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Comment by joshuaheard | Hacker News Reader

Abortion and gay marriage were changed in the courts, so I don't know if that counts as America changing its mind. That being said, I would posit that any increase in the rate of America changing its mind is due to the increase in the rate of information exchange due to advances in communication technology.

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Right, few of these "mind changes" are really analogous in terms of how they were enacted. Voter referendums are much more responsive to public opinion (ie something like "America") than legislatures, let alone the higher bar of constitutional change.

Gay marriage has been steadily gaining in public approval, as seen here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-support-reach...

This is indeed America changing its mind.

You're right that there is not a direct connection between America's laws and America's minds, but the article was clear in what it was reporting.

It would have been interesting to also include information on public polling of these issues, but this information doesn't exist beyond a few decades ago.

There is a chart with "age" on the y axis and "year for the poll" on the x axis. The delta is also shown for each group from 1996 to 2014.

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

I wish there thy y axis was birth year. That way we can see if older people are actually changing their minds instead of just aging into the next bracket.

agree. The south is very religious & a high percentage would say they are Christian over non religious. I bet they verbally support it when asked.. to not be shamed when speaking against it. When it comes to voting, they are against it.

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