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More than 10% of Canadians Do Not Believe Pedophilia Immoral

By Gudrun Schultz and John-Henry Westen

MONTREAL, Quebec, June 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Leger Marketing conducted a telephone poll of 1,508 Canadian adults between April 17 and April 23. The poll results, with a margin of error of ±2.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, have found that an alarming 11% of Canadians do not consider pedophilia immoral.

The question was in no way slanted.  Respondents were asked: "Do you consider the following behaviour as immoral?" and to "pedophilia" 81% responded 'yes', 11% 'no', and 8% did not know or refused to respond.

Pedophilia did, however, rank as most immoral of the items in the poll.  Second on the list were extra-marital affairs. 74% of respondents listed marital infidelity as immoral, while 23% did not believe it immoral.   Interestingly, only 17% of respondents said they considered divorce to be immoral, with 78% not considering it such.

Prostitution was ranked third, with 68% indicating they considered it to be immoral, and 29% not.

Over two-thirds of respondents said they believed underage sexual relations were immoral, with 65% of those questioned saying sexual relations before age 16 were wrong, with 31% not considering it immoral.  Alcohol abuse was given a similar ranking as under-age sex, with 65% saying it was immoral and 33% not.

Women condemned child abuse, marital infidelity, prostitution and under-age sex more strongly than men, ranging from a difference of 6 to 13 percentage points.

Men, however, responded more strongly against abortion, with 35% saying it was immoral.  Women were not far behind, with 33% indicating they believed abortion to be wrong. Abortion was considered immoral by just over a third of those polled, at 34%, with 60% considering it not immoral.

On the question of homosexuality, as well, men responded more strongly than women. 37% of men said they believed homosexuality was immoral, compared to 26% of women. One-third of respondents (31%) said homosexuality was immoral, while 63% believed it not to be so.

58% of respondents said pornographic films were immoral, with significantly more women responding (68%) than men (46%), the greatest gap between male and female responses in the poll.

Blasphemy was seen to be immoral by more than half of respondents, with 51% saying they considered it to be immoral, markedly higher than the results for abortion, homosexuality, divorce or contraception. Again, men responded less, with 45%, over 57% of women.

Only 8% of those questioned said contraception was immoral, with slightly more men than women responding. On the question of divorce, more men than women said divorce was immoral, with 19% for men and 16% for women.

The poll results are published online in incomplete form.  LifeSiteNews.com contacted Leger Marketing to obtain fuller details on the poll, which are presented in this article.

See the poll results online:
http://legermarketing.com/documents/spclm/060612ENG.pdf

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