I don’t like this piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine about “Generation Next.”

Ann Hulbert cites a Pew Research Center study to make the claim that Americans aged 18-25 are more anti-abortion and yet more pro-gay-marriage than their forebears, and she proceeds to ponder this apparently strange contradiction.

First problem: I don’t know where she gets her claim about abortion.

Roughly a third of Gen Nexters endorse making abortion generally available, half support limits and 15 percent favor an outright ban. By contrast, 35 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds support readily available abortions.

Um, “roughly a third” is the same as 35 percent. Especially in a survey, which has a margin of error. According to the original report, that “roughly a third” is actually 32 percent, which is statistically indistinguishable from 35 percent.

So the premise of Hulbert’s article is basically worthless.

As for her second point, that younger people are more tolerant of gay marriage, she comes up with a convoluted reason why people can be both anti-abortion (which, again, she hasn’t shown) and pro-gay-marriage:

[M]aybe there are signs here that Gen Nexters are primed to do in the years ahead what their elders have so signally failed to manage: actually think beyond their own welfare to worry about — of all things — the next generation. For when you stop to consider it, at the core of Gen Nexters’ seemingly discordant views on these hot-button issues could be an insistence on giving priority to children’s interests. Take seriously the lives you could be creating: the Gen Next wariness of abortion sends that message. Don’t rule out for any kid who is born the advantage of being reared by two legally wedded parents: that is at least one way to read the endorsement of gay marriage.

It’s really much simpler than that. Younger people are more supportive of gay marriage because they’re more supportive of gay people in general. Younger people aren’t morally superior or more thoughtful than their forebears; they’ve just grown up knowing more gay people, and therefore knowing more facts about gay people – such as the fact that we’re not all totally irresponsible perverted satyrs who want to destroy society – as opposed to the older generations, who grew up with prejudices and stereotypes based not on actual gay people but on what they thought they knew about gay people. And it’s more difficult to change your social views the older you get – not impossible, but more difficult.

So the younger people aren’t smarter or better. They’ve just grown up in a world that has a more accurate view of gay people than in the past. And that’s because more and more gay people are out today, and at younger ages, than in the past. It’s harder to demonize a group of people when you actually know people from that group.

It’s not that complicated.

And the article is therefore totally pointless.