By Bob Smietana
Most Americans no longer see anything wrong with smoking pot or shacking up.
But having an affair or cheating on your taxes are still frowned upon.
Those are among the findings of a CNN poll on the attitudes toward marijuana use and other behaviors that have been considered morally wrong.
The poll of 1,010 adult Americans found only about 1 in 3 (35 percent) say smoking marijuana is morally wrong. About the same number (32 percent) say living together is immoral.
By contrast, 9 of out 10 (93 percent) say having an affair is immoral, as is cheating on your taxes (90 percent). A majority (57%) also says having an abortion is morally wrong.
Americans are split on whether looking at a pornographic magazine or homosexual behavior is morally wrong. Half (50 percent) say homosexual behavior is wrong, while 46 percent say looking at pornography is immoral.
Few people disapprove of alcohol use. Only 16 percent say alcohol use is morally wrong.
CNN also found more than half of Americans (55 percent) say pot should be legalized.
Sales of legalized marijuana topped $5 million in the first week it was legal to sell in Colorado, according to the Huffington Post.
CNN Polling director Keating Holland said “senior citizens, Republicans, and Southerners” still oppose legal pot.
Americans’ views of affairs and tax cheats are unchanged in recent decades.
A 1987 Time poll, for example, found that 92 percent of Americans said an affair was morally wrong. Eight-six percent also said cheating on taxes is wrong.
Views of other behaviors were more flexible.
In 1987, Time found that 70 percent of Americans view pot smoking as immoral. That number had dropped by half in CNN’s 2014 poll. Most (82 percent) also found homosexual behavior immoral in 1987.
Over the last few decades Americans’ views on abortion have changed slightly, down from 62 percent in 1987.
A 2012 Gallup poll on morality also found that Americans frown on affairs, with 89 percent saying an affair is wrong.
Cloning humans (86 percent) and polygamy (86) were also widely seen as immoral.
Few see using birth control (8 percent), divorce (26 percent), gambling (31 percent), and buying clothes made from fur (35 percent) as immoral, according to Gallup’s poll.
A 2012 survey from Lifeway Research found only 37 percent of Americans say homosexual behavior is a sin. That’s down from 44 percent in 2011.