What will be the "big" Social Issues in 2050?

[RFayette]

As we are seeing the country move increasingly leftward on social matters, I do wonder what issues will replace the current crop.

My current guesses:
Animal rights (I think this one will be huge; I've heard people say to me "Check your Homo sapiens privilege" and accused me of speciesism, and that might become non-fringe in the future)
Abortion (which will always be around)
Tax-exempt status of churches
Curriculum of religious/homeschools (I could see Ken Ham-style curriculum come into fire in the future)
Polygamy?

What are your toughts?

[Brewer]

I imagine polygamy will be a topic of active political debate by that time period.

[RFayette]

I imagine polygamy will be a topic of active political debate by that time period.

I've heard that too, but I don't even see inklings of a polygamist movement among the fringe left or in secular/libertarian circles.  It seems hard to envision that happening compared to others that I posted.

[Sumner 1868]

I think at least another twenty-five years are needed to even attempt a guess, really. Using current trends is fruitless.

[Deus Naturae]

I think that as religion dies out (I'm not just talking about religious conservatives in their current incarnation, but religion as an active political force in general), "social issues" will no longer be debated in terms of "religious vs. secular"  but increasingly it'll be a matter of "personal choice vs. state intervention."

Basically, whether people should be allowed to make bad decisions. Increased regulation and/or prohibition of things like smoking, hard drugs, junk food*, etc will be major "social issues" in the future.

Gun control will also still be an issue, as always.

*There's also the possibility that the government will try to go after perfectly healthy foods like delicious, fatty red meat which is widely considered unhealthy as a result of the litany of misinformation regarding nutrition. This also plays into the environmentalist narrative about how eating meat is destroying the planet.

[RFayette]

*There's also the possibility that the government will try to go after perfectly healthy foods like delicious, fatty red meat which is widely considered unhealthy as a result of the litany of misinformation regarding nutrition. This also plays into the environmentalist narrative about how eating meat is destroying the planet.

So very true.  The instant radical environmentalists go after my burger, I would be voting straight-ticket GOP for the rest of my life.  Luckily the Democrats are not beholden to the fringe wing of the party, unlike the GOP.

[Deus Naturae]

*There's also the possibility that the government will try to go after perfectly healthy foods like delicious, fatty red meat which is widely considered unhealthy as a result of the litany of misinformation regarding nutrition. This also plays into the environmentalist narrative about how eating meat is destroying the planet.

So very true.  The instant radical environmentalists go after my burger, I would be voting straight-ticket GOP for the rest of my life.  Luckily the Democrats are not beholden to the fringe wing of the party, unlike the GOP.

Burgers aren't good for you, but it's the bun that's the problem, not the meat.

[Sumner 1868]

I think at least another twenty-five years are needed to even attempt a guess, really. Using current trends is fruitless.

Well, 50 years ago, would they have predicted that

Gays
Abortion
Drug Legalization
Discrimination in private stores
Religion

Would be social issues?

The answer is yes.

Arguably, they had already become social issues by then, only perceptions were different.

[RFayette]

*There's also the possibility that the government will try to go after perfectly healthy foods like delicious, fatty red meat which is widely considered unhealthy as a result of the litany of misinformation regarding nutrition. This also plays into the environmentalist narrative about how eating meat is destroying the planet.

So very true.  The instant radical environmentalists go after my burger, I would be voting straight-ticket GOP for the rest of my life.  Luckily the Democrats are not beholden to the fringe wing of the party, unlike the GOP.

Burgers aren't good for you, but it's the bun that's the problem, not the meat.

I know that (if you see my Update posts I cover that); I was just referencing how fat is made to be the enemy when it's really not......my point was that if the Dems start advocating the  banning of foods, especially foods that have health potential (such as a bunless burger), then they'll have gone off the deep end.

[Indy Texas]

Ethical issues regarding genetics - legality of various medical treatments and the like.

I can also see Artificial Intelligence becoming seriously disruptive to society in social and cultural ways as much as in economic ways, and creating a need for legislation addressing that.

[Deus Naturae]

Also, if polygamy ever becomes a major issue (which I seriously doubt it will by 2050 considering that most people, including most of its practitioners, don't really care about its legal status) it will be interesting to see how many people genuinely believe in the idea of "doesn't matter if you support it or not, it's none of your business."

A lot of SSM supporters make statements to that effect when arguing with religious conservatives, but it's easy for them to say that when they themselves see nothing wrong with SSM in any case. How would these people react if presented with a case where the legal status of a marital arrangement that they actually disagreed with was being debated?

[retromike22]

What about equal rights for artificially intelligent robots?

[Lief 🗽]

I suspect we'll look on maligned artistic works like this one as terrifyingly prescient:

[Bacon King]

robosexuality

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I think at least another twenty-five years are needed to even attempt a guess, really. Using current trends is fruitless.

Well, 50 years ago, would they have predicted that

Gays
Abortion
Drug Legalization
Discrimination in private stores
Religion

Would be social issues?

The answer is yes.

Few would have predicted fifty years ago in the pre-Stonewall era that gay rights would be an issue. Maybe abortion, but even there many of them probably would have predicted that fight would be over expanding access to something like what many pro-life advocates are trying to restrict access to be from what it is now.

[Beezer]

Human-Xenomorph marriage.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Necrophilia.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Well I wrote a long spiel, which my browser decided to destroy ( :/ ) I'm not wring it again, but I said human cloning, designer babies, vegetarianism and meat-eating (obviously, as you can see above, even if it makes logical sense to attack meat-eating culture; it would be about as electorally popular as mandatory leprosy); automation of society and the role of salaried work; national boundaries and probably a movement to attack them as superfluous; the role of 'culture' vs human rights; the ethics of terraforming and geoenginering; the distribution of property amongst the population; life extension and existing in an increasingly aged population; the role of artificial intelligence and how fast it should be allowed to develop; gender roles; artificial life; space-junk; increasingly insidious advertising campaigns; personal privacy in an interconnected world; whether we have a right to colonise and terraform other planets; transhumanism etc.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Hopefully State funding of abortion will finally be allowed.

[Ebowed]

Going out on a limb here, I suspect a future where the division between acceptance of scientific consensus consolidates (i.e. people denying climate change will coalesce with people who wish not to vaccinate their children or fluoridate their water) while people with mutual interests, namely actively combating and adapting to the effects of climate change, are more likely to work together.  Whether people still denying climate change will still be a facet of any fossil fuel industry in 35 years is a valid question.  I do agree with OP that animal rights will continue to gain prominence, and I'm curious to see how it will play out.  In Australia, I would certainly hope to see a discussion about gambling by 2050, good God let's hope it doesn't continue for that long.  The United States needs to seriously re-evaluate its approach to voting.  I imagine privacy in an age of inevitable digital surveillance could be a relevant social issue as well.

[Türkisblau]

Ethical issues regarding genetics - legality of various medical treatments and the like.

I can also see Artificial Intelligence becoming seriously disruptive to society in social and cultural ways as much as in economic ways, and creating a need for legislation addressing that.

This. As we progress in technological innovation, with things like these not looking too far out today, there will be serious debate on which direction our society go.

[Torie]

Very long life expectancies, particularly if while possible, are expensive to secure, with all of the concomitant social and population pressures. These drugs being worked on to slow, stop or reverse the aging process, could be a social time bomb.

[7,052,770]

• Transhumanism/body modification - what is allowed and what isn't
• What do when 3D printing leads to tens of millions of jobs no longer necessary
• What do when life extension alllows Generation Y to remain in charge longer than generations have previously gotten to be

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Social issues are not a thing. Everything has economic consequences.

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

Considering that AI is still very much about databases and game trees, I don't think we'll have to worry about that too much unless there's huge advancement in computationally recreating brain functions.

Eugenics I think is the obvious one we'll see. Where its right or wrong to genetically modify people is always going to be huge, but it'll only become larger as we learn to manipulate the genome.