There is a growing subfield in public policy analysis devoted to moral conflicts or what is commonly known as morality policy.1 Moral conflicts engage contested values, are highly salient for ordinary people, and easily polarize the debate into nonnegotiable positions. Because religious beliefs often underlie these policy debates, moral conflicts have occurred more frequently in the United States than in the more secular countries of Europe,2 though the presence of religious-based parties also accounts for the emergence of such conflicts there.3 Moral conflicts have been popularized as “culture wars” between mainstream and fundamentalist worldviews,4 and, as such, pose threats to consensus-building, political stability, and even public civility.5 If the emergence of moral conflicts is a worthy topic for scholarly inquiry, then surely the ability of our political system to end moral conflict without social trauma is equally important for policy analysis. This article focuses on why long-standing political debates over moral conflict sometimes fall off the policy agenda. In our search for explanations of why moral conflicts die, we draw on the agenda-setting literature in public policy and communications studies as well as sociological research on social movements and social problems.

中文翻译：

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道德冲突的生命周期：为什么有些人会死，而有些人会坚持

公共政策分析中有一个越来越多的子领域致力于道德冲突或通常所说的道德政策。1 道德冲突涉及有争议的价值观，对普通人来说非常突出，并且很容易将辩论极化为不可谈判的立场。由于宗教信仰往往是这些政策辩论的基础，因此道德冲突在美国发生的频率高于欧洲的世俗国家，2 尽管宗教政党的存在也是那里出现此类冲突的原因。 3 道德冲突已经被大众化为主流世界观和原教旨主义世界观之间的“文化战争”，4 因而对共识的建立、政治稳定甚至公共文明构成威胁。 5 如果道德冲突的出现是一个值得学术探究的话题，那么，我们的政治体系在没有社会创伤的情况下结束道德冲突的能力对于政策分析当然同样重要。本文重点讨论为什么关于道德冲突的长期政治辩论有时会脱离政策议程。在我们寻找道德冲突为何消亡的解释时，我们借鉴了公共政策和传播研究中的议程设置文献，以及关于社会运动和社会问题的社会学研究。