Update from a reader:

All I could think when watching this video that you posted was: Would you two just go ahead and make out already?

A reader writes:

I hope it's not too late to add to the Millennial Voters thread. I fully agree with what other writers have said so far about the differences in education, and especially life experience, between Millennials and the older generation and how it affects our voting trends. My wife and I (31 and 30 years old) are both heterosexuals who believe in full civil rights for gay people and the right for these fellow citizens to marry the person they love and not have the government tell them they are invalid. After this most recent election (wet both voted for Obama largely because he publicly endorsed gay marriage), we got to thinking about the waning role of religion in the lives of people our age and how that might affect how we vote.

My family (we have two daughters, 3 years old and 6 months) does not attend church and we don't adhere to any religious beliefs. I was raised Catholic and attended church from birth until I went to college.

I stopped going largely because I feel the church has involved itself too much in politics as a means to control the lives of people who may not necessarily adhere to their beliefs through the passage of laws by friendly legislators. What we've noticed these days is not a single one of our friends in our age group attends church, talks about religious beliefs, or appears to be the least bit religious. We pride ourselves on being free thinkers and on not taking, at face value, the pronouncements of those who hold perceived authority. Compare this to many of my older relatives who still receive their voting marching orders from the pulpit.

Finally, I think people my age have grown up in a society so diverse that we reject the notion that government should protect family values. Whose family values? Mine, my neighbor's, the deadbeat dad who abandons his family? The point is, we've come to realize, because we have access to and are not insulated from so many different cultures, points of view, histories and other information that there is not one set of values for the government to protect. That's why I always chuckle when people run for office on a "family values" platform. They didn't check with me to see what my values are, so how can they assure me those are the ones they will protect. I more get the sense they want me to live by THEIR family values, and I don't like that.

Another:

I wanted to expand on something your reader said here. I'm another one of Orwell's children (born in 1984). My parents also got divorced. Until that point (around 13), I had a modern "Leave it to Beaver" life. I was raised Catholic and thought everyone lived the same happy life I did in my stable, upper middle-class household. But my parent's divorce tore away that first layer of innocence or ignorance about the real world. I no longer felt entitled to be completely happy all the time. And I could begin to feel empathy for others in similar situations. 

I stayed pretty religious and conservative through 9/11 and into the Iraq war. But those two events got me interested in politics. And the aftermath of those events, particularly the failure in Iraq and the way it was sold to us, tore away at the next layer of how I perceived the world and replaced it with a cynicism and curiosity that put me on the path to where I am. From that point on I questioned everything, and the college experience was right there to help that along. I went from being an O'Reilly-watching Catholic to now being a very progressive atheist.

I'm sure earlier generations can point to similar events that shaped their lives (Vietnam, WWII). But as many readers have pointed out, we have a much easier time accessing information. So if you want to look beyond you're own worldview it's easy to do so. That's another thing I think is important, greater access to life beyond your immediate home. While many of us may not experience poverty or the effects of war directly, we can get a glimpse of it through TV, the Internet, and social media. Seeing those things removes fear of the unknown and helps people empathize, which are key elements in becoming a liberal.

Another:

I was born in 1990, so I'm on the tail end of the millennial generation, young enough that I only have vague memories of the time before we had dial-up in the house, but old enough to remember gleefully tearing the feeder tabs off reams of continuous form paper. (And yes, I had to google "1990s printer paper" to figure out what it was called.)

Like the Orwellian reader you quoted, I have plenty of friends who are every bit as socially conservative as their parents, some even more so, because the Internet has given them the resources to defend their positions against the educated liberal elite that much more effectively.