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Survey: Most Religious People Don't Hate Gays
SF Weekly ^ | Wed., Mar. 5 2014 | Anna Pulley

Posted on 03/06/2014 12:01:33 PM PST by nickcarraway

It's an oft-repeated message that religion and LGBT bashing go together like santorum and anal sex, but a new survey finds that is not the case, after all.

According to a new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), titled "A Decade of Change in American Attitudes about Same-Sex Marriage and LGBT Issues," not only have attitudes changed drastically in favor of pro-LGBT rights, but religious bias has also been overstated.

The religiously unaffiliated, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly support teh gheyz (73 percent), but so do majorities of Jewish Americans (83 percent), white mainline Protestants (62 percent), white Catholics (58 percent) and even Hispanic Catholics (56 percent) currently support same-sex marriage.

While a (sometimes slim) majority of religious folks tend to support LGBT issues, regular churchgoers (those who attend at least once or twice a month), still think that they are in the minority, and that their church takes the opposite viewpoint on things like same-sex marriage. From the findings:

About 6-in-10 (59 percent) white mainline Protestants believe their fellow congregants are mostly opposed to same-sex marriage. However, among white mainline Protestants who attend church regularly, only 36 percent oppose allowing gay and lesbian people to legally marry while a majority (57 percent) actually favor this policy. Roughly three-quarters (73 percent) of Catholics believe that most of their fellow congregants are opposed to same-sex marriage. However, Catholics who regularly attend church are in fact divided on the issue (50 percent favor, 45 percent oppose). Contributing to the misconception that religion takes an anti-gay stance is the mainstream media, which, you've probably noticed, tends to favor evangelical talking heads who think Girl Scout cookies turn people into lesbian witches, among other ridiculous rhetoric. The media ignores more moderate religious viewpoints, pro-LGBT people of faith, and even atheists, who represent 16 percent of Americans, but get less than 1 percent of air time, according to a study by GLAAD and the University of Missouri Center on Religion & the Professions.

This kind of fabricated "religion vs gays" polarizing is having a negative effect, says PRRI CEO Dr. Robert P. Jones. Particularly on the younger generations.

"Nearly one-third of Millennials who left their childhood religion say unfavorable church teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people played a significant role in their decision to head for the exit."

Almost 33 percent! That's a pretty staggering number when one considers all the other reasons a millennial might stop going to church, such as hypocrisy, political grandstanding, and, lesbihonest, that it interferes too much with Sunday brunch plans.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: annapulley; christianleft; gayagenda; homosexualagenda; religiousleft
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To: GeronL

I’m referring directly to the title vs. most of the hodge podge of the body of it. This basically implies Christians are all supportive of homo marriage.


61 posted on 03/06/2014 8:30:15 PM PST by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Technological progress cannot be legislated.)
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To: the OlLine Rebel

Leftist are always doing stuff like that


62 posted on 03/06/2014 8:33:08 PM PST by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans!)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

This is true, but we had been discussing the attitudes of certain notorious sinners, not of Our Lord.


63 posted on 03/06/2014 8:47:42 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: nickcarraway

What I’m saying is, I was a Christian before during and after I beat him. I was hardly older than the relative in age and the man was in his thirties. The man was an ex-con that ran a local key shop. I beat him for revenge, and a profound disgust for the damage he’d done to the boy. He was sent to prison a short time after this when the mother of another boy found him molesting her son. My relative begged me not to go to the cops, not wanting the shame of being raped to be public, so... And I’m not saying all homosexual men rape children, although it seems there’s a lot of pedophilia involved in more than a few of these attractions. Being Christian didn’t lessen the desire to punish this man however, or not enough to stop me from acting anyway. Even after many years I’ve never felt much burdened by regret about it. When I was growing up there wasn’t much sentimental Christianity with any men I knew. Most of our fathers fought in WWII and were charitable and yet undemonstrative Christians. I guess that was long ago.


64 posted on 03/06/2014 9:08:01 PM PST by februus
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To: The_Reader_David

But if the sinners distract you from the Lord, then the infernal realms have won the game with you (for the moment).


65 posted on 03/07/2014 1:35:02 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: februus

The shame of being raped to go public.

That says a lot about this sinful, cruel world and secondarily of how you aligned yourself with it!


66 posted on 03/07/2014 1:36:55 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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