Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Religious Homo-Acceptability Quotients





















This past weekend, I enjoyed another of several recent summaries the Los Angeles Times has printed of the poll results from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The details in the above chart of attitudes toward the homo-sexicals (click for very large view) are the type of data I love to pore over. I've highlighted the groups with the highest and lowest acceptance rates. I'm glad to see that Unitarians & Buddhists (I love my people!) are so accepting -- apparently even more so than atheists, which was somewhat surprising. And you've got to hand it to Reform Jews; I'm assuming they know from persecuted minorities! It also surprised me that American Catholics are so accepting. However, for all Il Papa's ranting and venom-spewing, I think the Catholic rep is at odds with how your typical Irish-/Italian-/Polish-/Mexican-Americans actually live their lives.

As for lack of surprises, the religious groups that are least accepting of teh gay? JWs, the Happy Mormons, and Evangelical Christians.

I was also somewhat encouraged by the weekend's news that the Presbyterian General Assembly voted to allow noncelibate singles (e.g., gays) to be ordained. It just shores up my general feeling that while the Evangelical crowd is very scary and hateful, they don't really represent the majority of the "religious" in this country, and not even the majority of Christians. They may be the most visible, vocal, and politically active, but I'm still optimistic that they don't have the power to completely hijack this country.

3 comments:

Gregg Biggs said...

No huge surprises here, but it is a bit interesting that Muslims and Mormons are twice as "accepting" as Jehovah Witnesses. Actually, I'm a bit disappointed that my UUs aren't the mid-90s. Must be those in Texas and South Carolina that keep the number from reaching 100%.

Anonymous said...

Yet.

M. Knoester said...

Funny you should say that, gregg, for obvious reasons I checked out UU first. It does say "Unitarian and Other Liberal Faiths", so the figure isn't a true reflection of UU-ism. That's my interpretation, anyway.