New Report: Catholics More Supportive Of Gay And Lesbian Rights Than General Public, Other Christians

WASHINGTON, DC -- Catholics are more supportive of gay and lesbian rights than the general public and other Christians, according to a new report released today. The new report, which is the most comprehensive portrait of Catholic attitudes on gay and lesbian issues assembled to date, also finds that seven-in-ten Catholics say that messages from America's places of worship contribute a lot (33 percent) or a little (37 percent) to higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth.

"It may come as a surprise to many that rank and file Catholics are more supportive of rights for gays and lesbians than other Christians and the public," said Dr. Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute. "But the best data available paints this consistent portrait across a range of issues, including same-sex marriage, workplace non-discrimination, open military service, and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples."

Among the key findings:

• Nearly three-quarters of Catholics favor either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or allowing them to form civil unions (31%). Only 22% of Catholics say there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple's relationship.
• Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Catholics favor laws that would protect gay and lesbian people against discrimination in the workplace; 63% of Catholics favor allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly in the military; and 6-in-10 (60%) Catholics favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children.
• Less than 4-in-10 Catholics give their own church top marks (a grade of an A or a B) on its handing of the issue of homosexuality; majorities of members of most other religious groups give their churches high marks.
• A majority of Catholics (56%) believe that sexual relations between two adults of the same gender is not a sin.

"The strong evidence of Catholic support for gay marriage highlights the growing acceptance in American culture of the normalcy of same-sex relationships, and further showcases ordinary Catholics' dissent from official church teaching on sexual morality," said Dr. Michelle Dillon, a panelist on the call releasing the report and chair of the Sociology Department at University of New Hampshire. "Most American Catholics believe that one can be a good Catholic and disagree with the Vatican and the bishops on issues of personal conscience; gay-marriage has clearly become another issue, along with artificial contraception and divorce and remarriage, which Catholics believe is not core to what it means to be Catholic."

The report was released today in a national press teleconference that included Dr. Robert P. Jones, PRRI CEO; Daniel Cox, PRRI research director; Dr. Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at Catholic University of America; and Dr. Michelle Dillon, author of Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The report draws on original analysis of existing data from PRRI and other sources, and includes previously unreleased data from PRRI's monthly Religion and Politics Tracking Polls.

"These data demonstrate that the momentum for legal recognition for same-sex unions is strong among American Catholics and likely growing with generational change," said Dr. Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at Catholic University of America. "Even among Latino Catholics, long supposed to be a group supportive of traditional social values, the numbers point to growing support for same-sex marriage. The question facing the American bishops, who oppose same-sex marriage on doctrinal grounds, is how it will choose to address this momentum"

To read the full report here.

Public Religion Research Institute is a non-profit, nonpartisan research and education organization specializing in work at the intersection of religion, values and public life.

Comments

[CharlesCT]

02:01 AM on 04/08/2011

Maybe they are living what they have been taught. Many people just talk the Bible, they don't want to live what it says. Faith, love, understanding and tolerance are very much whay some religions are about.

[Ioan Lightoller]

03:45 PM on 03/28/2011

For those with open minds, I am posting a couple of excellent links to a couple of pages on Soulforce's website. They are a more complete version of anything I could add to this discussion. However, I don't think homosexuality is any better or any worse than heterosexuality. Let people live their lives fully and live your own as well.

http://www.soulforce.org/pdf/whatthesciencesays.pdf

http://www.soulforce.org/pdf/whatthebiblesays.pdf

[SILVERBULLET011]

09:55 AM on 03/27/2011

What Muslim find shocking about the west...

They are shocked by the appalling rates of theft, drunkenness, drug addiction, sex outside marriage, abortions, rape of children and old ladies, homosexuality - especially when it is being put forward as quite normal and an acceptable alternative sexual lifestyle; homosexuals in positions of authority (from teachers to MPs).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/sharia_1.shtml

[santiago sherwood]

11:43 AM on 03/27/2011

there is a big difference between tolerance and approval. tolerance is something Sunni's Completely lack but Shiite's have a lot more. As there are still Churches in Synagogues in Iran. you won't find that in the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

[Ioan Lightoller]

06:11 PM on 03/27/2011

Why do you constantly seek to bring Muslims into this? We are discussing CATHOLICS. You just hate gay people and love to spew that hatred everywhere you go. There are gay masjids and gay imams--you just don't hear about them.

[rjhuntington]

06:28 AM on 03/27/2011

If Christians are Christians specifically because they are followers of Jesus Christ, then to be genuine followers of Christ, Christians would need to rigorously adhere to the life and teachings of the Jesus whom they regard as the Christ. You would think so, anyway.

What did Jesus Christ have to say about homosexuality? NOTHING! Must not be important then. If it were important, surely Jesus Christ would have said something about it. But, some like to point out, the Old Testament says so, Moses said so. Perhaps, but where did Jesus Christ say so or even recommend reading the Old Testament? He said he is the New Testament, which kind of throws out the old, don't you think? Why else say it? How could people who claim Jesus Christ as their God and savior allow something Moses said to trump what Jesus Christ never said?

Anyone who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to Earth on a divine mission has to accept that such a one would have no problem fulfilling a divine mission and that everything that needed to be said and preserved would be said and preserved. Right? It should be self-evident that for God to do this would be a piece of cake, right? Well, Jesus didn't say ANYTHING about it, so clearly, for Christians, it can't be an issue.

[SILVERBULLET011]

07:05 PM on 03/27/2011

Jesus didn't have to say anything against homosexuality because people already knew it went against Gods law and will, and Jesus did say let a man go to his wife and the two shall be one..

see marriage is ONE MAN AND ONE WOMEN AND THEY SHALL BECOME ONE...nothing about let two me or two women marray and become one, because its not normal or natural..

[Ioan Lightoller]

07:10 PM on 03/27/2011

Only in your hateful little mind. And many people are not Christian and in fact belong to religions which have no issues around a GLBT orientation or same-sex marriage. Care to tell me why your religious beliefs should have blocked the right of my Pagan Priestess to perform a legal marriage for us?

[WheelsOnFire]

07:22 PM on 03/27/2011

So now you speak for Jesus, do you silverbullet?

Just another example of narcissistic personality disorder, rearing its ugly head.

[SILVERBULLET011]

06:49 PM on 03/26/2011

How Sharia Law Punishes Raped Women
By: Hasan Mahmud

FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, November 17, 2008
On October 30, 2008, the United Nations condemned the stoning to death of Aisha Duhulowa, a 13-year-old girl who had been gang-raped and then sentenced to death by a Sharia court for fornication (Zina). She was screaming and begging for mercy,

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33098

Libya is a secular state under gadafi but the rebels we are now supporting are Islamist and this women would face death under their goverment under sharia Islamic law...

[Ioan Lightoller]

06:57 PM on 03/26/2011

And what has this to do with GLBT rights. I don't condone this sort of thing and never will but I would like to know where you are going with this.

[mercury613]

04:06 PM on 03/27/2011

You're starting to sound a bit unhinged.

[Ioan Lightoller]

06:12 PM on 03/27/2011

And he has said in a post that I'm mentally ill.

[learninglife]

06:42 PM on 03/26/2011

In response to those comments here that suggest that "self-sacrifice" and celibacy are the paths leading LGBT people to God...

Only human beings - let me reword that to read that only the ego of human beings and its resulting fear of the world and others - could take an all-loving God (if one does indeed exist) and turn that God into a judgmental, punishing, and in many cases even sadistic entity.

IMO, God, if S/he/It exists, would like you to be happy and love yourself. This concept for some reason seems to trouble many of God's "followers."

[Ioan Lightoller]

06:59 PM on 03/26/2011

Faved since I cannot fan again. A loving God and Goddess do not require people to twist themselves into knots by living a celibate lifestyle. We were made to love the gods and love one another. We were not make to make some goatherd "god" happy (not that I think that would even be possible given all the things he doesn't like).

[mercury613]

06:14 PM on 03/26/2011

Windfish: Then you misunderst­and ontology, Good Wolf. Ontology refers to the *nature* of being. An apple that has a worm in it or has some other privation or defect is still an apple. The worm has no part in the nature of the apple. It is incidental­. Same with a person who suffers from same-sex attraction­.
-----------

It's tragic that people continue to fall victim to the dehumanizing lies that the Catholic church spreads about gay people, and I'm sorry that you count yourself among those people. You can try to rationalize those lies all you want by jumping through philosophical hoops, using fallacious "natural law" arguments, etc, but it won't change the fact that they are, indeed, lies.

Thankfully, more and more people are waking up to this truth. I hope you do, too.

[Ioan Lightoller]

07:02 PM on 03/26/2011

Amazing. Faved. I hope windfish comes to realise that life not be the way he thinks it has to be in order to please his goatherd god. There is a wonderful world out there--live your life as you are led. I can guarantee that somewhere along the line, someone guilted windfish into giving up his nature in order to twist himself into the mold of the RCC.

[mercury613]

07:39 PM on 03/26/2011

Thank you. I've been there, and I feel very fortunate that I was able to recognize it for what it is: lies perpetuated by people who are too afraid to let go of their superstitious, baseless beliefs, and who feel the need to drag others into their misery.

[sfpolarbear]

01:36 PM on 03/26/2011

This is good news for me as a Catholic. I hope the message reaches the top of the church hierarchy.

[Ioan Lightoller]

06:13 PM on 03/27/2011

Fanned and faved. From your mouth to the hierarchy's ears!

[Spazzznyc]

01:25 PM on 03/26/2011

Catholics are better educated and many live in urban and more progressive areas and personally know gay people. You usually don't get the fire and brimstone preaching in a Catholic church as you do in smaller evangelical denominations in rural areas. Trust me, growing up Catholic in the Northeast and visiting my Baptist cousins in rural Ohio was culture shock, not exactly a church experience I would want to bring home with me.

[dkon2011]

11:08 PM on 03/25/2011

Now only if the hierarchy could see fit to recognize that God does not make trash.

[Ioan Lightoller]

07:03 PM on 03/26/2011

Fanned and faved! Sadly, Xtianity always has to have someone to look down on and to see as "other". I guess it makes them feel better about themselves.

[freddsky]

09:05 PM on 03/25/2011

My experience of my Protestant friends is that they are far too masochistic to detach and compartmentalize, to enjoy sin while it lasts-- whereas the RCs insist that there is nothing quite like genuine contrition (before and after) to enhance the joys of temptation. The former are more likely to point fingers while the latter are either too disinterested in or too busy to worry about what others might be getting up to. (No citation or statistical validation is implied.)

[rjhuntington]

06:01 AM on 03/27/2011

"RCs insist that there is nothing quite like...contrition...to enhance the joys of temptation"

LOL!!! As a former RC, I know the truth of this.

[freddsky]

05:57 PM on 03/27/2011

Like the former RCs I know you have the knack of saying things better with fewer words. Ti saluto!

[Ioan Lightoller]

06:14 PM on 03/27/2011

Hey, he wasn't Catholic but didn't Rasputin make something of a career out of "you have to sin before you repent"? lol

[Talossa]

06:16 PM on 03/27/2011

He did indeed.

[skeptic406]

02:40 PM on 03/25/2011

I read the source study and I think the generalizations are too broad. I am pleasantly pleased the so many RC folks support gay marriage. But the RC church itself certainly does not. On the other hand, there are some Protestant churches that as a matter of church policy support either marriage or civil unions.

[LintLass]

03:59 PM on 03/25/2011

That's the big disconnect: the Church and Catholic neocon organizations have been *lying* when they have claimed to represent that many Catholic voters. Not churchgoers... Voters.

[wolfiegirl]

08:17 PM on 03/25/2011

Catholicism is a culture as well as a religion. Even I, who don't practice Catholicism and consider myself largely agnostic, still consider myself a "Catholic", much like an ethnic group. I have other Catholic friends who feel the same way. As such, "we Catholics" are a surprising lot; since blue states are predominantly Catholic, many of us are democrats. Most Catholics I know are far more liberal in their values than you might think. I find most Protestant groups to be the neocons. Of course, there are some Catholics on the far right, but they are the exception.

[Good Wolf]

02:03 PM on 03/25/2011

Windfish wrote: "Currently, in the US, only 3 priests are credibly accused of any wrongdoing"
_____________________

I can only conclude that Windfish must *pretend* that the Philadelphia archdiocese didn't just remove 21 priests "credibly accused", who were still in the pulpit.

[LintLass]

04:03 PM on 03/25/2011

Am I 'persecuting' those Catholics spending millions to oppress me (not to mention demonize victims straight or LGBT, to further that end,) when I say,

Liars!

They still claim there's some *totally-random and uncalled for anti-Catholic bigotry,even from queer kids who'd get it for being a *Paddy* if we weren't getting it from the Catholics for being etc etc... * All manner of elaborate theories and dodges to "justify" what is *obviously wrong and hurting people:*

[mercury613]

04:17 PM on 03/26/2011

And that the RC hierarchy has not been complicit in a large-scale cover-up.

[AndySFO]

11:12 AM on 03/25/2011

The key line in this article, for me, is "Most American Catholics believe that one can be a good Catholic and disagree with the Vatican and the bishops on issues of personal conscience." Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church, argued that following one's personal conscience is not wrong. Church doctrine has been wrong before; at other times, revealed wisdom (another Catholic value) teaches us that what was once perceived as right has evolved into a wrong. I believe that we are seeing the beginnings of a shift in our understanding on this issue that will eventually lead to change in the Church's position.

Besides, we are told in scripture that "God is love" (1 Jo 4:8; 4:16). I think it behooves all Christians to ask ourselves whether working against allowing love to flourish between any two people is not working against God's will.

[skeptic406]

11:02 AM on 03/25/2011

As a Christian who has been historically excommunicated from the RC church, in part for similar beliefs mentioned above, I wonder why these folks still consider themselves as faithful RC'ers. It must be difficult to reconcile their personal faith with the teaching that all RC's must agree with the church on all issues of faith. I hope they are not condemned by their church and eventually they are able to reform their church.

[sfpolarbear]

01:41 PM on 03/26/2011

I for one was taught in Catholic School that I had to let my own conscience be my guide. I was in school in the 50's and 60s. The poster above who referenced Thomas Aquinas brings up the same point.