Gay and religion

Attitudes toward homosexuality have been found to be determined not only by personal religious beliefs, but by the interaction of those beliefs with the predominant national religious context—even for people who are less religious or who do not share their local dominant religious context. [6]. The anthology Gay Religion, edited by Scott Thumma and Edward R. Gray, has been the top resource for this compilation. It aims to "give a straightforward presentation of the spiritual lives, practices and expressions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons.".

LGBTQ+ individuals often have complex and diverse connections with religion and spirituality, even in the face of structural stigma and prejudice rooted in religious beliefs. Your relationship with religion is completely up to you! The Trevor Project offers advice and LGBTQ+ friendly resources for religion. The relationship between religion and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people can vary greatly across time and place, within and between different religions and sects, and regarding different forms of homosexuality, bisexuality, non-binary, and transgender identities.

Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender adults are, on the whole, less religious than the general public. LGBT adults who do have a religious affiliation generally attend worship services less frequently and attach less importance to religion in their lives than do religiously affiliated adults in the general public.

That sentiment is even more prevalent among the general public. Among all adults in the general public, there is a strong correlation between the frequency of church attendance and the belief that homosexuality should be discouraged. By overwhelming margins, most rate all six as more unfriendly than friendly. About eight-in-ten LGBT respondents say the Muslim religion, the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church are unfriendly toward them, while one-in-ten or fewer say each of these religious institutions is friendly toward them.

By comparison, fewer LGBT adults see the Jewish religion and non-evangelical mainline Protestant churches as unfriendly toward them, but more say each is unfriendly rather than friendly by a large margin. The remainder of this chapter explores all of these patterns in more detail and provides quotes from survey respondents on topics related to religion. When it comes to religion, the LGBT population has a distinctly different profile than the general public.

Fewer LGBT adults have a religious affiliation. Like the U. Young LGBT adults are particularly likely to have no religious affiliation, a pattern that is also found among the general public.

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However, compared with the general public, a higher share of LGBT adults are unaffiliated across all age groups. Apart from age, there are few subgroup differences among LGBT adults in the tendency to be religiously affiliated or unaffiliated. Gay men, lesbian and bisexual adults are about equally likely to be religiously affiliated. Similarly, within the LGBT population there are no significant differences in religious affiliation levels among whites compared with racial and ethnic minorities, or among college graduates compared with those without a college degree.

While marriage is correlated with religious practice in the general public, being married or in a civil union is not significantly associated with having a religious affiliation among LGBT respondents. There are modest differences across regions. Unlike the general public, LGBT adults tend to tilt strongly toward the political left regardless of whether they are religiously affiliated or unaffiliated.

LGBT adults identifying as liberals outnumber conservatives by more than two-to-one among both those who have and those who do not have a religious affiliation. Religious commitment. LGBT adults also exhibit lower levels of religious commitment. And religion tends to be less salient in the lives of LGBT respondents. Some, but not all, of these differences in religious commitment are related to the lower levels of religious affiliation among LGBT adults.

However, even after controlling for affiliation with a religion, LBGT adults exhibit lower levels of religious commitment. LGBT respondents with a religious affiliation attend worship services less frequently than do adults in the general public who have a religious affiliation. The vast majority of people with no religious affiliation, both those who are LGBT and the general public, say they seldom or never attend worship services.

There are modest differences among gay men, lesbians and bisexual adults in worship service attendance. There is a similar pattern when it comes to the importance of religion. Some, but not all, of the difference between LGBT adults and the general public is explained by the higher percentage of religiously unaffiliated lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults.

Religiously unaffiliated adults are less inclined to consider religion personally important. Even among those with a religious affiliation, however, LGBT respondents place less importance on religion. For example, a third of LGBT adults with a religious affiliation say religion is very important in their lives.