A few people on twitter have posted an article from USA today, Survey: 60% of gays say faith is important to them, which contains quotes like the following:
A significant majority of gays and lesbians — six in 10 — say faith is important in their lives
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The article also mentioned that the survey was conducted by a christian research firm known as the Barna Group, and it describes the study as showing that a belief in christianity is a central facet of the lives of a majority of gay and lesbian people. Uh-huh. Something about this article just did not seem right. The whole tone of the article just did not seem like something that a christian group would produce, so I just had to read the actual study.
Spiritual Profile of Homosexual Adults Provides Surprising Insights
I am glad that I don’t rely on USA Today to get the news. Talk about selective quotation. You really should read the article and the actual report together. I am surprised they can both exist simultaneously in the same universe.
Now, I won’t be quoting from the Barna group’s report because they have a very serious copyright disclaimer that seems to exclude fair use. Sure fair use is legal, but defending yourself against a lawsuit can be expensive even if you win. Of course, lawsuits may not seem all that christian, but there is a precedent. Some apocryphal stories insist that, after his resurrection, Jesus sued the Romans for violating his civil rights.
The first thing I noticed in the report was the statement that homosexuals make up three percent of the population which is a typical claim among conservative christians. Christian groups tend to put forward a much smaller percentage than gay rights groups, so this is not surprising. The stranger statistic comes later when they mention that gay people are younger than straight people. I assume they meant to imply that this was true for the people surveyed, but it is not stated that way. In the same paragraph, they also mention that gays are less likely to be “white“, and they make less money.
So, are gay people younger because they leave the “gay lifestyle” as they become more mature and responsible, or because they all die from aids? The study doesn’t say.
Unlike, the USA Today article which seems to be emphasizing that gay people are just like everyone else when it comes to religion, the actual study seems to emphasize the religious differences between gay and straight people. Differences in how seriously they believe in christianity, how often they attend church, how literally they interpret the bible, how orthodox their opinions are, and how conservative they are overall.
Most surprising of all is that fewer gay people are married. Who would have thought.
Of course, the entire survey was given to roughly 9000 people of which less than 300 identified themselves as being gay or lesbian. Three hundred people is not much of a sample. I’ve been in bars that had more than three hundred gay people in them. Still, of the roughly 300 people who said they were gay, around 120 people declared that they were strongly committed to christianity. I guess this would not really surprise me. Mostly, it would just be depressing.
I just do not understand why anyone would join an organization that hates them. Certainly, growing up in a homophobic society can create a mountain of shame, and joining a dominant religion may provide a way to feel normal or accepted. My own shame issues probably prevented me from leaving religion for a long time. The difference though is that I was not out at the time. All of these people identified themselves as gay or lesbian, so this is not the case with them.
The survey also mentions that gay people are less orthodox and more liberal than straight people, but it does not say how many of the gay and lesbians who identified as christian belong to a liberal community like the Metropolitan Community Church instead of being catholic, baptist, or some other asshole denomination. Certainly, that would make things a little better. The problem with the liberal christian churches like MCC is that christianity is pretty much rotten to the core. Say you throw out the passages that declare homosexuality to be an abomination. Do you also ignore the passages about hell? How about the miracles, demon possession, the misogyny, the hatred of sexuality, the entire ideology of sin, the psychologically damaging doctrine that equates thoughts with actions? What is left? Why not just stop calling yourself a christian and be done with it?
The other problem with liberal christians is that they provide cover for the conservative fascists. It would be great if the word christian became exclusively associated with people like the Westboro Baptist Church. It seems only fair since these are the people who take the religion seriously. Instead of ignoring all of the parts in the bible that they don’t like, they actually do what it says. Sure, they’re assholes because that is what happens when someone chooses to follow all of the asshole commandments in the bible. If these people were the only ones calling themselves a christian, christianity would be easy to dismiss.
Of course, if you really care about the truth, the major problem with christianity is that the whole thing is based on a lie. Unless, you have actually managed to find some hard evidence that some guy rose from the dead 2000 years ago.
No? Didn’t think so.
