More from the Pew Research Center today: Interesting statistics regarding how different Christian denominations view homosexuality and how those views have and have not shifted over the last decade:
The public is divided over whether engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin: 45% say it is a sin while an identical percentage says it is not. In 2003, a majority (55%) viewed homosexual behavior as was sinful, while 33% disagreed.
Among several religious groups, there has been relatively little change in these opinions over the past decade. Fully 78% of white evangelical Protestants view homosexual behavior as a sin; 82% said this in 2003. About as many black Protestants view homosexuality as a sin today (79%) as did so ten years ago (74%).
However, opinions among Catholics have changed substantially. In 2003, more Catholics said homosexual behavior was a sin than said it was not (49% vs. 37%). Today, a third of Catholics (33%) say it is sin, while 53% disagree.
White mainline Protestants are less likely to believe that homosexual behavior is sinful than was the case 10 years ago, according to the survey. Read more here.
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I’m just speculating, but I wonder if Something Else is going on among black Protestants, than strictly religious beliefs.
Two things come to mind:
1) The idea that “the Black Family is under siege”—poverty, one-parent families, high incarceration rates—and that homosexuality (somehow) adds to it, and
2) that the Civil Rights struggle of LGBTs is (somehow) a direct *competitor* to the Civil Rights struggle of African-Americans. (As if progress towards Civil Rights is a zero-sum game: if one group wins, another group must lose—nevermind the overlap of the two groups!)
Thoughts? [OCICBW]
JC Fisher