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.





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