Gays Step Up Efforts to Reverse Gay-as-Godless Stereotype
A groundbreaking survey about the faith lives of gay Americans that the Barna Group put out last week got surprisingly little attention. In my latest God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly, I tied the Barna survey’s fascinating portrait of gay religious life to the gay rights movement’s recent efforts to ratchet up outreach and messaging. Much of the work is aimed at reversing the gay-as-Godless stereotype.
Here’s the top:
Though he was raised in the United Methodist Church, Harry Knox knew he couldn’t become a minister in his denomination because it doesn’t ordain openly gay members. He enrolled in a seminary of the more liberal United Church of Christ but was eventually denied ordination anyway. “My whole career as an activist is an accidental ministry,” says Knox, 48, who now works at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group. “I would rather be a local pastor.”
Instead, since 2005, Knox has built HRC’s “religion and faith program,” which works to combat the stereotype of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community as antireligious. “For far too long, LGBT organizations did not put religious allies at the forefront of our efforts,” Knox says. “That’s a mistake we’re making less often now.”
Those religious allies may be more plentiful than most Americans think. A Barna Group survey out last week shows that most gay Americans lead pretty robust faith lives. While 72 percent of straight American adults describe their faith as “very important” in their lives, so do 60 percent of gays and lesbians. Almost as many, 58 percent, say they’ve made a personal and ongoing commitment to Jesus Christ.
And though they are much less likely than straights to share the beliefs of born-again Christians—which comes as no surprise, since most churches in the born-again tradition condemn homosexuality—the Barna survey found that 27 percent of gays do hold those beliefs. “Many in the Christian community assume there’s this significant gap between heterosexuals and homosexuals in terms of faith beliefs and activities,” says George Barna, the country’s top pollster on religious issues, who supervised the survey. “While there are statistically significant differences, it’s the narrow size of the gap that’s most surprising.”
The poll unleashed a torrent of hate mail, mostly from believers furious with Barna’s conclusion: that many gays are Bible-believing Christians. But more and more gay rights organizations are joining HRC in stepping up efforts to highlight the faith beliefs of many gay Americans, largely through religious outreach programs. And some religious traditions and denominations are taking steps to welcome gay and lesbian members.
Gay rights activists say that the 2004 election, when voters in 11 states passed gay marriage bans that were heavily promoted through churches, was a wake-up call. To help counter the image of the gay marriage battle as a fight between gays and religious Americans, HRC, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and other national gay rights groups quickly hired religious outreach staff.
Read the full story here.
See Gays Step Up Efforts to Reverse Gay-as-Godless Stereotype
U.S. News & World Report
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Same-Sex Couples, Faith leaders Celebrate First Anniversary of Marriage
Community members to hold anniversary events across the state, honoring historic milestone
Faith leaders, same-sex couples, friends and family will gather across the state to celebrate in honor of the one-year-anniversary of couples who married last year when same-sex couples were able to legally marry. Faith leaders will offer brief remarks, and couples will gather for a group photo at each event.
San Francisco: 6:30 p.m. First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco 1187 Franklin St, Starr King Room
June 17 Fresno: 6 PM Historic Water Tower in Downtown Fresno 2444 Fresno St.
San Diego: 5:30 p.m. Mission Hills United Church of Christ 4070 Jackdaw St.
Event sponsors include, Equality California, California Faith for Equality, Marriage Equality USA, Jordan Rustin Coalition, API Equality – LA, Equality Inland Empire, Redlands United Church of Christ’s Christians for Marriage Equality, Orange County Equality Coalition, Equality Action NOW, PFLAG, Courage Campaign- Fresno Equality Team, Yes! on Equality, and Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, Spousesforlifeproject.com.
Equality California (EQCA) is the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender-rights advocacy organization in California. In the past decade, EQCA has strategically moved California from a state with extremely limited legal protections for LGBT individuals to a state with some of the most comprehensive civil-rights protections in the nation. EQCA has passed over 50 pieces of legislation and continues to advance equality through legislative advocacy, public education and community empowerment. www.eqca.org
California Faith for Equality is a statewide network of clergy and lay leaders from a diversity of faith traditions who are committed to equality. www.cafaithforequality.org
Marriage Equality USA is a national organization whose mission is to secure legally recognized civil marriage equality for all, at the federal and state level, without regard to gender identity or sexual orientation. www.marriageequality.org
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/same-sex-coup…
Mainline Clergy Survey shows high support for activist government, growing support for LGBT equality
Leading researchers on religion and politics today released the results of an in‐depth survey of
Mainline Protestant clergy political engagement during the 2008 election season, attitudes on social and economic issues, and the public role of the church. The Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey (CVS), conducted by Public Religion Research, is the largest survey of mainline clergy in seven years, and the broadest ever in scope. Mainline Protestants, who make up 18 percent of all Americans and nearly a quarter of all voters, have been trending Democratic in recent years, but remain fairly evenly divided in their political behavior.
“Mainline Protestants are probably the most under‐examined major religious group in the United States,” said Dr. Robert P. Jones, President of Public Religion Research. “That’s especially surprising when you consider that they occupy so much of the vital middle ground in American politics.” Jones said that Mainline Protestants, once the religious bedrock of the Republican Party, are now an important swing constituency that has been moving slowly but steadily away from the GOP since the early 1990s. He said the new survey will be invaluable in helping us understand Mainline Protestants’ role in the American religious landscape by shedding light on the attitudes and political engagement of mainline clergy.
“Mainline clergy are highly educated, political interested, and socially engaged,” said Jones. “They are strong supporters of church‐state separation, but they are also interested in being more personally involved on social and political issues.”
The CVS surveyed senior clergy from the seven largest mainline denominations: United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, American Baptist Churches USA, Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The survey found significant differences across the denominations on religious and political measures.
Among its findings on social and political issues:
Mainline clergy are much more likely to identify as liberal and Democratic than conservative or Republican. Almost half (48%) of all mainline clergy identify as liberal, compared to about one‐third (34%) who say they are conservative. A majority (56%) of mainline clergy identify with or lean towards the Democratic Party, compared to roughly one‐third (34%) who claim a Republican affiliation, a 22‐point gap. Clergy political leanings vary considerably by denomination. Three quarters (74%) of UCC clergy identify as liberal, compared to less than a third (32%) of ABCUSA clergy.
Mainline Protestant clergy are broadly supportive of government’s role in addressing social problems such as unemployment, poverty and poor housing. More than three‐quarters (78%) agree that the federal government should do more to solve social problems, and more than 4‐in‐10 strongly agree.
Mainline clergy are strongly supportive of government action in the areas of health care and the environment. More than two‐thirds (67%) of clergy agree that government should guarantee health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes. And nearly 7‐in‐10 (69%) clergy say that more environmental protection is needed, even if it raises prices or costs jobs.
On a broad range of issues, mainline clergy affirm equality for gay and lesbian Americans. Roughly two‐thirds of mainline clergy support some legal recognition for same‐sex couples (65%), passing hate crime laws (67%), and employment nondiscrimination protections for gay and lesbian people (66%). A majority (55%) of mainline clergy support adoption rights for gay and lesbian people.
Mainline Protestant clergy are strong advocates of church‐state separation. A majority (65%) of mainline clergy agree that the U.S. should “maintain a strict separation of church and state.” Mainline clergy are more worried about public officials who are too close to religious leaders (59%) than about public officials who do not pay enough attention to religion (41%).\
Mainline clergy are more likely to publicly address hunger and poverty and family issues than controversial social issues. More than 8‐in‐10 clergy say they publicly expressed their views about hunger and poverty often in the last year, and three‐quarters say they addressed marriage and family issues often. Only about one‐quarter (26%) say they often discussed the issues of abortion and capital punishment.
The survey also includes findings on religious measures, including clergy religious self‐identification (mainline, evangelical, born‐again), their views on the interpretation of scripture, and the relative importance of evangelism and social action.
Dr. John Green, Director of the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron, served as advisor to the project and supervised its data collection. Green also participated in two of the earlier studies of mainline clergy in 1989 and 2001 upon which this new survey builds.
“This survey adds significantly to our knowledge and understanding of mainline clergy,” said Green. “Scholars of religion as well as journalists and interested activists will benefit from the information and insights it offers.”
The survey, which was conducted by mail, contained over 250 separate questions and generated
2,658 respondents with a response rate of 44%. The Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey was funded by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.
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Religious leaders, faith organizations file lawsuit to invalidate Prop 8
Today, the California Council of Churches and other religious leaders and faith organizations representing millions of members filed a petition with the California Supreme Court asking the to invalidate Proposition 8. The petition argues that Proposition 8 poses a severe threat to the guarantee of equal protection for all and was not enacted through the constitutionally required process for such a dramatic change to the California Constitution.
The petition is filed on behalf of the California Council of Churches, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, two Episocopal bishops (of California and Los Angeles), the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California, and the Northern and Southern California Nevada Conferences of the United Church of Christ. The groups are represented by Eric Isaacson, based in San Diego, and by Jon B. Eisenberg of Eisenberg and Hancock, LLP, based in Oakland.
“Proposition 8 poses a grave threat to religious freedom,” said Rev. Rick Schlosser, executive director of the California Council of Churches. “If the Court permits gay men and lesbians to be deprived of equal protection by a simple amjority vote, religious minorities could be denied equal protection as well — a terrible irony in a nation founded by people who emigrated to escape religious persecution. If the Court permits Proposition 8 to take effect, religious discrimination similarly could be written into California’s Consitution.”
For a copy of the brief, visit www.calchurches.org/marriage.
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