The Quiet Gay-Rights Revolution in America's Churches

[DonViejo]

A shift among people of faith is moving public opinion -- and changing gay Americans' lives in profound ways.

MOLLY BALLAUG 14 2013, 7:00 AM ET

For most gay Americans in the 20th century, the church was a place of pain. It cast them out and called them evil. It cleaved them from their families. It condemned their love and denied their souls. In 2004, a president was elected when religious voters surged from their pews to vote against the legal recognition of gay relationships. When it came to gay rights, religion was the enemy.

A decade later, the story is very different. Congregations across the country increasingly accept, nurture, and even marry their gay brethren. Polls show majorities of major Christian denominations -- including American Catholics, despite their church's staunch opposition -- support legal gay marriage. Leaders of some of the most conservative sects, like the Southern Baptists, have moved away from the vitriolic rhetoric of yesteryear and toward a more compassionate tone. Mormons march in gay-pride parades. A sitting Republican senator, a Methodist from the heartland state of Ohio, says the question was settled for him by "the Bible's overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God." A new pope says, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"

The votes, too, are going differently these days. Ballot measures, state legislatures, and Supreme Court decisions testify to a new public consensus on gay marriage, the political issue that currently serves as the chief proxy for attitudes toward gay rights and acceptance.

Gradually, and largely below the radar, religious Americans have powered this momentous shift. In 2004, just 36 percent of Catholics, the Christian sect most supportive of gay marriage, favored it, along with 34 percent of mainline Protestants; today, it's 57 percent of Catholics and 55 percent of mainline Protestants. Even among white evangelical Protestants, the most hostile group to gay marriage, support has more than doubled, from 11 percent in 2004 to 24 percent in 2013. "This debate has gone from a debate between nonreligious and religious Americans to a debate dividing religious Americans," said Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, who has closely tracked the evolution in public opinion.

Full article
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/the-quiet-gay-rights-revolution-in-americas-churches/278646/

[trotsky]

1. Happy to see the religious come around to the right side of this issue.

Too bad Jesus can't convince the rest of them.

[Rob H.]

2. "...Southern Baptists have moved away from the vitriolic rhetoric...

...of yesteryear and toward a more compassionate tone."

According to whom? I live in the Bible Belt (Tennessee, to be exact) and that's not what I'm seeing. There was a proposed city ordinance late last year that would have added the words "sexual orientation" to the city's nondiscrimination language and it was a Southern Baptist minister who bloviated most loudly in front of city hall about how wrong it would be to do that. He did so both times it came up. (The ordinance ultimately passed, which probably caused him no end of frustration.)

In 2010, his church also prohibited a softball team from playing in their league because their coach was a lesbian. They suspected she was a lesbian and when they asked her about it in a special meeting they called, instead of telling them it was none of their business she answered honestly and her team was banned.

Southern Baptist churches here are not accepting of the GLBT community--far from it. The SBC itself doesn't support equal rights for the GLBT community, nor do they support same-sex unions, ordaining gay clergy, gay-straight alliances in schools, and legislation that would outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. It also opposed the repeal of DADT. Hell, Tennessee had what was referred to as the "Don't Say Gay" Bill (which is dead for now, thank goodness) and the bill's sponsor is Southern Baptist. We're not talking ancient history, either: that happened earlier this year and its sponsor intends to try again next year!

Things might get better once the dinosaurs in charge of the SBC die off and younger people step in to take their places, but given that it took them 130 years after the end of the Civil War to apologize for supporting slavery I wouldn't advise anyone to hold his or her breath while waiting for them to change.

[cbayer]

4. While there is not question that the issue in some churches is going to change

slowly, painfully and possibly not at all, I think the progress being made is worth celebrating and supporting.

If more and more individuals, congregations and denominations begin to change, those that don't can be marginalized and the hate they expose exposed to more sunshine.

[cbayer]

3. It's a wonderful thing to watch unfold and a testament

to how things can profoundly change over time.

The article is well worth the read and very good news.

Thanks so much for posting it.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. Granted I am not a believer, but I have to wonder, 'why bother'.

If these various sects of faiths can so clearly be demonstrated to NOT have a grasp of the truth at all, why bother? Why adjust one lever and then hop on the bus? What else do they have completely wrong? Where will that bus take you, now that it will condescend to let you in the door?

When an organization is, for instance, predicated upon some supernatural revealed truth, and they can be shown so clearly and blatantly false, what use is there for the org?

If you must have faith, why not lump in with the faiths that got it right from the start? What better litmus test will you ever have as to whether a sect of religion is real, or invented by man?

[hrmjustin]

6. I am glad the direction the Episcopal Church has taken on LGBT rights.

[dimbear]

7. Folks who see the error of their ways and resolve to do better deserve congratulations and

encouragement. Perhaps an even bigger tip of the hat to those who pointed out the right thing to do.