This month the Public Religion Research Institute released the results of its annual American Values Atlas, which surveys more than 40,000 people about their lives and attitudes. Of the 40,000 respondents in the sample, more than 700 were Mormon.
The full report measures several other things besides LGBT issues, including perceptions of racial discrimination, but here I’m just focusing on three findings about how Mormons feel about same-sex marriage and religiously-based refusals of services to LGBT people.
Even though 55% of Mormons still oppose same-sex marriage, that opposition is rapidly eroding: PRRI’s 2015 data about Mormons had 66% opposing it and 26% in favor.
That’s an 11-point drop in opposition over just one year (66% to 55%), with a corresponding 11-point rise in support (26% to 37%).
Like evangelical Protestants, Mormons have a clear “generation gap” in their feelings about same-sex marriage. There’s nearly a 20-point difference between the 28% of Mormon elders who support marriage equality and the 47% of younger Mormons who are in favor. That’s not quite majority status, but it’s close.
These PRRI findings are similar, but not identical, to what we found among the youngest and oldest Mormons in the Next Mormons Survey (NMS, 2016). The 18-26 age bracket of that study showed support for same sex-marriage at 40.2%, nearly twice the 20.3% support among Mormons 52 and over. So the NMS percentages aren’t as high as PRRI’s for either generation, but the 20-point difference between them is strikingly similar.
Fewer than half (42%) of Mormons now say it’s acceptable to allow small business owners such as florists and bakers to refuse gay people their services, while a majority (52%) now oppose such refusals.
This 2016 finding represents a sharp turnaround from where Mormons were just one year earlier, when 58% supported the right of small business owners to refuse services, and just 38% opposed.
That 16-point drop in the percentage of Mormons who think it’s OK for small businesses to refuse service represents the most significant change of any religious group in the survey, though almost every group experienced a smaller change in this direction.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
All this will change again. We have a generation coming up that is fully aware of what happened in Prop 8 and now are more aware that their friends/family and neighbors being upfront about being gay...they know them..and they love them. We have come a long ways baby.
candygal wrote:All this will change again. We have a generation coming up that is fully aware of what happened in Prop 8 and now are more aware that their friends/family and neighbors being upfront about being gay...they know them..and they love them. We have come a long ways baby.
Yes we have come a long way, baby. Times are changing. Religions are losing their tight control they once enjoyed as the new generation of modern mankind takes sprout. Modernization is dispelling the myths that have come down through the Dark Ages.
Practically everybody knows someone who is gay and has to wrestle with the idea of why God and church would condemn the natural love and desires that exists in the hearts of gay people.
The dark cloud of religious intolerance is being dispelled and light is breaking through, at last.
There is a SSM poll going on over at the MDD Board. As of the time of this posting support of Same Sex Marriage is running at almost 58%. Even some hard core TBMs and apologist now support it.
The church is going to continue to receive a lot of pressure, both internal and external to change their stance on this.
sunstoned wrote:There is a SSM poll going on over at the MDD Board. As of the time of this posting support of Same Sex Marriage is running at almost 58%. Even some hard core TBMs and apologist now support it.
The church is going to continue to receive a lot of pressure, both internal and external to change their stance on this.
More and more people are recognizing that the world is a place of diversity and freedom. We are not living under religious rule. The Bible is not the law of the land. There simply is no excuse for religious people to impose their personal restrictions on everyone else through rule of law. I think more and more religious people are realizing this and softening their hardcore stance.
Practically everyone these days knows someone who is gay, whether a family member or just a friend. This is making a huge impact on how religious persons view LGBT rights and whether they should just learn to live and let live. There is a certain degree of peace that settles in the heart when one adapts the feelings of live and let live. It's love, not hate.
"So long as you tolerate this 'gay world' and its degenerate people, you are in a very desperate situation ...." -Spencer with. Kimball, 1971, New Horizons for Homosexuals, pg. 29
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
"So long as you tolerate this 'gay world' and its degenerate people, you are in a very desperate situation ...." -Spencer with. Kimball, 1971, New Horizons for Homosexuals, pg. 29
- Doc
Spencer with. Kimball was despicable, an inbred gay bashing Mormon who caused nothing but pain and anguish for a great many young LDS men. His talents and ability would have been better served had he lived in the Soviet Union working for the Kremlin. Kimball was a religious gangster dressed up in a suit making speech after speech on the virtues of supporting hate filled religious dogma.
I bear testimony that the man was evil in pushing his antigay agenda. But he was a like a termite queen getting love and affection from his devoted followers. His every need and whim was taken care of as he presided over the Cult. He loved priestcraft and his worshiping flock.