Thursday, July 30, 2009

A Surprising Finding Regarding Catholics and Gay Marriage

States with more Catholics more favor gay rights

Yesterday’s “Faith and Reason” section of USA Today began with the following:

Want to predict which state might move next to legalize same-sex marriage? You might count Catholics. The higher their percentage of the population, the more likely the state is to support gay rights.

Yes, I was surprised too – pleasantly, I should add.

We can thank Mark Silk, a political scientist who mashed together a new study on gay rights and public policy with a statistical breakdown of U.S. religion, for articulating this surprising finding. And, according to Silk, for the finding itself, we can thank the Roman Catholic Church’s “pervasive message of social justice” – an umbrella that many Catholics stand under when they argue for marriage equality.

To read the USA Today article in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Misplaced Priorities of the Catholic Church in Maine
A Call to Emphasize Catholicism’s “Sweet Spot”


3 comments:

kevin57 said...

I am pleased by this, but not necessarily surprised. Yes, I think that this is due to the Church's own principles on social justice which have been preached and taught from pulpits and lectures and episcopal letters; however, it is also due to how "Church" is being taught. In my school, Church is studied through the use of the kingdom parables (And who could argue that for Christ, his community was to be a reflection of these kingdom values?). Analyze, pray over, discuss those parables as much as you like, and you always come back to inclusivity, welcome, reconciliation, and unity. It's kind of a "stretch" to get to condemnations, excommunications, and dogmatism.

Brian R said...

Thanks to God, I found work teaching in Catholic Schools. Having grown up in the evangelical and homophobic Anglican diocese of Sydney, I was close to rejecting all belief in God. While not official doctrine I found acceptance both as a Protestant and a gay man among both the religious and laity with whom I worked. They believed in and practised social justice, displaying the Love of God in the process.

Mark Andrews said...

I think the applicable phrase here is "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc."