Catholics more likely to support gay rights?

Posted by justinquincy , Jul, 2009 @ 7:16 am

A new report hailing from Columbia University underscores what many of us already knew: Catholics are more interested in which beer they’ll have tonight rather than which guy in the corner with that umbrella drink is going home to make nookie with the bowed-head priest in the corner. In other words, they’re happy supporting gay rights. Over at The Recovering Catholic blog we learn that

Six of the eight states where 50 percent or more of the public supports gay marriage are the states with the highest proportion of Catholics, ranging from Rhode Island at 46 percent to New York and California at 37 percent.

While I agree that it seems like a bit of good news, I disagree that it means much of anything. New England Catholics exist in a village of liberal Episcopalians and Unitarian Universalists, thus, there’s more community pressure to “fit in.” I’d argue that the Catholics are likely probably a bit more conservative than their New England counterparts when it comes to issues like homosexuality and abortion.

Pew Research’s Religion Project sheds light on the geographical issue here. Folks, the Evangelical population in America is 26%, while the Catholic population is 24%. The Northeast, where most of the movement on gay rights has come, has a disproportionately small percentage of evangelicals (13%) versus the South (37%) or Midwest (27%). Meanwhile, the Midwest and South both have near equal levels of Catholics, around 20%. I’d argue the headline here should be, “Northeast less likely to have evangelicals.”

But, any news is good news… and if Catholics really do support gay rights more (as compared, to evangelicals, which is hardly a great comparison). Great!