Understanding Black Attitudes Toward Homosexuality
By George E. Curry
TheDefendersOnline.com
Oct 11, 2010
Are African-Americans less supportive of homosexuality than
other racial and ethnic groups? The answer is an emphatic yes. But the reasons
have more to do with religion than race.
“While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious
nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures
than the U.S. population as a whole, including level of affiliation with
religion, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer and religion’s
importance in life,” observes a report titled, A Religious Portrait of
African-Americans by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The
report noted, “Nearly eight in ten African Americans (79%) say religion is very
important in their lives, compared with 56% among U.S. adults. In fact, even a
large majority (72%) of African-Americans who are unaffiliated with any
particular faith say religion plays at least a somewhat important role in their
lives, nearly half (45%) of unaffiliated African-Americans say religion is very
important in their lives, roughly three times the percentage who says this
among the religiously unaffiliated population overall (16%).”
And African-Americans are more likely to act on their
religious beliefs.
“More than half of AfricanAmericans (53%) report attending
religious services at least once a week, more than three-in-four (76%) say they
pray on at least a daily basis and nearly nine-in-ten (88%) indicate they are
absolutely certain that God exists. On each of these measures, African-
Americans stand out as the most religiously committed racial or ethnic group in
the nation,” the report stated.
Among the most religiously committed, no group is more
committed than African-American women. The report found that 84 percent of Black
women say religion is very important to them and 59 percent say they attend
religious services at least once a week.
Given African Americans’ close affiliation with the church,
it should come as no surprise that most Blacks oppose homosexuality.
“Blacks are much more likely to think that homosexuality is
morally wrong (64%) than Whites (48%) or Hispanics (43%),” according to a Pew
poll last year on civil unions and gay marriage.
Again, that should be placed within the larger context of
religion.
“Overall, two-thirds of those who attend services at least
weekly say homosexual behavior is morally wrong, compared with 43% of those who
attend services monthly or yearly and 32% of those who seldom or never attend,”
the report stated.
A survey released Wednesday that combines two recent polls
by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on
Religion & Public Life shows that 43 percent of the public favor
same-sex marriage and 48 percent oppose it. The report, Gay
Marriage Gains More Acceptance, represents the first time in the 15 years
Pew has been polling that fewer than half of Americans oppose same-sex
marriage.
“Blacks continue to oppose same-sex marriage by a wide
margin,” the new report states. “In 2010, just 30% of non-Hispanic Blacks favor
gay marriage while 59% are opposed. From 2008 to 2000, 28% of Blacks favored
same-sex marriage and 62% were opposed.”
The number of African-Americans in favor of allowing gays to
serve openly in the military has dropped from 57 percent in 1994 to 48 percent
in 2010. Over the same period, White support increased from 51 percent to 63
percent.
There are other variations as well, with younger people and
the better educated more likely to favor same-sex marriage than their older and
less educated counterparts. Geography is a factor as well, with a majority
Southerners opposed to same-sex marriage, the Midwest and West were about evenly
divided and the Northeast supported gay marriage by a margin of 49 percent to
41 percent.
The new study did not address civil unions, which would give
unmarried gay and lesbian couples many of the rights now enjoyed by married
heterosexual couples. A Pew poll last year revealed that Blacks support civil
unions over gay marriages, with 43 percent of Black Protestants in favor of
civil unions and 49 percent opposed. Overall, 57 percent of Americans favor
allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into civil unions, up from 45 percent
in 2003.
Interestingly, the poll on civil unions and gay marriage
noted that 64 percent of Americans say gays and lesbians encounter a lot of
discrimination, facing more discrimination than Muslims (58 percent), Latinos
(52 percent), Blacks (49 percent) or women (37 percent).
Gregory B. Lewis of the Andrew Young School of Public Policy
Studies at Georgia State University examined data from 31 public opinion polls
conducted from 1973 and 2000, which involved nearly 7,000 Blacks and 43,000 Whites.
In 2003, his analysis was published in Public Opinion Quarterly. Lewis
concluded, “Despite their greater disapproval of homosexuality,
African-American opinion on gay civil liberties and employment discrimination
are quite similar to whites’ opinions, and African-Americans are more likely to
support laws prohibiting anti-gay discrimination.”
Many African-Americans are influenced by the Bible and their
religious leaders. Black preachers tend to address social issues such as school
prayer, the death penalty and homosexuality more than their White counterparts.
In one survey, nearly 50 percent of African-American
churchgoers reported that their pastors regularly expressed negative viewpoints
toward homosexuality. In one Baltimore study, 68 percent of the Black
respondents said their pastor had preached that homosexuality was a sin or
immoral.
Ministers point to various passages of the Bible to justify
their stand against homosexuality, including Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9
and the most quoted Scripture on the subject, Leviticus 18:22, which reads,
“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”
In its 2009 report titled, At the Crossroads: African
American Same Gender Loving Families and the Freedom to Marry, the National
Black Justice Coalition, the nation’s only African-American gay civil rights
organization, said: “The ‘homosexuality is a choice’ rhetoric is also preached
by African-American ministers in their churches. Arguing that as a result gays
are not entitled to certain rights and protections in the same way African-Americans
are, creates a wedge between African-American and gay communities.”
To some, it is a wedge unlikely to disappear.
During a Freedom Weekend panel discussion earlier this year
in Detroit, Anthony Samad, a scholar, social activist and columnist, told
supporters of gays and lesbians: “…What you’re asking African Americans to do
is go against their belief system, which is the church. Most of them believe a
marriage should be between a man and a woman. You’re asking them to choose
between your cause and their church.”
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Concerning Our Father, Brother & Friend, Mr. Ernest Withers:Reactions From The Press...Part 3
2010 State Of The Black Union
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