Do The Gays Really Love Jesus This Much?

Just because Abraham, Issac, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Ruth, Allah, Cain, Goliath, and Ezekiel hate homosexuals does not mean homosexuals hate them. In fact, gays are more God-fearing and Bible-thumping than you could imagine!

So long as “70 percent of them” is more than you could imagine.

Religious pollster George Barna surveyed 9,000 LGBs (no Ts?) and found “that 70 percent of gay adults describe themselves as Christian and 60 percent say their faith is ‘very important’ in their lives.” We’ll let you decide whether you want to believe Barna’s data (evangelical groups love him, which makes us skeptical), but their granular accuracy is less important than their means for comparison: On those two points, the general population ranks at 85 and 70 percent, respectively.

What’s the good news? The Focus on the Familys and Westboro Baptists of the world, who’ve tried their damnedest to brand us as God-hating mongrels, have souffle on their faces. (That, and the Anglican churches running from the gays are also, by definition, running toward the gays.)

So why do we homos love ourselves so much religion? PoliticsDaily.com offers an excellent summation of “whys.”

There’s the folksy explanation (emphasis ours):

[Religion sociologist Scott Thumma] notes that most gay Christians — like most other Christians — join congregations because they like the pastor or the music or the community, with “denominational pronouncements” carrying less weight.

The “gay men are better off without women” theory:

One of the more controversial theories came in a study some years ago by sociologist Darren E. Sherkat, who compared the rates of religious activity of straights and gays and found that gay men showed significantly higher levels of religious involvement than heterosexual men. (And they were more religiously active than lesbians and bisexuals.) Gay men, Sherkat argued, attend church “without having to be dragged to services by female partners — as is the case for heterosexual men.”

Among the factors Sherkat cited to explain this phenomenon was a desire by gay men to “avoid the risk of eternal punishment by gravitating towards religious consumption — much like heterosexual women do.”

The “we’re all persecuted” rationale:

“One reason that homosexuals are drawn to service in the church is that many of these people have been wounded themselves. They know what it’s like to feel broken, and they want to help others in whatever way they are hurting,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, who knows gays and lesbians who work in ministry despite the fact that they cannot openly identify as homosexual. “The Christian paradigm of the scapegoat — the marginalized one, the one who suffers unjustly — is quite powerful, especially for gay people.”

The “we’re just better at spirituality” conjecture:

In a similar vein, others cite Christian de la Huerta’s powerful book on gay religiosity, “Coming Out Spiritually,” and his argument that gay people are, among other things, forced to mediate across the gap between their sexuality and spirituality, a divide straight Christians do not have to negotiate. So that makes LGBT people especially adept at helping others navigate a world of binaries, in particular the frontier between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The GAYS LOVE THEIR DIVAS perception:

Others note the esthetic synchronicities between Christian culture and gay sensibilities, especially in the old-line traditions like Catholicism. Mark Jordan, a scholar of gay religion at Harvard Divinity School and author of several provocative books, such as “The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism,” has argued that this sense of drama in the Mass makes churches a favorite stage for “Liturgy Queens,” an epithet that Jordan reclaims as a badge of honor. “The liturgy creates its own divas, on both sides of the communion rail. It is a show that makes for ardent gay fans,” he writes. “Liturgy Queens need not be members of the clergy, but they are typically found in the vicinity of the altar – or at least in the choir loft.” Or, as Father Martin noted somewhat more benignly, Michelangelo was likely gay: “If we didn’t have gay Catholics we wouldn’t have the Sistine Chapel.”

And, of course, the “we’re just in it for the sex” line of thinking:

Sherkat also wondered whether gay men gravitate to a male-oriented religion with a male savior, Jesus.

Our working theory: Jesus was a homo, and we pray to him for his excellent decoupage tips.