LGBT Community Is Less Religious Than Non-LGBT's

These charts were made with information contained in a recent Gallup Poll. That survey was conducted between January and July of this year and involved a random national sample of 104,024 adults (including 3,242 members of the LGBT community). The sample of LGBT adults has a margin of error of 2 points, while the non-LGBT sample has a margin of error of 1 point.

We know from past surveys that at least 20% (about 64 million Americans) consider themselves to be non-religious. When you narrow that down to the "millennial" generation (the youngest adult generation in America), that figure jumps up to around 30%. But both of those percentages pale in comparison to the religiosity (or lack of it) among the LGBT community. That community has a huge 47% saying they are not religious -- nearly half. And a whopping 62% of them say they seldom or never attend religious services.

This should surprise no one in this country. The religious community in the United States (especially most christian churches) have been demonizing the LGBT community for a long time now. They have made it perfectly clear that being born with a preference for the same-sex is not acceptable -- and that anyone born that way must keep it a secret if they want to be part of the religion most of them grew up in.

It comes as no surprise then that these people would reject those people who have rejected them, and tried to make them feel like they were something less than human. It didn't have to be this way. In all probability, the LGBT community (if it had not been repeatedly demonized by religious organizations) would have about the same percentage of religious people as the non-LGBT community. In fact, I think the fact that 53% of the LGBT community continuing to say they are religious shows that. The churches (especially the fundamentalists churches that preach hate) have driven away millions who would have loved to stay in the church they grew up attending.

I think this is also a primary reason why the churches are losing a bigger percentage of young people than ever. These young people don't want to align themselves with those preaching hate and intolerance.