Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are significantly less likely than non-LGBT Americans to be highly religious, and significantly more likely to be classified as not religious. The same percentage of each group is moderately religious. These results are based on more than 104,000 Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted between Jan. 2 and July 31, 2014, including 3,242 adults who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Gallup classifies Americans as "very religious" if they say religion is an important part of their daily lives and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. That group constituted 41% of all U.S. adults between January and July 2014. "Nonreligious" Americans (30% of U.S. adults) are those who say religion is not an important part of their daily lives and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining group, 29% of Americans, are classified as "moderately religious." These people say religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still attend services. LGBT and non-LGBT individuals differ on both dimensions that make up the religiosity classification. About a quarter of LGBT individuals attend religious services regularly, contrasted with 42% of non-LGBT individuals.More graphs and analysis are at the link.
In a ground-breaking interpretation of the Law of Return, the Interior Ministry decided to permit non-Jewish same-sex marriage partners of Jews living abroad to immigrate to Israel and be granted Israeli citizenship, the ministry announced on Tuesday. According to the Law of Return, any Jew has the right to apply for, and be granted, Israeli citizenship. The right is extended under the law to the applicant’s partner by marriage as well. The right, however, was previously reserved only for heterosexual couples. “The gates of Israel will from now on be open to any Jew and his family, without discrimination based on his way of life,” Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in a statement. In Israel itself, marriage services for Jews are controlled by the state rabbinate, which does not perform same-sex marriages; nor is there any option of civil marriage for Jews.More from Shalom Life:
[Minister] Sa'ar said that his decision came as a result of the issue being raised in many recent immigration applications to the Interior Ministry. In the statement marking his decision, he wrote that "the point of the Law of Return is an ingathering of the Jewish people from exile, and the purpose of the 1970 amendment was to enable the family of a Jewish person to come to Israel as an equal to him, in order to encourage immigration." He continued. "I do not see any reason to distinguish between Jews who had a heterosexual marriage and Jews who had a same-sex marriage abroad, according to the law. Both meet the requirements of the Law of Return, from the perspective of 'and the sons have returned.'"
Matthew Moore, 46, who is openly gay, said he was shocked to see his sexual orientation still described as a chronic condition more than a year after he complained about the use of the archaic medical classification. "It was infuriating. It was painful," he said of his decision to sue. "It was another attempt by this doctor and this medical group to impose their agenda of discrimination and hate onto a gay patient." As reported in September by NBC4, Moore discovered the description in his medical records after undergoing a routine physical in April 2013 by Dr. Elaine Jones of the Torrance Health Association. Moore wrote a letter complaining about the designation to the Torrance Memorial Health Association and received a prompt apology:Moore is suing both his former physician and Torrence Memorial. Referring to the incidence of suicide among LGBT youth, Moore told the local NBC affiliate, "I don’t want any gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual ever to hear from a doctor that their normal and healthy sexuality is anything other than that." (Tipped by JMG reader Jerald)
"We would like to unequivocally state that the Torrance Memorial Physician Network does not view homosexuality as a disease or a chronic condition, and we do not endorse or approve of the use of Code 302.0 as a diagnosis for homosexuality," Torrance Health Association Senior Director Heidi Assigal wrote to Moore. The association also issued a media statement saying the designation had been used as a result of "human error" and claiming that "upon notification by the patient the record was corrected." Moore said he let the issue go, thinking the problem had been solved. But when he obtained a copy of his medical records in May, he said he was stunned to see that while the 302.0 code had been removed, "homosexual behavior" was still listed under "chronic problems."
