Gays on gays

What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality?

What Does The Bible Declare About Homosexuality?

Introduction

For the last two decades, Pew Investigate Center has reported that one of the most enduring ethical issues across Christian traditions is sexual diversity. For many Christians, one of the most frequently first-asked questions on this topic is, “What does the Bible state about attraction to someone of the same sex?”

Although its unlikely that the biblical authors had any notion of sexual orientation (for example, the word homosexual wasn't even coined until the late 19th century) for many people of faith, the Bible is looked to for timeless guidance on what it means to honor God with our lives; and this most certainly includes our sexuality.

Before we can jump into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a brief but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible.

What is the Bible?

For Christians to whom the Bible is God’s very written word, it is widely understood that God produced its content

The 1990s, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and DOMA

The 90's were a pivotal time for gay rights. While LGBTQ people were treated unequally, and often faced hostility within their communities, a younger generation began to realize that LGBTQ people were entitled to the same rights as anyone else. While it would obtain another 20 years or so for those rights to be realized, the 90's were a time when gay rights began to be on the forefront of political conversations.

In 1993, the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy was instituted within the U.S. military, and permitted gays to help in the military but banned homosexual activity. While President Clinton's intention to revoke the prohibition against gays in the military was originally met with stiff opposition, his compromise led to the discharge of thousands of men and women in the armed forces.

In response to "Don't Ask Don't Tell", Amendment 2 in Colorado, rising hate crimes, and on-going discrimination against the LGBTQ society an estimated 800,000 to one million people participated in the March on Washington for Womxn loving womxn, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights an

LGBTQ Rights

The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. Founded in 1986, the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does and has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our tape of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transsexual people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to defend LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.

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For non-LGBTQ issues, please contact your local ACLU affiliate.

The ACLU Lesbian Gay Double attraction Transgender Project seeks to create a just culture for all LGBTQ people regardless of race or income. Thr

Adult LGBT Population in the United States

This report provides estimates of the number and percent of the U.S. senior population that identifies as LGBT, overall, as well as by age. Estimates of LGBT adults at the national, state, and regional levels are included. We rely on BRFSS 2020-2021 facts for these estimates. Pooling multiple years of data provides more stable estimates—particularly at the declare level.

Combining 2020-2021 BRFSS data, we estimate that 5.5% of U.S. adults recognize as LGBT. Further, we estimate that there are almost 13.9 million (13,942,200) LGBT adults in the U.S.

Regions and States

LGBT people reside in all regions of the U.S. (Table 2 and Figure 2). Consistent with the overall population in the United States,more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region. More than half (57.0%) of LGBT people in the U.S. reside in the Midwest (21.1%) and South (35.9%), including 2.9 million in the Midwest and 5.0 million in the South. About one-quarter (24.5%) of LGBT adults reside in the West, approximately 3.4 million people. Less than one in five (18.5%) LGBT adults stay in the Northeast (2.6 million).

The percent of adults who identify as LG