Vessel

6,195,000 = people in denominations that support LGBT.
1,379,300,000 = people in denominations that consider LGBT lifestyle as sin.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I looked up to see how many religious people view homosexuality as a sin. I was hoping that since half or more of the US population support gay marriage that there would be more denominations affirming their dignity and human rights. While these are worldwide numbers, 6 million religious people affirming the LGBT existence as not sinful is a drop in the bucket. With 300 million people in the United States and 76% of them identifying as Christian, it is a reality check to feel so outnumbered. (One could get into a technical arguement and say that Unitarian Universalism is not a Chrisitan religion - but to me we appear to have our foundations in very liberal Chrisitan theology and to ‘other’ religions our difference from Chrisitianity is nominal. I should probably break this out into another post.)

Originally I wanted to find out what the numbers were so I could say, hey - there are actually lots of Christians that love people with a LGBT orientation. Since I do, and work with a lot of other religious folks who do too. And while there is an entire denomination specifically addressing that need (Metropolitan Community Church) it is not enough. I thought for sure the Methodist Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of the United States had resolutions stating specifically that having a different sexual orientation is not sin, but I was wrong. How can they appoint a gay bishop and not be proud of him, or affirm that his sexual orientation does not condemn him?

These denominations are in for a rude awakening when marriage for all happens. And it will because I won’t stop working on it.

The numbers, from wikipedia.org (chrisitianity and LGBT)
Historically, Christian churches have regarded homosexual sex as sinful, based on the Catholic understanding of the natural law and traditional interpretations of certain passages in the Bible. This position is today affirmed by most Christian groups, including the Catholic (1.1 billion members) and Orthodox (250 million members) Churches, part of Protestant denominations, especially among Evangelicals such as the Southern Baptist Convention (16.3 million members), and the LDS Church (13 million members).

However, a small minority interpret biblical passages differently and argue that homosexuality can be seen as morally acceptable. This approach has been taken by a number of relatively small denominations, notably the United Church of Canada (2.8 million members), the liberal congregations within United Church of Christ (1.1 million members), the Moravian Church (825,000 members), the Anglican Church of Canada (800,000 members), the Methodist Church of Great Britain (330,000 members), Friends General Conference and Lutheran churches in Europe. A new denomination, the Metropolitan Community Church (40,000 members), has also come into existence specifically to serve the Christian LGBT community.