A majority of Americans oppose denying services to LGBT individuals in the name of religion, according to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute. Sixty-one percent of respondents were against giving faith-based groups or private individuals the religious exemption to, say, refuse to cater a lesbian wedding, or to refuse to sign the marriage certificates of same-sex couples, as Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, Ky., made national headlines for doing in 2015.
Just one religious group believes that people like Davis should have faith-based exemptions to protect their right of conscience: evangelical Christians. Fifty percent of evangelicals believed that it should be legal to discriminate in the name of faith, as opposed to the 42 percent who were against that idea — a surprisingly slim majority for this influential slice of the GOP electorate. [...]
It’s worth noting that the ERLC is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the few denominations to support legislation like FADA. Even Mormons, a population that’s heavily conservative, are against discrimination in the name of faith, with 52 percent opposing the legal right to deny services to same-sex couples. In 2015, the Church of Latter-day Saints helped pass a nondiscrimination law in Utah preventing workers from being fired on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, the first such legislation passed by a red state.
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