PollsterBarna: Most gays positive about faith: Six in ten say faith is important in their lives

A significant majority of gays and lesbians—six in ten—say faith is important in their lives, according to a new survey by an evangelical Christian research firm.

“People who portray gay adults as godless, hedonistic Christian bashers are not working with the facts,” said George Barna, founder of the Barna Research Group, a private company based in Ventura, California.

“A substantial majority of gays cite their faith as a central facet of their life, consider themselves to be Christian, and claim to have some type of meaningful personal commitment to Jesus Christ active in their life today,” Barna said in a statement.

The survey was based on telephone interviews in 2007 and 2008 with 9,232 adults. For the small subsample of self-identified homosexuals (280 of the respondents), the margin of error was as high as ±5.8 percentage points. Among the findings:

• 72 percent of heterosexual adults say faith is important in their lives, compared to 60 percent of homosexual adults.

• 85 percent of straight adults identify themselves as Christian, compared to 70 percent of gay adults.

• 75 percent of heterosexuals said that they had made a “personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important” in their lives, compared to 58 percent of gays and lesbians. –Religion News Service