The U.S. public expresses a clear consensus on the contentious question of whether employers who have religious objections to contraception should be required to provide it in health insurance plans for their employees.
See the latest Pew Research Center reports, data and interactive features on gay marriage and homosexuality, including public opinion, changing legal status and religious groups’ views.
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Worldwide, most of the countries that allow gay marriage are in Western Europe. In the Americas, five countries have legalized gay marriage.
More than 18 years after the Netherlands became the world’s first country to allow same-sex marriage, Austria became the latest European nation to legalize the practice.
The share of Americans who favor same sex marriage has grown in recent years, though there are still demographic and partisan divides.
Only 19% of those who identify as bisexual say all or most of the important people in their lives are aware of their sexual orientation.
About seven-in-ten LGB adults said churches and other religious organizations focus too much on rules, compared with half of straight adults.
Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults are substantially less likely than straight adults to affiliate with a religious group or to attend religious services weekly.
A majority of Americans (61%) favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, while about half as many (31%) oppose same-sex marriage. Republicans and Democrats remain deeply divided over legal marriage for gays and lesbians.
The church is one of the few major mainline Protestant denominations in the country that currently does not sanction same-sex marriage.
The Iron Curtain that once divided Europe may be long gone, but the continent today is split by stark differences in public attitudes toward religion, minorities and social issues such as gay marriage and legal abortion.
In the EU, Central and Eastern Europeans differ from Western Europeans in their views on certain issues, including religious minorities and gay marriage.
