Three-quarters of Presbyterian Clergy Support Recognition of Same-Sex Couples’ Relationships

More than three-quarters of PCUSA clergy support some legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships. Thirty-eight percent support same-sex marriage, and 38% support civil unions for gay couples. Only about 1-in-4 (24%) say there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship.When clergy are offered a religious liberty reassurance that the law would guarantee that no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for same-sex couples, support for marriage increases 14 points to majority support (52%), support for civil unions falls to 24%, and the same number say there should be no legal recognition for same-sex couples (24%).These are some of the results in the recent national Clergy Voices Survey (CVS), the largest survey of mainline Protestant clergy ever conducted.  Read the full Presbyterian results here.   More about Public Religion Research, which conducted the survey, can be found at https://www.publicreligion.org/ or https://www.facebook.org/publicreligion.