US: A New Poll Shows American Muslims Are Less Homophobic Than White Evangelical Christians

When Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, it was just weeks after the Pulse nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were killed in a terrorist attack during the Orlando gay club’s Latin night. He decried “Islamic terrorism” and told the convention crowd, “I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”

Unsurprisingly, after the shooting, many people presented viewpoints in direct contradiction with Trump’s speech. Now there’s new data to back them up. A recent Pew study looking at life for Muslim Americans in the early days of the Trump presidency finds that the group is nearly 20 percent more likely than the general population to say targeting and killing civilians in order to further a cause is never justifiable. 

But what’s perhaps more noteworthy, particularly for Trump’s opponents, is Pew’s finding about Muslim Americans’ attitudes toward the LGBT community. Statistically, they’ve become much more accepting of LGBT people: 52 percent of Muslim Americans now agree that homosexuality should be accepted by society—up from just 27 percent in 2007.  Read more via MotherJones