Homosexuality as an issue of religion and politics in the USA

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2, University of Innsbruck (Department of English), course: ¿One Nation under God?¿ ¿ Religion and Politics in America, language: English, abstract: The USA is a country that has a deeply-rooted religious tradition on the one hand and that separates religion and state like almost no other country on the other hand. However, the border between this religious consciousness in private and this strong secularism in public life often becomes blurry. There are certain issues like school prayer, sex education or abortion that are of an extreme importance for religious people. These make up a majority of the American society and a significant percentage of potential voters. Consequently, many politicians (including the current president George W. Bush) pay attention, react or even give in to this pressure in order to maintain a solid basis of voters that secures their political position. An important issue in religion and politics in the USA is homosexuality and the related issue of same-sex marriage. Homosexuality has been being not tolerated and banned by most religious groups for a long time, but in our liberal society today many churches seem to develop a certain degree of tolerance towards homosexuals and to change their perspective on homosexuality. This makes the whole issue controversial since the perspectives in society also change. The major question in politics is whether homosexual couples should obtain the same rights (or at least some rights) as heterosexual couples through marriage or civil union or not. The importance of this issue also became clear for George W. Bush when he started the campaign for his re-election. The aim of this topic is to prepare an introduction to the vast issue of the problematic relationship between religion and homosexuality and an overview of the positions of the American Christian churches towards homosexuality, to show the power of the religious groups (and the public opinion), to take a look at George W. Bush in his re-election campaign and to highlight the current legislation in the USA.