When Mark Hendrickson and his colleagues argued that we were dropping out of organised religion very fast, he probably wasn't telling us anything new. So, what's the significance of these findings? According to the Lavender Islands religion question, "New Zealand lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians quit mainstream religion at two-and-half times the rate of the general population" The report suggests that Christian denominations and sects are a major turnoff, and to keep sane and alive, people leave their denomination of origin. They've concluded that if those denominations don't want them, no great loss - they don't need to be Christian either. Of the 2269 participants in the survey, 73 per cent said they were raised as Christians, with 22.5 per cent not raised in any religion. But only 15 per cent of raised Christians were currently practicing their religion, while 73 per cent of the gay, lesbian and bisexual participants were currently non-religious. We can't generalise about the other great faiths, as Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and "other" religions accounted for only a small percentage of responses. However, the sums referred to above-"seventy threeper cent raised Christian andfifteen per cent who are currently Christian... is a remarkable eighty per cent decline", Hendrickson said. And we're not alone. According to comparative census data,thosewho identified themselves as Christian dropped from 90.1% (1966)to 59.8 per cent (2001), which representsa decline of 33.6 per centover thirty five years. Most Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches refrain from public homophobia, apart from fundamentalist elements within each church. There are some individual "reconciling" congregations in Wellington and Auckland that welcomeLGBTs. However, we're still not comfortable. I gave Christianity up in the mid-eighties, disgusted at the behaviour of Christchurch militant anti-abortionists and homophobes. Over the ensuing two decades, as overall New Zealand religious observance has decreased, churches have become insular enclaves, apart from Methodist and Anglican social justice departments, who criticise inadequate social spending. Because they are insular enclaves, they've become lifestyle choices, particularly as evangelicalism has started to subside into political quiescence and diversification. For that reason, we can take them or leave them, and it seems to be the latter. Church membership is no longer associated with social status; in fact, it seems de rigeur that to be fundamentalist, one has to hate anyone with a higher education and proudly boast that "ooo-arrr, they not be one of them intellectuals." Even the Maxim Institute admitted that seventy percent of fundamentalists that get to university lose their faith when faced with intellectual challenges. Actually, we've never been as into LGBT Christianity as much as elsewhere in the western world. TheOrder of Perpetual Indulgence never found a nook or cranny for their satirical habits (...) here, possibly due to the lesser denominational role of Catholicism. As for the Metropolitan Community Church, it has had only three parishes in the country, compared to the popularity of that LGBT denomination in Canada and the United States. And to be frank, many older LGBTs who maintain conservative church membership try to contort themselves into psychological knots justifying their membership in homophobic religious groups, and aren't overly happy people to be around. Look what damage Catholicism did to Dusty Springfield and Kenneth Williams back in the sixties. Of course, the Lavender Islands research doesn't answer all our questions. Do LGBT Buddhists have a better time of it, in which case, why aren't New Zealand LGBT Buddhists more prominent? Are LGBT Muslims Sufi, given that esoteric branches' commitment to gender equality and rich tradition of homoerotic poetry? Are there differences between LGBT Reform Jews, and Orthodox Jews? Are younger LGBTs more likely to be into Buddhism or Wicca from the start? And what about Wicca, given its origins in the feminist women's spirituality movement of the eighties and nineties, the continued relevance of green politics and its LGBT-affirmative nature? And why isn't there an LGBT secular humanist group? Humanism is a nonreligious option, and there are plenty of Dutch and British LGBT humanists. Leaving our religions? Yes, in the case of Christianity. As for the others, we need more detailed research. Craig Young - 26th February 2007