Americans who identify as left-leaning overwhelmingly support requiring creative service businesses to accept assignments that some providers see as antithetical to their religious beliefs, according to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, a District-based group.
Americans who identify as right-leaning, though, aren’t sure.
The new poll delved into how respondents across the political spectrum felt about the nation’s ongoing “service-refusal” debate — a fight that has put religious bakers, wedding photographers and web designers squarely in the crosshairs of gay activists and their allies who argue that religion has no place behind a cash register.
According to the PRRI survey, 66% overall say businesses should not have the right to refuse service if that refusal is aimed at LGBTQ individuals.
Of that overall percentage, 85% of Democrats oppose service refusals, followed by 66% of political independents.
Republicans, though, are significantly more inclined to give businesses and creative service providers the benefit of a doubt. Among Republicans, only 44% think a cake baker should be forced by law to make, for example, a same-sex cake for a gay wedding.
Forcing businesses to provide services in violation of religious beliefs earned the support of less than half of those polled who identified as Latter-day Saints (44%), Orthodox Christians (43%) or White evangelicals (38%).
The Supreme Court said its term beginning in October of this year will hear an appeal from Lorie Smith, a wedding website designer who is fighting Colorado regulations requiring her to create messages that violate her religious values.
The high court in 2018 offered a narrow ruling supporting Jack Phillips, a cake designer who objected to designing a same-sex couple’s wedding cake on religious conscience grounds. PRRI noted the two cases in the survey report’s introduction.
In interviews or news conferences over the past 10 months, Mr. Phillips, web designer Lorie Smith, and now-retired flower arranger Barronelle Stutzman each told The Washington Times they served customers without regard to sexual orientation, objecting only to using their creative skills to support a message to which they have faith-based conscience objections.
Other results from the PRRI survey indicated strong overall support for gay rights. An overwhelming majority of Americans — 79% — say they support laws to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in employment, public accommodations and housing.
While Democrats (89%) and political independents (82%) were said the be the most in favor of such protections, PRRI said Republicans (66%) and “White Evangelical Protestants” (61%) were “least supportive” of such measures.
PRRI said the survey sampled 22,612 adults, of which 20,670 were part of the Ipsos Knowledge Panel. The survey was conducted in separate waves during March, June, August and October-November of 2021, the group said.
The organization said the survey’s margin of error is +/- 0.8 percentage points at a 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 1.7 points.
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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