84% of Americans oppose religious exemptions for providing LGBTQ medical care

A recent study found 84 percent of Americans oppose allowing medical professionals to deny care to an LGBTQ person based on their religious beliefs.

The survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in partnership with the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles, interviewed 1,003 people between Sept. 9-12. Participants were asked about their views of religious exemption in medical care, hiring practices and businesses serving customers.

"Recent efforts by some state legislatures to expand religious exemptions from LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination laws are largely out of alignment with the views of most Americans," study author Christy Mallory, legal director at the Williams Institute, said in a release shared with Becker's on June 15. "More than 3 in 4 Americans now favor civil rights laws protecting LGBTQ people against religiously motivated discrimination."

Here are four other findings:

1. Women were more likely than men to oppose the use of religious beliefs to deny medical care to LGBTQ people; however, more than two-thirds of men opposed the use of religious beliefs to discriminate.
   
   
2. In each racial group, more than 80 percent of respondents opposed allowing medical professionals to withhold care to LGBTQ people based on religious beliefs.
   
   
3. Ninety-two percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans opposed religious-based discrimination in medical care.
   
   
4. About two-thirds of Catholics and Protestant/Christians opposed the use of religious beliefs to discriminate against LGBTQ people in medical care.