Some Features of LGBT Community Religiosity in Contemporary Lithuania

This paper aims to research the features of religiosity of LGBT community in contemporary Lithuania. LGBT community in Lithuania faces challenges of social exclusion due to the dominating cultural and social norms supported by traditional and conservative powers in Lithuanian society. Religious and political elites ground their antagonism towards LGBT community in the doctrine of Roman Catholic Church and its approach to the practices of homosexuality. Lithuanian society was undergoing quite rapid social change after the collapse of Iron Wall and recent social research data reports about the increase of the part of population with more liberal attitudes toward homosexuality. However, LGBT community finds itself as an alternative cultural group in still very traditional and conservative Lithuanian society and religion remains one of the obstacles to overcome these boundaries. How do LGBT community members construct their religiosity and everyday religious life? What are the features of LGBT community religiosity? How does LGBT community religiosity manifest in their everyday life? These and other questions have been posed in the beginning of the research.

In 2017 autumn Lithuanian LGBT community for the first time participated in the survey about their religiosity, relations with Roman Catholic Church and society. The results of the survey will allow disclosing the features of LGBT community religiosity, their beliefs, practices, consequences of their religiosity for everyday life, their assessments of activities of dominant religious community in public. The LGBT community survey results will be compared with European Value Survey results and social research data from other countries – Poland, UK (Hunt 2009, Yip&Page 2013, Hall 2014).