“My faith says who I am is wrong”
For many LGBTQ+ people, faith is a home, a family and a language, and it also tells them something about themselves is wrong. Some leave, some stay and keep it to themselves, some move to a congregation that accepts them, and some live with the tension for years. In Pew's 2013 survey of LGBT adults in the US, about a third of those with a religion said there was a conflict between their beliefs and their sexual orientation or gender identity. A 2018 study of more than 21,000 US college students by Lytle and colleagues found that religion mattering more went with fewer suicidal thoughts for heterosexual students, and gave no such protection to lesbian, gay, bisexual and questioning students. What matters most is what the faith gives the person, what it costs, and who they can talk to about both.
What to check first
It helps to separate the teaching from the people: what the tradition's texts say, what a particular leader or congregation says, and what the person's family says. These are often different, and they may change at different speeds. Whether there is anyone inside the tradition the person can talk to openly matters too.
What could be going on
Conflict between faith and sexual orientation or gender identity: Fits if you feel pulled between two parts of yourself that both matter, with no easy way to keep both.
Internalized homophobia (internalized stigma): Check whether the teaching has become a voice inside you, so the judgment feels like your own.
Cognitive dissonance: Fits if holding both feels unbearable, and you keep trying to make one side give way.
Moral injury: Could be this if what hurts most is being let down by a community or leaders you trusted.
Telling them apart
Conflict between faith and sexual orientation or gender identity: The person may feel pulled between two parts of life that both matter, faith and who they love or are. Each choice seems to cost the other. The conflict may be strongest around family, ritual or the future.
Internalized homophobia (internalized stigma): The teaching may have become a private voice: prayers to change, disgust after attraction, a sense of being less worthy. The person may hold the belief and also suffer from it. It may stay even after leaving the tradition.
Cognitive dissonance: Holding both may feel unbearable, so the mind keeps trying to make one side give way: rejecting the faith wholesale, or forcing the attraction down. Festinger described this drive to end a clash between beliefs. The swings may come in cycles.
Moral injury: The deepest hurt may be betrayal by leaders or a community the person trusted with their soul. Moral injury describes the wound when a trusted authority acts against what the person holds right. Anger and grief may come mixed.
Questions to carry
- The last time I felt the pull between them, where was I and what had I just heard?
- What do I hold sacred that has nothing to do with what I was told about this?
Also said as
- gay and christian and i don't know how to be both
- my church says being gay is a sin
- can i be muslim and gay
- i'm trans and my religion says it's wrong
- torn between god and who i am
- lost my faith after coming out