Conflict between faith and sexual orientation or gender identity
The strain of holding a faith, or belonging to a family or community whose faith teaches that same-sex relationships or gender transition are wrong, while being gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans. People respond in many ways: leaving the faith, moving to another congregation or tradition, staying and remaining celibate, reading the scriptures differently, or living with a tension that stays open.
What drives it
Both identities can sit at the core of a person. One gives community, meaning and family ties, the other love and honesty, and the conflict sets them against each other, so any choice can feel like losing part of oneself. For identification it explains distress that doesn’t lift when one side is dropped, because the loss of that side remains.
How it shows
Work
Working for a faith school or charity whose rules forbid same-sex marriage. Keeping a partner out of view at a job that came through church friends.
Relationships
Sitting through a sermon beside parents, knowing what they would say if they knew. One partner who left the faith and one who still prays. Being asked to step down from the choir or the youth group after coming out.
Self
Notice which communities you would grieve if you lost them, and whether a prayer or practice still means something to you apart from its rules.
What tells it apart
Internalized homophobia (internalized stigma): Internalized homophobia is a negative view of one’s own sexuality. Faith conflict can exist without it, in someone at ease with their sexuality who still loves a tradition that rejects it.
Moral injury: Moral injury follows acting against one’s own moral code or being betrayed by those trusted to uphold it. It may fit when the person feels betrayed by religious leaders or community, or feels they have betrayed their faith.
Spiritual bypassing: Spiritual bypassing uses spiritual ideas to skip over painful feelings. In faith conflict it can sound like ‘I’ve given it to God’ while the conflict carries on underneath, though for some people the same words describe a settled peace.
A test
Ask the person what they would lose if they left their faith, and what they would lose if they stopped living as gay, bi or trans. If both lists are long and heavy, the distress may come from the conflict itself more than from either identity.
Questions to carry
- In the last service or prayer, what did I hold back?
- Which part of myself have I been asked to give up, and by whom?
How strong the research is
mixed. In the first meta-analysis on the question (73 studies, Lefevor and colleagues, Psychological Bulletin, 2021), religiousness and spirituality had a small positive link with health among sexual minorities overall, clearer for spirituality and religious belief. The link vanished or turned negative in samples recruited from gay venues such as bars and clubs, and results varied widely between studies. In 2,949 LGBT young adults (Gibbs and Goldbach, Archives of Suicide Research, 2015), those who grew up in religious settings had higher odds of suicidal thoughts and of a suicide attempt, and internalized homophobia explained only part of this. In two samples of current and former Latter-day Saints (McGraw and colleagues, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2023), beliefs that did not affirm same-sex relationships predicted more depression a month later through internalized stigma, while affirming beliefs were unrelated to depression and suicide risk.
Where it comes from
Grant Lefevor and colleagues, ‘The relationship between religiousness and health among sexual minorities: a meta-analysis’, Psychological Bulletin, 2021. Gibbs and Goldbach, ‘Religious conflict, sexual identity, and suicidal behaviors among LGBT young adults’, Archives of Suicide Research, 2015