Religious Identity, Sexual Identity, and Internalized Homophobia in Adults Who Have Deidentified from Christianity

Over the past three decades, the level of acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities has increased. However, this overall acceptance does not necessarily lead to an acceptance of these identities within specific Christian communities, leading to gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals having contradictory experiences between their Christian upbringing and secular society. Research has suggested that individuals who deidentify from a religion tend to retain cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns that may lead to identity conflicts. Using religious residue as a theoretical framework, this cross-sectional, correlational quantitative study sought to identify the relationships between sexual identity and religious identity variables in gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults who were raised in a Christian religious tradition and have since deidentified from that faith. Results of this study found that religious fundamentalism, religiosity, outness, current and former religious identity, and geographic location all significantly predicted internalized homophobia. As more adults are identifying as nonreligious, it is important to better understand the experiences of those who change religious identities and how those former identities impact present psychological functioning, identity formation, and mental health.