The Proverbial Closet: Do Faith and Religiosity Affect Coming Out Patterns?

Abstract

Disclosing one’s sexual minority identity or “coming out of the closet” is a key milestone in sexual minority identity development. While scholars have explored how race, gender, class, and other social classifications shape coming out patterns among lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) individuals, we know far less about the effect of religious contexts. To address this shortcoming, we extend existing theoretical insights to better understand how faith and religiosity shape coming out patterns among sexual minorities both independently and collectively. Specifically, we examine how religious affiliation and religious attendance (a measure of religiosity) affect when LGB individuals privately realize and publicly disclose their sexual minority identity. Using data from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Survey of LGBT Adults, we conduct a series of ordinary least squares regressions on a representative sample of LGB adults ( n = 1,136). We find religious contexts—both religious affiliation and attendance—have no independent effect on when a person realizes or publicly discloses their sexual minority identity for the first time. However, evangelical Protestants that frequently attend religious services publicly disclose their sexual minority identity at older ages. These results highlight the social cost of publicly disclosing an LGB identity, especially within conservative religious spaces.

Religious Transitions, Sexual Minority Status, and Depressive Symptoms from Adolescence to Early Adulthood

“…Furthermore, research focusing specifically on religiously active sexual minority samples suggests that faith group acceptance is a particularly important mechanism for protecting the mental health of LGB individuals (Lease, Horne, and Noffsinger-Frazier 2005). In addition, research scholarship suggests that evangelical Protestants publicly disclose their sexual minority identity at older ages (Ratcliff and Haltom 2021). Thus, future researchers in this area should examine the mental health impacts of switching between specific religious denominations.…”

An overview of coming out research: Introducing a three‐lens typology

“…In this way, religion has been also found to impact when individuals come out. For example, Ratcliff and Haltom's (2021) study findings suggest that 'LGB individuals publicly disclose their LGB identity at later ages when they identify with more conservative religions … and are exposed to these teachings more frequently' (p. 260).…”