Development and Validation of the Sexual Minority and Religious Identity Integration (SMRII) Scale

Despite the psychosocial strain of homonegative religious attitudes, many people with minoritized sexual identities also hold religious identities and benefit from integrating their sexual minority and religious identities. However, for research and clinical practice to advance, a reliable and valid measure of sexual and religious identity integration is needed. The present study reports on the development and validation of the Sexual Minority and Religious Identity Integration (SMRII) Scale. Participants were comprised of two subsamples for whom sexual and religious identity is particularly salient (Latter-day Saints and Muslims) as well as a third subsample of the general sexual minority population-totaling 1,424 individuals (39% POC, 62% cisman, 27% ciswoman, 11% trans/non-binary/genderqueer). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the 5-item scale measures a single unidimensional construct. This scale demonstrated good internal consistency in the total sample (α = .80) as well as metric and scalar invariance along relevant demographics. The SMRII also evidenced strong convergent and discriminant validity, significantly correlating with other measures of religious and sexual minority identity typically between r = .2 and r = .5. Taken together, initial findings indicate that the SMRII is a psychometrically sound measure that is brief enough to be utilized in research and clinical settings.Public Significance Statement: This article introduces the Sexual Minority and Religious Identity Integration Scale (SMRII) as a reliable and valid assessment of the degree to which individuals integrate their sexual minority and religious identities. This five-item measure is brief enough to be utilized in both research and clinical settings.

Does Internalized Stigma Change the Way that Religiousness Relates to Depression for People with Marginalized Sexualities?

Drawing on minority stress and intersectionality theories, we examine whether the relationship between religiousness and depression among people with marginalized sexualities changes as a function of their experience of internalized stigma. Analyses of a sample of 260 people with marginalized sexualities suggested that the relationship between religiousness and depression was moderated by internalized homonegativity. Simple slopes analyses revealed that when people with marginalized sexualities reported higher degrees of internalized homonegativity, the relationship between religiousness and depression was positive. Conversely, when people with marginalized sexualities reported lower degrees of internalized homonegativity, religiousness was negatively related to depression. Dismantling analyses using subscales of the Internalized Homonegativity Inventory suggested that these effects are largely driven by personal homonegativity and participants' views of the morality of homosexuality. Taken together, these results suggest that religiousness may be positive for people with marginalized sexualities when they experience low degrees of internalized stigma. Further, results suggest that both people with marginalized sexualities' negative self-views and negative views of people with marginalized sexualities generally may affect the ways in which people with marginalized sexualities experience religiousness, and how it ultimately impacts them psychologically.

Religion/Spirituality, Stress, and Resilience Among Sexual and Gender Minorities: The Religious/Spiritual Stress and Resilience Model

Although many sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) consider themselves religious or spiritual, the impact of this religiousness or spirituality (RS) on their health is poorly understood. We introduce the religious/spiritual stress and resilience model (RSSR) to provide a robust framework for understanding the variegated ways that RS influences the health of SGMs. The RSSR bridges existing theorizing on minority stress, structural stigma, and RS-health pathways to articulate the circumstances under which SGMs likely experience RS as health promoting or health damaging. The RSSR makes five key propositions: (a) Minority stress and resilience processes influence health; (b) RS influences general resilience processes; (c) RS influences minority-specific stress and resilience processes; (d) these relationships are moderated by a number of variables uniquely relevant to RS among SGMs, such as congregational stances on same-sex sexual behavior and gender expression or an individual's degree of SGM and RS identity integration; and (e) relationships between minority stress and resilience, RS, and health are bidirectional. In this manuscript, we describe the empirical basis for each of the five propositions focusing on research examining the relationship between RS and health among SGMs. We conclude by describing how the RSSR may inform future research on RS and health among SGMs.

Transgender community resilience on YouTube: Constructing an informational, emotional, and sociorelational support exchange

This strength-based, mixed-methods study explored how trans individuals utilize transvlogs as a community building and resilience resource. Eighty-six transvlog viewers explained their motivation for viewing transvlogs and additionally rated their self-efficacy and well-being. Narrative analyses indicate that participants viewed transvlogs to gain informational, emotional, and sociorelational resources. Twelve percent of participants additionally shared those resources with others and contributed to a relational resilience exchange. In addition, transvlog viewers' self-efficacy and well-being scores were higher than previously reported means. While prior research has noted the benefits of transvlog creation, the present study furthers this study by suggesting that transvlog viewers interactionally benefit as well. Participants in this study were not passive viewers, but rather active, agentive contributors to a trans community resilience exchange. Building on this study, we conclude with a discussion of how therapists can incorporate extant trans-created resources to foster trans community resilience.

Transformative LGBTQ+ Growth and Leadership within Greek Life

Departing from extant deficit models, the present study qualitatively explored 50 LGBTQ+ college students' development within Greek Life from a Transformative Intersectional Psychology (TIP) approach. Amidst the heteronormative and gendernormative challenges of Greek Life, participants actively pursued an authentic self, friendship, leadership and transformative social change. Sixty-six percent of participants characterized their Greek Life experiences as positive, with 88% of participants reporting that their overall Greek Life engagement positively contributed to their college experience. Moreover, 74% of participants served in Greek Life leadership roles. Of the participants in leadership roles, 46% reported that their Greek Life experiences positively connected to their LGBTQ+ identity. Participants' dynamic Greek Life engagement required no external research prompt, illustrating LGBTQ+ emerging adults' agentive efforts to actively, collaboratively and transformatively direct their own development and create institutional change. Research, counseling and administrative recommendations on how to foster LGBTQ+ campus leadership and Greek Life inclusion are discussed.

Incorporating Transformative Intersectional Psychology (TIP) into Our Understanding of LGBTQ Muslims' Lived Experiences, Challenges, and Growth

This article serves as the first in a series of six articles providing a theoretically and empirically informed approach to understanding Muslim LGBTQ lives from an intersectional positive-growth framework, transformative intersectional psychology (TIP). Within this perspective, LGBTQ Muslims' religious, gender and sexual identities are mutually interactive and situated within the dynamic systems of power, privilege and oppression. This approach recognizes that LGBTQ individuals negotiate multiple minority identities as they navigate oppression and build pathways of resilience. In the present article, we provide an introduction to TIP and this theory's relevance to the distinct experiences of LGBTQ Muslims. We then conclude with an overview of the goals of this Special Issue, The LGBTQ Muslim Experience, and introduce the subsequent articles in the series. The articles in this Special Issue address the implications of transformative intersectional psychology for LGBTQ Muslim research, training and clinical practice.

Sexual prejudice, sexism, and religion

Multi-national and meta-analytic studies suggest that the pathways between religiousness and sexism/sexual prejudice are partially mediated by sociopersonality factors such as conservatism. In this article, we describe the contributing factors to this relationship, such as authoritarianism and fundamentalism. These factors interact at the dynamic nexus of individual and social development. As such, religiously situated sexism and sexual prejudice are not viewed as inevitable outcomes to religious practice and faith. Individual differences (e.g. conservatism), congregational (e.g. doctrine/policies, limited contact), and cultural factors (e.g. power hierarchies) mutually contribute to this landscape, and individuals ultimately make choices regarding their behavior and views. Further research exploring the mechanisms of religiously situated gender inequality and sexual prejudice is essential given the associated negative outcomes for individuals, relationships, and communities. Our growing grasp of the agentive pathways leading to religiously situated prejudice and discrimination is enriching our understanding of how individual differences and social contexts contribute to sexism and sexual prejudice.

A Quantitative Examination of Identity Integration in Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People of Faith

Much of the religious/spiritual development of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals (GLBs) has focused on experiences of conflict and distress, providing little insight into how these identities can be integrated. The present study explored the religious and spiritual lives of GLBs with a specific focus on the integration of these identities. We conducted a retrospective secondary data analysis of 750 GLB individuals from the Northern California Health Study to quantitatively assess sexual orientation and religion/spirituality integration using hierarchical cluster analysis. Resulting MANCOVA analyses of the five revealed groupings (integrated, gay identity struggle, anti-religious/spiritual, secular, and low gay salience) present numerous statistically significant differences between these integration clusters and a variety of dependent variables including measures of demographics, religiosity/spirituality, gay identity, and multiple mental health outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings while also making suggestions for future research.

Petitioning for Social Change: Letters to Religious Leaders From Gay Men and Their Family Allies

Coming out is often described as challenging, especially for individuals from conservative religious communities (Etengoff, 2013). In an effort to explore how these sociocultural conflicts are mediated, gay men (n = 16) and their family allies (n = 9) from Christian and Jewish communities wrote letters to religious leaders regarding current sexual minority policies and whether they should change or remain the same. Petitioning tasks were selected as letters can shift author-audience relations to allow for non-normative and unscripted expressions (Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004). Sixteen of the 25 participants addressed their letters to a specific religious figure, illustrating the sociorelational applicability of the task. Ninety-three problems and 75 solutions were discussed, supporting prior discussions of petitioning tasks as a form of living history and conflict mediation (Daiute, 2010). Moreover, 20 of the 25 participants wrote about humanization needs (e.g., "We are not freaks at a freak show"), providing new conceptual structures for participatory research efforts, policy initiatives, and clinical applications.

Clinicians' perspective of the relational processes for family and individual development during the mediation of religious and sexual identity disclosure

Although the psychological literature regarding gay men from religious families is continually expanding, it is also limited in that few studies focus on the use of therapy in the negotiation of the interrelated systems of religion, sexuality, and family. Utilizing a cultural historical activity theory-based process of analysis, this study focuses on the narratives of 12 clinicians discussing 230 conflicts and how those conflicts are mediated in both productive (e.g., seeking secular support) and unproductive ways (e.g., bringing one's son to an exorcist) by gay men and their religious families independent of and at the advice of their therapists.

Sunni-Muslim American Religious Development During Emerging Adulthood

Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in America, with approximately 6 to 7 million Muslims living in America within the past decade. However, there has been little psychological research conducted focusing on the development of the Muslim American self. This inquiry addresses that gap by focusing on how familial religious affiliation during childhood and the everyday environmental activity systems of emerging adulthood impact religious practice and the construction of the religious self among Sunni-Muslim American emerging adults ( N = 63, 18-29 years) via the development of diverse mediational strategies. Utilizing an applied cultural historical activity theory–based analysis, the authors found that participants’ religious development emerged as a diverse and dynamic process developing in relation to the interacting activity systems and sociorelational contexts of emerging adulthood.