Josie Friedman

While religious involvement is generally associated with protective outcomes such as a sense of community connectedness, value-driven purpose, and coping beliefs, religious participation may have markedly different outcomes for sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations if their religion conflicts with their SGM status. Thus, we sought to investigate if affiliation with religions which are more discouraging of homosexuality was predictive of SGM youth reporting problems at home or school due to their SGM identity. Further, we hypothesized that SGM youth who scored higher in religiosity would be more likely to report problems due to their SGM identity. The secondary aim of this study was to investigate the moderating effects of parental support on the relationship between religious affiliation and minority stress as well as the relationship between religiosity and minority stress. Based on the first four waves of the ABCD data, the study sample included 788 adolescents who identified as gay, bisexual, or transgender at any of four study timepoints.  The results of this study were not significant with regard to religious affiliation and religiosity. However, additional logistic regression analyses revealed that lower parental support significantly predicted greater odds of youth reporting problems due to their SGM identity. Limitations of this study include that the range of sexual and gender minorities, the index of minority stress (problem at home or at school) and some aspects of religions that were discouraging of SGM status were not fully assessed. These findings are limited to young teens who identify as SGM, but future research will be warranted that considers these questions as more youth explore questions about their sexual and gender minority.