Does Traditional Teaching On Sexuality Make Gay People Unwell? Probably Not. Here’s Why.
by Mark Woods, Christian Today:
Does traditional Christian teaching on same-sex relationships damage the mental health of lesbian, gay and bisexual people? Yes, said the Oasis Foundation’s report on Friday. In the Name of Love: The Church, exclusion and LGB mental health issues claims to offer ‘watertight’ research showing homosexual and bisexual people are up to 12 times more likely to experience mental health difficulties. It also claims to demonstrate ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that it’s the Church’s fault for ‘fuelling negative messages about same-sex relationships in society, the media and political debate’.
There is, in fact, plenty of reasonable doubt; whatever one’s personal sympathies, the Oasis report is actually pretty thin, heavy on assertion and light on evidence. It has been comprehensively analysed by Peter Ould, who cites a proper academic study by Barnes and Meyer, Religious Affiliation, Internalized Homophobia, and Mental Health in Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals. Barnes and Meyer found that, counter-intuitively, going to a church that taught homosexuality was sinful actually tended to reduce depression in gay people.
Clearly, more research is needed to find out why. Perhaps pathologising same-sex attraction as basically sinful is helpful in at least giving people a framework for understanding it; if it’s sinful, at least you have clarity, and conservative evangelicals are good on sin.
But there are two potential problems with this kind of research.
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