David Archuleta (second place, American Idol, Season 7) is embedded below talking about his struggle to understand the relationship between his faith and his sexuality. It’s long, meanders a bit, but is very powerful.
This video illustrates a concept that I discussed with my interns recently during a didactic about the intersection of faith and sexuality–the assigned reading was a study that examined the well-being of both liberal and conservative LGBQ Mormons and former Mormons through the lenses of Cognitive Dissonance and Minority Stress theories.
These results support predictions made by cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957), as those who consistently engaged with or disengaged from their Mormon identity were more likely to report better well-being than all others, and those who found themselves caught between a strong Mormon and non-Mormon identity (i.e., confused religious viewpoint, more conflict, occasional church attendance) exhibited worse well-being….Our findings highlight the difficulties in integrating conflicting identities and suggest that developing a clear sense of which identity is more salient may help reduce cognitive dissonance and ultimately aid integration to improve well-being” .
We found that our results supported aspects of both cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) and minority stress theories (Meyer, 2003). To the extent that our study was able to assess cognitive dissonance, this dissonance appears to predict well-being better than the hypothesized stressors experienced by sexual minorities in conservative religious environments. On the other hand, minority stress theory (2003) accurately predicted that more positive beliefs about sexuality would be related to improved well-being even if individuals were experiencing dissonance….Based on our findings, we encourage therapists working with sexual minority Mormon clients to focus with clients on navigating conflict between sexual and religious identities, accepting their experiences of same-sex attraction, and developing positive views about sexuality” .
Lefevor, G. T., Blaber, I. P., Huffman, C. E., Schow, R. L., Beckstead, A. L., Raynes, M., & Rosik, C. H. (2020). The role of religiousness and beliefs about sexuality in well-being among sexual minority Mormons. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 12(4), 460–470. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000261Cite