The Impact of Religious and Nonreligious Sectors on the Well-being of Sexual Minority Students

• In Event: 1480 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Sexuality, Health, and Crime

Abstract

We use national data from the Cardus Education Survey and the Relationship in America Survey to examine the effect of attending religiously affiliated high schools on the psychological well-being of sexual minority graduates. We add nuance to previous investigations that explore the detrimental effects of the religious school sector by differentiating between Catholic and Evangelical Protestant educational environments. Furthermore, we incorporate participants that attended nonreligious sectors, such as private and homeschool, during their high school tenures to determine if these sectors have similar effects as religious environments. Our results confirm previous findings that sexual minorities report lower levels of well-being than their heterosexual peers. The disparity between sexual minorities and heterosexuals is greatest within Evangelical Protestant schools. However, there was no significant difference between Catholic schools and the other non-religious sectors. The results suggest that not all religious sectors play an equivalent role in the lives of sexual minority students and should be accounted for in future research.

Author

• Christopher Quiroz, University of Notre Dame