The Role of Religion in Gay Teen Suicides

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Religion plays a huge role in keeping homophobia alive and in disposing gay teens toward ending their lives as an escape from bullying - and from the psychological damage many have experienced growing up in so-called religious households. Homophobia, anti-gay discrimination and gay bashing remain alive and well in society because conservative Christians (including conservative Catholics and the Church hierarchy) in particular target anything that discourages bigotry and cruelty to gays as "promoting homosexuality." It's this constant disingenuous, anti-gay drum beat of "hate the sin, love the sinner" that makes anti-gay bully morally acceptable for far too many Americans. The other side of the coin is the damage done to LGBT youth who grow up in religious homes and discover to their horror that they are, through no choice of their own, considered an abomination. Worse yet, only death ends one's existence as something they've been taught to view as evil and sinful. A piece in the Washington Post via Faith in America looks at this vicious cycle. Here are some highlights:

There is an unspoken narrative surrounding the life and suicide of Tyler Clementi and other similar stories. It must no longer be excluded from the national dialogue on these tragic suicides. What role does a child’s religious upbringing play in their decision to kill themselves? It’s a difficult and delicate subject but it can be no more.

While of course I care about the feelings of well-meaning parents in their time of horrific sorrow, I’ve come to see it more important to care about the feelings of vulnerable teens who fall prey to emotional and spiritual bullying from the pulpit and consequently passed on to them by their parents either intentionally or unintentionally.

There are many more Tyler Clementi tragedies waiting to unfold if we continue to close our minds to the harm caused by religious teaching’s bias and intimidation toward gay. lesbian bisexual and transgender individuals, especially youth and families.

The story of Tyler Clementi’s death has been one of the most publicized teen suicides in recent memory. Unfortunately, a review of media interviews and print news articles over the last 18 months produces only a few hints to the role religious teaching may have played in Clementi’s emotional and psychological distress.

During the previous four years, Faith in America has been sounding the alarm on the immense harm that is being caused to LGBT youth and their families when church teaching is used to place a religious and moral stamp of disapproval on their very being. We also have observed a reluctance to address the root cause of so much of the hostility, prejudice and discrimination.

Christian denominations can look to other sad histories such as church teaching role in supporting slavery, opposition to equality for women, promoting segregation and bans on interracial marriage. Religion institutions have apologized for those moral failures.

So many kids fear they will be separated from their parents’ love if they divulge a same-sex sexual orientation because they know what their parents have been taught in church. Worse, consider the emotional and spiritual trauma of being made to feel your sexual orientation also will separate you from God – knowing as a young person what your relationship with God means to your parents. I’ve seen with my on eyes how devastating this can be to a young teen.

Of course the social stigma and hostility that is promoted toward gay and lesbian individuals is not confined to Southern Baptist churches and other evangelical churches. While their numbers are decreasing, there sadly are Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran ministers who continue to teach that that homosexuality in and of itself places the gay or lesbian person beyond God’s love.

Grace Church of Ridgewood, New Jersey, is the church that Tyler Clementi attended with his family. It was not an affirming and welcoming place for a young person processing a same-sex sexual orientation, according to some pastors in that community. The church is a member of the Willow Creek Association, a group of churches headed by Bill Hybels, who as recently as last year said that God designed sexual intimacy to be between a man and a woman in marriage and anything outside of that is sexual impurity in God’s eyes. The gay youth hears in those words that they are dirty, unclean and something for which they should be ashamed.

Olson-Smith wrote “In the congregation Tyler grew up in and his parents still belong to, there was no question. To be gay was to be cut off from God.” . . . . In Christian circles around the country, a “hate the sin, love the sinner” perspective is often promulgated as a ‘Christian’ approach to homosexuality.

After five years of speaking with LGBT youth and their parents across this country, I believe that it was this perspective that likely caused Tyler’s mother to react in a way that her son perceived to be “totally rejecting” him – as he penned in a text message – when he came out to her before going off to college. There can be no doubt that Mrs. Clementi loved her son unconditionally. But Tyler didn’t hear the unconditional part and I suspect that is because he knew what his mother had been taught by the church.

The evidence against religious teaching’s bias and intimidation toward gay people and the role such religion-based bias and intimidation plays in the bullying, the stigma, the prejudice and the discrimination is overwhelming and conclusive.

Immunity can no longer be given to misguided church teaching’s bias and intimidation toward gay and lesbian youth and families. If we do, there will be more stories about a precious life being senselessly ended and more devastation brought upon their parents and families.

Religion is too often a great evil that perpetuates daily horrors on LGBT individuals around the globe. Needless deaths, needless misery, and psychological child abuse are religion's hallmarks. Just so the self-congratulatory pious set can feel better about themselves. It's nothing short of criminal and the special deference given to harm inducing religious beliefs needs to end.