The Affective Consequences of Minority Stress Among Bisexual,Pansexual, and Queer (Bi+) Adults: A Daily Diary Study

Bisexual, pansexual, and queer (bi+) individuals are at increased risk for depression and anxiety. These disparities are hypothesized to be due to the unique, minority-specific stressors that they experience. Prior research supports that bi+ stressors are associated with depression and anxiety, but nearly all studies have been cross-sectional, limiting our understanding of how experiencing bi+ stress influences individuals’ levels of depression and anxiety as they occur in their day-to-day lives. To address this gap, we examined the daily associations between bi+ stressors (discrimination, internalized stigma, rejection sensitivity, and identity concealment) and depressed/anxious mood in a 28-day diary study. Participants were 208 bi+ individuals who completed daily measures of bi+ stressors and depressed/anxious mood. We tested unlagged (same-day) and lagged (next-day) associations, and we also tested whether internalized stigma, rejection sensitivity, and identity concealment functioned as mechanisms underlying the daily associations between discrimination and depressed/anxious mood. Participants reported higher depressed/anxious mood on days when they reported higher discrimination, internalized stigma, rejection sensitivity, and identity concealment. There were significant unlagged indirect effects of discrimination on depressed and anxious mood via internalized stigma and rejection sensitivity, and there was also a significant unlagged indirect effect of discrimination on anxiety via identity concealment. However, none of the lagged associations were significant. Results suggest that bi+ stress is related to same-day, but not next-day, depressed/anxious mood. The nonsignificant lagged associations could reflect that bi+ individuals are using adaptive coping skills in response to bi+ stress, or that other experiences throughout the day have stronger influences on next-day mood.     

Depression and Religion: Realities,Perspectives, and Directions

The debate between psychologists hostile and friendly to religion regarding whether religion promotes or deters depression is reviewed from a historical perspective. Two modes of religion can be seen as forming a continuum with one pole as a life-celebrating, self-affirming religion that deters depression and the other pole as a life-constricting, self-derogating religion that promotes depression. Counselors are advised to help lead religious clients out of depression by procedures aimed at moving them from unhealthy toward healthy religious modes     

Religion and Suicide Risk in Lesbian,Gay and Bisexual Austrians

Religion is known to be a protective factor against suicide. However, religiously affiliated sexual minority individuals often report a conflict between religion and sexual identity. Therefore, the protective role of religion against suicide in sexual minority people is unclear. We investigated the effect of religion on suicide risk in a sample of 358 lesbian, gay and bisexual Austrians. Religion was associated with higher scores of internalized homophobia, but with fewer suicide attempts. Our data indicate that religion might be both a risk and a protective factor against suicidality in religiously affiliated sexual minority individuals.     

The Body and the Sacred in the Digital Age: Thoughts on Posthuman Sexuality

Abstract

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of "posthumanism." In this essay, I examine some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behaviour and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.     

Sense and Senselessness in Religion: Reflections on Creation of the Sacred

Creation of the Sacred posits that ‘religion makes sense’. In so doing, it underestimates ‘the negative’. Its emphasis on the scientific basis for tradition, here called ‘scientistic traditionalism’, underestimates the role of critique and the function of dissent in the dialectics of tradition-building. For this reason, it also cannot ‘make sense’ of monotheism, which, in its many traditions, positions itself in opposition to mere biological imperatives.     

God, Freedom, and Evil: Perspectives from Religion and Science

This paper develops analogies concerning the evolution of dissipative structures in nonequilibrium thermodynamics to interpret irrational human behavior in which one finds a lack of correspondence between the invested means and the consequences observed. In an attempt to positively explain the process of cooperation between the free human person and interacting God, I use philosophical categories of Whitehead's process philosophy in an aesthetic model that opposes composition and performance in a musical symphony. Certainly, the essence of human freedom can be expressed in neither thermodynamical nor aesthetic terms. The models proposed can, however, facilitate our understanding of the mutual relations between God's action in the world and the drama of human free choice of moral evil.     

Religion and Sexuality: The Perversion of a Natural Marriage

From the beginning of human history religion and sexuality have shared certain characteristics. But what existed in early history as a natural linguistic and liturgical marriage between two activities with certain shared emotional, psychological, and even physical goals, ended in most of the great religions centuries ago in divorces fueled by patriarchal fear and prejudice. The split between sexuality and religion is especially evident in the repression of women and the criminalization of sexuality characteristic of our Abrahamic religions, factors that have led all too often to tragic and perverted parodies of the old natural marriage.