Disclosing one’s sexual minority identity or “coming out of the closet” is a key milestone in sexual minority identity development. While scholars have explored how race, gender, class, and other social classifications shape coming out patterns among lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) individuals, we know far less about the effect of religious contexts. To address this shortcoming, we extend existing theoretical insights to better understand how faith and religiosity shape coming out patterns among sexual minorities both independently and collectively. Specifically, we examine how religious affiliation and religious attendance (a measure of religiosity) affect when LGB individuals privately realize and publicly disclose their sexual minority identity. Using data from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Survey of LGBT Adults, we conduct a series of ordinary least squares regressions on a representative sample of LGB adults (n = 1,136). We find religious contexts—both religious affiliation and attendance—have no independent effect on when a person realizes or publicly discloses their sexual minority identity for the first time. However, evangelical Protestants that frequently attend religious services publicly disclose their sexual minority identity at older ages. These results highlight the social cost of publicly disclosing an LGB identity, especially within conservative religious spaces.

公开少数族裔身份或“走出壁橱”是少数族裔身份发展的关键里程碑。虽然学者们探索了种族，性别，阶级和其他社会分类如何塑造女同性恋，男同性恋或双性恋（LGB）个体中的外出模式，但我们对宗教情境的影响知之甚少。为了解决这个缺点，我们扩展了现有的理论见解，以更好地理解信仰和宗教信仰如何独立或集体地影响性少数群体中出现的模式。具体来说，我们研究了LGB个人私下意识到并公开披露其性少数群体身份时，宗教信仰和出勤率（一种衡量宗教信仰的方式）的影响。使用皮尤研究中心2013年LGBT成人调查的数据，我们对LGB成人（n = 1,136）的代表性样本进行了一系列普通最小二乘回归。我们发现，宗教背景（包括宗教信仰和出勤）对一个人首次意识到或公开披露其性少数群体身份没有独立的影响。但是，经常参加宗教活动的福音派新教徒在年龄较大时会公开其性少数群体的身份。这些结果凸显了公开​​披露LGB身份的社会成本，尤其是在保守的宗教空间内。