Conservative Christian Non-Affirming Ideologies About LGBTQIA+ Issues: Cultural Competence for Practice with Families of LGBTQIA+ Youth

This article addresses cultural competence issues for mental health practitioners working with conservative Christian families of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual, or other minoritized sexual and gender (LGBTQIA+) youth. We compare and contrast non-affirming ideologies about LGBTQIA+ issues across the four statistically largest conservative Christian movements in the United States: the Black Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelicals, and the Latter-Day Saints. We explore the premise that non-affirming ideologies surrounding LGBTQIA+ issues are integral to these movements’ broader efforts to address specific conditions of oppression and privilege faced by their adherents. We argue that this perspective may support anti-oppressive practice by helping practitioners understand why conservative Christian families might remain committed to beliefs that secular mental health fields associate with harm toward LGBTQIA+ children. We propose that this understanding may help practitioners address these beliefs in a nuanced way while applying techniques we describe toward the end.