Independent Practice

Abstract. The current two-part study focused on developing the Religious Experience of Homosexuals Scale (REHS) and investigating the interaction of religious, spiritual, and sexual identity development. The first part of the study addressed proposed items for the REHS. Focus group participants provided support for dividing items into categories of affirming, ambiguous, and disapproving in the REHS. In the second part of the study, we explored how religion, spirituality, and homosexuality affect identity development and psychological health. Results suggest that religious identity often serves to suppress sexual identity development while accepting one’s sexual identity often serves to deter religious identity development. The growing literature addressing the identity development and psychological health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB)1 individuals has largely ignored religious and spiritual issues (Davidson, 2000; Hoffman, 2004; Hoffman, Knight, Boscoe-Huffman, & 1 In this paper, we focus on LGB instead of LGBT issues for two primary reasons. First, we did not have individuals identifying as transgendered in the research focus groups. Second, transgender issues add another dimension to the issues beyond what is focused on. We intend to focus on transgender issues more specifically in future research