Supporting Gay Men Leaving Religion:
Reclaiming Your Identity with Secular Alternatives
As a gay men’s specialist psychotherapist, Certified Sex Therapist, and life/career/relationship coach for over 30 years, one of the themes I hear from my clients is about how they have been somehow mistreated by their religious institutions in their past, either in their upbringing as children, or as young adults, especially around the time of coming out.
This is even a theme or topic issue in articles and discussions in the broader mental health arena, including straight people, of all genders, about being survivors of Religious Abuse, and while it certainly happens to straight people, LGBT people of all kinds get the brunt of it, and among these, still probably gay men, although trans people are also the very specific “targets” lately of Right-wing bigotry, politically from Republicans in America or the Conservative parties in other countries, such as the UK, in a combination of oppression that is both political and religious.
For many gay men, religion has been a double-edged sword: a source of community, comfort, and guidance, but also a place of rejection, judgment, and trauma. The teachings and traditions that are supposed to offer love and salvation can become, for some, weapons of shame, guilt, and emotional abuse.
If you’re a gay man struggling with religious trauma or in the process of leaving your religion due to religious abuse, you’re not alone. This journey can be incredibly challenging, but it can also be an opportunity to reclaim your identity and find new sources of meaning, connection, and joy.
The Psychological Toll of Religious Abuse
Religious abuse can take many forms: verbal condemnation, exclusion from religious communities, pressure to conform to heterosexual norms, or even harmful “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy,” or, lately, more “clever” names to disguise these practices as they become illegal in more states and countries. These experiences can leave deep psychological scars, including feelings of worthlessness, anxiety, depression, isolation, and even suicidal ideation. The core of the abuse lies in the belief that your authentic self is incompatible with your faith—a false and damaging message that can create a sense of inner conflict and self-rejection.
The Challenge of Leaving Religion
For many gay men, leaving their religion is not just about rejecting harmful beliefs—it’s about leaving behind a whole way of life. Religious communities often provide a sense of belonging, a moral framework, and a purpose that can be hard to replace. The fear of the unknown, of losing these rewards, can make it difficult to walk away, even when staying feels unbearable. This is why it’s crucial to find secular alternatives that can fulfill these needs in ways that affirm your identity as a gay man, rather than deny it – or, in the case of the current Catholic Church Pope, these non-sensical half-validations like “love the gay man, but he can’t ever act on it.” That’s a mixed message of affirmation followed by a serious devaluation, saying that only “legitimate” gay men are those who are celibate.
Historically, gay men have been the victims of Religious Abuse and Persecution the world over, more so than the other “letter groups” in LGBT, and part of this is because of the “need to punish” men for gender-non-conforming behavior, the tyranny of the majority, and the misogynistic notion that a man who is not gender-conforming, meaning in any way approximating the “lowly woman,” is “debasing” himself, becoming a Traitor to the Gender, forfeiting or squandering his Male Privilege, and is therefore worthy of the worst imaginable “punishments” so that the Patriarchy and Toxic Masculinity can be “preserved,” in their eyes.
I’ve written before how gender non-conformity can trigger not just discomfort, but a murderous rage, which is an interesting, although vile, phenomenon, that manifests in many cultures and nations, and throughout history. We always have to ask why gender non-conforming behavior or presentation provokes such rage, in some, because it can, and has, led people to act in some of the most violent interpersonal ways possible, such as the “gay panic defense” or even the mutilation of gay men or trans women. And, yet, topics like “Don’t Say Gay,” such as the Florida law, have the support of literally tens of millions of Americans, and more across the globe. And while there can be a secular aspect of homophobia just as “different,” homophobia and transphobia remain, very specifically, religiously-based, the world over.
In America, Religious Abuse is usually from the most aggressive anti-gay factions such as American Evangelical Protestant Christianity, who have been responsible for sending “ambassadors” of these ideas abroad to cultivate government support for the so-called “Kill The Gays” bills in Uganda and other countries. But we also see vehement anti-gay rhetoric and actual behavioral oppression from Catholicism, or Islam (many Muslim governments, such as Iran, have imprisoned and executed gay men, including teenagers), Orthodox Judaism, the “Mormon” church (Latter-Day Saints), Jehovah’s Witnesses, or even minority religions like Wicca have heterosexist ideas like “male Sun god” and “female moon goddess” as the only legitimate binary. Other anti-gay rhetoric has come from B’hai, or Sikhs, and even some conservative facets of Buddhism, with controversial anti-gay comments coming from seemingly progressive world figures like the Dalai Lama, or, as I said, the most “progressive” Catholic Pope yet.
It’s a cumulative, pervasive effect, in many different American states, countries, Western, Eastern, and certainly throughout history.
Even the more religious aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have alienated many of the gay men I work with who are trying to recover from substance abuse problems. I work with these guys, and help them to take in the best aspects of “the Program” and “leave the rest,” as they say, but it’s a stress on gay men who have been abused by religious institutions to get a lot of “God talk” even in gay AA rooms, and they are left to deal with reconciling the benefits that the Program offers with the religious content (such as reciting “The Lord’s Prayer” at meetings) that they can find intrusive and offensive, which they associate with their historical oppression.
Even beyond a client’s history of hearing anti-gay rhetoric, what I call the “Sick/Bad/Wrong” syndrome, some, not all, guys have experienced sexual abuse in religious settings. This can be when they were little boys from priests, which is of course a widespread, dramatic issue in the Catholic Church worldwide, for which they have paid millions and millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements. Others have experienced the tortuous experience of “pray away the gay,” or “reparative therapy,” or “conversion therapy,” or, more recently, “dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction,” and the legal battles go on in the fight about protecting people, especially minors, from this charlatanism, versus what the other side calls “freedom of religion” or “freedom of choice” to undergo that if they choose, despite it not being a legitimate mental health psychotherapy intervention model, and it’s been condemned by every major mental health professional association, among pediatricians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and psychiatrists.
Other religious oppression has come not from the religious institution itself, but how that is heard, interpreted, and integrated into parental behavior and brought into the home as part of daily life. Bad parents act as the “agents” of the religious institution, creating an atmosphere of religious oppression, but in your average neighborhood home, and this includes possible mis-interpretation, or making up “rules” for behavior that maybe (or maybe not) the religious institution would recommend. Some parents “improvise” and control their children in ways that they “make up” in what they consider to be an interpretation of religious institution teachings or gender role rules and expectations. I’ve heard lots of stories from guys who have been my clients about how religious-based “rules” were enforced in their house, including actions that are emotionally and physically abusive. Must of these oppressive parenting “rules” often include isolation away from culture, such as home schooling, not allowing watching TV, not allowing “secular radio,” and not allowing Internet access, such as numerous “Christian Internet Filters” for desktops and smartphones that not only block “objectionable” content but also “report” on the browsing history, and my research shows there are many of these that are commercially available and marketed to conservative so-called “Christian” parents.
In my practice, I work with a lot of gay men with a history of trauma to help them overcome these experiences and heal from their traumatic experiences in a more and more profound level. Not all of their traumatic experiences are religious-based, some are survivors of sexual assault, or accidents, or illness, or interpersonal violent crime, or workplace bullying, or domestic abuse, but many have a traumatic memory association with religious material and experiences.
In trauma, we tend to avoid stimuli that reminds us of any aspect of the traumatic experience, especially with our five senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Or, it could be “proximity,” such as being in a church. Gay men can have great discomfort even if they don’t attend church regularly if they visit a church for a wedding or a funeral, for example. In psychology, we tend to “move away” from pain, or the things we associate with pain, and “move toward” the things we associate with pleasure, or fun, or well-being, in what Sigmund Freud called “The Pleasure Principle,” which the animal kingdom responds to. You give a dog a treat when she does a trick you’re training her to do; that’s a positive reinforcement of the behavior that brings pleasure, which B.F. Skinner wrote about as Operant Conditioning.
I’ve written before about how gay men can “reclaim their spirituality” from these bad experiences with religious institutions. It is our right, just like anyone else, to have and practice the kind of spiritual expression that we want for ourselves, whether that is in a more formal religion, or if it’s our own version of spirituality, which is often what AA encourages (despite their undermining of this message by reciting a specifically Christian Lord’s Prayer as a ritual). They encourage a “god of our understanding,” which can be very empowering. For the anti-gay folks, being gay is a “sin” worthy of stripping away legal rights, and worthy of oppression, from discrimination to legal hate crimes, or, to some, systematic extermination by the government of all LGBT people, especially gay men, and, more lately, trans people, as we’ve seen that as a political tool of late, to scapegoat trans people and use them as a political pawn because, relatively speaking, they can get away with that with very little societal pushback. They also oppress women with relatively little pushback, which is curious, because women of all kinds are a big group, but remain a group in society vulnerable to oppression, again, the world over.
So, it’s understandable that, in that “avoiding pain” action, which can even be unconscious, gay men would avoid all things religious.
But when we avoid those triggers to preserve our dignity, mental health, and well-being, we are also losing any positive associations we had by history with religion. Maybe you liked singing the hymns in church, or singing in the choir, for music appreciation; maybe the family would go out to eat at your favorite restaurant after church each Sunday. Maybe we saw a guy we had a crush on in the congregation. Maybe we associate religious services or rituals with “family time” with grandparents or cousins or others we had fun with. Maybe some of the religious messaging that was actually affirmative and positive about life was inspirational or comforting. That association with religion can have some positive aspects to it, too, that can make us feel conflicted, that by avoiding, we are “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” What do we do then?
My point here is that gay men need support for the decision to distance themselves from the religious institutions and practices of their past, but they also need support for how to replace the “good parts” of that without a sense of loss, or certainly betrayal, by these institutions.
Which brings us to what I like to call a “Secular Solace.” Religious people often use their religion for many functions, including for emotional solace during challenging times, “getting out of themselves” and “giving it (whatever the situation is) up to a Higher Power,” which can make them, ironically, feel empowered that they are invoking help “from above.”
Religions also help to structure and “make sense” of the world, and all the flora and fauna and creatures/operations in it, especially for those who believe in Creationism and their literal understanding of how the entire Universe came to be, which they consider (OK, erroneously) to be history and science, but also “faith.” Religious cultures historically have helped human civilizations “make sense” of the Natural world around them, to have explanations for why things are what they are, just like in Greek mythology. A more modern term for Creationism is “Intelligent Design”, meaning that Someone, presumably a “God,”made things in Nature the way they are, “by design.”
Secular Solace
So, in what I call “Secular Solace,” gay men who do not want to identify with any religious institution can in essence “replace” those comforts with other ways of thinking.
For example, many religious people have a sense of the “circle of life” and developmental changes throughout the lifespan, fulfilling what they consider to be “God’s purpose” for their life, from childhood, to teen years, to early adulthood, middle age, and seniorhood. Developmental psychology also addresses the developmental stages that people go through during the life span, such as Dr. Erik Erickson or Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, or Dr. Margaret Mahler, and others. In my practice, I often use the developmental phases to help my clients understand that there are certain challenges (and rewards) that come with how old you are, such what most of us know as the “Midlife Changes” in your late 30s or early-mid 40s.
Instead of necessarily relying on “God” for comfort through the lifespan and our sense of purpose, we can take a more secular view that is more about our social, interpersonal, and appreciation in Nature for how we progress through Life. We can appreciate that every age in our Human Nature brings challenges and rewards, and that’s predictable and right on time. We don’t try to be as fast and strong as we were in youth at middle age, but maybe as seniors, we have more peace and “life perspective” than we did when we were younger. Erickson said that for every age or phase of life, there is always a challenge, and a reward, that is associated with that phase of life. And we have to cope with that: there is no way to have “all” the advantages but “none” of the disadvantages of each stage.
We can also take a secular approach to relationships. Religious people can talk about their “relationship” with God or Jesus or other figures or deities in their tradition, but we can take a secular view of this where maybe we don’t “hear the voice of God” in our “hearts” as much as we hear our own trusted, instincts of wisdom in our gut feelings and intuition. Much of our personal values and boundaries come from what “feels right” for us, in our value system, which might differ from person to person. Issues such as whether you have a monogamous or Consensual Non-Monogamous relationship, for example, can be informed by our own inner value system of what we’re comfortable with. What kind of work we do. How we treat others. How we vote, especially, would be an expression of our personal value system.
For religious people, marriage means not only their relationship to their spouse, but a relationship that has been “joined together” by God, especially in Catholicism, which historically has looked down on divorce. A secular support for relationships can be around things like the Brotherhood of Man, or the idea of the spiritual or “soul-mate”, or even just a very secular idea of love in Nature that doesn’t necessarily have a spiritual component to it, unless we want it to. Weddings, for example, can have a religious aspect to them, or be a secular ritual that has a civic, legal aspect to it. (This was part of the fight for marriage equality, or same-sex marriage, was the argument that two straight atheists could get married; marriage was not limited to being a religious “ritual,” but a civic and legal one, and this has been true even in history, as it was about property and family influence.)
A secular appreciation of Nature can be not necessarily saying that “God created” Man, and other animals, and flora and fauna, but these are aspects of Nature. For some, including the more “earthly” religions like Wicca, almost “worship Nature” as the spiritual force of the universe. One phrase I have used that implies that we can appreciate Nature and how it all works is “we don’t need a God; we have a flower.” Meaning, that we don’t necessarily need “more” than what Nature gives us, because what Nature gives us is already so abundant. Some would interpret “God” as “Nature,” or just “Love.”
A secular appreciation of sex can certainly be not a “mandate to procreate” like some straight religious people see it as, but an extension of an appreciation of Nature by celebrating the natural functions of our bodies. The natural functions of eating, drinking, temperature control, peeing, pooping, sleeping, and healing can be aspects of Nature and not necessarily religious, although religion has been applied to food such as the Holy Eucharist or Communion ritual, representing the crucifixion and “body and blood” of Jesus Christ, or the ritual eating of seasonal fruits or vegetables, or even “making a toast” with champagne can have a magical or spiritual quality by a group of people affirming a statement and “sealing” it with a sip of drink like an incantation. Certainly, blood has taken on a religious aspect to it in its symbolism as the “fuel of life.” Even gay men’s tendency to celebrate the body by way of exercise or physique development and esthetic appreciation via the gym can be a celebration of Nature (and probably our genetics, as well!).
Some gay men who leave their religion can feel a loss of a sense of culture. Religions, certainly, form the underpinnings of culture, when you think of Christmas and Easter in Christianity, or Ramadan in Islam, or Yom Kippur in Judaism, and so on. But we can still access the cultural value of observing ritual, customs, and traditions that have their origins in religion but in a secular way. I’ve written before about a “Secular Appreciation of Easter” and a “Secular Appreciation of Christmas,” in which I discussed ways to appreciate the themes of “death and rebirth” every winter and spring, or a sense of “renewal” in every new year, such as the holiday season where the “birth of Son” (“S-O-N”) as in Jesus Christ in Christianity was laid upon the “birth of the Sun” (“S-U-N”) in Wicca as the start of longer daylight hours after the Winter Equinox. I know some Jewish guys who have a Christmas tree for the secular joy and cultural appreciation of it, and I know (perhaps more rarely) some non-Jewish guys who might appreciate and observe Yom Kippur as the “Day of Atonement” and reflection on our lives’ actions and values.
While some might get angry that “that’s cultural appropriation!” in rage, we see how that is rage against anything that is not “purist” in their religion, which can provoke a “need” to “punish,” but where is the line? Even every Christian family who celebrates Christmas might observe it in different ways (opening presents on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or even the Feast of the Epiphany in early January), or Jewish families might vary how they observe the Passover Seder dinner.
Support for Leaving Religion and Replacing the Rewards of Religion with Secular Alternatives
Leaving religion doesn’t mean abandoning the things that gave your life meaning. It means finding new ways to meet those same needs, without the baggage of shame and rejection. Here are some key areas to focus on:
- Community: Religious communities often provide a sense of belonging and connection. Replacing this with a secular community can be vital. Consider joining LGBTQ+ groups, volunteering, or connecting with like-minded individuals through social activities that celebrate your identity.
- Purpose: Religion often gives people a sense of purpose or calling. Reclaim your purpose by focusing on your passions and values. This might mean dedicating time to activism, pursuing creative endeavors, or building relationships that align with your authentic self, or, choosing a vocation that is an expression of your personal values, such as my history as a gay men’s specialist therapist, when years ago I was inspired to help the life, worth, dignity, and well-being of gay men after the harrowing years of the AIDS crisis.
- Spirituality: While organized religion may no longer resonate with you, although it certainly still could, in your own way, spirituality doesn’t have to be tied to dogma. Practices like mindfulness, meditation, and connecting with nature can provide a sense of peace and fulfillment without the constraints of religious doctrine.
- Moral Framework: Many people stay in their religion out of fear of losing a sense of right and wrong. The truth is, morality is not exclusive to religion. As a gay man, you can cultivate a moral framework based on empathy, compassion, and justice that honors both your values and your identity. You own the adult prerogative to take responsibility for navigating life according to your values, to do what feels right to you, and to set limits against doing things that don’t feel right to you. Guys I work with who are recovering from a substance abuse problem, or guys who feel they are having “too much” or the “wrong kind” of sex, or with the “wrong people,” need support for identifying, and then aligning, with their own values that are still affirmative of who they are as gay (or perhaps bisexual or pansexual) men.
Seeking Professional Support
Leaving a religion after experiencing religious abuse can be a lonely and confusing process. Many gay men feel torn between their desire to live authentically and the lingering guilt and fear instilled by years of religious indoctrination. This is where professional support can make all the difference.
As a psychotherapist specializing in gay men’s issues, I understand the unique challenges of navigating religious trauma and the process of leaving a faith that has caused you harm. I can help you work through these complex emotions, explore your options for building a fulfilling life outside of religion, and develop practical strategies for replacing the rewards of your faith with secular alternatives, or, help you to adapt your original faith to be affirmative in who you are now, and there are many spiritual resources for this, for gay men who want to do this. Sometimes, it’s not an either/or situation, and I think some guys forget that.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or unsure of how to move forward, I invite you to reach out. Together, we can create a path to healing and empowerment that honors who you truly are—without the weight of religious abuse holding you back.
Take the Next Step
If any of this resonates with you, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to go through this journey on your own. I offer specialized psychotherapy to residents of California, and life coaching services, nationwide and worldwide, to help gay men navigate the challenges of religious trauma and life transitions. If you’re ready to take the next step in reclaiming your identity and building a fulfilling, secular or spiritual life, I encourage you to contact me for a consultation, either email at Ken@GayTherapyLA.com, or Ken@GayCoachingLA.com, or call or WhatsApp me at 310-339-5778. Let’s work together to help you find peace, purpose, and joy—on your terms.
See also other Blog articles on this website, or check out my Podcast, “Gay Therapy LA with Ken Howard, LCSW, CST” heard in over 148 countries around the world, with over 150 episodes to date. I also offer online courses, including one on gay men improving sexual self-confidence, available on the Thinkific course platform. If you have suggestions for future blog articles, podcast episodes, or online course topics, your suggestions are welcome.
(Instagram: gaytherapyla)
