This research project has met the criteria of Freedom 2 b[e] and been approved by the board to be posted on this website.
Hello,
My name is Joel Anderson, I am doing some research for a psychology honours thesis on the nature of the relationship between religiosity and positive and negative attitudes towards homosexuality. And I am posting this on the Freedom2b[e] forum because I’m looking to get as wide a spread of participants as I can from Christian backgrounds.
I understand this is a sensitive topic, and there will be people who don’t want to partkae, but I understand that there are many out there who would like to get involved. .
http://blogs.acu.edu.au/leahkaufmann/research-experiments/
I would like to start by pointing out that this is far from an attack on religion or faith. Basically, I’ve found there seems to be a lot of confusion from everyone involved about the relationship between religion and prejudice, many assumptions are made, and this study aims to clarify this. I’m certainly not trying to claim or imply that religion causes or leads to prejudice. This is an exploratory study to see if the relationship between religion on sexual prejudice exists, and if it does, what it looks like.
Growing up as the son of a minister, and then in adolescence realizing I was not heterosexual, I went through the very awkward soul-searching process that i’m many others in many situations have been through on their journey of self-discovery regarding their sexuality and their faith: If God loves everyone, and created us in his image, then why does the church hate me/why would he make me like this etc….
I am very comfortable now with my relationship between my faith and my sexuality, and my relationship with God, but realize that this is not the same for everyone. In particular, it find it disturbing that within the gay community there is such a large opinion of the fact that GBLTIQ and religion do not and cannot go together. I think there is so much need for study to try and shed light on where the homophobia is coming from, and to advocate for the right to be both gay and Christian. And thats where I come back to this e-mail which is trying to get participants to be involved in collecting some data.
A little information about the study: It is not offensive or obtrusive at all. It has approval from both the Australian Catholic University, and the Human Research Ethics Committee, both of which went to great lengths to make sure this sensitive topic was handled properly.
My research title is:
EXPLORING ATTITUDES TOWARD HOMOSEXUALITY: THE ROLE OF ATTITUDE-RELEVANT FACTORS AND CONTEXT EFFECTS
And the official blurb is:
The study explores implicit and explicit attitudes toward homosexuality. The role of religiosity and of religious cues will be used to assess to the currently inconsistent findings on the relationship between religion and prejudice. As a result, the findings of the study will permit discussion of the causal effect of religion and religious cues on the positive and negative evaluation of homosexuals.
Participation involves approx 40 mins of time, and can be done online from the following link:
http://blogs.acu.edu.au/leahkaufmann/research-experiments/
Please message me if you have any further questions!
Joel
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