Is minority stress the cause of poor mental health in sexual minorities?

Sexual minorities suffer from worse than average mental health. The most widespread explanation of this phenomenon is minority stress theory, which attributes poor mental health to stigmatization and discrimination by the rest of society. In this paper I argue that minority stress theory is not a sufficient explanation of poor mental health in sexual minorities. My arguments are based on four observations: 1) other social groups which experience or historically experienced discrimination do not suffer from poor mental health; 2) sexual minorities suffer from worse than average mental health even when they experience a low level of discrimination; 3) the quasi-experimental studies best suited to support this theory suffer from serious methodological errors; 4) a meta-analysis of genetic-biometric studies shows that most (although not all) of the disadvantage of sexual minority members disappear once familial factors are controlled for. Alternative theories are explored to explain the etiology of mental health problems in sexual minorities.