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Sexual and gender minorities (SGM) often come out to enhance their overall well-being. Unfortunately, religious SGMs who come out tend to face additional stressors from family, peers, and coreligionists following their disclosure, which may negatively impact their well-being. In the present study, we explored the relationships between outness, vigilant approaches to coming out (e.g. being selective, preparing the conversations beforehand), positive responses to coming out (e.g. demonstrating acceptance, supporting), and well-being among a sample of 429 religious SGMs. We found continued evidence that coming out to others and being positively responded to relate to higher levels of well-being, with positive responses partially mediating the relationship between outness and well-being. We also found vigilant approaches to coming out are not directly related to well-being, although they moderate the relationship between outness and well-being such that religious SGMs who are not yet out to many people have higher levels of well-being when they employ vigilant approaches. Finally, we found that being out to different groups of people (parents, siblings, peers, coreligionists, and religious leaders) was similarly related to well-being.
Skidmore et al. (Sat,) studied this question.