Sexual Complexity: A Comparison between Men and Women in a Sexual Minority Sample of Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
“Sexual Complexity: A Comparison Between Men and Women in a Sexual Minority Sample of Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” explores data collected from same sex-attracted Mormons through a survey conducted in 2011. The article provides insights that may be useful for understanding same-sex attraction among Mormons and ex-Mormons, as well as how these data seem variable based on gender identity, concluding with the hope that these data may prove useful for therapy for individuals coping with the trauma of being a same sex-attracted person with a conservative religious background.
A primary problem with this paper is that it is difficult to discern its overall argument, as much of the content seems devoted primarily to summary: It would be helpful to articulate the thesis more clearly and thoroughly in the abstract and/or introduction. That said, one of its base premises, that sexual attraction can be reduced to a difference in “biological mechanism” between “men” and women,” presents inherent limitations from most gender and sexuality studies perspectives. While it is important of course to emphasize the fact that most respondents to the survey in question identify biology as a main component of their sexualities, a gender and sexuality studies article that engages this question must necessarily problematize this issue. Questions as to how “biology” has been used in pseudo-scientific attempts to “prove” racial and gendered superiority, and hormone therapy has been suggested to “correct” homosexuality, mistakenly in these instances thought to be a result of some kind of hormonal imbalance, must be considered, and indeed might be a fruitful direction to take.
In addition, the paper portrays a narrow understanding of gender, which appears to be perceived as binary, discussing only “men” and “women,” and betraying an assumption that having a penis equates to being a man and having a vagina equates to being a woman. While transgender and nonbinary subjects are outside of the scope and perhaps indeed irrelevant to the participants in the survey, terms such as “cisgender” are useful indicators that the author understands the limitations of the definitions and data in use. In a similar vein, precision of language is an issue as the paper occasionally uses terms such as “LGBTQ” but engages pretty narrowly with LGB. A few other “non-heterosexual”/”plurisexual” identities are mentioned but not engaged with any specificity, and “T” (transgender+) is certainly not engaged at all and so should be omitted for clarity’s sake. Further explanation is required as to why the paper uses language that centers and normalizes heterosexuality and chooses to describe same-sex attraction as “difference” in its survey material and summation (pp. 5; 17). Another problem is that the paper does not articulate sufficiently the theory and methods engaged, which would be a helpful revision in future iterations of this manuscript, in terms of grounding more clearly the intended goals and scope of the survey as well as the article itself.
Although the paper is about same sex-attracted Mormons, I do not see where the paper engages gender and sexuality studies, religious studies, queer and transgender studies, and/or Mormon studies: Further engagement with scholarship, theories, and methods directly related to these fields would be extremely beneficial. There are also some issues with the study itself, which used the Kinsey Scale, a potentially limited and outdated concept, as its litmus test for the survey data gathered. Further explanation and defense of this decision would be helpful. Finally, same-sex attraction in Mormonism is well-covered ground, therefore making it difficult to see how this manuscript in its current state offers meaningful or innovative contributions to current scholarship and discourse on this topic.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a well-written, high-quality study that examines the psychosocial health outcomes, sexual orientation change efforts, and relationship statuses of a sample of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. The authors show that LGBTQ Latter-day Saints who no longer attend church and who are in same-sex relationships report better psychosocial health outcomes. Those LGBTQ Latter-day Saints who had pursued sexual orientation change efforts typically reported that those efforts were not successful. For the most part, only bisexual women and men found success in mixed-orientation marriages.
I believe that this study makes several helpful contributions to scholarly literature. My only suggestion is that the authors cross-check their in-text citations and bibliographic references. A few studies that were referenced in the bibliography were not actually cited in the paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Good day,
Excellent article.
One mistake to correct: We have reported elsewhere ((Bradshaw, et al., 2020)
Page 15. One parenthesis, not two.
The conclusion : interesting but more women than men declaring their bisexual orientation, might also be due to machism and the fact that men have a higher tendancy to hide that part of their intime psychology, because of education, almighty masculinity, etc. It could not only be a consequence of a "biological mechanism" that you give no scientific evidence in your article.
Yours.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3:
- We have now included statements to deal with the possibility of men failing to declare their bisexuality.
This additional support (with references) has been added to the Discussion, page 16.
There are reports that “men experience considerable pressure to hide or downplay their same-sex attraction,” or are in denial of their bisexuality (Morgenroth et al., 2021; page 1). However, direct assessment of brain function employing fMRI (Safron et al., 2018), confirms separate neural patterns of heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual orientation. This supports the alternative view - that the gender difference in the distribution of bisexuality is probably due to inherent biological underpinnings, not socialization.
Morgenroth, T., Kirby, T. A., Cuthbert, M. J. Evje, J. &Anderson, A.E. (2021). Bisexual erasure: Perceived attraction patterns of bisexual women and men. European Journal of Social Psychology.1–11. .https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1002/ejsp.2773
Safron, A., Klima. V.., Sylva, D. l, Rosenthal, A. M., Li, M., Walter, M. and Bailey. J. M.
(2018). Neural Correlates of Sexual Orientation in Heterosexual, Bisexual, and Homosexual Women. Sci Rep 8, 673. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1038/s41598-017-18372-0
A sentence in the Discussion now reads: In our sample, women report a significantly higher incidence of bisexuality than men, probably due to the intersection of distinctive biological mechanisms and unique socialization experiences
- The double parenthesis has been corrected for the Braadshaw et al reference on page 16.
Reviewer 4 Report
I think the article is adequate but needs some minor revisions.
Establish the reliability and validity of the sample used in the study.
In the discussions specify what contribution and innovation it has to the field of knowledge.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 4:
- Reviewer 4 asked us to address the reliability and validity of the sample. We are not sure how to respond to this question because it is our understanding that reliability and validity are not characteristics of samples. They are characteristics of measures. Perhaps the reviewer is asking us to address generalizability and representativeness of our sample. Thus, we address here both the reliability and validity of our measures, and the generalizability and representativeness of our sample. While we cannot state that our sample is fully representative of the population of LGBTQ+ individuals from an CJCLDS background, we feel we have provided a great deal of information about wide variety of recruitment pools, the breadth of current and past engagement with the CJCLDS, and the wide variety of current identification with regard to both religious and sexual identity. Therefore, we believe our data set broadly captures the experiences of this population. And while we do not claim that our results generalize beyond the population of LGBTQ+ individuals from a CJCLDS background, we do believe that our findings will inform research in other conservative faith communities. We have made these points in the manuscript.
- The following statement of the significance of the study has been added after paragraph 2 of the Discussion, page 16.
We submit that our findings make an important contribution by demonstrating how inherent gender differences in the distribution of sexual orientation are manifested in religious belief and practice. The greater incidence of bisexuality in women permits a greater accommodation to the conventions of their religious lives – in disclosure, entering heterosexual marriage, and continued affiliation. These insights are not only valuable to the individuals involved, but should be very useful to their church leaders and those offering professional counseling.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am certainly impressed with the attention and care the authors gave with this updated version, which in many ways does concretely address many of the concerns I raised previously. These additional and revised contextualizations do substantially improve the quality of their submission. Authors understandably defended their reasons as to why they do not devote more content to engaging with the broader fields I mentioned (e.g. queer and transgender studies, etc.). However, much work would still need to be done with supporting how and why their study and analysis are relevant to the current state of the field(s). This study and analysis are no doubt interesting and relevant perhaps in fields such as Mormon Studies specifically and/or fields that overlook religious studies. However, I cannot overstate that the content and conclusions - and still as presented in this revised draft - are well-covered ground in the broad field of religion, gender, and sexuality. Engagement with this scholarship has increased in this draft, but is still insufficient.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1:
Reviewer 1 asked that we continue to expand our engagement in the literatures related to religion, gender, and sexuality. We agree that there are likely dozens, if not hundreds of additional authors (both theorists and researchers) that we could bring in to our review of the literature. As we read through our manuscript again, we worked throughout to make sure that we engaged a broad and comprehensive review of research that supports our questions about the gendered experiences of our sample in their conservative religious context. Because our manuscript is quite long already, we were sparse in our edits and additions throughout; we attempted a review of the literature without unduly lengthening the overall manuscript. We do argue that our findings, given our unique sample and the innovative measurement of religious and sexual identity developmental experiences, do in fact contribute something new and meaningful to scholarship on the intersection of religious and sexual identity development.
This additional support (with references) has been added to the Introduction, first paragraph, page 4.
In confirmation of this conclusion, the data from a meta-analysis of 8 published studies “provided compelling evidence that bisexual-identified men show bisexual genital and subjective arousal patterns (Jabbour et al., 2020; page 1). This same study also established the validity of the Kinsey Scale as a reliable measure with which to assess sexual orientation (Bailey and Jabbour, 2020).
Jabbour, J., Holmes, L., Sylva, D., Hsu, K. J., Semon, T. L., Rosenthal, A. M., Safron, A., Slettevold, E., T Watts-Overall, T. M., Savin-Williams, R. C., Sylla, J., Rieger, G., and Bailey, J. M. (2020). Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 117(31), 18369–18377. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2003631117
Bailey, J.M., and Jabbour, J. (2020). Reply to Zietsch and Sidari: Male sexual arousal patterns (and sexual orientation) are partly unidimensional. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 117(44), 27081. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2018061117
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
N/A
