Religiosities and sexual diversity in Social Work

Abstract

In view of the historical-social relationship in which religious values, principles and dogmas are symbiotically related to the binary construction of gender under the nuances of heteronormativity, the following problem was raised: “How do self-declared homosexual students in the Social Work course deal with the religious principles and values related to sexuality transmitted by their religions?” We aim to understand how they relate their religious principles and values, while homosexuals, to university academic training and how they problematize these values and principles in the “scientific” and future professional journey. For this purpose, we carried out nine case studies with self-declared homosexual students, and we see that for all these students, religion influenced their affective and sexual experiences.