ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a perspective to support social workers in helping clients, families, institutions and policymakers to manage differences associated with being a sexual or gender minority. For many people, both queer and non-queer, the very notion that the authors might talk about religion and spirituality at the same time they consider sexual and gender minorities is epistemologically dissonant. The taxonomy of sexual identity is complex, and there is little agreement even among people who write and talk frequently about sexual and gender identities. Much of social work theory and education has used the heuristic of the cultural 'other' about sexual and gender minorities in order to learn about them as separate phenomena or cultural variants. Meaning-making is not simply an activity that asks relatively simple questions about whether a queer person is acceptable to their god. Searching for meaning by sexual and gender minority persons not infrequently begins in the context of a formal religious organisation.
