Growing up gay and religious. Conflict, dialogue, and religious identity strategies

Abstract

Homosexuality has become a divisive issue in many religious communities. Partly because of that, individuals growing up in such a community and experiencing same sex attractions need to negotiate the messages about homosexuality with their own experiences. This paper explores the identity strategies of religious communities as the background of individual identity struggles. Following a discussion of Bauman's grammars of identity/alterity, it describes four different discourses employed in conservative protestant and evangelical circles: holiness, subjectivity, obedience, and responsibility and four modes of negotiation: Christian lifestyle, gay lifestyle, commuting (compartmentalisation), and integration. By combining an analysis of discourses on the community level with individual strategies, this narrative research helps to better understand the interactions of (group) culture and individual coping.

Keywords:

• homosexuality
• religion
• identity strategies
• conflict
• narrative

Acknowledgements

Portions of this paper were presented at a VISOR/LSTC pre-AAR conference, Chicago 2008 and at the 117th APA-convention, Toronto 2009.

Notes

Notes

1. Jones and Yarhouse (2007) conclude from a prospective and longitudinal study that a change away from homosexuality is possible. Although their study is highly controversial because it seems to be devoted to furthering the aims of the ex-gay (or according to other scholars anti-gay) movement, it actually suggests that it is not sexual orientation that changes but sexual identity. Moreover, whereas participants showed a move away from homosexual identification, they did not develop a more heterosexual identification.

2. Baumann builds his theory on a reinterpretation of the anthropological work of Edward Saïd, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and Louis Dumont, acknowledging that he is using their ideas creatively rather than representing them precisely. It is beyond the aims of this paper to assess the relation between Baumann's work and his inspirers.

3. Many studies of homosexual behaviour give ample attention to the number of sex partners of homosexuals but fail to give corresponding numbers for heterosexuals, nor to explain a possibly high degree of promiscuity in light of the socio-cultural climate homosexuals live in or to differences between male and female homosexuality and the influence of gender differences. Without this kind of background, such studies contribute to the orientalising grammar.