“Still Looking for My Jonathan”: Gay Black Men's Management of Religious and Sexual Identity Conflicts

Abstract

This article looks at homosexual Black men who are heavily involved in fundamentalist African-American churches. These men describe themselves as “out as same-sex loving individuals” even though the messages preached by their church leaders and the doctrines of their churches are, at the very least, heterosexist, but more likely to be stridently anti-homosexuality. Not only do these men attend the churches they are parts of, but they are viewed as leaders in these churches in positions ranging from associate pastor to director of facilities management. The study uses structured interviews to understand how these men manage the conflict between a committed gay identity and a strong religious identity that says the two cannot coexist.

KEYWORDS:

• Homosexual
• African-American
• masculinity
• religion
• sexual identity
• Black church
• Richard Troiden

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Martin Hughes, Steven Tepper, and George Sanders for their helpful comments and suggesctions on this article.

Notes

1. I am careful in noting this. Some of my respondents remarked that they did not like the question because they do not see themselves as religious, but instead prefer to talk about “being in relationship with God” or “spiritual.”