| Abstrakt: |
This paper furthers an understanding of the process of identity construction and reconstruction among individuals with conflicting religious and sexual identities. Drawing on interviews with individuals previously involved in the ex-gay movement who attempted to change their sexual identity, I analyze the strategies individuals use to reconstruct their sexual and religious identities. Five stages of identity processes are discovered and exemplified: constructing the religious convert, compromise between conflicting identities, constructing the ex-gay identity, rejection of ex-gay and religious identity, and integration of a religious and homosexual identity. Individuals pass through these stages at various routes throughout their life towards developing an integrated identity involving a successfully incorporated homosexual and religious identity. This analysis suggests that individuals employ many strategies to resolve dissonance between conflicting identities, and that identities change over time and context. This paper concludes by discussing the fluidity of identity construction and the role that identity based movement's play in the construction of individual and collective identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
