4. On Resolving Sexual Identity Conflicts and Life Trajectories

This section explores different ways to resolve sexual identity conflicts. I prefer to think about these resolutions as trajectories, recognizing that there are many trajectories a person can follow. I emphasize trajectory as saying something about direction or pathway rather than endpoint per se. I realize that trajectories are often followed precisely because of an expressed wish to reach an endpoint, but I have found that focusing exclusively on endpoints can at times detract from the importance of the direction itself.

4.1. Trajectory 1: Affirm Gay Identity as Central

One way to resolve sexual identity conflicts—let’s call it Trajectory 1—is to affirm a gay identity as central to who one is as a person. This is historically atypical, but it is common in contemporary culture.

One gay historian identifies four forms of homosexuality across cultures and throughout history.⁵⁹ The first is age-structured homosexuality. This is seen, for example, in age-related initiation ceremonies in some societies in New Guinea. The second form is gender-reversed homosexuality. An example of this might be the North American Indian berdache (sometimes referred to as “two spirit” suggesting both a masculine and feminine spirit reside in the individual). The third form of homosexuality across cultures is role-specialized homosexuality. According to Herdt, an example of this can be found in the Chukchee shaman whose vision quests direct him to engage in same-sex behavior for a time. The fourth and final form of homosexuality can be seen in the modern gay movement. What is unique about this form of homosexuality, according to Herdt, is that it is a movement made possible by “disengaging sexuality from the traditions of family, reproduction, and parenthood.” The modern gay movement became a “social and historical likelihood” based upon this separation and in a cultural context of personal, sexual self-actualization.⁶⁰ This self-actualization is organized around the self-defining attribution “I am gay.”

This first trajectory, then, involves locating oneself as a member of the modern gay movement.⁶¹ It entails private sexual identification as gay and typically a public sexual identity as gay. It embraces a gay identity as a normative outcome for sexual identity development among those who are attracted to the same sex. Same-sex behavior, then, is believed to be a normal and natural expression of identity, of who one is as a person.

4.2. Trajectory 2: Move from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation

Christians have often countered Trajectory 1 with what we can refer to as Trajectory 2, which moves the person from a homosexual orientation (the basis of a gay identity) toward a heterosexual orientation (the basis of a heterosexual identity). From a Christian perspective, what are we to make of attempts to change sexual orientation? It is understandable that a person would consider attempting to change since Christians view heterosexuality as normative. At the same time, the assertion that heterosexuality is normative is no guarantee that sexual orientation can change.

As we parse out these different trajectories, I want to explore how they might respond to a key verse from Scripture that is often cited in these discussions: 1 Corinthians 6:11. After Paul lists a number of sinful behaviors, he declares, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

It is important to avoid two extremes in the pastoral care or response to sexual orientation. The one is arrogant optimism that all persons with a homosexual orientation can equally likely to change.⁶² Those who operate from this perspective are more likely to be found among Trajectory 2 persons and assert that anyone can change if they try hard enough or have enough faith. They view 1 Corinthians 6:11 as saying that a person used to be oriented to the same sex and that now they are oriented to the opposite sex.

The other extreme to avoid is cynical pessimism. This asserts that no one can experience change in sexual orientation and that those who have made that claim have lied. The cynical pessimist might view 1 Corinthians 6:11 as referring to other concerns, even other sexual concerns, but not to the gay relationship people have today. They do not see a reason to attempt change, and some might even go so far as to argue that such attempts go against a gay person’s actual nature as gay, drawing upon recent revisionist understandings of Romans 1.

Another approach to the topic is realistic biblical hope. From this perspective, 1 Corinthians 6:11 describes a change, but we have no assurance that the change in question is a change in attraction or orientation; rather, the change may be a pattern of behavior that characterizes a person. Change may also occur at the level of attraction or orientation, but that is not considered typical or a necessary interpretation of the biblical passages.

Also, emphasizing change of sexual orientation can risk idolizing heterosexuality. What is more important to the Christian is not heterosexuality but a Christ-like life devoted to God (e.g., 2 Timothy 2:21; 1 Thessalonians 5:23).

4.3. Trajectory 3: Move away from Gay Identity

Another option, Trajectory 3, is to provide pastoral care in which the person moves away from a gay identity but does not focus on a movement away from a homosexual orientation to a heterosexual orientation. Trajectory 3 focuses more holistically on sexual identity in contrast to Trajectory 2’s more narrow focus on orientation. It helps a person think about who they are and how they think of themselves and communicate who they are to others rather than limiting the discussion to arousal patterns and measures of sexual attraction.

It is interesting to think about what some Christians have said about their change of orientation experience. In our study of ninety-eight people attempting to change orientation through involvement in a Christian ministry affiliated with Exodus International, we asked the question, “How helpful has the ministry been so far?” Here are a few responses:

• It “made my walk with Christ closer.”
• “It was very helpful to increase my relationship with God, making it closer.”
• It got “my hands on materials that are helpful to read.”
• “I need that intermediate place between church, between the rest of the world to be able to be honest . . . to have somewhere to be real.”
• “They’ve helped me to find myself.”

Note that the areas of help have a lot to do with spiritual themes, such as walking closer with Christ or God and being able to be transparent. When it came to an open-ended question about how helpful their ministry has been so far, people did not offer a discussion of how the ministry was changing their sexual orientation.

Similarly, we asked participants to discuss areas that reflect real change. Here are a few of the responses they shared:

• “I’d say what it’s doing is reminding me of God’s intimate care and reminding me of his care for me—that he’s gentle and he will walk with me. I guess that’s basically saying that it’s okay to struggle.”
• “I haven’t acted out sexually in any way since I’ve been going. . . . It’s gotten under the surface, helped me see the reasons why I did the things I did.”
• “I think that God used it to let me know that I could struggle and still be accepted.”

What is involved in following this trajectory? I encourage people to carefully examine the language that they use to describe themselves and their experiences since I believe language can shape a person’s sense of identity:

Each of us is born into and assimilates preexisting forms of language in a culturally created linguistic system. In the process of socialization, we learn to speak in accepted ways and simultaneously to adopt the shared values and ideology of our language system. Thus, our words express the conventions, the symbols, the metaphors of our particular group. And we cannot speak in a language separate from that of our community.⁶³

The Christian sexual minority often has limited options for understanding his or her attraction to the same sex in light of his or her Christianity. From a narrative understanding, they might readily develop a “dominant story” or principal view of themselves and the world. For many Christian sexual minorities, it is that they are sinful or wrong for their sexuality or sexual impulses. From this theoretical perspective, the person internalizes a dominant discourse from Christianity that shapes their sense of themselves as a sinful person.

Some Christian sexual minorities create a sense of identity around the common meanings or connotations associated with “gay” as an identity label. They are gay Christians, and they take different positions that they view as justifying a different interpretation of key passages in Scripture, overarching themes in Scripture, and so on to argue that same-sex behavior is neutral and must be judged like any heterosexual behavior as to whether it is moral or immoral (such as whether it occurs in a loving relationship, etc.). In one online community called gayChristian.net, they refer to themselves as “Side A” Christians. They do not believe that same-sex attraction is a temptation to sin or something to struggle with or against; rather, they are “those who are in gay relationships or hope to be someday.”⁶⁴

Other Christian sexual minorities do not create a sense of identity around the common meanings or connotations associated with “gay” as an identity label. They are also gay Christians, but they seem to mean something more like being “gay” reflects the fact that they are attracted to the same sex. GayChristian.net refers to them as “Side B” Christians, who “view their same-sex attractions as a temptation, and strive to live celibate lives.” To some, this might mean that these gay Christians are changing the common meaning of the word “gay” in that they reject behavioral expression of their attractions for religious reasons. But to these Christian sexual minorities, they share a common sense of experience with members of the gay community, and the use of the word “gay” (as a self-defining attribution) is an honest account of their sexual attractions and reflects the resonance they feel with the gay community at that level.⁶⁵

Still others reject a gay identity label altogether. This may be the more common response among sexual minorities who do not endorse same-sex relationships and the theological and biblical studies that are cited to support such behavior and/or relationships. These individuals are sometimes referred to as ex-gays or post-gays. Exodus International popularized the word ex-gay, although there was movement away from that designation by some in leadership in the year prior to the closing of the ministry organization. Post-gay has been popular among some Christian sexual minorities, including Peter Ould:

Post-gay isn’t an ontological statement, it’s a vectorial statement. For those uninitiated in the deeper arcane magicks of mathematics, a vector is simply a description of a direction and magnitude. It describes a movement, not a position (which is ontology). Post-gay then is less about being straight or gay and rather about a choice of a journey.⁶⁶

In our own work studying similar individuals, we used the more descriptive (but somewhat clunky) language of “dis-identifying” with a gay identity. What these terms and others seem to convey is a rejection of the label “gay” by either not being gay, not identifying as gay, or moving beyond gay as a personal identity label. In keeping with Ould’s sentiment, it is primarily a discussion of life trajectory or, in his words, a choice of a journey.

In each of these steps away from the common meanings associated with a gay identity label, we want to consider how Christians understand sexual identity labeling in light of a broader understanding of identity labeling, which is tied to locating and centering the self. One way Christians have understood labeling and identity is that they have recognized the human tendency to have a wrongly centered self.⁶⁷ This comes at least in part from passages such as Galatians 2:19–20, where Paul writes to the churches in Galatia about the believers’ life in Christ: “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Mirslav Volf points out that in Galatians 2:19–20 Paul writes about a wrongly centered self and the need to be “re-centered.” The act or process of re-centering involves a shift away from self and toward a more salient identity in Christ.

In the area of sexual identity, a truly Christian understanding begins with recognizing that there can be a “diffusion of the self” in which the person passively allows a gay identity to supersede a Christian identity. (In all areas of life, there is a tendency to passively allow other interests and experiences to supersede a Christian identity, so this should not be thought of as exclusive to the sexual identity discussions.) This passive diffusion of the self is more likely to occur in cultural contexts that support the concept of organismic congruence (see §3 above). Organismic congruence assumes that the preferred outcome resides in awareness and acceptance of what the organism experiences itself to be. Locate this assumptive framework—which is implicitly supported within the broader Western culture and in its mental health and related institutions—within a broader culture of individualism and personal fulfillment (self-actualization), and it comes as no surprise that such congruence will be seen as the normative outcome for identity resolution. This makes “de-centering” more challenging because the cultural context makes passive diffusion of the self that much more likely.

The Christian would consider first “de-centering” the self and then “re-centering” the self. This does not entail rejecting the self; rather, according the Volf, “re-centering establishes the most proper and unassimilated center that allows the self to stand out against person and institution which may threaten to smother it.”⁶⁸ The Christian sexual minority may often end up navigating the process of re-centering the self in the face of the gay community and in the face of their particular church community, particularly if the former suggests that the only authentic identity is gay and if the latter suggests that the only authentic identity is straight.

Although there is no one pathway we know of for this process of de-centering and re-centering the self, let me offer a few observations about what it might entail at a very practical level. The first consideration is to resist the drift toward isolation when struggling with sexual identity concerns. This is a common experience, as many people in the church are either uncomfortable with the subject or may be communicating either rejection or acceptance in ways that do not help the Christian sexual minority walk out a commitment to faithful obedience to God’s word.

The next consideration is to recognize that same-sex attraction is part of the person’s experience but not the central or defining aspect of their identity. This is a move toward de-centering the self. The three-tier distinction between attraction, orientation, and identity made earlier provides the intellectual space for exploring identity and ultimately de-centering the self. Indeed, here’s how one person in a study we conducted wrote about the difference between sexual orientation and identity:

Orientation indicates that there is some sort of natural bend to me towards homosexuality . . . identification is what sort of label are you placing on yourself. . . . I believe that you can have a predisposition towards something. . . .There may have been things in my life that moved me towards homosexuality making that an easier leap than others. That would be more or less an orientation and through that, I’ve had certain things happen in my life
. . . that oriented me towards homosexual attitudes, and beliefs. That orientation then led to identification. It was like well . . . okay I am feeling this way, and believing these things, that must mean I’m homosexual. These two questions together they are not really two separate issues they are tied together. Your orientation can lead to identification.⁶⁹

De-centering the self may involve describing one’s experiences of attraction or one’s orientation (the difference between same-sex attraction and orientation being the amount, degree, and persistence of attraction over time) rather than forming an identity around one’s experiences of attraction or one’s orientation.

To re-center the self is to develop one’s sense of identity around other aspects of who they are as a person, such as being born male or female. These might be other “givens” of existence or what were referred to earlier as the ethnic aspects of identity, or these might be roles, such as mother or father, wife or husband. These aspects may include what might be called civic aspects of identity or commitments, beliefs, and values a person holds that shape their identity, such as important religious or faith commitments, such as cultivating one’s identity “in Christ” as central and most salient. In fact, this might be the hallmark of a re-centered self for the believer; that is, they move away from a passive subscription to a competing identity by recognizing the “diffusion of self” that can or has occurred. Then they re-center the self by experiencing their “in Christ” identity as central and defining.

What happens to a Christian sexual minority’s sexuality in a re-centered self? We are not talking about a loss of sexuality or diminished sexuality. Nor are we talking about a sexuality that is transformed from one orientation to another. That is a separate matter. When this re-centering begins to occur, the person can then think of their sexuality as they would so much of their experience: they begin to think about what it means to be a good steward of their sexuality and its expression in relationships.

Stewardship entails “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.”⁷⁰ It is a common theme found throughout the New Testament that Christians are instructed to be responsible stewards of what they have been given (see Malachi 3:6–12; Matthew 25:14–30; Luke 19:13; 1 Corinthians 6:2). What is entrusted to the care of the Christian sexual minority is what is entrusted to all Christians. Among what is entrusted to the Christian’s care are resources, such as money, but also family relationships, time, and, of course, sexuality and its expression. Everything that Christians have has been given to them for the express purpose of bringing honor and glory to God. This assertion will no doubt be completely foreign to those steeped in contemporary Western culture, a culture of not only individualism but also of personal ownership (and, some would say, entitlement). But the Christian stands in contrast to such ownership/entitlement in all areas. None of it is ours; none of it is something we own or even have a right to.

We turn our attention now to an additional challenge to a re-centered self. That is, we want to explore a theology of sexual identity and at least a partial theodicy or a theology of evil. This is a theological understanding that has to inform the Christian’s understanding of the fall and of pain and suffering.