Move away from gay identity

MOVE AWAY FROM GAY IDENTITY

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, we asked, “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 the Lord Jesus Christ 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 socialisation, 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 internalises 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 behaviour is neutral and must be judged like any heterosexual behaviour 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 behavioural 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 behaviour and/or relationships. 

These individuals are sometimes referred to as ex-gays or post-gays. Exodus International popularised the word ex-gay, although there was movement away from that designation by some in leadership in the year before 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 labelling in light of a broader understanding of identity labelling, which is tied to locating and centring the self. 

One way Christians have understood labelling and identity is that they have recognised the human tendency to have a wrongly centred 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.

Miroslav Volf points out that in Galatians 2:19–20, Paul writes about a wrongly centred self and the need to be re-centred. The act or process of re-centring 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 sexual identity discussions.) 

This passive diffusion of the self is more likely to occur in cultural contexts that support the concept of organismic congruence. 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 fulfilment (self-actualisation), and it comes as no surprise that such congruence will be seen as the normative outcome for identity resolution. This makes “de-centring” more challenging because the cultural context makes passive diffusion of the self that much more likely.

The Christian would consider first “de-centring” the self and then “re-centring” the self. This does not entail rejecting the self; rather, according to Volf, “re-centring establishes the most proper and unassimilated centre 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-centring 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-centring and re-centring 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 recognise 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-centring the self. The three-tier distinction between attraction, orientation, and identity made earlier provides the intellectual space for exploring identity and ultimately de-centring 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 are not really two separate issues; they are tied together. Your orientation can lead to identification.69

De-centring 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-centre 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, like cultivating one’s identity “in Christ” as central and most salient. 

In fact, this might be the hallmark of a re-centred self for the believer; that is, they move away from a passive subscription to a competing identity by recognising the “diffusion of self” that can or has occurred. Then they re-centre the self by experiencing their “in Christ” identity as central and defining.

What happens to a Christian sexual minority’s sexuality in a re-centred 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-centring 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 Mal 3:6–12; Matt 25:14–30; Luke 19:13; 1 Cor 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 honour 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-centred 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.






63 Dorothy Stroh Becvar and Raphael J. Becvar, Family Therapy: A Systemic Integration, 6th ed. (Allyn & Bacon, 2006), 93.

64 See http://gaychristian.net.

65 A recent example of a gay Christian who believes God calls him to abide by the traditional Christian sexual ethic is Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan, 2010). By rejecting the meaning of gay identity in the common vernacular, some might even say that this group of gay Christians are involved in excorporation (as contrasted with incorporation), by which is meant a group speaks “our meaning with their language.” See Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “What is Everyday Theology?” in Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman (Baker, 2007), 56. Vanhoozer here introduces the reader to John Fiske, who is the person who introduces the language of “excorporation” and originally contrasts it with “incorporation.”

66 http://www.peter-ould.net/2007/04/19/you-and-me-together/.

67 Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 71.

68 Volf, Exclusion and Embrace.

69 From the author’s files.

70 See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Stewardship.

Yarhouse, M. A. (2022). How Should We Think about Homosexuality? (D. A. Carson, Ed.; pp. 56–69). Lexham Press.