Self-actualization gay identity development

One way to resolve sexual identity conflicts 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-specialised 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 behaviour 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-actualisation.60 This self-actualisation is organised around the self-defining attribution “I am gay.”

This 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 behaviour, then, is believed to be a normal and natural expression of identity, of who one is as a person.

This has now become a pathway for many into a dark, broken world of lust.


59 Gilbert Herdt, “Developmental Discontinuities and Sexual Orientation across Cultures,” in Homosexuality/Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation, ed. David P. McWhirter, S. A. Sanders, and J. M. Reinisch (Oxford University Press, 1996), 224.

60 Herdt, “Developmental Discontinuities.”

61 There are far more trajectories and identity outcomes than the three I discuss in this section. However, for the purposes of conveying the argument, I discuss these three broad trajectories to indicate possible ways to respond to same-sex sexuality and identity in terms of identity synthesis or achievement. This is similar to trajectory as “a choice in a journey,” to borrow from Peter Ould (http://www.peter-ould.net/2007/04/19/you-and-me-together/). For a study and discussion of the many possible outcomes, see Carr, “Sexual Minority Christians.”

Yarhouse, M. A. (2022). How Should We Think about Homosexuality? (D. A. Carson, Ed.; pp. 53–54). Lexham Press.