The process of accepting
oneself as gay and of ‘coming out’ to family and friends is well documented.
For Muslim men, this is complicated by the tension between their emerging
sexual identity and their religious and cultural birth identity, which labels
homosexuality as sinful.
This paper explores this process in a sample of five
gay Muslim men living in New Zealand, a liberal secular society where
homosexuality is widely accepted and gay rights are endorsed in legislation.
Identity Process Theory drives the analysis, which identifies five themes
encapsulating the process of striving for psychological coherence: resistance,
acceptance, tension, renegotiation and pretence. Initial phases of denial and
anger at their emerging sexuality are strongly linked to the conflict with
their religious identity.
Later, acceptance of their sexuality as natural and
even God-given protects them from blame for their ‘sins’. In contrast to
earlier work in the UK, for most men, renegotiation of their Muslim identity is
adopted as the key strategy for achieving intrapsychic coherence. However, at
an interpersonal level, families remain a source of conflict, temporarily resolved
through pretence. Renegotiating religious identity leaves men having to pretend
not just to be straight, but also to be strongly religious.
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