The Stories of Gay Christian Men in Taiwan: How They Manage Identity Conflict between Their Religious and Sexual Orientations

This qualitative study aimed to explore Christian gay men's psychological conflict between their religious and sexual orientations. Selecting two self-identified gay Christian men as participants, the author adopted social constructivism as the framework of epistemology and narrative methodology to illustrate two distinct pathways of life stories as to how gay Christian men manage their identity conflicts.

In addition to the story-telling, the author analyzed how gay Christian men dealt with their internal conflicts in two different approaches. Firstly, the author identified the common factors that these two participants were experiencing, including potential harmful religious beliefs, discriminations and/or bullies that might occur in the churches these participants attended. Secondly, the author identified the factors that were unique to each of these participants, for instance, their ways of managing conflicts and discriminations. One of the participants took a proactive step to resolve his internal conflicts, such as attending a gay affirmative Christian church, while the other was too pessimistic about his future to make any change in his life.

From these two participants' stories, the author drew a hypothesized model to demonstrate gay Christian men' s identity development process. This model could be viewed as an identity crisis in Erikson's Stages of Psychological Development Theory. In the end of this study, some therapeutic strategies and helpful referral resources that could be used to reduce these individuals' psychological distress were also discussed.