'Killing the Messenger': Religious Black Gay Men's Neutralization of Anti-Gay Religious Messages

摘要

I use cognitive dissonance theory as aframework to examine coping strategies used by men endeavoring to maintaina coherent sense of themselves as gay Christians. Using interviews with black gay Christian men, J uncover astrategy used to maintain that identity in the face of stigmatizing religious rhetoric. While these men have managedto reconcile their religious and sexual identities, sermons delivered by church leaders disrupt that reconciliation,causing them to have to neutralize these anxiety-inducing attitudes. This study shows that they focus accusationsof illegitimacy on the speaker rather than the doctrine by denigrating the speakers' knowledge, morality, focus,and motivations. In this way, they neutralize the sting of churches' negative messages by neutralizing the moralauthority of the churches' messengers. These findings offer new insight into how parishioners persist in religiouscommunities in which their sexual behaviors or identities are condemned.