Cited in Paper by Mark Yarhouse

Thanks to Wesley Hill for pointing out that Mark Yarhouse referred to my work in his latest paper for the Christ on Campus Initiative.

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 behavior and/or relationships. These individuals are sometimes referred to as ex-gays or post-gays. Exodus International popularized the word ex-gay, although there has been recent movement away from that designation by some in leadership. 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.67

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.

You can read the whole paper here – it’s worth your time.