Talking One's Way out of Homosexuality:
The Role of Narrative in Sexual Identity Transformation

Lori Heintzelman

Abstract for paper presented at
Conference of the Georgetown Linguistics Society
The Language and Identity Tapestry: Linguistic Re/presentation of Identities in Social Interaction
Georgetown University
Washington, DC
February 18-20, 2005

An array of evangelical Christian ministries aim specifically at converting gay men and women into "ex-gays". Foremost among them is the international organization Exodus, whose Mission Statement reads "Proclaiming to, educating, and impacting the world with the biblical truth that freedom from homosexuality is possible when Jesus is Lord of one's life" (www.exodus-international.org). For participants in such an endeavor, telling one's story of the journey from gay to ex-gay--as a coherent narrative--is essential in the transformation process. As such, Exodus provides a forum for these testimonies at its annual conferences. For the researcher, these narratives are instructive for the ways in which homosexuality can be conceptualized and discursively constructed so that change--of identity, not just behavior--is viewed as both desirable and possible. The individual narratives also reflect, reinforce, and recirculate a master narrative (Foucault, 1978) about gender and sexuality as fashioned by Exodus. I argue that Exodus is most efficacious as a truth-making enterprise, using not just scripture but non-biblical language to "re-educate desire" (Stoler, 1995)--i.e. to challenge the individual to reframe what was thought of as a fixed identity. The linguistic interplay between the individual struggling with an unwanted sexual identity, and the organization claiming power to transform it, is complex. To understand identity (trans)formation and sustainment in the realm of sexual orientation requires careful attention to the content and structure of both personal and institutional discourses.

Using transcribed testimonies from four consecutive Exodus conferences, and ethnographic notes from participant observation at the Exodus 2003 conference, this paper will attempt to reveal the threads that are woven into the making and unmaking of two contentious sexualities--gay and ex-gay. A primary framework used in examining this particular language and identity tapestry will be Bucholtz and Hall's (2003, 2004) "tactics of intersubjectivity".

Lori Hentzelman is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado. She can be reached at Lori.Heintzelman@Colorado.EDU.

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 18, Issue 1 - June 2005