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

Lori Heintzelman

Abstract for poster presented at
Perception and Realization in Language and Gender Research Conference
Michigan State University
July 2003

An array of Christian ministries aim specifically at converting gay men and women into "ex-gays". Foremost among them is Exodus, an international organization whose foundational premise is "Freedom from Homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ." 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 public 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 constructed discursively so that change is viewed as both desirable and possible. Entwined in the content of these narratives are beliefs about gender as related to the formation and sustainment of particular sexual orientations. Voice quality changes and lexical choices index homosexuality as gender misidentification in complex-and sometimes conflicting-ways. Additionally, the delivery and tone of these narratives varies strikingly along gender lines.

Using testimonies from four Exodus conferences as a data source, this poster's purpose is to explore the ways in which gender is salient in the conceptualization of sexual identity, and how gender is realized in the telling of narratives of transformation.

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

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 1 - June 2004