Hearing Voices in the Closet

Abstract

Having explored spiritual and religious identity development in Part II, we turn our attention to gender and sexual identity development in Part III. The first set of questions we must ask pertain to the experience of the Christian closet—why do people stay in the closet? What are the perceived harms/benefits of the closet? What impact does being in the closet have?

This chapter addresses all of these questions, with a particular note on mixed-orientation marriages within Evangelical spaces. Mixed-orientation marriages (an opposite-gender marriage in which one member is same-sex-attracted) are under-explored within Evangelical contexts. Highly emotive and painful for all parties involved, these stories have often gone unacknowledged in the literature, resulting in a double traumatisation in which individuals are left reeling by the event itself and then led to believe they are alone on the journey.