This study is one of the first to include data from both male homosexuals and their family members to investigate disclosure of sexual orientation. Being homosexual in U.S. society can be particularly traumatic for males because strong pressures oppose the violation of masculine gender norms. Being homosexual and Mormon has unique complications. Reactions from the Mormon community toward individuals of homosexual orientation is defined by prevailing attitudes toward homosexuality, which are largely based on existing theories of etiology, attribution of etiology, and the religious and cultural beliefs extant in the community. The role of family relationships in the coming out process for Mormon male homosexuals contributed important information towards understanding their development. As a particular example of families facing homosexuality, this qualitative study explored family characteristics reported by a sample of male homosexuals who were raised in Mormon families. Relying on reports from both homosexual males and their family members, these data inform how the coming out process is influenced by, and influences, family relationships, and expand knowledge about how family relations and culture influence development. Findings showed that attitudes prevalent within family, church, and community influenced Mormon male homosexuals' decisions to come out. Religious influences on Mormon homosexuals and their family members had an inhibitory effect on the disclosure of sexual orientation and subsequent support and communication within family relationships. Expectations of negative response increased silence among Mormon male homosexuals about their sexual orientation and resulted in alienation from both church and family. Mormon male homosexuals most wanted their family members to accept them and withhold judgment. They hoped for increased dialogue and understanding. Parents were typically distressed by the disclosure, with fathers having a stronger reaction than mothers. Relationships were strained in terms of family contact and communication. Family members who made efforts to gain information and understand the homosexual son were perceived as more supportive. Implications of how families and Church leaders can insulate the homosexual son from adverse social response and provide needed support are discussed.

This project examines the experiences of 37 gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees of professional, collegiate, and club sport. Using intensive, non-directive interviews and Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM), I explore how employees negotiate the near-total sport institution, perceive the environment for sexual minorities in sport, manage their sexual identities, and identify potential allies at work. Participants informed their beliefs about the sport workplace by the totality of their direct and indirect experiences, their observation of others, and their accumulated experiences in sport as athletes and employees. While employees’ perceptions of the sport environment were slightly negative, their actual experiences were predominantly neutral or positive. Participants discussed their workplace experiences in terms of coming out, being out, and acting out. They identified levels of “how out” they were, even as their behaviors belied that designation. “Being out,” for these participants, involved relying on various motivations and strategies at work. One group of participants felt coming out was part of a larger moral imperative to create social change, and did so by emphasizing gay identity over sport or work identity. A second group felt it was professional or responsible to stay closeted at work, noting that personal lives and private lives should not intersect. A third group also highlighted their work and sport identities over their gay identity, without attaching any liability to their sexual identity. These employees, who were the youngest members of the sample, did not place significance on sexual identity as a salient feature of their overall identity. “Acting out” involved both active and passive strategies to emphasize or deemphasize sexual identity at work. This project suggests that the processes by which employees negotiate their workplace environments (and, particularly, sport as a workplace) are complex and nuanced. For non-heteronormative employees working in sport, their processes of coming out, acting out, and being out were mediated by many factors, including age, type of sport, workplace hierarchy and identity formation processes.

Coming out of the closet and sharing a disclosure narrative is considered an essential act to becoming gay (Jagose 1996; Meeks 2006). Although coming out experiences vary by time and place, sexuality scholars note the assumed difficulties when claiming a non-heteronormative identity, including stress, isolation, and rejection (Chauncey 1994; Faderman 1991; Herdt 1993; 1996; Savin-Williams and Ream 2003). In the late 1990s, a post-closet framework emerged arguing that coming out of the closet has become more common and less difficult; “American homosexuals have normalized and routinized their homosexuality to a degree where the closet plays a lesser role in their lives” (Seidman Meeks and Traschen 1999:19). Moreover, post- gay activists and writers such as James Collard (1998) contended that being and doing gay “authentically” involves moving past oppression and despair and living an openly gay life. In light of such arguments, this dissertation research was constructed to explore coming out experiences. I collected 60 narratives from self- identified lesbians and gay men living in Atlanta, New York, and Miami and analyzed these narratives using an intersectional framework. Intersectionality highlights the ways in which multiple dimensions of socially constructed relationships and categories interact, shaping simultaneous levels of social inequality (Crenshaw 1989; 1995). Through the multiple and sometimes complicated intersections of race, class, gender, capital, place, religion, and the body, my analysis exposes institutional and interactional dimensions of power, privilege, and oppression in coming out narratives. Indeed, the kind of "American" or "routinized" homosexuality described by post-closet scholars privileges white, non-gender conforming, middle-class individuals, most often male and urban. Coming out stories that express or embody elements of non-normativity are marginalized and marked as different. In conclusion, intersectionality exposes how privilege functions as a dimension to coming out stories, leading to marginalization and oppression amongst already discriminated identities.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2001. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Jan. 9, 2005). Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-54).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of West Florida, 2009. / Submitted to the Dept. of Professional and Community Leadership. Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 0 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores how gay men make migration decisions through the life course. Recent studies of queer migration fall into two categories: (1) the role of the state and its heteronormative policies (e.g., family reunification-based immigration policy or criminalized homosexuality) and (2) queer migrations within countries, which employ narrative approaches but often presume a linear, usually rural-to-urban trajectory of migration among young queer people fleeing one place and emancipating themselves elsewhere. This study nuances the dynamics of migration decision-making among gay men, adopting a life course approach that examines how historical and social contexts, institutions, and individual circumstances and subjectivities convene to shape migration trajectories. For this research, I use the migration narratives gay men living in two cities—Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, D.C., U.S.A.—to capture the dynamics of migration decision-making in two different locational contexts. 48 interviews with Self-identified gay men (24 in each city) ground this study. Respondents were asked about their reasons for migrating, the community, home, and family environments in sending and receiving places, changes in aspects of health, well-being, and relationships before and after migrating, and aspects of everyday life after moving to Ottawa or Washington, D.C. The focus on two capital cities was adopted not only to examine places that draw internal migrants from a variety of places, but also to elaborate on the dynamics of gay life in two mid-sized cities overlooked in sexuality and space literature, and on the ways in which the institutions of these two “government towns” have simultaneously attracted and regulated gay men and other sexual minorities. I advance several findings in this study. First, coming-out migrations are both much less linear than traditionally conceived and are influenced more by the internal social dynamics of places than flat characterizations of places as homophobic or backward. Second, the dynamics of the places that gay men leave and come to are often quite literally embodied in terms of health and well-being. Third, the government town is a paradoxical place that has been queered by the emergence of gay rights-seeking and advocacy regimes, yet continues to regulate gay men’s lives in diffuse ways. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2012-03-08 12:30:30.014

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, November, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, May, 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-111).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Cincinnati, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Mar. 27, 2005). Includes bibliographical reference (p. 73-76).