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Moral Development in Gay Men During the Coming-out Process
Dissertation   Open access

Moral Development in Gay Men During the Coming-out Process

Michael Dan Jasek
University of West Florida Libraries
Doctor of Education (EDD), University of West Florida
2009

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Abstract

We live in a society where people are taught that homosexuality is immoral. For many men, an internal conflict develops as they begin the coming-out process. In order to proceed through this identity formation, they must resolve this internal conflict. This qualitative study explored the ways gay men resolve this issue so that they may adopt a positive gay identity for themselves. This study looked at moral development in gay men as they resolved the conflict between their moral beliefs and their emerging gay identity, how this process related to Cass's gay identity model, and the external factors which played a role in the process. Triangulation of fictional novels with gay characters, books telling men's coming-out stories, and data collected from the interviews of three men who spoke about their experience with realizing their true sexual orientation was used to generate results. Some men were told at an early age that homosexuality is immoral and is not a life a "proper" man lives. Several institutions were discovered to construct and maintain this belief in these men. Some of these included family, peer, community, legal, education, and religion institutions. It was this repeating message that homosexuality is immoral which allowed the men to internalize this belief. Only later in their lives did this belief come into conflict. The introduction of new and often contradictory information to the "truth" the men had held throughout their lives until the point of conflict was key to resolution of conflict.
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