"Created this way": liminality, rhetorical agency, and the transformative power of constraint among gay Christian college students. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gardner, Christine J.
• Is Part Of: Communication and critical/cultural studies. Volume 14:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 31
• Page End: 47
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: LGBTQ -- sexual identity -- rhetorical agency -- liminality -- gay Christian; Communication and culture -- Periodicals; Communication -- Periodicals; 302.205
• DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2016.1206206
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1479-1420

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This study offers liminality as an analytic tool to investigate the discursive strategies of the negotiation of oppositional identities. Interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning Christian college students reveal appeals to essentialism, labeling, and identification. Specific findings include appeals to being "created gay, " the naming of identity labels that support and resist both traditional sexual minority and religious labels, and the deployment of a gay Christian identity as evangelism. This essay explores how disciplinary rhetorics create the conditions for the emergence of rhetorical agency, allowing for a nuanced understanding of the transformative possibilities of minority sexual identity formation.