Rewriting a Discursive Practice: Atheist Adaptation of Coming Out Discourse

Abstract

Coming out is a powerful way for individuals to disclose, constitute, and perform membership in stigmatized identity categories. The practice has now spread far beyond its LGBTQ origins. In this essay, I examine how atheists and other secularists have taken up and adapted coming out discourse to meet their situational and rhetorical needs. Through an analysis of 50 narratives about coming out atheist, I show that atheist writers use coming out discourse to claim both high and low agency over their identities. They both follow and resist a low-agency approach that has sometimes characterized LGBTQ uses of coming out discourse. Furthermore, I argue that the attribution of high personal agency in coming out discourse and other discourses of identity can introduce themes of deliberation, choice, and uncertainty, leading to a richer public discussion of identity category membership.

Keywords

stigma identity choice agency LGBTQ rhetoric atheism

Coming out is more than just a phrase. It is a discursive practice that shapes the production, distribution, and consumption of texts (Fairclough, 1992, p. 78).¹ It is also a social practice in that it shapes “social identities, social relationships, [and] systems of knowledge and belief” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 65, 2003, p. 25). If I say, “it’s time for me to come out as X,” I am doing more than repeating a stock phrase; I am also drawing on a rich set of circulating assumptions about what my statement means, how I came to believe it, and how listeners should understand and respond to it. From a political perspective, coming out is a powerful way for members of an identity category to constitute themselves as a counterpublic. Its use conveys a marginalized stance, a “recognition of exclusion from wider public spheres” (Asen, 2000, p. 427). The idea of coming out as a way to resist perceived stigma has spread far and wide. It is now possible to come out as any number of things: an undocumented immigrant (Vargas, 2011), a Mexican (Elizalde, 2015), an adoptive parent (Weir, 2003), an academic mother (Birken & Borelli, 2015), a conservative college student (Rath, 2013), a “social change philanthropist” (Urschel, 2005), a Wiccan (Murphy-Hiscock, 2009), and many others, some serious and some less so.

Atheists, agnostics, and other secularists have taken up coming out discourse to disclose, perform, and constitute their identities. In his best-selling book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (2006) describes the limited political power of atheists and agnostics and names coming out as a “good first step” (pp. 4-5). There are now published advice books dedicated to coming out atheist (Christina, 2014; McAfee, 2012). Other books written about atheism offer sections advising atheists on how to come out (McGowan, 2013, p. 153; Mehta, 2012, pp. 81-84). Although a few rhetoricians and sociologists have studied atheist coming out, they have not explored the ways in which atheists have adapted coming out discourse. Furthermore, despite rapid demographic growth,² rhetoricians have paid almost no attention to the rhetorical practices of atheists (but see Dick, 2015; Hart, 1978; Rhodes, 2014). The near absence of research on the rhetoric of atheists is rather startling considering that, according to the Pew Research Center (2015), atheists now outnumber both Jews and Muslims in the United States. Atheists represent a large number of people (around 10 million in the United States, based on Pew’s estimate) navigating a stigmatized identity category, with almost no research on the rhetorical practices they are using to do so.³

In this essay, I examine 50 coming-out-atheist narratives, focusing on how the writers both resist and follow a model of coming out discourse that minimizes individual agency. I identify and analyze eight rhetorical moves through which atheists claim different levels of personal agency over their identity category membership. I find that the atheist narratives (a) use both high- and low-agency moves in roughly equal proportion and (b) blend high- and low-agency moves, using both at the same time without apparent contradiction. Some writers even imply that their identification as atheists could change—an idea quite at odds with a low-agency “born this way” trope. This mixture of high and low agency responds to atheists’ multiple and sometimes competing rhetorical goals. These findings show how atheists have adapted—rather than merely taken up or appropriated—coming out discourse to represent their experiences and respond to various rhetorical goals. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates how the attribution of personal agency (in coming out discourse and elsewhere) can introduce themes of deliberation, choice, and uncertainty into monolithic representations of identity. I argue that these themes help open the door to richer public discussions of identity category membership.

Theoretical Overview

Coming Out as a Performative, Constitutive Discourse

Historian George Chauncey (1994) traces LGBTQ uses of the phrase “coming out” to “an arch play on the language of women’s culture—in this case the expression used to refer to the ritual of a debutante’s being formally introduced to, or ‘coming out’ into, the society of her cultural peers” (p. 7). Gay men at first understood coming out as an introduction into something, not an exit from the closet. Several researchers (Chauncey, 1994, p. 7; D’Emilio, 1983, p. 235; Grindstaff, 2006, p. 127; Sedgwick, 1990, p. 14) attribute the shift from coming out into a community to coming out of the closet to the period following the Stonewall Riots. Along with the shift in spatial orientation (from out into to out of) comes a change in audience. Before the riots, LGBTQ people came out to an audience of cultural peers, an act of disclosure for the purpose of in-group solidarity. After Stonewall, “coming out” also referred to disclosure to an out-group audience.

Coming out goes beyond simple disclosure. It is a richly performative and constitutive act. Eve Sedgwick (1990) argues that coming out “may have nothing to do with the acquisition of new information” (p. 3). For example, the “secret” that coming out reveals may be a rhetorical fiction, a way of performing secrecy to change the way a marginalized identity is framed (e.g., as something others despise, making the disclosure an act of resistance and courage). We may understand coming out as a speech act whose felicitous performance does something (cf. Butler, 1997). Liang (1997) writes that coming out “is a speech act that not only describes a state of affairs, namely the speaker’s gayness, but also brings those affairs, a new gay self, into being” (p. 293). Coming out is also a richly constitutive act. Davin Grindstaff (2006) writes, “at its core, coming out is a social act, a complex and nuanced rhetorical practice—a matter of invention” (p. 127). To put it another way, coming out is constitutive in that it does not merely represent an a priori set of identities, rigid categories to which we may merely hitch our self-representations. Rather, coming out brings identity categories into being and gives them meaning. To say that coming out is constitutive is to understand that “linguistic or discursive practices create what they describe as they simultaneously describe what they create” (Jasinski, 1998, p. 74).

Low Agency in LGBTQ Uses of Coming Out Discourse

Coming out discourse can constitute identities as low agency, something a person has no choice about. Some LGBTQ uses of coming out discourse exemplify this tendency. In handbooks on coming out LGBTQ, one finds phrases like “accepting your sexuality” (Outland, 2000, p. ix) and “admit[ting] to yourself that you are gay or bisexual” (Signorile, 1995, p. ix), which suggest that people do not choose to be gay so much as realize or come to terms with it. Those familiar with public discourse on LGBTQ issues, or even just Lady Gaga’s oeuvre, may recognize the low-agency “born this way” trope as a common argument for legal and cultural equality for LGBTQ people, in coming out discourse and elsewhere. Stein (2014) explains that “a popular and intuitively plausible argument for the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (LGB people) focuses on the claim that sexual orientations are inborn and/or unchangeable” (p. 597). The political wisdom of arguments from low agency is sometimes taken for granted, to the degree that calling something “not a choice” is taken as just another way of saying that it is “legitimate” (Whisman, 1996, pp. 4-5). Indeed, many historical and theoretical accounts of efforts to legitimize LGBTQ identities have pointed to the popularity of essentialized, low-agency representations of those identities (Chávez, 2004, p. 258; Epstein, 1992, p. 243; Gross, 1993, p. 113; Halley, 1991, p. 359; R. R. Smith & Windes, 1999, pp. 27-28; R. R. Smith & Windes, 2000, pp. 100-101; Stein, 2014, pp. 597-600).⁴ The practice of coming out has been (D’Emilio, 1983, pp. 235-236) and continues to be (Grindstaff, 2006, p. 125) a keystone in these efforts, and so will share in the tendency to represent LGBTQ identities as low agency. This is not to say that LGBTQ uses of coming out discourse are inherently low agency, but clearly such a model exists and circulates widely.

It is possible to break from low-agency models of coming out, and some LGBTQ uses of coming out discourse do so. Like the sources above, Jeffrey Bennett (2014) argues that “the idea of being ‘born this way’ is a widely circulated notion in LGBT communities that is employed in a multitude of spheres for a range of social and political purposes” (pp. 212-213). However, in his analysis of individual submissions to the “Born This Way” blog, he shows that, title notwithstanding, some LGBTQ individuals do not narrate their experience in that way (p. 213). Not all of his data are coming out narratives per se, but they are identity narratives. Some “cement hegemonic practices” (e.g., low-agency, born-this-way representations), while others “interrupt normative scripts of identity” (p. 213). This is to say that there are “cracks in the ‘born this way’ ideology” (p. 228). Since there are multiple versions of coming out discourse, those who use it—or any other discourse of identity—must adapt it to meet their needs. They can claim low agency, as some LGBTQ political discourse does. But they can also resist that tendency, as some of Bennett’s vernacular narratives do.

Theoretical Approaches to Atheist Uses of Coming Out Discourse

Among those few scholars who study the practice of coming out atheist, two theoretical approaches predominate. The first is to understand atheist and secular uses of coming out discourse as appropriation in the critical sense. Anspach, Coe, and Thurlow (2007) describe atheist coming out discourse as an instance of “lateral” appropriation, lateral because it occurs between two marginalized groups (p. 99). They chronicle atheists’ “closet” talk (one component of coming out discourse) on atheist organizational websites. They find several key rhetorical advantages for atheists: coming out discourse supports a cathartic expression of emotion, “activate[s] a marginalized status,” and serves as a “unifying call to action” (p. 106). Their approach is critical; it envisages atheists attempting to “wrest power away from other social groups” (p. 114, emphasis added), engaging in cynical theft for “sociopolitical gain” (p. 97). One could get the impression that atheists have “stolen” coming out discourse intact and unaltered.

The second approach to studying atheist coming out discourse is to see it as a straightforward and unproblematic borrowing. This approach shows up in several sociological studies of atheist identity formation, activism and community building. These accounts note that the practice of coming out is drawn from LGBTQ discourse, but otherwise leave it relatively unexamined. For example, Cimino and C. Smith (2007) write,

The call for atheists and secular humanists to engage in greater activism to protect their rights is often compared to the women’s rights and gay rights movements. It is fairly common to hear or read of those describing their declaration of themselves as atheist or secular humanist as an act of “coming out of the closet.” (p. 421)

Describing how collective identities are developed in social movements, Guenther, Mulligan, and Papp (2013) merely note that “efforts at making identity categories visible—like the gay liberation movement’s emphasis on coming out—further enhance the sense that individuals are part of a collective” (p. 460). Other examples of this approach—in which scholars take coming out atheist as straightforward borrowing—can be found in J. M. Smith (2011, pp. 229-231, 2013).

Neither of these approaches gets at the complex process of adaptation that happens when coming out discourse is taken up to describe new identity categories. For example, as undocumented immigrants in the United States began coming out, they found the image of the closet to be overly individualized (Enriquez & Saguy, 2016, p. 120). The secrecy denoted by the physical metaphor of the closet failed to convey that the families of undocumented immigrants must also maintain—and suffer because of—secrecy. Immigrants and activists began to talk of coming “out of the shadows” rather than the closet (pp. 120-121). Fat acceptance activists reinterpreted the practice of coming out, envisioning it as a process of affirming their fatness rather than disclosing it, because “body size is hyper-visible” (Saguy & Ward, 2011, p. 54). Adaptations of coming out discourse may have significant social implications because it is such a pervasive and powerful way to constitute identity category membership. The goal of this essay is to understand how atheists have adapted the discourse and why those adaptations matter.

Data and Method

About the Dataset

This study focuses on coming out narratives, which both perform the act of coming out and reflect on the process. Coming out narratives are richer artifacts than short declarations, full of elaboration and reflective thinking about what it means to come out, how or why one does it, and what happens afterward. Like all narratives, coming out narratives are not straightforward, empirical accounts of experience—they construct rather than reflect reality (Bruner, 1987, p. 13, 1991, pp. 5-6, 13; Ochs & Capps, 1996, p. 21). In other words, narratives are selective and necessarily rhetorical; they “allow individuals to . . . occupy certain positions successfully” and “claim particular rights” (Ritivoi, 2009, p. 31). Narrative scholars have argued that the format and structure of personal narratives transform what may be disconnected events into meaningful, coherent life stories (Bruner, 1991, p. 18; Johnstone, 2008, p. 155; Linde, 1993, p. 93; Ochs & Capps, 1996, pp. 24, 27, 29; Ritivoi, 2009, pp. 34-36). Liang (1997) has chronicled the coherency-making power of coming out narratives specifically. As these atheist writers tell their coming out stories, they make their atheism an outcome of life experiences (e.g., encounters with hypocritical religious people, childhood realizations, study of religious texts, etc.) and in some cases personal traits that they imply they were born with (e.g., skepticism).

I collected a corpus of 50 narratives about coming out as atheist from the Coming Out Godless Project, a web-based archive that published written accounts of coming out as atheist (and other secular identities) from 2009 to early 2016. While it was active, anyone could submit a narrative to the site, which encouraged users to “share [their] godless story with the community.” At least one published advice manual on coming out atheist samples the archive extensively (Christina, 2014). I chose this archive over one other, better-known archive, Openly Secular, which enjoys the imprimatur of prominent atheist figures such as Richard Dawkins and established organizations like the Center for Inquiry. That archive focuses more on celebrities (actors, athletes, musicians, writers, etc.) and is edited—the videos show unambiguous signs that they have been cut together from longer clips. Although celebrity voices will undoubtedly play a role in changing attitudes toward atheists and other secularists in the United States, this project is concerned with how everyday people talk about atheism using coming out discourse.

At the outset of the project (October 2014), I collected and reviewed all 111 stories available on the site, dating back to January 2009. Finding them consistent in theme and focus, I elected to examine the most recent 50 narratives, dating from April 25, 2011, to October 28, 2014, to give the most current portrait of atheist and secular rhetoric. The narratives vary in length from 28 words to over 3,000. For clarity, I have assigned each narrative an identifying number. N1 is the most recent narrative; N50 is the least recent. A sample size of 50 allowed me to both examine individual narratives closely and be sure that different voices and perspectives were included.

The archive provides very little information about the narrative writers. Some narratives identify their authors by first and last names, others use screen names, and still others are anonymous. The archive organizes the narratives using 11 high-level tags representing specific religious traditions that the writers have abandoned, with additional tags for “Unspecified” and “Always Godless.” Based on these tags, we can conclude that the writers overwhelmingly come from Christian backgrounds, though other religious traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Scientology, appear in a handful of narratives. British spellings and specific place mentions (e.g., Australia) suggest that the archive includes Western perspectives from outside the United States, though most appear to have been written by Americans. All of the narratives are written in English. Racial classifications are almost entirely absent, with only one writer identifying as a person of color (N46). Two narrative writers identify as gay (N1 and N45). Gender is difficult to determine, though guesswork—based on contextual clues and gendered names—allowed me to infer that 23 of the writers are male and 13 are female. The gender of 14 other writers could not be determined based on the narratives. Although I always refer to the narratives by number, I offer additional information about the writers if it is relevant to the analysis.

What makes these coming out narratives at all? Is it just because they were labeled coming out stories by the website? It’s significant that the archive asks for “coming out godless” stories, though that alone is not enough. More evidence can be found in the narratives themselves: 15 out of 50 include phrases associated with coming out (e.g., “And so I came out” [N44] or “My ‘coming out of the closet’ was pretty uneventful” [N23]). Perhaps more telling, 32 of the narratives focus on some process of disclosure. Although not all of these narratives use the terminology of coming out, no other phrase or metaphor used to describe the process of disclosure approaches the popularity of “coming out.”

Readers may also question whether these narratives are public, rhetorical discourse. The narratives could be understood merely as atheists griping to other atheists for the purpose of coping. It’s true that the narratives focus on a personal process of coming to terms with atheism, and work to create solidarity among atheists and other secularists. But they are also publicly oriented in that some exhort others to consider atheism or come out as atheist and offer advice on doing so. In this way they are a kind of rehearsal for public performances of atheism. They practice the language of coming out (e.g., “So, Mom, Dad . . . I never believed in Santa, and I never believed in God. I’m an atheist” [N13]). Even if we read the narratives as a more private discourse, they still have important political and rhetorical impact. The narrative archive may be an enclave, a space “of withdrawal and regroupment,” but it is also a “training ground for agitational activities directed toward wider publics” (Fraser, 1993, p. 124).

Coding for Agency

To understand how atheists have adapted coming out discourse, I ask, how much personal agency do these narrative writers claim when describing their atheism? Since atheism is often seen as a chosen identity, the attribution of agency is a key tension point, a testing ground to see whether and how atheist uses of coming out discourse will break from low-agency models of coming out discourse. Here “agency” refers to the representation of personal agency for rhetorical ends. This is a study of agency as it is used as a premise in arguments. To be clear, I’m not referring to agency in any neurological sense (cf. Cooper, 2011). Nor am I quite referring to rhetorical agency, the contested—to put it mildly—“competence to speak or write in a way that will be recognized or heeded by others in one’s community” (Campbell, 2005, p. 3). Although rhetorical agency is not under examination here, that scholarship does inform my approach. In particular, I follow Carolyn Miller (2007) in understanding agency as “an attribution, an attribution that’s not determined but constructed (or pre-constructed)” (pp. 152-153). The writers in these narratives attribute, to themselves, varying levels of agency as they explain their atheism. That attribution is contingent: it is an attempt that may or may not succeed with audiences.

For my analysis of these narratives, I created a coding system to track what I call high- and low-agency moves, or the means by which the narrative writers claim varying levels of personal agency. This system was developed through a series of open coding exercises. Based on repeated readings, I identified eight features that stood out as markers of high/low agency (see Tables 1 and 2 below).

Table 1.

Coding Scheme for Lower Agency Identity Moves.

Lower agency move	Textual marker
1. Identity without awareness	Descriptions of an identity category that suggest that it precedes or does not require awareness (e.g., statements implying someone can be an atheist without knowing it or before realizing it).
2. Immutable identity	Descriptions of limited agency/choice stemming from difficult-to-change personality features, immutable characteristics, or inborn traits. May also include descriptions of identity as something one “comes to terms with.”
3. Identity as who I am	Positioning of an identity category as an essential part of the self via the use of who I am or other similar phrases as anaphors for specific identity categories (e.g., statements like “I am an atheist. I cannot help who I am”).
4. Identity from irreconcilable conflict or contradiction	Description of an identity category as the product of irreconcilable conflicts or logical contradictions (e.g., statements that present atheism as the product of conflict between religious views and science or logical thought).
5. Unwilling identity	Active resistance to the idea of belonging to an identity category (e.g., a phrase like, “I did not want to be an atheist, but I am one anyway”).

Table 2.

Coding Scheme for Higher Agency Identity Moves.

Higher agency move	Textual marker
6. Deliberation verbs	Active verb phrases that indicate deliberation (e.g., question, research) or conscious choice (e.g., decide, conclude, pick).
7. Self-labeling verbs	Active verb phrases that indicate self-labeling, sometimes with attached reasons for the identification (e.g., call myself, identify). One might say, “I call myself an atheist because I am no longer convinced that god exists.”
8. Identity’s benefits	Description of positive effects of an identity category as a factor in choosing to claim membership (e.g., a person may claim to identify as atheist because it makes them feel “happy” or “free”).

Analysis

Lower Agency Atheism

Many of the narratives embody a low-agency version of coming out discourse. Twenty-six of them construct atheist (or related secular) identities using at least one of five low-agency moves identified in Table 1.

Move 1: Identity without awareness

Some narrative writers suggest that a person can be an atheist without knowing it. Several writers use the verb realize, implying that atheism can precede conscious awareness:

I didn’t immediately realize I was an atheist until about ten years later when I became affiliated with a freethinker group in southwest Missouri. (N26)

My Lutheran high school is where I realized my atheism. . . . When I was 16, I realized fully that I didn’t believe in a higher power, or an afterlife, or anything spiritual like that. (N5)

But it would take me another 15 years to realize I didn’t believe in God. (N13)

In these and other passages, realize limits agency in two ways. It places atheism temporally prior to awareness. If we take realize to mean something akin to “become aware of,” that thing which is realized must be true prior to the realization. Realize also makes atheism true about a person without their knowing about it—one might never realize something, but that makes it no less true. If something about me is true before I know about it or true without my knowing about it, it’s difficult to conceptualize that thing as a product of my agency.

Writers also place atheism prior to or outside of awareness when they trace it to childhood or some other period before the age of reason:

I am an atheist, have been since—well for as long as I can remember. (N29)

Move 2: Immutable identity

Some writers trace their atheism to traits or qualities that are immutable. They may describe their atheism as the product of an innate inability to believe, describing repeated, failed attempts:

Can a person force himself to believe something? I certainly tried. I read the bible, prayed, went to church, prayed, and obeyed my ass off. But no amount of faithful behavior modification could quell the overwhelming head and heart belief that god just wasn’t there. (N14)

I would look up to the sky and try to imagine God guiding me. I would always fail. I would always feel ridiculous. (N18)

After years of searching for answers to my questions, I had to throw up my hands and finally admit that I was an atheist. (N27)

I’ve always enjoyed singing the songs, but I have never been able to fully believe the Catholic doctrine. (N28)

When writers claim that their atheism follows repeated, sincere (but failed) attempts to believe, they may be responding to circulating images of atheists as people who have not tried hard enough (akin to older circulating images of gay men who just haven’t “found the right woman”). They are limiting their agency by suggesting that atheism is not a choice, but rather a default necessitated by their innate inability to believe.

N17 is a fascinating example of immutable identity because the writer is so direct about limiting his agency:

Why don’t I believe? I have a lot of clever retorts to that question, but the honest answer is I don’t know. I mean that as an admission of doubt, as simple ignorance. I don’t know why I don’t believe when 90% of my peers do. But the answer, it seems to me, is that those who can believe do. . . . What’s more, I wanted to believe . . . I looked at the picture book versions of Bible stories (with, I now know, all of the gruesome violence edited out), and I got down on my little knees and said the words. And I tried so hard to believe. . . . For the next decade or so, through primary and into high school, I tried valiantly to convince myself that my faith was real. . . . I tried and failed, over and over, with each new failure piling on fresh doubt and confusion. . . . Why couldn’t I believe? I don’t know. I wanted to. Belief, it seems, is not a choice; those who can, do.

His repeated failures provide evidence for the claim that “those who can [believe], do.” The flipside of this assertion is that those who can’t believe, don’t. Atheism then is not a choice but a deficiency.

Other writers construct immutable identity in ways that reflect more positively on themselves, for example by describing their innate ability to “see through” common myths and misperceptions around them:

My mother tells me I never believed in Santa Claus. Apparently when I was very young my parents took me to the mall to meet St. Nick and upon seeing him I promptly responded that it was just a man in a costume. But it would take me another 15 years to realize I didn’t believe in God. (N13)

Note the presence of the low-agency verb, realize. This writer also limits their agency by suggesting that they saw the truth of things from an early age. He or she did not fail to believe so much as see belief as nonsense from the very beginning. It’s worth noting that this move limits agency in a particularly flattering way (wasn’t I a clever child, to be burdened with incredulity from the very beginning?).

Another way of constituting immutable identity (and limiting agency) is to talk of “coming to terms” with an identity category:

When I was 16, I realized fully that I didn’t believe in a higher power, or an afterlife, or anything spiritual like that. It absolutely terrified me. I didn’t tell anyone that I felt this way for the next four years—the first person I told was my boyfriend, my sophomore year of college (he’s an atheist, too). . . . Realizing my atheism and coming to terms with it made me appreciate life more. (N5, emphasis added)

I didn’t think too much about it until about a year and a half ago when I finally came to terms that I am indeed an atheist. I just don’t believe anymore. (N23, emphasis added)

“Coming to terms” makes atheism immutable (and low agency) by constituting it as something unpleasant—but unchangeable—that one must deal with. In the most extreme cases of immutable identity, atheism may be described as inborn, as in the title of N35: “Born Atheist, Raised Mormon.”

Move 3: Identity as who I am

Some writers construct a low-agency version of atheism by using phrases like who I am as anaphors for atheism. This move makes atheism a part of—and even a stand in for—an authentic self:

I look forward to being more open with who I am. (N3, emphasis added)

If you’re careful, no one can see your disbelief like they see your gender, age, or skin color, though I can’t help who I am just the same. (N17, emphasis added)

I look forward to just being myself from here on out. I am so happy to finally know who I am and finally have an explanation for all the internal struggles I’ve had all my life. (N23, emphasis added)

In these three cases, an authentic self (“who I am”) stands in grammatically for atheism (“who I am” could, in each case, be replaced by “my atheism”). In a similar vein, N23 describes being openly atheist as “being myself.” Note too the parallels that N17 draws between gender, age, and skin color, other traits that are often the basis of group identity classifications taken to be immutable or at least not easily changeable.

Move 4: Identity from irreconcilable conflict or contradiction

Writers may limit their agency by portraying their atheism as a necessary response to irresolvable logical contradictions. Flaws in religious beliefs, once seen, cannot be unseen and lead irresistibly toward atheism:

Around that age there was one thing that bothered me about the faith I had been taught to accept and, although I have experienced many more reasons to reject the [C]hristian faith since, it seems to be the one flaw in any religion that is simply unanswerable. I call it “The Problem of Contact.” Essentially it boils down to this: In order to be saved you must accept Jesus as your savior, however no-one living in Australia had any chance to do this until 1788, nearly 2000 years after the death of Jesus (if you believe the myth) which means that for nearly 20 centuries people were living good lives, caring about those around them, selflessly giving and loving, and being condemned to eternal torment by a god who was supposedly loving and just. It made no sense. (N4)

This writer struggles with what he calls “the problem of contact.” His phrasing suggests that it is impossible to resolve this problem—it “made no sense” and was “simply unanswerable.” Moreover, despite the fact that some religious traditions neither include a belief in the afterlife, nor require faith in a specific set of dogmas to achieve it, the writer suggests that it is a “flaw in any religion.” These moves limit agency by making atheism an inevitable and necessary outcome when religious tenets and rational thinking meet. Other writers provide less detail about what the specific conflicts are, merely describing them as irreconcilable:

I discovered the atheist movement at this time (1998) and found that there were MANY people like myself who could not reconcile religious belief, religious texts with reality. (N43)

Move 5: Unwilling identity

A final means of constructing low-agency atheism is to write of active resistance and negative emotions tied to the idea of becoming an atheist. If a person actively does not want to become something, but does anyway, the individual’s agency must be limited in some way. One writer makes this move by borrowing from the 1999 film The Matrix. In that film, the main character is given a choice between a blue pill and a red pill. The red pill will open his eyes to truth but possibly lead to suffering, but the blue pill will allow him to continue to live his life in ignorance.

I don’t want to be an Atheist—Blue pill please, Morpheus. . . . If you can bring yourself to believe in an all powerful best friend in the sky then yay. As long as you don’t hurt anyone else, I envy you. . . . Given the choice, I would go for the blue pill. (N9)

Note the way this writer deploys choice. He would not have become an atheist, had he had the choice. Since he is an atheist, his low agency seems clear.

Higher Agency Atheism

Although they include many low-agency moves, these atheists’ coming out narratives also break from a low-agency version of coming out discourse by constituting atheism as high agency, a choice born of deliberation, discovery, and uncertainty. Twenty-four of the narratives describe atheism or a related secular identity using at least one of the high-agency moves identified in Table 2.

Move 6: Deliberation verbs

Verb choice is a key means by which writers indicate their level of agency in becoming (or admitting, realizing, etc.) their atheism. Present in seven out of 50 narratives, decided is one of the most common high-agency verbs in the corpus. It connotes a process of conscious decision making, a careful evaluation of reasons and evidence culminating in an active choice to be atheist. This is the case wherever writers preface their use of the verb decided with a description of research and exploration:

After a while, I decided I was really agnostic but still believed in SOMETHING. But after really looking into other religions and finding that they were all just the same thing spun a different way, I renounced it all and am now a self proclaimed atheist. (N19, emphasis added)

At 30, I decided to stop searching for god. I had searched enough. . . . Rather, I choose to accept the reality that no empirical evidence exists to prove there is a god (or Zeus, or Allah, or Vishnu) instead of assuming the opposite—that god exists because he cannot be disproven. That decision automatically makes me an Atheist. (N35, emphasis added)

I started reading up about non-religion . . . something I didn’t even know was a choice . . . not long after. I think I started reading The Friendly Atheist in the August of 2009, a bit before my 13th birthday. And just seeing all of this, I’d decided the fact that I could so easily see all these things religion was doing wrong meant there was no way it could be right. (N40, emphasis added)

In high school, I struggled with what I believed for a couple years while I was going through my confirmation studies until I finally decided that I am an atheist and I just didn’t believe in any of it. (N24, emphasis added)

Each of these writers describes a process of research and deliberation leading up to an apparently reasoned decision to eschew belief in a god or gods. The writer of N19 “looked into other religions” and the writer of N24 researched Catholicism as part of her confirmation studies. N35’s writer searched for god in multiple forms and N40 describes the writer’s encounter with atheist texts. There is still an element of low agency here—note the way the writer of N35 did not decide to be an atheist; rather, he decided to stop searching and that “automatically” made him an atheist.

Writers may use other verbs to construct a high-agency atheism that is the culmination of a long search or deliberative process. For example, the writer of N34 uses a nominalized form of the verb conclude:

After reading all the essays on evolution, religion, and the universe were complete I came to a conclusion that there is no god. (N34) (emphasis added)

Other writers use a more ambiguous (at least as far as agency is concerned) verb, became:

Down the road I started to read more and more of the bible and look into more and more science. I started to see how horrible and evil religion is and how it can make people do terrible things (the crusades, suicide bombers, self mutilation) and I also saw how it is used for the powerful to keep the masses in check (the Catholic church). I also saw how science was healing diseases and making such advancements in our lives. It was then that I became an Atheist. (N21, emphasis added)

Become does not necessarily indicate a high level of agency. One can become ill, for example. But in N21, become carries a high level of agency because it follows a series of active verb phrases that position the writer as an agent. The writer “started to read,” “started to see,” and “saw” flaws in the religious beliefs to which the individual had been exposed and, as a result, became an atheist (note that this writer does not call perceived flaws in religion “inescapable” or “irreconcilable” as in some of the lower agency representations analyzed above). Both the verb and the surrounding context suggest a high level of agency in this writer’s identification as an atheist.

Move 7: Self-Labeling Verbs

Self-labeling—in particular calling oneself an atheist—is high agency insofar as it connotes active, conscious choice and ownership over one’s atheism, rather than, say, a regretful process of coming to terms. Several instances of this move include the verb call:

I guess I would call myself a humanist now. (N8, emphasis added)

I’m proud to call my self an Atheist. (N34, emphasis added)

My mom knows, though. She figured it out over the years, even though I never was brave enough to say it flat out. She visited me over Easter weekend this year. Religion came up. Although she understands that my brother and I call ourselves atheists, she doesn’t truly believe we will always be atheists. (N7, emphasis added)

By calling themselves atheists (or humanists), these writers claim ownership over their identities (though note the uncertainty in N8’s “I guess”). Consider the alternatives. It is far different to call oneself an atheist than to concede, realize, or, in the words of the writer of N27, “throw up [your] hands and finally admit that [you are] an atheist.”

Other verbs can do the same work. The verb identify is a good example. In the examples below, it marks careful, conscious choice on the part of the writers:

And then there’s me. I was the last of us to identify as an atheist. I wasn’t comfortable with the term until very recently, maybe a couple years ago. And mainly my trepidation about calling myself an atheist was that I didn’t want to be lumped in with the anti-theists. (N12, emphasis added)

Which is why I identify as agnostic instead of atheist: no one can prove there is a God, but no one can prove there is not one. (N33, emphasis added)

High agency is also apparent in the writer of N12’s decision to hold off on identifying as an atheist until he became comfortable with the term. N33’s writer carefully describes her reasons for choosing the label agnostic over atheist—a further sign of conscious deliberation and high agency.

Move 8: Identity’s benefits

Another high-agency move combines active verb phrases with a description of the positive effects of eschewing theistic belief.

When I finally let all of my religious hang ups go, I had never felt such peace, such happiness, such release. My life has never been better, more uplifting—or more godless. I believe in mindfulness, kindness, and feel that letting go of religion has taken me to an even higher level of moral responsibility. I guess I would call myself a humanist now. (N8)

This writer describes her conscious rejection of religion—she “let all of [her] religious hang ups go.” The process of “letting go” has had important benefits for this writer, bringing peace and happiness, but also taking her “to an even higher level of moral responsibility.” The sequence of the narrative suggests that those benefits led her to choose membership in an identity category: she first let go of her beliefs in god, then experienced positive outcomes, and then identified as a humanist (this last claim made in a coda that brings her narrative back to the present tense). Her chosen identification as a humanist is fully realized only after she experiences positive effects.

Other narrative writers make it clear that they chose to be secular both because of the lack of evidence for a god or gods and because atheism had a positive effect:

So combined with my experience and other research, I had evidence of the damage of religion and no evidence of god, so I eventually gave up on the idea of god. . . . For me I just no longer felt the need for mythology and found it more damaging than helpful at this point in my life. Perhaps I will one day return to it without any ties to literalism. (N33)

N33’s writer deploys another higher agency verb phrase. Evidence in hand, she “gave up on the idea of god” rather than being “forced to give up on the idea” or having to “throw her hands up and concede” as one might see in narratives with lower agency moves. This writer found belief in god to be damaging, not helpful. Since she became an agnostic, we can infer that she found agnosticism to be more helpful than belief in god(s). Notice too that she remains open to returning to belief—a further sign of conscious choice and high agency. Significantly, these are benefits of identity category membership, not the benefits of disclosing that membership (the latter is common in coming out discourse of all types).

Other writers allude to the benefits of atheism in briefer phrasing, including mentions of being “blissfully without religion for 48 years” (N46) and “happily atheist” (N50).

Mixed Agency Atheism

One of the most striking features of the narratives is the way they mix high- and low-agency representations of atheism without apparent difficulty or contradiction. As Table 3 shows, 10 of the narratives include both high- and low-agency moves.

Table 3.

Numerical Distribution of High-/Low-Agency Moves in the Narratives.

Only high-agency moves	Only low-agency moves	Both	Neither	Total
14	16	10	10	50

The 10 hybrid narratives show that high- and low-agency representations of atheism are not mutually exclusive. They break down the high-/low-agency binary, making their coming out discourse flexible. For example:

Eventually I came to terms with my self knowing if I stayed devoted to both I might end up killing myself from the confusion, so I picked science and scolded how foolish I was listening to my parents, soon after that I realised I would’ve probably killed myself or worse if I decided to stay Christian when I realised I was gay. (N1)

John, whose narrative identifies him as a former Baptist, uses the phrases “coming to terms” and “myself” to describe atheism (low-agency moves), but he also uses decision verbs that give him higher agency in his identification as an atheist. He writes that he could have decided to stay Christian but instead picked science. Another example:

For two years I have continued being an atheist and I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Once you know the truth, there is no going back. . . . This story I posted was about more than adjusting into atheism. It is also about accepting who you are and believing that you can always trust a good friend with your darkest secrets. (N10)

The writer uses coming-to-terms type phrases that suggest immutable identity and low agency: “adjusting to” and “accepting” atheism. At the same time, the writer uses the decision verb phrase “continued being,” which connotes an active state, something that persists because of an ongoing choice. Even more remarkable, he undermines the immutability of his atheism by suggesting uncertainty—he doesn’t think he’ll ever go back.

In N35, titled “Born Atheist, Raised Mormon,” the writer describes how he “realized [he] had been an Atheist [his] entire life.” Placing his atheism prior to his own awareness (at birth, no less) makes it an immutable identity. He writes that he “was born an Atheist” and has “never believed in a god, no matter how many times [he] tried to convince [himself] otherwise.” Invoking the language of LGBTQ coming out discourse, he ends his narrative by writing, “Sorry, Dad. I was just born this way.” And yet, the writer also recounts that, at 30, he “decided to stop searching for god” and elsewhere explains that he “choose[s] to accept the reality that no empirical evidence exists to prove there is a god” (emphasis added). Despite being “born atheist” the writer at least partly conceptualizes atheism as something one decides or chooses.

Conclusion

The idea that one is “born that way”—that one’s identity category membership precedes choice, agency, and even discursive representation—circulates widely in LGBTQ coming out discourse (Grindstaff, 2006, p. 66), though with some notable exceptions (Bennett, 2014). For political reasons, it can be tempting to claim low agency as part of an effort to essentialize identity category membership (R. R. Smith & Windes, 2000, p. 101). This analysis suggests that some atheists resist that pattern, blending high- and low-agency representations of their identity category. In their uses of coming out discourse, these atheists include themes of choice, deliberation, and even uncertainty in their narratives. But why have atheists adapted coming out discourse in this way, and why does it matter, not just for atheist rhetoric but also for discourses of identity writ large?

Atheist coming out narratives may include both high- and low-agency moves because they reflect differing experiences of atheism. Some feel they were born skeptical, while others conceptualize their atheism as a working hypothesis, a product of deliberation that could change. Another explanation is that atheists attribute high or low agency based on their rhetorical goals. For those whose primary goal is to argue that atheists do not deserve the social opprobrium to which they have been subjected (as documented by Brewster, Robinson, Sandil, Esposito, & Geiger, 2014; Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011), low agency can seem like a good choice. In some LGBTQ political discourse, low-agency representations of identity implicitly argue that if someone is “born that way” and cannot change, the person deserves legal equality and better treatment. There is some evidence that this argument works: Political scientists Donald Haider-Markel and Mark Joslyn (2005) demonstrated a positive correlation between support for same-sex marriage and the belief that homosexuality is a biological, inborn trait. Janet E. Halley (1991) identifies a similar “immutability argument” as a key component in judicial arguments to constitute LGBTQ people as a distinct class deserving of legal protection (pp. 358-359).

On the other hand, if atheists’ primary goal is to exhort others to become atheists, a higher agency representation of atheism makes sense. Unlike homosexuals, some atheists do want to recruit and convince others to question and abandon religious belief. For instance, Greta Christina (2014) claims that disclosing one’s atheism is worthwhile partly because “coming out actually helps create other atheists” (p. 23, emphasis original). With this goal in mind, higher agency representations of atheism may work better because they model a process by which one can become an atheist (e.g., reading atheist books, embracing doubt, reading religious texts critically). This process is open to anyone, not just those who were born skeptical and pride themselves on never having believed in Santa Claus. Narratives that include both high- and low-agency representations may take both stances (protesting mistreatment and exhorting others to become atheists), though they have the added challenge of avoiding internal contradiction.

These findings go beyond atheism and coming out discourse; they show how the attribution of personal agency can break open sometimes-monolithic identities. When we claim some agency over our identity category memberships, we open the door to a more substantive public dialogue about who we are. Lower agency representations, though perhaps useful for claiming rights, leave us in a defensive posture. We are born this way, we cannot change, and we deserve protection. Higher agency representations—even if they are mixed with low-agency moves, as in the hybrid narratives described above—are richer insofar as they shift us away from “I was born this way; deal with it” and toward “here’s what I think I know and why.” Identity category membership becomes open for discussion, deliberation, even negotiation. I am not claiming that LGBTQ uses of coming out discourse never do this—indeed, Bennett (2014) shows that some do. Nor am I claiming that the narratives examined above represent a sea change in coming out discourse; after all, they rely on low- and high-agency moves in nearly equal measure. What the narratives do is showcase the flexibility and possibility of coming out discourse. They exemplify what coming out discourse and other discourses of identity can be: an exploration as well as a declaration, a chance to give voice to more complex visions of who we are, what we do, and why.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback. He is grateful to Linda Flower, Kate Kiefer, Eric Aoki, Tom Dunn, and Lisa Langstraat for commenting on versions of this article. Sarah Sloane and Louann Reid also offered valuable advice during the revision process.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Doug Cloud is an assistant professor of English (rhetoric and composition) at Colorado State University. His scholarship focuses on the connections between rhetoric, social change, and identity in three areas: LGBTQ rights, atheism, and climate change.

References

Anspach

Coe

Thurlow

(2007). The other closet? Atheists, homosexuals and the lateral appropriation of discursive capital. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(1), 95-119.

Asen

(2000). Seeking the “counter,” in counterpublics. Communication Theory, 10(4), 424-446.

Bennett

(2014). “Born this way”: Queer vernacular and the politics of origins. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(3), 211-230.

Birken

S. A.

Borelli

J. L.

(2015, January 14). Coming out as academic mothers. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://m.chronicle.com/article/Coming-Out-as-Academic-Mothers/151157/?cid=gs&utm_source=gs&utm_medium=en

Brewster

M. E.

Robinson

M. A.

Sandil

Esposito

Geiger

(2014). Arrantly absent: Atheism in psychological science from 2001 to 2012. Counseling Psychologist, 42(5), 628-663.

Bruner

(1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54(1), 11-32.

Bruner

(1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1-21.

Bucholtz

Hall

(2003). Language and identity. In Duranti

(Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 369-394). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Butler

(1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York, NY: Routledge.

10.

Campbell

K. K.

(2005). Agency: Promiscuous and protean. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2(1), 1-19.

11.

Chauncey

(1994). Gay New York: Gender, urban culture, and the makings of the gay male world, 1890-1940. New York, NY: Basic Books.

12.

Chávez

K. R.

(2004). Beyond complicity: Coherence, queer theory, and the rhetoric of the “gay Christian movement.” Text and Performance Quarterly, 24(3/4), 255-275.

13.

Christina

(2014). Coming out atheist: How to do it, how to help each other, and why. Durham, NC: Pitchstone.

14.

Cimino

Smith

(2007). Humanism and atheism beyond progressive secularism. Sociology of Religion, 68(4), 407-424.

15.

Coming Out Godless Project. (n.d.). The Coming Out Godless Project: Share your story. Retrieved from http://comingoutgodless.com/

16.

Cooper

M. M.

(2011). Rhetorical agency as emergent and enacted. College Composition and Communication, 62(3), 420-449.

17.

Dawkins

(2006). The God delusion. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

18.

D’Emilio

(1983). Sexual politics, sexual communities: The making of a homosexual minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

19.

Dick

(2015). Atheism in religious clothing? Accounting for atheist interventions in the public sphere. Culture and Religion, 16(4), 372-391.

20.

Elizalde

(2015, May 5). When I “came out” as Mexican. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/05/opinions/elizalde-coming-out-mexican/index.html

21.

Enriquez

L. E.

Saguy

A. C.

(2016). Coming out of the shadows: Harnessing a cultural schema to advance the undocumented immigrant youth movement. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 4(1), 107-130.

22.

Epstein

(1992). Gay politics, ethnic identity: The limits of social constructionism. In Stein

(Ed.), Forms of desire: Sexual orientation and the social constructionist controversy (pp. 239-293). New York, NY: Routledge.

23.

Fairclough

(1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

24.

Fairclough

(2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. New York, NY: Routledge.

25.

Fraser

(1993). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In Calhoun

C. J.

(Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 109-142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

26.

Gervais

W. M.

Shariff

A. F.

Norenzayan

(2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1189-1206.

27.

Grindstaff

D. A.

(2006). Rhetorical secrets: Mapping gay identity and queer resistance in contemporary America. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

28.

Gross

(1993). Contested closets: The politics and ethics of outing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

29.

Guenther

K. M.

Mulligan

Papp

(2013). From the outside in: Crossing boundaries to build collective identity in the New Atheist Movement. Social Problems, 60(4), 457-475.

30.

Haider-Markel

D. P.

Joslyn

M. R.

(2005). Attributions and the regulation of marriage: Considering the parallels between race and homosexuality. PS: Political Science and Politics, 38(2), 233-239.

31.

Halley

J. E.

(1991). Misreading sodomy: A critique of the classification of “homosexuals” in federal equal protection law. In Epstein

Straub

(Eds.), Body guards: The cultural politics of gender ambiguity (pp. 351-377). New York, NY: Routledge.

32.

Hart

R. P.

(1978). An unquiet desperation: Rhetorical aspects of “popular” atheism in the United States. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 64, 33-46.

33.

Hunsberger

Altemeyer

(2006). Atheists: A groundbreaking study of America’s nonbelievers. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

34.

Jasinski

(1998). A constitutive framework for rhetorical historiography: Toward an understanding of the discursive (re)constitution of “Constitution” in the Federalist Papers. In Turner

K. J.

(Ed.), Doing rhetorical history: Concepts and cases (pp. 72-92). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

35.

Johnstone

(2008). Discourse analysis (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

36.

Liang

A. C.

(1997). The creation of coherence in coming-out stories. In Livia

Hall

(Eds.), Queerly phrased: Language, gender, and sexuality (pp. 287-309). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

37.

Linde

(1993). Life stories: The creation of coherence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

38.

McAfee

D. G.

(2012). Mom, dad, I’m an atheist: The guide to coming out as a non-believer. London, UK: Dangerous Little Books.

39.

McGowan

(2013). Atheism for dummies. Mississauga, ON: John Wiley.

40.

Mehta

(2012). The young atheist’s survival guide: Helping secular students thrive. Englewood, CO: Patheos Press.

41.

Miller

C. R.

(1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 151-167.

42.

Miller

C. R.

(2007). What can automation tell us about agency? Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 37(2), 137-157.

43.

Murphy-Hiscock

(2009). Out of the broom closet: 50 true stories of Wiccans who found and embraced the craft. Avon, MA: Adams Media.

44.

Ochs

Capps

(1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19-43.

45.

Outland

(2000). Coming out: A handbook for men. Los Angeles, CA: Alyson Books.

46.

Pew Research Center. (2015, May 12). America’s changing religious landscape. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

47.

Rath

(2003, October 31). Coming out of the conservative closet. Stanford Daily. Retrieved from http://www.stanforddaily.com/2013/10/31/coming-out-of-the-conservative-closet/

48.

Rhodes

(2014). The atheistic voice. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 17(2), 323-347.

49.

Ritivoi

A. D.

(2009). Explaining people: Narrative and the study of identity. StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, 1(1), 25-41.

50.

Saguy

A. C.

Ward

(2011). Coming out as fat: Rethinking stigma. Social Psychology Quarterly, 74(1), 53-75.

51.

Sedgwick

E. K.

(1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.

52.

Signorile

(1995). Outing yourself: How to come out as lesbian or gay to your family, friends, and coworkers. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

53.

Smith

J. M.

(2011). Becoming an atheist in America: Constructing identity and meaning from the rejection of theism. Sociology of Religion, 72(2), 215-237.

54.

Smith

J. M.

(2013). Creating a godless community: The collective identity work of contemporary American atheists. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52(1), 80-99.

55.

Smith

R. R.

Windes

R. R.

(1999). Identity in political context: Lesbian/gay representation in the public sphere. Journal of Homosexuality, 37(2), 25-45.

56.

Smith

R. R.

Windes

R. R.

(2000). Progay/antigay: The rhetorical war over sexuality. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

57.

Stein

(2014). Immutability and innateness arguments about lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights. Chicago-Kent Law Review, 89(2), 597-640.

58.

Urschel

J. C.

(2005). Coming out of the green closet: Wealth discourse and the construction of social change philanthropists. In Faber

D. R.

McCarthy

(Eds.), Foundations for social change: Critical perspectives on philanthropy and popular movements (pp. 245-270). Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.

59.

Vargas

J. A.

(2011, June 22). My life as an undocumented immigrant. New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html

60.

Weir

K. N.

(2003). Coming out of the adoptive closet. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

61.

Whisman

(1996). Queer by choice: Lesbians, gay men, and the politics of identity. New York, NY: Routledge.