Conversations about Psychology and Sexual Orientation

Front matter

JANIS S. BOHAN

AND,GLENDA.M. RUSSELL

WITH. VIVIENNE CASS;

Contents

Contributors

Introduction: The Conversation Begins Glenda M. Russell and Janis S. Bohan

Conceptual Frameworks Janis S. Bohan and Glenda M. Russell

Chapter 1 Consider these quandaries

* A client enters psychotherapy seeking to find his “true” sexual orientation. He has had satisfying sexual and emotional relationships with women for many years but now finds himself attracted to a man.

* Researchers design a study to investigate the relationship between mental health and the level of disclosure of lesbian identity. A potential participant in the study demurs, insisting that the label “lesbian” does not match her sense of self, although she is in a long-term, exclusive relationship with another woman.

°- A law intended to ensure equal rights for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals is challenged by a right-wing group, which insists that sexual orientation is not a genuine axis of identity, that it can change, and that it is sometimes actively chosen. In support of its position, the group cites findings from cross-cultural investigations and psychological research.

In certain domains of discourse regarding sexual orientation, we can find vigorous attempts to address quandaries such as these. Most such attempts lie outside the field of psychology, but increasingly they are finding their way into the psychological literature. At the heart of many such discussions is an appeal to a distinction between essentialist and social constructionist perspectives on sexual orientation. This book is intended to enter into those discussions.

Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Sexual Orientation

Our aim in this book is to explore the implications and ramifications of two very distinctive perspectives on psychological understandings of sexual orientation. In this chapter, we introduce certain core principles of essentialist and social constructionist’ understandings of sexual orientation; these principles serve as a framework for a more detailed discussion of the implications of each approach for psychological praxis. Actually, it is oversimplified to speak of “an approach” in either case. Each of these perspectives entails a very convoluted set of principles, the complexity of which cannot be adequately addressed in the space available here. However, we hope to provide sufficient introduction of key elements to ground later discussions of implications of these approaches. If we are successful in that attempt, we will have tools to unpack the complexity of the issues raised here, as well as to raise others.

Ontology and Epistemology

It may be helpful to frame this discussion in terms of two intertwined but discernibly distinct levels of analysis: the ontological and the epistemological. The ontological domain addresses the question of what is: what is the nature of reality? In the case of sexual orientation, the pertinent question is this: in what sense can sexual orientation be said to exist as an actual element of reality? The epistemological domain, on the other hand, has to do with questions of knowledge: what is knowledge, how is knowledge attained, what are the criteria that warrant what we take for knowledge?

In what follows, we first examine the essentialist and the constructionist perspectives on sexual orientation, paying attention to the ontological and the epistemological components of each. We then inquire briefly as to the implications of each as it is applied to the sorts of questions that occupy psychology.

Essentialism and Sexual Orientation

The Ontological Domain

The essentialist perspective on sexual orientation is grounded in an ontology of realism—that is, the assumption that the categories employed to discuss reality in fact describe actual phenomena that exist independent of our understandings of them. Thus, from an essentialist perspective, sexual orientation exists as a free-standing quality of individuals, an essential element of individual identity, much as one’s sex, gender,” or ethnic identity.’ Sexual orientation identity, in this view, is present as a component of identity, whether or not it is acknowledged by the individual, observed by others, or given meaning by the culture. It is a fundamental and definitive axis of each individual’s core self, regardless of how that self may be manifested (or hidden) in varying situations.

In addition, essentialist ontology argues that the meaning of sexual orientation is ahistorical and universal. Essentialism asserts that sexual orientation as an element of individual identity has existed throughout history and across cultures; in every time and locale, the sex of one’s partner (or of others to whom one is attracted emotionally and/or sexually) has been a definitive contributor to identity. Thus, across time and culture, there have been individuals who were fundamentally (in contemporary Western terms) heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Whether or not a given culture provided words to designate these identities, whether or not there was an identifiable LGB community, whether or not these people made a point of revealing their identities, there have always and everywhere been people who defined themselves in terms of the sex of those they loved (for further discussion see Bohan, 1996).

From an essentialist ontological stance, then, sexual orientation is an extant trait of the individual, a core aspect of one’s character; such an identity is grounded in the sense that sexuality itself is definitive of one’s identity. One expression of this identity is the choice of one’s partner, with particular focus (in contemporary Western understandings) on the sex of one’s partner. Although attitudes toward variations in sexual orientation may differ across time and culture, these identities themselves have existed transhistorically and universally. They represent fundamental, essential qualities that are made manifest in what we term sexual orientation.

The Epistemological Domain

The essentialist perspective on sexual orientation meshes rather neatly with psychology’s predominant epistemological position, namely positivism. Positivist epistemology is grounded in certain basic assumptions: that there is a real world whose existence and nature are independent of its being observed; that it is possible to know, measure, and quantify this reality through the careful implementation of methodologies that are founded on the certainty of objective, value-neutral observation; and that such careful application of methods allows us to “discover” and “describe” that reality.

This positivist epistemology is perfectly suited to the essentialist perspective on sexual orientation precisely because sexual orientation is taken as an extant phenomenon that can be discovered and described. The task of science, from this perspective, is to reveal the phenomena that define sexual orientation and to answer meaningful questions about them through the application of positivist methodologies.

Social Constructionism and Sexual Orientation

Social constructionism is a relatively recent approach to questions of the meaning of “truth” and “knowledge”—in other words, to questions of both ontology (being) and epistemology (knowledge). Constructionism is relatively less well known than are the realism and positivism that undergird essentialism and that provide the foundation for psychology’s approach to sexual orientation. Accordingly, a brief discussion of the key points of constructionism is in order before we elaborate on its meaning for the topic of sexual orientation.

Social constructionism argues that we do not know reality directly. Rather, what we take as truth—that is, what we take to be an accurate description of reality—is in fact a hypothesis, a best guess based on the limited information available to us. Thus, we do not firmly “know” in the usual sense of having access to an accurate rendition of a free-standing reality. Rather, we come to particular understandings about whatever there is on the basis of the necessarily circumscribed means of knowing that are available to us. These understandings are socially constructed. That is, they are not (simply) the creations of each individual but rather reflect widely shared consensus about the nature of reality. Such understandings are indelibly marked by the beliefs and prior interpretations embedded in our own culture, including assumptions about what questions it is important to ask as well as the concepts available to us to organize our understandings.

In particular, our understandings are shaped by the language we employ and the categories we create to define and describe the phenomena we take to be reality. The straightforward quality of this statement belies the profound change in perspective that it signals. We mean this statement literally. We elaborate on it further as this discussion proceeds and return to it repeatedly throughout the book.

In addition, it is important to recognize that the language and the categories available to us reflect the belief system of the dominant culture, framing our understandings and realities in a manner congruent with that culture’s values. Thus, our shared understandings reproduce, support, and perpetuate the status quo. For example, much of the discourse on sexual orientation from all sides—including from LGB-affirmative positions in psychology and in the culture at large—has been couched in terms of categories defined by this prevailing discourse.

The understandings we construct do not seem to us to be hypotheses but seem self-evidently true. In other words, we believe we describe some extralinguistic reality—a reality that exists outside and beyond discourse—rather than an understanding profoundly shaped by linguistic forms. Although we believe we have “discovered” and are describing reality, we are actually putting language to the visions gained through the lens of our particular context. Rather than describing a free-standing reality, the particular discourse we employ to express our so-called knowledge does not simply represent reality. Rather, that discourse—the language, beliefs, statements, terms, and categories we employ—endows experience with meaning, actually forges the meanings that we take to be reality. Our experience is thus formed not by reality but by discourse, by our particular constructions—which themselves reflect and support familiar cultural understandings (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Gergen, 1985; Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1988, 1990; Sampson, 1993a, 1993b).

To apply this concept to our own circumstance, in the sociocultural milieu in which American psychology currently functions, we “know” that there are two sexes, male and female, and two genders, masculine and feminine.’ The notion that there are two sexes seems self-evident— until, that is, we consider the case of “intersexes,” individuals who do not fit the criteria presumed to place one in one or the other category and who routinely face surgical procedures to “fix” themselves so that they will fit into these arbitrary categories (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 1992; Money, 1987, 1988). Or until we consider cultures that recognize a third and even a fourth gender and that understand these not as variations on the two that seem so obvious to us but as genuinely distinctive categories of sex/gender (Blackwood, 1984; Tafoya, 1992; Whitehead, 1981; Williams, 1986). Such variations in meaning illustrate what is meant by the social construction of reality.

Importantly, the constructionist argument asserts that, no matter how self-evident our own particular deductions appear, they are no more certain, no more directly representative of “truth” than are other, very different understandings. If we cannot know reality directly but only through the limited vision of our own position, then we cannot legitimately assert that our rendition correctly taps some core truth about human experience.’ In contrast to the positivist assumption that we can match our depictions against reality and thereby test their validity, constructionism asserts that there can be no unconstructed standard against which to compare one or another understanding, no criterion for validity in the usual (positivist) sense.

Faced, then, with the question of why one or another idea/construction holds sway, constructionists argue that, since the preference for one construal over another cannot be grounded in an objective match to reality, such preference must reflect some other basis of judgment. The selection of one understanding over another occurs for good reasons, and constructionists insist that it is possible to dismantle (or deconstruct) a given pattern of so-called knowledge to consider why this rather than that particular piece of certainty has evolved. Thus, we can ask the questions “Why this understanding, in this culture and at this time? And what would be the consequences of our adopting a different understanding?” (see especially S. L. Bem, 1993, 1995; Kitzinger, 1987, 1995; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995). Again, notice that the question here is not which construction is more accurate but what are the implications of embracing one or another construction.

The Ontological Domain

Applied to sexual orientation, the constructionist approach suggests that sexual orientation is not a trait or quality of individuals. Rather, it is a socially constructed notion, a construct that imbues certain acts and experiences with a particular meaning; these experiences are taken as expressions of an identity grounded in (what we term) sexual orientation. However, these experiences are not intrinsically or necessarily manifestations of identity, nor need identity be organized around the nature of one’s erotic and affective attachments. Viewed from a different historical or cultural position, these same phenomena would carry a very different meaning. Same- or other-sex attachments would not necessarily be seen as constitutive of identity; indeed, there might be no construct of sexual orientation at all, no sense that the sex of one’s partner is significant to one’s sense of self. In Padgug’s (1989) words,

The members of each society create all of the sexual categories and roles within which they act and define themselves. The categories and significance of the activity will vary as widely as do the societies within whose general social relations they occur. (P. 60)

The Epistemological Domain

From a constructionist perspective, so-called knowledge does not represent a discovery of an independently existing reality but rather the construction of an understanding generated and validated by social discourse. Thus, it is not possible to employ particular methodologies in order to discover and describe the parameters of sexual orientation identity. In contrast to psychology’s positivist stance, constructionism argues that whatever understanding we have of that construct is not a product of objective observation but one of collective exchange—albeit one in which prevailing understandings have disproportionate influence in comparison to less dominant discourse.

In a position that can be seen as straddling the epistemological and ontological domains, constructionism asserts that we actually create rather than describe reality through the discourse we employ and that this creation is dynamic and constantly evolving. The weaker version of this argument contends that what we construct is meaning. That is, the same phenomenon takes on very different meanings in various cultures or across time. Such meaning, in turn, provides a script for how members of that culture relate to the phenomenon in question.

Strong constructionism, on the other hand, insists that we actually construct not only meanings but phenomena themselves through discourse (e.g., Kitzinger, 1995). Thus, naming a thing actually speaks it into being. There is no such thing as extralinguistic reality; our discourse creates what it bespeaks. In terms of sexual orientation, for example, the very notion that one can or should define identity in terms of sexual or affectional preferences causes people indeed to understand themselves in that way. The provision of specific categories “describing” sexual orientation defines for individuals the options available to them. The discourse “describing” characteristics of members of those categories in turn frames individuals’ own self-definitions and shapes their behavior.

Intersections between Essentialism and Constructionism

For the project we undertake here, we have recourse to both essentialist and social constructionist perspectives. Both have contributed to understandings of sexual orientation, and both have value in application to actual events. At the same time, these two perspectives represent significant differences in both epistemological and ontological domains, and any effort to merge the two is, therefore, oxymoronic.

Most psychological research and theory that deal with sexual orientation have derived from an essentialist approach. We naturally draw extensively on this corpus of work to illuminate the essentialist perspective. We also—and here is an oxymoronic twist—draw theory and data drawn from essentialist models to illuminate a social constructionist perspective. We recognize the inherent—and inevitable—contradiction in using essentialist approaches to support a constructionist perspective.

With a parallel twist, we employ a social constructionist framework in two distinct ways. First, we use social constructionism as an epistemological tool for critiquing essentialist approaches to sexual orientation. In this case, social constructionism is an epistemological tool for looking at (and deconstructing the very notion of) sexual orientation. We then use constructionism as an ontological device, offering it as an alternative framework for understanding the phenomena we know as sexual orientation. In what follows, we consider the interrelationship of essentialism and social constructionism on the ontological and the epistemological levels.

The Ontological Domain

Constructionism suggests that the understandings assumed by a particular culture act to frame its members’ experience and to shape their behavior. In this culture, at this time, our understanding or construction of sexual orientation is an essentialist one. That is, the dominant understanding is that sexual orientation is indeed a core, essential, fixed attribute of individual identity.

Sexual orientation may well be a socially constructed meaning imposed on experiences that could equally well accommodate myriad other meanings. However, this particular, essentialist meaning is the one that individuals in this culture are likely to embrace (cf. Cass, 1984, 1990; Schippers, 1989). Thus, individual identities inevitably reflect and instantiate socially constructed understandings.

Each person’s coming to her or his identity involves creating narratives about who she or he is. This is far more than a matter of making up stories, and it implies neither truth nor the absence thereof. Rather, from a constructionist perspective, creating narratives is a dynamic and reiterative process that has generative impact. Creating narratives actually shapes individual identity (e.g., Cass, 1990; Crawford, 1995; Frantz & Stewart, 1994; Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 1995; Park, 1992; Personal Narrative Group, 1989; Sarbin, 1986; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995).

The conceptual categories and the language available for narratives of individual identity necessarily consist of the language and the categories created by our collective constructions of the notion of sexual orientation. People in this culture can thus be expected (from a weak constructionist perspective) to imbue their experience with essentialist meaning. They might also be expected (from a strong constructionist perspective) to be influenced to a large extent by the dictates of essentialist understandings of the categories provided and the attributions associated with those categories. Put directly, the understandings we have (collectively) created become scripts for our (individual) lives.

The Epistemological Domain

When we consider epistemology, the oxymoronic quality of attempts to fuse these two perspectives becomes especially clear. A merger of essentialist and constructionist epistemologies is philosophically impossible; we cannot both “discover” and “construct” reality. Here lies a fundamental challenge to psychology’s approach to sexual orientation. To the degree that the very notion of sexual orientation and the categories contained within it are constructions, positivist analysis cannot yield what it intends—namely, accurate descriptions of independently existing, extralinguistic phenomena.

This last suggestion gives impetus to the constructionist challenge to the notion of validity. If there is no “truth” to which we have recourse, the merits of a particular position must be judged by some criterion other than its validity in the usual sense. From this position, we are encouraged to examine the particular versions of reality that are widely endorsed by this culture. Thus, we might ask, “What is the impact of holding an essentialist view of sexual orientation? Why do we define individual identity in terms of the sex of one’s partner? Why these particular categories rather than some others?” And, a most important question for our purposes here, “What are the implications of one or another understanding of sexual orientation? Who benefits, and how?” These and related queries can be subsumed within the direct and politically crucial question “What purpose is served by one or another position? How is it used, and by whom?”

Psychology, Constructionism, and Sexual Orientation

Considerable recent scholarship across a variety of disciplines has explored a constructionist perspective on sexual orientation, detailing its rationale and implications (e.g., S. L. Bem, 1993, 1995; Butler, 1990, 1993; D’Emilio, 1983, 1992; Foucault, 1979; Greenberg, 1988; Kitzinger, 1987, 1995; McIntosh, 1968; Plummer, 1981; Richardson, 1987; Rust, 1993; Stein, 1996; Tiefer, 1987; Weeks, 1981, 1989). In combination, these works open the way to an analysis of how individuals’ lives are framed by their culture’s understanding of sexual orientation and by their own self-identification as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual.

However, this social constructionist approach to sexual orientation is not widely known outside academia, nor has it guided the psychological literature on the subject to any marked extent. Psychological theory, research, and practice that address sexual orientation—as well as the implementation of psychological understandings in the public sphere— have derived almost entirely from an essentialist approach; this is true in two senses. First, most work in the psychology of sexual orientation begins from the essentialist ontological assumption that sexual orientation is a primary, nuclear quality of self. Second, the psychology of sexual orientation is grounded in the presumption that, by conducting proper research, one can discover and describe the “true” nature of gay/lesbian/bisexual experience. Both positions stand in contrast to the constructionist perspective, which asserts that there is no entity—sexual orientation—to be discovered, investigated, described, or explored; the very object of our curiosity is a social construct shaped by our means of knowing rather than a free-standing phenomenon that can be known directly. Thus, psychology has contributed to as well as been shaped by the cultural understanding of sexual orientation as an essential trait of individuals.

Implications of Essentialist and Constructionist Perspectives

In order briefly to illustrate the implications of the contrast outlined here, we offer several situations that individually and collectively demonstrate the differences between psychological praxis from a constructionist and from an essentialist stance. These illustrations should also make clear the intransigent dilemma that underlies this discussion: there are clearly circumstances in which essentialist understandings provide a strikingly powerful instrument on behalf of those who identify as other than heterosexual, and there are instances where the reverse is true. Thus, the question is not which is “correct” but how we tease out the outcomes of adhering (particularly without reflection) to one or the other point of view. As a means of addressing this question, let us consider several circumstances where the purposes of LGBs may be both served and impeded by each approach.

Coming Out

In both lay and professional literature, the process of “coming out”— coming to a gay, lesbian, or bisexual identity—is portrayed as a discovery; identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual involves the unearthing of something already present, even if hidden, denied, or ignored. Common images include finding one’s true self or “coming home” to the place where one always really belonged. The national support group Parents,

Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) uses the swan to represent LGB people. This symbol, taken from Anderson’s fable “The Ugly Duckling,” fits an essentialist view: LGB individuals are beautiful in their true (LGB) identity, rather than ugly in a false (heterosexual) one. Such portrayals of coming to a nonheterosexual identity represent an essentialist construal of sexual orientation. Incidentally, although the topic receives far less attention, we also hold an essentialist view of heterosexual identity. Although heterosexual individuals do not face the same struggle in coming to this identity, since the heterosexual assumption is simply embraced, we nevertheless assume that those who identify as straight are equally at home, having found (if without struggle) their true self.

This metaphor of discovery makes sense of what is otherwise often experienced as a terribly confusing and painful sense of ill fit in the world. Such coherence is widely understood as a key element to optimal mental health (Morgan, 1991). The provision of a label for oneself and one’s feelings brings closure to the identity confusion that almost surely follows upon the awareness of feelings that are condemned by society (Cass, 1979; de Monteflores, 1986; Troiden, 1989). As a part of the process of coming to terms with this identity, the essentialist understanding of identity as permanent also provides a basis for a new self-narrative, for rereading the past as having contained the seeds of this identity, perhaps throughout one’s lifetime. This reconstruction of identity as always having been gay or lesbian or bisexual lends a sense of continuity to one’s personal history and a sense of integrity to one’s current life (see, e.g., Whisman, 1996).

Further, claiming a lesbian or gay (and perhaps a bisexual) identity provides an entree to the LGB community, with all the attendant support and socialization functions the community serves; it offers other “swans” among whom one feels at home. Like other minority communities, the LGB community takes its collectivity (at least in part) from a sense of shared identity, whether grounded in common experiences, shared oppression, or other signals of unity. A categorical identity is often central to the existence of such communities, and their members may be admitted on the basis of their claiming the appropriate identity. To deny the category of nonheterosexual identity would be to deny this basis for collective identity; to claim it is to open access to the rich resources of community.

Finally, essentialist renditions of coming out may serve a function for heterosexual people as well. First, they reinforce the perception of LGBs as “other,” their identity defined by their deviation from the heterosexual norm. Further, when an individual claims a gay, lesbian, or bisexual identity and does so by appeal to the discovery of a core essential self, she or he contributes to the reification of discrete categories of sexual orientation. This may, in turn, lead heterosexual people to feel safer in their own identity; as long as the categories are distinct and the identity stable across time, they needn’t be concerned that their own identity might somehow transform into a nonheterosexual one.

On the other hand, embracing an essentialist understanding of coming out may lead the individual to distort or disclaim elements of his or her own experience or history in order to match the newly claimed category. Thus, past relationships might be demeaned or regarded as deceitful or inauthentic, despite their having been experienced at an earlier time as good and fulfilling relationships. Personal preferences that are incompatible with the category might be expunged in the name of adhering to the socially constructed confines of the identity. For example, an individual who identifies as lesbian might feel it necessary to quell—and even disown—feelings of attraction to men. A recent highly publicized example of the failure to exorcise such unacceptable feelings is seen in the story of the lesbian sexuality expert Joann Loulan, who is involved in a relationship with a man. While some have supported Loulan’s choice (Cotter, 1997; Faderman, 1997; Martin & Lyon, 1997), many in the LGB community have ostracized her precisely because “real” lesbians do not develop intimate relationships with men (e.g., Clausen, 1990; Gideonse, 1997; Graff, 1997; Lipstadt, 1997; Oakley-Melvin, 1997; Quinn, 1997). The potential loss of Loulan’s contributions to the community and her loss of the support of many in the community are the price exacted by the demand for rigid adherence to discrete, essentialized categories.

This same expectation for adherence to discrete categories can have direct and unfortunate consequences for individual LGBs. People who are convinced that neat categories represent the only acceptable identities may withhold information about themselves that violates this model. Where such information is important, as for example, in health care, its withholding may prove detrimental. Consider the case of an out lesbian who is afraid to tell her physician about her sexual activities with men or the man who identifies as heterosexual and dares not reveal same-sex sexual activity. Consider the case of a gay man who dares not tell his psychotherapist that he is attracted to women or the woman coming to a lesbian identity who feels compelled to conceal from her counselor her continuing involvement with men. Surely the physical or mental health care these individuals receive will be compromised by the limitations they impose on disclosure as a result of the demand to comply with precise categorical boundaries.

Developmental Issues

The dilemmas raised by these two approaches become especially clear when we contemplate their implications for youth coming to a gay, lesbian, or bisexual identity in this culture. On the one hand, a clearly defined identity meets what is portrayed as a central need for adolescents in this culture, namely some sense of structure, clarity, and certainty in a period that often seems uncertain and chaotic. This need is as relevant to heterosexual youth as to LGB adolescents. The crucial difference lies in the differential impact of anticipatory socialization (Herdt, 1989a), the process by which they are taught what to expect of adult life. Given that this socialization is grounded in the heterosexual assumption, heterosexual teens’ sense of sexual orientation identity serves to confirm their place in the normative story of growing up. However, for LGB youth, such socialization provides them with no template for their own life and serves, rather, to highlight their variance from the expectations of the dominant culture. Thus, for LGB teens, although coming to a firm sense of identity can be seen as a major developmental milestone, it is also true that one element of that sense of identity separates them from mainstream society—including the mainstream peer group.

Again, an essentialist approach may allow the teen to lay solid claim to a nonheterosexual identity, granting access to an alternative community. The advantages of such belonging are numerous; at a very basic level, this community may serve as peer group to LGB teens. Given the centrality of peers to the developmental tasks of adolescence and given the rejection often faced by LGB teens, a group that fills this role is indeed important. The LGB community also serves the function of providing affirmation and support for the difficult process of coming to terms with a stigmatized identity—a task especially difficult for youth, who have few psychological or material resources for this struggle.

On the other hand, essentialist understandings of sexual orientation may have unfortunate consequences for youth. We mentioned earlier that such categories restrict individual variation in identity, even among adult LGBs. Such restriction is of even greater concern with adolescents, since the task facing adolescents as understood by this culture—namely to define who they are to be—demands freedom of exploration. The potential life scripts conveyed to adolescents at this vulnerable moment of identity formation may be especially compelling. For youth who claim a gay, lesbian, or bisexual identity, the process of open exploration so necessary for the development of a rich sense of identity may be foreclosed in the name of embracing and striving to play out the part proffered them. The search for and susceptibility to ready-made blueprints for one’s identity may characterize youth of any group. However, the discredited status of bisexual, gay, or lesbian identity clearly imbues sexual orientation identity with unusual salience.