ABSTRACT
In 2004, Evangelical Christians seemed locked into an antagonistic relationship with the gay rights movement. Republican presidential incumbent George W. Bush had made a federal Defense of Marriage amendment central to his re-election campaign, in a strategic bid to rally Evangelical voters. This chapter proposes an explanation to the question of homosexuality by extending the concept of structured ambivalence: inconsistent normative expectations that result from one’s social position and the way those expectations require inconsistent ideology and behavior. It describes how Evangelicals come to experience structured ambivalence about homosexuality, as they perform their religious identity in different social domains. Ambivalence, contains respondents who indicated that sexual relations between individuals of the same sex is “always wrong” or “almost always wrong,” and either strongly agree or agree with homosexuals being allowed civil unions. Within congregational life, Evangelicals reflect on their personal experiences with gays and lesbians to do “everyday theology” about homosexuality.
