Abstract
M.A. (Clinical Psychology)
Same-sex marriage is legally recognized in South Africa and thereby casting gay men as acceptable sexual citizens. Gay men who choose not to marry are subject to further sexual discrimination. To explore the constructions and social meanings of gay men in same-sex marriage, four self-identified gay men who had been married for at least a year were interviewed. Guided by a social constructionist epistemology, discourse analysis of these interviews exposed the effects of language in the shaping of identities. The analysis found that the married gay man positions himself as a ‘decent’ sexual subject and assumes the heterosexist ideology of marriage, which discriminates the single gay man as amoral and ‘deviant’. The married gay men used the discourses of healing, othering, protection, rights and playing straight that entrenched heteronormativity as a moral and sexual authority thereby reinforcing homophobic prejudice. Policy and socio-political recommendations were made to address the legal concept of equality from a Queer Theoretical perspective and for the training of psychologists to include critical engagement with gay subjectivity and the gay cultural world.