Abstract
M.A.
This study is a phenomenological case study *i.e. the focus is on the participant’s personal descriptive experience] using responsive interviewing [i.e. the interviewer allows the interviewee to determine the direction and content of the interview] in an effort to understand the personal challenges that a Jewish male homosexual person, Irvin, has to face in the current South African context of the 21st century. What is revealed is that for a man to remain true to his religious convictions and at the same time to embrace his homosexual desires is by no means an easy balancing task. Yet the merger of a religious identity with a homosexual identity can become an inspirational example of what it is to live a truly authentic life, in which ‘compromise’, far from being a negative means to an end, becomes central to what it means to be genuinely authentic.