The New Religious Rite

A Symbolic Interactionist Case Study of Lesbian Commitment Rituals

Bibliographic Data

ID12459150
AuthorsKrista Mcqueeney (University of North Carolina Health Care, corresponding author), Krista B McQueeney
Year2003
Volume7
Issue2
Pages49-70
Publication date2003-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Lesbian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1089-4160 • E-ISSN: 1540-3548
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1300/j155v07n02_05
PMID24815894
OpenAlexW1972085416
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited18

Despite the legal and religious establishment's denial of rights and recognition to same-gender couples, many lesbians and gay men are adapting and/or creating their own rituals to affirm their commitments to each other. This article uses participant observation of a black lesbian couple's shower and holy union ceremony to explore the multiple and competing meanings attached to the ritualistic symbols and narratives they incorporated. I seek to complicate the existing framework, in which rituals are held to produce feelings of belonging for participants and serve as vehicles for the social transformation of marginalized groups (e.g., Driver, 1991). By adapting and appropriating ritualistic elements often used in heterosexual weddings, I argue that this couple and their ritual coordinators succeeded in creating a sense of social order, "communitas" (Turner, 1969), and personal and social transformation for some participants. However, I also suggest that the achievement of these functions hinged on the creation of symbolic out-groups and the reproduction of social conventions around gender, the family, and the "appropriate" expression of sex in marriage, which diminished the experience of communitas and social transformation for other participants. Future research should focus on the competing expectations and interpretations participants bring to their experiences of rituals and the ways in which existing structures of power and authority may limit rituals' social functionality, creation of communitas, and revolutionary potential

Ceremony · Communitas · Lesbian · Liminality · Power (physics · Rite · Sociology · Symbolic interactionism · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Social Psychology

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