Reconciling sexual orientation and Christianity: Black same-gender loving men's experiences

This qualitative study examined the methods that Black same-gender loving (SGL) men used to reconcile their sexual orientation and Christianity. Specifically, the study sought to answer two questions: (1) What does it mean to Black SGL men to have reconciled their Christian beliefs and participation with their sexual orientation? and (2) What specific methods do Black SGL men use to reconcile their Christian beliefs and participation with their sexual orientation? Seven Black Christian SGL men participated in the study. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was conducted and yielded eight themes: happiness with and acceptance of self; sense of integrity; geographically distancing self from family and home church; personal interpretation of Biblical text; educating self about same-sex sexual orientation; seeking interpersonal support from and providing interpersonal support for other Black SGL people; use of lived experiences to guide actions; and reconciliation as a practice. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

What Not to Multiply Without Necessity

The Razor commands us not to multiply entities without necessity. I argue for an alternative principle—The Laser—which commands us not to multiply fundamental entities without necessity.     

Exploring Asian American racial identity

In this study the authors used cluster analysis to create racial identity profiles for a sample of Asian Americans using the People of Color Racial Identity Attitudes Scale (PCRIAS). A four-cluster solution was chosen: each cluster corresponded to one PCRIAS subscale and was named accordingly. Scores on the Asian American Racism-Related Stress Inventory and the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale were compared across clusters. As expected, the Dissonance and Immersion clusters were characterized by relatively high racism-related stress and low levels of color-blind attitudes; the Conformity cluster showed roughly the opposite pattern. Surprisingly, the Internalization cluster showed a pattern similar to that for Conformity and thus may reflect "pseudoindependence" as discussed by Helms.     

Some men like it black,some women like it pink: consumer implications of differences in male and female website design

• The World Wide Web doubles in size roughly every 2–3 months and dramatic claims are made about the effectiveness of Web‐based commercial efforts. The centrality of non‐price mechanisms of differentiation to the perception, enjoyment and ease of use felt using websites is acknowledged but the only statistically rigorous studies of factors such as form and content have been conducted within a universalist paradigm of aesthetics. This paper reports on an interactionist approach to web aesthetics involving an analysis of 60 male‐ and female‐produced websites. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences between the male‐ and female‐produced websites on 13 out of the 23 factors analysed. These differences span issues of navigation as well as linguistic and visual content. The paper argues that the appeal of websites can be maximised if they mirror the needs and interests of their target populations and that websites targeted at male or female dominated markets need to reflect the aesthetic diversity found in the male‐ and female‐produced websites analysed here. It also presents information on the demographics of the IT profession, showing that there is a potential imbalance between the percentage of women involved online and those involved in the IT profession. This suggests that the male domination of the IT profession could be a barrier to the effective mirroring of female Website preferences.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.