Gay Fathers of Rhode Island
This group meets two times per month and is composed of men who self identify as "gay" and/or "bisexual". Many are in the process of separation and divorce, while some have chosen to remain married All have children of various ages and deal with issues of balancing fatherhood with their newly emerging sexual identity.
Members of this group provide support, validation, and offer specific strategies to help each other manage this complicated and at times confusing issue. The group functions to decrease the sense of isolation these men can feel, and invites them into a sense of relationship with themselves and others as gay/bisexual men.
Gay men who marry and become fathers have two identities that normatively are regarded as contradictory. It is especially difficult for these men to achieve congruence of both identities because each of their separate worlds tends to reject the other identity. Some people are able to understand and accept others whose lives differ from their own and who may share similar experiences. It is these people who provide the solution to the gay father's dilemma, for it is they who through their acceptance, validate him and become his significant others. By developing a social network of significant heterosexual and homosexual [or bisexual] friends, the gay father can enact both identities simultaneously. By functioning both as gay as well as a father, he can eliminate the identity confusion and place himself in the category of GAY FATHER. It is by these means that gay fathers achieve a congruent identity and self-acceptance". - Frank Bozett. Gay Fathers, 1981.
|