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Relationship Status and Marital Intention Among Chinese Gay Men and Lesbians: The Influences of Minority Stress and Culture-Specific Stress

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Abstract

Marriage and offspring play an essential role in mainland China, and most sexual minorities face enormous pressure to get married because of traditional culture. In Chinese Confucian culture society, gay men and lesbians experience culture-specific stress due to the conflict between same-sex attraction and conventional notions of filial piety and the morality perception of getting married. This study explored how minority stress and traditional culture-specific stress (i.e., perceived filial piety of getting married and the morality perception of mixed-orientation marriage) are related to relationship status and affect the intention to marry among gay men and lesbians in China. Participants (326 gay men and 168 lesbians) completed an online questionnaire that assessed minority stress (i.e., internalized homophobia, self-concealment), perceived filial piety of getting married, the morality perception of mixed-orientation marriage, relationship status, and marital intention. Results indicated that participants with high minority stress, who perceived getting married as filial piety, and who did not perceive mixed-orientation marriage as immoral were more likely to be in an opposite-sex relationship or have a greater intention to marry than were their counterparts. Culture-specific stress had a stronger impact on marital intention for gay participants than for lesbians. Minority stress facilitated the influences of culture-specific stress on marital intention. The findings indicated that both minority stress and culture-specific stress shape the marital intention among Chinese gay men and lesbians, and minority stress has more extensive influences on marital intention than culture-specific stress.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU1709244).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing, China

    Guangju Wen & Lijun Zheng

  2. Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Guangju Wen & Lijun Zheng

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  1. Guangju Wen
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Correspondence to Lijun Zheng.

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Wen, G., Zheng, L. Relationship Status and Marital Intention Among Chinese Gay Men and Lesbians: The Influences of Minority Stress and Culture-Specific Stress. Arch Sex Behav 49, 681–692 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01528-6

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