**1. Introduction**

Over the last decades, gender studies have produced a deep transformation of socially shared conceptualization of gender and sexual identity. Judith Butler [1] has challenged the ontological value traditionally assigned to dichotomies such as male/female, or straight/gay. She has argued that there is no necessary link between our anatomy and our sexual identities. In Monique Witting's view [2], heterosexuality is not a natural fact, it is a political regime, and categories such as man or woman are normative and alienating.

Gender studies have fostered an important antidiscrimination movement, which has had a substantial impact on politics and culture the world over. For anti-discrimination activists, Christian Churches and particularly the Catholic Church have been and are the focus of a particularly heated polemic. Traditional catholic views of sexuality are very likely the main base for such ideological confrontation.

The social and political basis of such strife lies outside the scope of our competence and interests. The reader can find a comprehensive discussion of the genesis of gender theory within XX century anthropologic and sociological culture in Le Sexe des Modernes, by Éric Marty [3], while Clotilde Leguil relies on Lacan's thought to offer a psychoanalytic perspective on contemporary gender identities [4].

In the present paper, we will rather investigate the anti-clerical polemic in terms of psychodynamics of institutional groups. We will explore the unconscious phantasies and the developmental pathways underlying the commitment to a religious identity versus activism within the anti-discrimination movement. We will show how these conflicting human groups show surprisingly parallel unconscious object relationship patterns, particularly in the area of the Oedipal organization.

To illuminate our view, we will present and discuss a clinical case of a young man featuring both deep religious commitment and enhanced anxieties in the area of child sexual abuse.
