Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
In November 2017 I wrote about pie baking.
And in November 2015 I also wrote about pie baking.
In November 2016, I was destroyed by the “election” and wrote a post in November of that year “For Strong Women” just to help many of us keep going.
Continue reading “And the Pies! Ongoing Grateful Thanks for Tradition by Marie Cartier”
Why is this bar still important? (Read Part I)
For the gender queer, marginalized community who are testing the waters of gender difference by frequenting this bar, many for the first time, for the pool leagues, and yes, the college folks, but also the working class people, and the tentative younger folks, this may be “the only place.” For the democracy of a gay bar creates a conversational cauldron for marginalized people to “hear themselves 
into speech” to quote the theological Nelle Morton.
I am quoted in an article done by Virginia Pilot report Amy Poulter saying that “LGBTQ bars are also tasked with filling in the gaps as religious spaces, support groups and the go-to location to celebrate milestones and mourn losses. Bars like Hershee are often the only place LGBTQ people feel at ease and comfortable in their own skin.”
And I added, “And the council, they need to realize what they have before they destroy it.” Continue reading “The Hershee Bar: Saving A Lesbian Sacred Place (While there is still one left) by Marie Cartier (Part II)”
I spent last weekend in Norfolk, Virginia. I was brought there by the folks at Old Dominion University; my visit was brainstormed and facilitated by y Professor Cathleen Rhodes who teaches in the Women’s Studies Department and also manages a magnificent archive of historic LGBTQ+ spaces The Tidewater Queer History Project. This project has a walking tour of significant LGBTQ+ spaces in the area, an online archive, and graduate students intensely interested in archiving the remains of past and current LGBTQ+ sites for study, and community.
I was brought to the area because I wrote the book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bas and Theology Before Stonewall. The thesis of my book is that gay bars before 1975 (pre-Stonewall) served as alternate church spaces and community centers for people exiled from all other spaces. There was literally no other public space for gay women to go in the 40s through the early 70s, as so attested to by 100+ informants that I interviewed for the book. Continue reading “The Hershee Bar: Saving A Lesbian Sacred Place (while there is still one left) by Marie Cartier (Part I)”
I need the grandmothers to help me
re-member my rage.
Cross stitch. Double knot. I sew it back on. The raggedy parts I let fly loose
when I thought it was OK to not be “so angry.”
“Boys will be boys.”
And so then, girls will be angry.
And we will re-member—our rage.
I need the great aunts, and all the old women with the signs that read,
“We are still protesting this shit.”
I need them, this herstory to help me
re-member my rage, feel it strong and tight. Cross stitch. Double knot. Those women re-member
me. I am that woman. She is me.
Our rage is a song.
After all this time, we are still singing it. Our rage
is a river and we swim in it, even if it’s upstream. There is a fierce mermaid goddess,
Yemaya. She protects us. She knows
our rage is our best defense.
Our rage is a
swarm of bees. Not yet extinct. Our rage
is holy. Terror. Continue reading “Poem: #MeToo, We Re-Member by Marie Cartier”
A friend of mine has been in hospice with Alzheimer’s. And she died today. There will be a day when I write about Barbara… what a great friend she was. How I hate that she is no longer in my life. How I know how hard it is for her spouse to lose her. How hard it is when someone so vibrant leaves your community.
But writing about her was not what I could do today. And today is when I had this blog due. I decided after I learned that she had passed – to garden. Barbara used to help my wife water the garden. It was something comforting and familiar and useful that she did with us.
I started this blog June 18, 2018, writing about the horrific policy of the trump administration of separating children from their parents who seek asylum at the border. And this is where we are…a human rights disaster.
Then I watched with the rest of the nation as Rachel Maddow, our top news reporter, cried while trying to report the news that the Trump Administration has opened and is using three “Tender Age” facilities to house children 3 years and younger. They will soon be opening a fourth.
Continue reading “Then They Came for the Immigrant and Refugee Children by Marie Cartier”
Last year I published a photo essay with pictures of Long Beach, CA’s Pride week-end. You can see last year’s photo essay here. I also published a photo essay of the Los Angeles Resist March from last year here.
It feels more important than ever to re-member/ re-attach ourselves to the normality of resistance, freedom, solidarity, courage and joy. I hope the pictures here help you FAR family to re-member your activist selves and re-invigorate them if they are in need of it. I know mine was before the past week-end. Here are photos from the Long Beach Dyke March on Friday night, and the Long Beach Gay Pride parade on Sunday morning.
Continue reading “Long Beach, California – 2018 Pride! by Marie Cartier”
So, I am perusing my twitter feed and I come across this headline:
White House Bible Study Led by Pastor Who Is Anti-Gay, Anti-Women and Anti-Catholic
The opening paragraphs read like my LGBTQ+ religious studies nightmare:
“The first Bible study group held for the U.S. Cabinet in at least 100 years is led by a pastor who believes homosexuality is ‘illegitimate,’ who doesn’t believe women should preach and has described Catholicism as a ‘false’ religion.
Ten members of the Cabinet, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, sponsor the study group, which holds meetings lasting between one hour and 90 minutes every Wednesday, according to BBC News. It unfolds at a location in Washington, D.C., that is kept secret for security reasons.
Its leader is Ralph Drollinger, a pastor and president of Capitol Ministries: an organization which aims to ‘evangelize elected officials and lead them toward maturity in Christ.’”
It’s where I went when I wanted to be around other gay people when John Kerry debated George Bush in 2004 for the presidency. I had just moved to Long Beach from Los Angeles and I was still figuring out the city. I didn’t have access to the debate on my TV at home, and I needed to see it. The bartender turned it on for me and we all gathered around and watched. By we all, I mean the gay men and lesbians who frequented that corner café and bar.
I remember laughing so hard that day when someone in the bar said what I still love as a quote, “John Kerry: Bring complete sentences back to the White House.”
Later when I met my girlfriend, who would become my wife, we were living a few blocks apart and in the middle of those few blocks was The Paradise Café. We didn’t have access to the lesbian TV series smash The L-Word. We often went to the Paradise and guilted them into turning it on. We’d sit at the bar with French fries, which to this day I think are the best fries in Long Beach, and watch The L-Word, chiding a lot of gay men around us that they needed to watch to and catch up on this “amazing show!!”
It was where I went, where tons of us went after gay marriage was declared legal in California. I went in with a friend of mine, Carolyn Weathers, who is the cover girl on my book, Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall (BYAMR).
Continue reading “Another Gay Bar Closes – Paradise Lost by Marie Cartier”
Here we are, as I write this, a week after the horrible shooting of 17 students and teachers in Parkland, Florida. And the beginnings of a new student led movement: #NeverAgain—never another school massacre like what happened in Florida.
Today, one week after this horrific event, you had massive student walk-outs all over the country to protest the government’s refusal to do anything substantive about it. Here are images of student protests.
One of the out spoken survivors of the Parkland shootings, Emma Gonazlez, has turned into a spokeswoman/teen, for the movement, fueled by her fiery speech the day after the shootings.
She has continued to speak out as have the other students.
And the movement grows.
I am a college teacher, a college teacher in two public universities. I teach students one to four years older than the students at Parkland. Last week at one of the public schools I teach at there was an active shooter warning that turned into a hoax. I have in the past been on lock down because an active shooter was on campus. This is a very real problem for me.
Today I heard the president of the United States suggest that the solution to the every growing problem of gun violence is to arm teachers or other school officials with weapons. As a black belt in karate, I have had gun training and gun safety as part of my training and it is part of my self-defense resume. I had to learn it. What I can tell you about owning a gun (which I don’t) is that having a gun is not the same as knowing how to us one. I know how to disarm someone, if I am lucky and the fight goes in my favor. Anyone with any experience in self-defense will tell you that the quickest way to escalate a situation is to introduce a gun into the situation.
Continue reading “Activism Helps You Heal: #RESIST #NeverAgain by Marie Cartier”
