“I want you to see this new piece I wrote for our newsletter,” said Sister Ann. We were safe inside the dining room of the Episcopal convent where she lived and I was an extended guest, and yet she spoke… Read More ›
Queer
Lifting the Veil – #WontBeErased by Joyce Zonana
Samhain is upon us. Halloween. The Day of the Dead. All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ Day. That liminal time of year when the doorways to what the Celts called the Otherworld, Annwn in Welsh, are open. In New York City, we have the 45th annual Village Halloween Parade, a queer extravaganza of puppetry, masquerade, and cross-dressing that draws some 60,000 participants and over 2 million onlookers. Elsewhere, we have children in costume and lawns covered with plastic skeletons and illuminated ghouls. Everywhere, if we’re lucky, we might catch a glimpse of “the piper at the gates of dawn,” the vision granted Rat and Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows: “something very surprising and splendid and beautiful”—Pan the goat-god, boundary-crosser, Friend and Helper, trans-being.
Esther’s Choice — And Ours by Joyce Zonana
The Book of Esther tells a story in which women’s power is not so much repressed as asserted. The king who banishes one queen finds himself submitting to the will of another. Numerous women writers of various ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have found inspiration in the stories of both Esther and Vashti’s disobedience to an autocratic king.
Redeeming Gender, Softening Extremes by Christy Croft
Last month, I attended a lecture by Anglican theologian Adrian Thatcher on his recent book, Redeeming Gender. In this book, Thatcher draws upon the one sex and two sex theories described by Thomas Laqueur in his book, Making Sex: Body… Read More ›
The Denied Trans-Childhood of Medusczka by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente
One of my articles in April featured one of the “Niñas Santas Trans”(1). I have been asked often where I came across her and if there are more liken her. Well, she is part of a colorful and provocative project of… Read More ›
Remembering to Be Thankful by John Erickson
Remembering to be thankful may just be a privileged illusion that individuals in positions of power get to write about in the December of each year to self-congratulate themselves about being actually able to be able to be thankful. It may just seem like people who write about being thankful are complaining or pontificating that being thankful is in itself a chore.
To Have and to Hold: Gay Marriage and the Religion Question
If a conservative religious traditions can’t give their mothers or sisters full equality, how can we expect them to give a GLBT individual the time of day?
8 Simple Rules for Being a Queer Godfather by John Erickson
Becoming a Godfather was more than just a reentry into the Catholic traditions I had long given up but rather a journey back in time that would grant me the ability to rewrite the wrongs I felt as a kid growing up in a tradition I not only didn’t understand but also didn’t feel like I belonged in.
The Need for Asexuality in Theological Discourse by Lache S.
Asexuality is an orientation that is misunderstood and marginalized. That is, if it is allowed a presence at all. I consider myself to be sensual, loving to receive and give pleasure, affectionate and romantic, and longing for a relationship that… Read More ›
Sodomy and Gay Men’s Lives by John Erickson
How do we begin to deconstruct the word sodomy so that it no longer associates and elicits hateful propaganda regarding the sexual activity of consenting gay/queer adults? Meaning if often produced, not through a one-to-one relation to things in the… Read More ›
New and Old Queer Frontiers – Redefining Sacred Space by John Erickson
Queer. Sacred. Profane. Bar Culture. One might not easily associate all four of those words in the same category, but Dr. Marie Cartier, a Professor at California State University Northridge, has crossed numerous boundaries in her search for the sacred… Read More ›
On Being a Gay Male Theologian During the War on Women by Dirk von der Horst
For some time, a prominent strand of gay and feminist theory and theology has taken it almost as axiomatic that gay men, lesbians, and straight women have a common stake in dismantling patriarchy. While I have always understood my own… Read More ›
Rara Encarnación By Xochitl Alvizo
Rara Encarnación Encarnación The Word became flesh Why is it always a word? Did the Divine listen first? Hear-ing into be-ing… Or just speaking into being? in to flesh Carne
