Queering Christianity by Robert E. Shore-Goss

Author:Robert E. Shore-Goss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

STRUGGLING IN THE MARGINS … LURED BY THE CENTER … THE CHALLENGE FACING QUEER THEOLOGY

Postmodern and poststructural theories have brought with them an increasing wave of what writer and director Ali Blackwell refers to as “post-queer” theories, where labels are irrelevant, and “fundamentally [post queer society] is about good manners and an open mind.”7 Increasingly in academia, post-queer discourse manifests as a trend towards post-identity politics and a desexualization of queer theory. Queer theorist David Halperin suggests that “there is something odd, suspiciously odd, about the rapidity with which queer theory—whose claim to radical politics derived from its anti-assimilationist posture, from its shocking embrace of the abnormal and the marginal—has been embraced by, canonized by, and absorbed into our (largely heterosexual) institutions of knowledge.”8 Current headlines in fact contradict this only theoretically apparent lessening of the need for radical queer activism. When one looks at recent disconnected media stories over the past year, a troubling political relationship emerges.

We can start by recollecting statements made by U.S. President Barack Obama’s inaugural pastor, mega-church Pastor Rick Warren, during an election that also included the Californian “Proposition 8” repeal of the state’s legalization of same-sex marriages. Warren’s statement to his thousands of congregants was unequivocal: “Let me say this really clearly: We support Proposition 8. If you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8.”9 It is not a huge leap from this kind of politics dressed in biblical legitimation to Pastor Rick Warren’s antiqueer outreach work in Uganda. Unsurprisingly, queer communities called on Warren to denounce the bill that recently emerged in the Ugandan parliament. The bill “would imprison anyone who knows of the existence of a gay or lesbian and fails to inform the police within 24 hours. It requires the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’—defined as any sexual act between gays or lesbians in which one person has the HIV virus.”10 It is also not surprising that links have been inferred between Warren and antiqueer minister Scott Lively, who has also done prolific antiqueer church work in Uganda. Lively’s own antiqueer rhetoric is clear. In writing, for example, about his belief in a global gay agenda, he states that “Matthew Shepard is the Horst Wessel of the modern ‘gay’ movement,” and equates the mythologizing of Wessel in the rise of Nazism to the gay movement’s “mythologizing” of Matthew Shepherd.11 Warren eventually denounced the Ugandan bill and denied connections to Lively, and Lively himself also denounced the Ugandan bill, saying it was too extreme.12 Despite both ministers’ eventual backpedalling, however, the political damage had already been inflicted, both locally and abroad. These escalating statements are all linked by an implicit assumption—their acceptability because of their religious roots. This kind of antiqueer rhetoric—in campaign speeches, virulent online publications, and national legislation—points to the ongoing need for queer political activism that confronts religiously justified bigotry directly.

The social location for this kind of queer activism, however, has long been a point of struggle within queer religious and secular communities.

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