Religion and Queer Theory

Queer folks and religion. Although they are frequently at odds with one another, they clearly go together. Many LGBTQ individuals are looking for spiritual homes. At times this is within the religious communities in which they were raised, while at other times, queer individuals look for a home in other religious communities, some that are millennia old, like Buddhism, others that are much more recent such as modern day paganism. And for many religious groups in the early twenty-first century, sexuality, and particular non-heterosexuality, is front and center in terms of religious ethical concerns. Many of the most conservative traditional religious groups reject LGBTQ folks out of hand or demand that they lead lives of celibacy. Fortunately, today there are many more progressive religious groups that are looking to incorporate queer individuals into their religious communities in ways that respect their religious beliefs while at the same time treat queer people of faith with dignity and respect.

The positive use of the term ‘queer’ is a recent trend. Folksin the 1940's, 50's, and 60's used it as a term of derision. Sexuality and gender is no longer tied to simplistic binary ways of thinking. Someone is either gay or straight. These categories, like the general category of ‘homosexual,’ did not exist until the nineteenth century. The French philosopher Michel Foucault describes the genealogy of the concept of homosexuality in his landmark first volume of his “History of Sexuality.” Sexuality today is not seen as completely or nearly completely biologically rooted. Rather, much of what we understand as sexual or gender oriented behavior is culturally constructed. While our notions about sexuality or gender may see these as natural phenomena that are ultimately  about biology, social scientists have shown that this is not the case. Social scientists have demonstrated that the way in which we perceive the world, as well as  behaviors or desires that we think of as natural, as biologically determined, are in actuality  the product of society and our social life. They are socially constructed.

Queer theory attempts to go beyond ‘liberation’ and ‘full rights’ and to decenter us and make us question the primacy of these concepts. Instead, queer, in the words of Ellis Hanson, marks off “a domain virtually synonymous with homosexuality and yet wonderfully suggestive of whole range of sexual possibilities…that challenge the familiar distinction between normal and pathological, straight and gay, masculine men and feminine women” (cited in A. Jagose: Queer Theory: An Introduction,  p. 99).

Looking at sexuality and gender as socially constructed helps us reject a rigid dichotomous thinking that divides everyone into male or female, gay or straight, and ultimately natural or unnatural and good or bad. Many young people today experience gender as much more fluid. They are almost intuitively aware of the constructed nature of gender and sex roles and they creatively play with these areas of life. They are not tied to the older conceptions. This in part helps us understand how young people in America are very open to same sex marriage and find discrimination against LGBTQ individuals as appalling and unacceptable. As these social changes touch our religious communities, they  need to rethink the ways in which they deal with queer individuals, a number of whom are members of their churches and congregations. The good news for LGBTQ folks is that the future looks full of potential. The potential for a normal life with a same sex partner without discrimination in either civil society or in the religious community is within reach. While there are still communities who use models that see queer folks as sinners and condemned by God, more and more faith communities are opening their eyes and their hearts and understanding that equality both in the secular world and in the religious community is a winning strategy for all of us as we move toward the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century.
 

For more on Michel Foucault’s biography, click here. One Unitarian Universalist resource that may prove useful in exploring queer theory in a religious context is the Welcoming Congregation program. This is a voluntary program that congregations take part in so that they can “become more welcoming and inclusive of people with marginalized sexual orientations and gender identities” (UUA, Welcoming Congregation Program website). The UUA offers Queer 101 as well as Resources for Queer Youth.  Patrick Cheng provides an accessible survey of what queer theory is and the way that it relates to relgious questions in Radical Love.  The first few chapters of Radical Love orient someone who is new to queer theory and the book references many of the 'classics'  for those who want to explore queer theory and religion in more detail.