#queer virtue

I'm reading a book called Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity. It is so good. It's by a lesbian Episcopal priest, the Reverend Elizavlbeth M. Edman, and it's incredible. She used the genderneutral pronouns Ze/Hir for God and includes genderqueer and trans people in her writing. I'm only on the 4th chapter but it's an incredible read about how Chrisitanity can be considered inherently queer.

Central to queer sensibility [is] the understanding that the most important thing we can do for ourselves and for one another is to tell the truth - about our inherent value; about who we are; about the multiplicity of our experiences; about who is still struggling and what they/we are still struggling with, and what we're going to do about it.

In Praise of "Queer Virtue"

Queer individuals are called to perceive a truth inside themselves, name it as an identity marker, reckon with it, tell the truth about it even in the face of hostility, find others who perceive a comparable identity marker, and build community for the betterment of all of us. That, to me, is the essence of a spiritual journey. It is more than that. In my faith tradition, we refer to this as a call. It is a vocation.

If you open your eyes to see a young person doing the bold work of naming hir sexual identity, and you observe a person 'of faith' holding a spiritual knife over that young person's soul, it is impossible not to see that the young person is doing what the church is supposed to be doing: trusting, risking, for the sake of love. This is exactly the moment when the church is supposed to hear the voice of God saying, 'Put the knife down. This child is innocent.' If this is a test, it is not a test of the child.