Reddit mentions of Queering Christ: Beyond JESUS ACTED UP

Being in the queer community, these are exactly the types of ethical questions we must grapple with — and the answers from heterosexual theology aren’t really helpful — so, yes, this is the perfect place to ask.

Personally, these types of questions have been sorta driving my spiritual — and intellectual — journey over the past couple years. My husband and I met on OkCupid, but we’ve both been on Grindr on and off throughout our relationship. I don’t think I’ve shared this here before, but to be transparent, we’ve had a third guy come over before. (And I can talk about reasons for that if you’re curious.) Honestly, that’s where we’ve met a lot of our good friends, and it’s how we’ve connected to many folks in the community, especially given how it’s replacing the bar scene to an extent.

The best way I’ve come to process this is through Kathy Rudy’s argument in Sex and the Church. I posted an excerpt here wherein she quotes Robert Shore-Goss’ Queering Christ. Rudy sees that the failure of conservative “family values” morality is that it is insularly focused on the nuclear family. Jesus spoke pretty dismissively about his own family and others holding tightly to biological kinship relations. His main focus was on the wider community. Your relationships should be outwardly focused and for the benefit of the community. As Shore-Goss describes above, that’s what he and his husband were able to accomplish in their relationship. Rudy says — and this should carry some very important caveats and exceptions! — that the gay community’s approach to sex and sexuality is a helpful alternative model.

So I’d also say that it depends. Is there something life-giving and community-strengthening coming out of these experiences or out of the apps?

Greeetings comrade.

>what are some of your favorite Anarchist writings,

Armed Joy by Alfredo Bonanno, Feral Revolution by Wolfi Landstreicher, Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin, The Revolutionary Catechism by Sergei Necheyaev.

>some of your favorite teachings of Jesus

The Parable of the Sheep and Goats and the Parable of the Bags of Gold


>and where they intersect?

I focus a lot on the negative. Hell, damnation, and suffering and I consider the experience of hell to be formative to my politics, if only because I think radical Christianity is a result of existence in a totally inverted world. So let's go to hell...

>Also any book recommendations for me?

Revelation and Revolution: The Basic Writings of Thomas Muntzer

God of the Oppressed by James Cone

Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus Acted Up by Robert Goss

I just finished 'Queering Christ: beyond JESUS ACTED UP' by Robert Goss. It attempts to construct a queer theology. It is mostly focused on gay men, mostly since that's where the author falls, but it does a decent job extending it to Trans/Non-Binary people. The book also has great resources for follow up reads on these topics.

Also check out Indecent Theology by Marcella Althaus-Reid; I haven't finished reading this one yet.

One I haven't even started yet is 'Omnigender' by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. This is specifically a trans-religious approach.

Hope these help :)

*edit: added links.

Morton Smith, a Biblical scholar of great repute, posited that Jesus performed baptism upon the near-nekkid young man and had sex with him. But you know more than him, right? Smith was convinced of Jesus' homosexuality by the young man's affection for Jesus and his lack of clothing. Are you telling us you know more about loin cloths than he did?

In ancient Greece and Rome, bisexuality was institutionalized.

You opined that there were no writings of a gay Jesus, and I countered that I was mentioning two. Here are some more: In John, we have the “beloved disciple,” who lay on Jesus' chest at the Last Supper and whispered to him. When he was crucified, Jesus asked this disciple to take care of his mother, which suggests they were exceedingly close; Jesus was going, “Mom, I’ve married a man. We are gay lovers. So he is your son-in-law. He should live with you now and take care of you.” Of Jesus' disciples, only Peter was married, as almost all Jewish men were; the disciples were common men—fishermen and the like—and not special like men studying law or Moses. A Roman centurion approached Jesus and implored him to heal his seriously ill beloved servant, but Jesus never admonished him for his homosexuality, which was a grave sin. When Satan thrice tempted Jesus in the desert, he never offered him a woman; given that society's hostility to homosexuality, offering him a man wouldn't have been very tempting. Finally, Jesus turned water into wine; a straight man would have turned it into beer. There are so few indications of Jesus' homosexuality that you can fill a book with them.

And by the way, according to the Roman historian Seneca, men were crucified nude; crucifixion was, after all, all about humiliation.

With Jesus' beloved disciple, who “reclined upon the bosom of the Lord” and whispered to him at the Last Supper, you ask if they were sitting or standing. If the disciple lay on Jesus' chest, what do you think? You venture no opinion as to the pair's evident closeness if Jesus requested that this disciple take care of his mother after his death. And this was the only male disciple to attend Jesus' crucifixion. You've left this point unanswered. King James I of England compared his own sexual relationship with the Duke of Buckingham to that between Jesus and his beloved. Elton John also viewed the two as fuckbuddies. Dare you disagree with Elton John?

You denigrate books that speak of Jesus' homosexuality, like this one and [this one](https://www.amazon.com/man-jesus-loved-Theodore-Jennings/dp/082981535X?ie=UTF8&tag=jesusinloveor-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969
) and [this one](http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-holt/gay-gospel-jesus-and-john-the-beloved-disciple/ebook/product-17553396.html
) and this one, but this is after claiming there's no source material. At least you've dropped the suggestion that Clement's letter was forged.