The Bible is a complex queer text. We must reclaim it from the Christian right.
The Bible is a complex queer text. We must reclaim it from the Christian right.
(RNS) — When one digs just beneath the surface of the Bible and engages its stories in their ancient culture and context, it becomes very clear the Bible is very queer.
NO THE FUCK WE SHOUDLN'T
Let that piece of shit book die with its aging user base.
It has been the number one contributor to the denigration, persecution, torture, and murder of countless people for simply being different than it says.
I see she/her in your username. Please read Timothy 2:12 if you still think you want to live by the bible's teachings. This is the kind of shit you're ironically supporting.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+2%3A12&version=NIV
Pulling things out of context let's you think and justify just about anything. The letter to Timothy is in response to particular people in a particular church at a particular time. Go research it.
But the main point of the whole text is: the world is full of suffering, people are good and people are bad, but we should work to be better and lessen suffering. -Forgive those who trespass against you. Love even your enemies. Those who are not against us are with us. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
The Christian right are literally the kind of judgmental people Jesus criticizes. All good forces should work together, rather than creating strawmen that can split progressives.
I'd argue it being so easy to misinterpret is exactly why it should be allowed to die off as a religious text. Normal idiots DO NOT need any reason to view it as anything more significant than the dead sea scrolls or the like. Just some ancient artifact they know of but don't really care about.
The letter to Timothy is in response to particular people in a particular church at a particular time. Go research it.
I mean, this actually illustrates my point pretty well. What's stopping others from using quotes out of context? Surely this won't be abused, nor has it been abused in the past. /s
But the main point of the whole text is: the world is full of suffering, people are good and people are bad, but we should work to be better and lessen suffering.
Let's start by **NOT **promoting the same book used to persecute LGBTQ, non believers, and believers of other religions. This is not a starting point for this community.
The Christian right are literally the kind of judgmental people Jesus criticizes. All good forces should work together, rather than creating strawmen that can split progressives.
I'm not going to back down on this or agree to work with the christian right. Treating people properly isn't up for negotiation. I've seen this book and its followers hurt real people in real life repeatedly and I won't stand for it being part of some LGBTQ movement. If this book teaches kindness and compassion, then why do its followers insist on acts of malice toward those who don't align? You can't put this book in a position of power and be picky and choosy and interprety about what parts are meaningful and how things should be construed.
FWIW Jesus as told was a good guy who treated people with kindness and compassion. But I will continue to condemn the countless past and ongoing atrocities carried out in his name as well as the book that encourages them. For me, for my family, and for my friends.
Fuck the Bible
The bible that has been and is still being used to persecute queer people. And has been used as a justification for colonizing and committing countless genocides?
The Bible is a queer text? Um... what?
Some of the earliest written interpretations of the Bible (the Jewish midrash) saw Adam, the first human, as being intersex and having both male and female characteristics until God made Eve later (thus separating male from female):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgynos
This is mentioned in the Jewish midrash, the idea of the androgynos is brought up in Genesis Rabbah, a Jewish commentary on the Bible written sometime between 300 CE and 500 CE. The commentator asserts that Adam, in the story of Creation, was created by God as an androgynos. It continues to say that later, when Eve was fashioned from his rib, God separated out the sexes, assigning Adam as male and Eve as female.
The New Testament was surprisingly positive about mixed-gender people, who were at the time called "eunuchs", which we know encompassed intersex and some other gender non-conforming people in the concept of the ancients:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_people_and_religion#Christianity
https://www.hrc.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-transgender-people
[T]he word “eunuch” in the ancient world would also sometimes be used for those who we would now call intersex. Trans scholars today aren’t interested in these individuals because they believe that eunuchs identified as transgender, but rather because some of the things the eunuchs in scripture experienced are similar to what trans people -- and intersex people -- experience today, particularly in terms of discrimination, oppression and dehumanization.
Once the people of Israel are freed from captivity, several prophets, including Isaiah, guide them in the rebuilding of their homeland. In Isaiah 56:1-8 God speaks through Isaiah and says that even though Deuteronomy 23 outlawed the participation of eunuchs in Israelite society, in the new Israel they will have a special place--God says, “I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:5, NRSV). This wide welcome would have been a relief for the eunuchs, but warring theological factions meant that as far as we know, this prophecy was never fulfilled.
Many years later, Jesus mentions eunuchs in Matthew 19:12, where he notes that there are many kinds of eunuchs, including “eunuchs who have been so from birth,” “eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others,” and “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (NRSV). While the first group might include intersex people, and the second group people who were castrated by force, Christians have been arguing for centuries about who might be included in that third category. Regardless of whom he was referencing, what we do know is that in this moment, Jesus first of all does not denigrate eunuchs like others in his society may have done, and beyond that he actually lifts eunuchs up as a positive example. The fact that Jesus positively mentions people who are gender-expansive in his own time and place gives hope to many gender-expansive people today.
Finally, we see another important eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 who travels all the way from Ethiopia hoping to worship in the temple in Jerusalem, and who meets Philip, one of Jesus’ followers, on the way home. Up to that point, we don’t have a record of eunuchs becoming part of the early Christian church, but in this story in Acts we hear about this Ethiopian eunuch who, after hearing about Jesus, asks Philip “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36, NRSV). While Philip could have said that there was no precedent for this situation--that the Ethiopian’s ethnicity as a non-Israelite or his identity as a eunuch might indeed prevent him--instead, Philip baptizes him with no questions asked and no strings attached. This story of a gender-expansive person of color welcomed as one of the first Christian converts is a powerful part of our spiritual history.
Gender diversity is also known in Judaism, specifically from the Talmud. But it's a bit different from modern understanding of gender. The channel UsefulCharts explains it better than me in the following timestamped youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBeDU09o9Hw&t=1312
no, thanks.
government to acknowledge only two genders, erasing the identities of an estimated 1.6 million Americans who are transgender
Let's reiterate that the "2 genders" thing is a cocktail of misconceptions and erroneous assumptions about sex and gender. It erases intersex and non-binary identities, but it does not at face value refute directly gender transitions, unless the problematic context is upheld.
So please don't reproduce the false idea that the adage "there are only two genders" has anything to do with the existence of transgender people, because this way you perpetuate the misinformation.
Their articulation of "2 genders" is bioessentialist and in the case of the U.S. government, explicitly trans-denying (Trump's executive order for examples defines two genders based on gametes, something that is clearly meant to deny trans identity).
I don't think you can reasonably consider the "2 genders" idea as trans-accepting, even if there is theoretically some articulation of a gender binary that could be trans-affirming - that's just not the context we're in.
I didn't. Trumps executive order is explicitly cisgenderist, but trans people are not a third gender.
You need to add that "gametes" stuff for it to invalidate gender transition. Like, even TERFs made this point only in the recent years. This is not to mean that the "2 genders" adage is trans-accepting, but it does not exclude trans people by itself, as it literally does with intersex and non-binary. It is the shared set of beliefs that makes it such the transphobic slogan, and before "gametes" it could be a number of other things - like gender essentialism.
People who say "we accept all genders, we let trans women into the women's toilet" are in fact third-gendering trans-people. This is IMHO problematic, and people with your or OPs record of curating trans-related journalism should be aware of it.
So this but in earnest?
What...? Yeah, no.