This Is The Most Romantic Shit I Have Ever Seen I’m Gonna Throw Up

I just discovered your blog & I love it! c: (I have a Christian/folky witch blog called rafaela-a-bruxa). Admittedly, I recently been struggling w/ my faith in the context of LGBTQIA+ (I am an ally & fully support LGBTQIA+ rights. But all the Christians around me & church are against it (unfortunately I'm surrounded by evangelicalism too..which sucks even more). As a gay Christian, can I ask how you blend both your faith and identity? (Feel free to message me if you wish).

Apologies for being late in getting to this ask but hiiii

I’ve put a few posts up re: clobber passages and how I resolve scriptural tensions if that’s what you mean (just look up “clobber passages”, “Leviticus” or “Romans” and they should pop up)

As for a more regular living sense, I kinda just have found a place where both flow very naturally from the same place for me. God is Love, and has called me to love in a particular way. God does not embody gender in a human way, and has called me into proximity with him by calling me in a similar way. I view my queerness as a vocation to which I am called the same as any other vocation—something I am honored to live and participate in and celebrate, despite hardships which may come my way or communal responses to it. It’s definitely hard when you don’t have people around you who understand, which is why I encourage seeking out community wherever possible, including across traditions and demographics, but I also hold that my queerness is spiritual and part of me and thus I am able to honor it faithfully even if it’s just me on my own thanking God for the fact that I was made a lesbian and am capable of loving others in a lesbian way (romantically, yes, as with my wonderful girlfriend, but also in the sense that being queer transforms your relationship with all forms of love including platonic).

New song obsession

I have this on repeat 😂

That one time he kept eye contact for a good 10 seconds when talking and walking over to my friend

She has grown up 🥺🫶✨ @eviltanguyan

It's been three months since I made this post about Saints Sergius and Bacchus, John Boswell, classical Western homoeroticism, and Christian homophobia.

Since then I have read both of Boswell's books on the history of gay/queer people in premodern Christianity (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe), familiarized myself more fully with the spectrum of charges against Boswell and his scholarship, and realized that he's been the subject of ideologically-motivated smear campaigns by just about every political/religious/academic faction you can imagine. My conclusion: Professor Boswell is a saint, martyr, and important queer elder who does not get the respect that he deserves, and I'm in awe of the sheer volume of the massive genius brain that was somehow crammed into his little blond head.

ANYWAY. This is an official followup to my original post, now that I've read Boswell's work.

I take back my hunch that Boswell's work was not intersectional. He was, in fact, a pioneer in the field of medieval social history, and utilized a wide range of critical lenses in his work. He was inhibited by the lack of documented evidence about some groups (for example, he was frequently criticized for not writing more about lesbians, but he was open about the difficulties of researching lesbians in history and explained what he was doing as a scholar and as a teacher to mitigate this) but he constantly called attention to issues of class, gender, and other social factors wherever they were relevant.

I was RIGHT in noticing that the slight difference in rank between Sergius and Bacchus seems to be an erastes/eromenos indicator! Boswell spoke at greater length and with greater sensitivity about erastes/eromenos dynamics in history, so if you want a deeper look into that, you should read his books.

I was also probably right in noticing that the legend of Sergius and Bacchus is seeded with various forms of Byzantine propaganda! I really wish that I could talk to him about it. :(

Both secular queer theorists and religious queer theologians seem to be most uncomfortable with the fact that Boswell was reporting on historical facts and observable social forces, not idealized concepts of queer people as somehow being more ethical or spiritual than the straight majority. He included evidence of things like abuse, prostitution, and exploitation not because he thought they were cool, but because they were part of the material reality of queer people's existence in the past, just like they were part of the material reality of his own 70s-80s gay subculture.

That was his bottom line: gay/queer people are a normal human variation, and as a historian, he could provide hard proof of their existence and what their lives might have been like. If his work seems "shallow" or "dated" to some more modern queer researchers, it's only because so many people were willing to dismiss his scholarship, reject his work, and abandon his research leads after he died. But, he was actually super smart and his scholarship was actually meticulous, so even his most dedicated critics have been unable to "debunk" him. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality most recently had a 35th-anniversary reprinting, and he is still being cited as an authority by more recent scholars.

Even though the full strength of the Church and the Academy were leveled against him, his work has proven its own worth. He still deserves to be read and discussed by both professional scholars and enthusiastic hobbyists. And, the Open and Affirming movement in Christianity wouldn't be as strong as it is without his confirmation that "gays and lesbians are normal," as he put it, and not simply a construct of modern society.

Rest in power, Professor Boswell. We won't forget you.

Since I made that post, I have also opened a sticker shop with a bunch of queer Christian saint icons, including Boswell and some of the queer saints he discovered/wrote about. They're pretty cool. You should buy one.

going here would fix me actually

Dear loved ones,

Do not listen when they tell you you cannot be gay and believe in God. Choose one, they say.

This is a blatant lie. You can be both. In his wise ways, God created you perfect in his eyes. Be gay, pray with a glad heart and thank Him for this blessing and gift. To love is a freedom given to you to receive joy and happiness in this world. You are blessed more than you know and God loves you just as you are. For He is The God of Love. You are precious and destined for good things and for a good world to come.

Ignore the imperfect writings of ancient men and listen to your heart and reason - love is the way.

Love yourself and love God. Be free from choosing and condemnation.

Lots of love,

MCL69, Student of the One

Statistics- Again

men constitute 99.7% of strangulation attacks

men constitute 99.6% of acid attacks

men constitute 99.3% of child pornography

men constitute 99% mass shootings

men constitute 99% of rapist

men constitute 98% of homicide

men constitute 98% of forcible incest

men constitute 96% of child sex abuse

men constitute 95% of molesting cases

men constitute 99% of domestic abuse

men constitute 99% of drugging

men constitute 99% of stalking

men constitute 99% of human trafficking abuse

men constitute 99% of sex trafficking abuse

Men constitute 99% of animal abuse

Men constitute 98% of bestiality

86% of makeup companies are male 99% of advertising male 98% of modeling agencies 92% of fashion media is male 94% of the fashion industry is male

Women are 10x more likely to get raped, yet this is seriously underreported considering the dead bodies

1/3 of women internationally report being sexually assaulted. we know this number to be much higher due to autopsies reported in the census

Women are 400,000,000x more likely to DIE from RAPE

not one man has ever died from rape, accounts for no coroner report ever, whereas tens of thousands of women and children die a year.

50 million women are sex trafficking victims

women make up for 95% of labor trafficking

70% of child soldiers are FEMALE

25 million are forced into child marriages > 5

650 million are in arranged marriages/ marriages consummated below the age of consent

Men make up most 98% on average of every fetish community

99% for pedophilia.

in 70 countries - that comprise 26% of the world population, women need men's permission to learn, work, or travel.

There are 50 countries in which the law states you can sell and buy women into marriage. - These countries, including India and Pakistan, make up 38% of the entire world.

There are 178 countries that do not have the same legal rights for women, where written law specifically excludes women from freedom.

There are 2.4 billion women globally who are born in countries that have written law that restricts them completely, but even more so without a man.

6 billion people believe in a religion that states that women are less human than men

More Statistics Sources