In My Mind Jesus Looks Like Bahaa Sultan

praying for your mutuals is honestly so freaking funny

sooo when are you dropping the links. to texts about religion and sexuality and transgression

closet devotions by richard rambuss

the man jesus loved by theodore w. jennings, jr

jonathan loved david by tom horner

the sex lives of saints by virginia burrus

toward a theology of eros

i also recommend the essay "gendering jesus crucified" by richard c. trexler that you can find here & richard rambuss' essay "pleasure and devotion: the body of jesus and seventeenth-century religious lyric" in queering the renaissance

from Philadelphia Gay News, 1976

“Then when G-d asks [Cain], ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ he arrogantly responds, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ In essence, the entire Bible is written as an affirmative response to this question.”

— Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy (via ourwakingsoules)

You showed no mercy; it will not be shown to you. You opened not your house; you will be expelled from the Kingdom. You gave not your bread; you will not receive eternal life.

Saint Basil the Great; Sermon to the Rich

someone on Discord brought up Romans 1:26-27 and activated my autistic avatar state and I ended up writing a little essay that's basically a summary of the argument Daniel A. Helminiak makes that Romans 1:26-27 is not a condemnation of homosexuality or homosexual acts in his book What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality

and I thought I'd share it here in case someone else is interested

it basically covers 3 main points:

1. what does Paul mean by things being natural or unnatural? 2. the distinction between impurity/uncleanness, and evil/sin. 3. the purpose and rhetorical structure of Paul's letter to the Romans.

keep in mind I am by no means an expert, this is just my summary of Helminiak's argument, which I happen to find very convincing. there's a lot of details and corroborating evidence left out here, if you want the full thing, I can recommend the book! I enjoyed reading it, and it also has interesting things to say about other 'clobber passages'

essay under the cut!

1. Unnatural, or contrary to nature?

So first, what does Paul mean when he calls things natural or unnatural? When we read these words nowadays, there is usually a strong moral value attached to them. When people call things 'unnatural', it means they violate some important law of nature, they are abhorrent and wrong and bad. There is, however, a lot of evidence that this is NOT how Paul uses the term (the Greek here being "para physin"). This is a term he uses many times in multiple letters, simply to mean that someone is doing something beyond what one would usually expect. It clearly has no inherent moral value to him, because he even says there are things God does that are "para physin"! So instead of 'unnatural and abhorrent and bad', we should read it more like: "contrary to her nature, Judy was super chipper this morning! she usually isn't a morning person", or "James is always so kind, but contrary to his nature, this morning he just snapped at me". In this case, by calling these acts "para physin", he is probably saying that these people are doing things that are against social norms and expectations, and/or that they are doing things that don't fit with their usual behavior.

2. Uncleanness vs sin

Second, we have the distinction between things being ritually unclean, and things being evil/sinful. Helminiak goes deep into the intricacies of Jewish law to support this point, but I'll just jump straight to the conclusion, and recommend that you read his book if you feel it needs more justification. Basically, the core is as follows:

- There are things that are considered evil, sinful, bad, morally wrong, for example murder, selfishness, exploitation of others, etc. - There are also things that are considered unclean, but not morally wrong. This is a lot of what is described in Leviticus, for example, and Helminiak uses this same distinction to clear up the infamous clobber passage from Leviticus about men lying with men. Now, these purity laws in the Pentateuch are not unimportant - when they were made, they were extremely important to the Jewish people to set them apart from others. These are the 'holy' laws after all, in the original Hebrew sense of the word meaning things that are different, set apart. They were extremely important for the formation and protection of the Jewish identity. - In many places in both Paul's writings and others' writings in the New Testament, it is made clear that this second set of laws, I'll call them purity laws, do not need to apply to gentile converts. Essentially, they are still highly respected as Jewish law, but they are not carried over to any non-Jewish people who follow Jesus because, once again, these are about the Jewish people and the Jewish identity.

This gives us a distinction between impurity (relevant specifically to Jewish people), and sin/evil (relevant to everyone). According to Helminiak, this distinction was also already accepted by Jewish people at the time, to be clear, so this is not something imposed in hindsight.

Paul uses this distinction in Romans 1. Verses 21-32 have the following structure: 21-25: These people worship idols instead of God! There are consequences to this.

26-27: They do things that are ritually impure/unclean, and also are socially unacceptable and frowned upon. They suffer public shame as a consequence.

28-31: Additionally, they do things that are evil/sinful, and for that, they deserve death.

So the stuff Paul says about homosexual acts, is separate from the things he condemns that are evil and sinful. There is no clear moral judgment about the homosexual acts here.

This leaves us with a question: if Romans 1:26-27 is referring to laws that are only relevant for Jewish people, and Paul is talking about non-Jewish people, why does he even bring them up??? To answer this, we have to proceed to our third major point.

3. The rhetorical structure of Paul's letter to the Romans

We have to consider in what situation Paul is writing this letter, and for what purpose. He is writing it to a congregation that is a mix of Jewish people and non-Jewish converts, and there is animosity between them. This was very common, and one of the major points of contention between these two groups of people was usually precisely the thing we just talked about: cleanness and uncleanness. For example, there was a lot of conflict around food, with the gentiles eating food considered unclean by the Jewish people, and the Jewish people being upset by that.

Paul's goal is to help them reconcile. But, Paul being Paul, he doesn't do this by saying "I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy." No, he does this by saying "why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

When we look at the rhetorical structure of the letter, we see that Paul does the following things: - Sympathize with the Jewish people to get them on his side. Because aren't these gentiles just gross and awful? - UNO REVERSE! Actually you, Jewish people, you also do things that you consider unclean, and things that you consider sinful! So stop judging - Sympathize with the gentiles to get them on his side. Because aren't these Jewish people so annoying? - UNO REVERSE! Shut up, you're no better than anyone else!

So by bringing up these unclean/impure things in 1:26-27, Paul is sympathizing with the Jewish people in the congregation to get them on his side, to get them listening to him, only so he can turn it around later.

It's like if I were trying to convince a loud conservative of something, I might do so by first sympathizing with them to get them on my side, so that then I can flip things. I could say: "Ah yes and these liberal snowflakes are so dramatic, aren't they? They are always overreacting to things, they make such a big deal out of tiny little things like which exact words you use. Right? Don't you think so? But look, see! You are no better! You also overreact and can be dramatic! Because you act like it's a huge burden to use the right pronouns for someone, like your rights are being taken away from you just because someone wants you to use they/them pronouns!"

So, now that we have examined all of this, I think it's safe to say: taken in context, these verses really aren't what they seem to be in isolation. And they are most likely not a condemnation of homosexuality or homosexual acts.

Archangel Michael through Art History

Hans Memling, c.1466-1473 Juan de la Abadia, c.1480-1495 Master of Castelsardo, 16th century Raphael, 1518 Claudio Coello, c.1660 Luca Giordano, 1663 Sebastiano Ricci, c.1720 Antonio María Esquivel, 1840

Douglas Blanchard, The Passion of the Christ - A Gay Vision, Part I

Full size (100x86 cm) graphic version of painting for my composition classes. It is needed to better understand tone values and to have a perception of how your work gonna look like in full size. Made with charcoal stick

Saint Michael and the Fascist // inspired by Raphael’s “Saint Michael Vanquishing Satan”

We needdddd a transgender spear of divine justice as of late yall