Every part of who you are, whether you’re queer or not, is a powerful reminder that there is good in this world.
Shawna Gordon
FAQs
What does LGBTQIA+ mean?
LGBTQIA+ stands for Lesbian (a woman who is attracted to women), Gay (a man, or person, who is attracted to members of the same sex), Bisexual (a person attracted to people of more than one gender), Transgender (a person who’s gender is different from the sex/gender assigned to them at birth and culturally), Queer/Questioning (a person who is not cisgender or straight, perhaps in a way that LGB does not capture), Intersex (a person whose chromosomal/gonadal characteristics do not map onto the male/female binary), and Asexual (a wide category of people who experience sexual attraction in specific contexts, rarely, or not at all). The + indicates that there are other gender and sexual identities not covered by these most common ones.
What is hermeneutics?
Oftentimes, readers of scripture claim that they hold to certain beliefs or affirm or condemn particular behaviors because “the Bible says.” But what does the Bible actually say? And how do we know? These are the questions addressed by one’s “hermeneutic”, or way of interpreting the Bible. Contrary to popular belief, there is actually no such thing as a “plain reading” of Scripture. The Bible does not actually speak for itself. The meaning of biblical texts is infused by a variety of sources and the interaction that takes place between them. These sources include not only the physical words themselves and the worlds they inhabit and create, but also the author of the text within their historical and cultural context and the reader within their own. Neither the author nor the reader approaches the text as a blank slate. Both author and reader insert themselves into the text in a very particular way, informed by their unique social locations. Thus, every author of the Bible and every reader/listener has a hermeneutic, a set of assumptions or suspicions that frames the way they understand Scripture. One’s hermeneutic is often informed by the complexities of one’s social location; a queer hermeneutic is a hermeneutic informed by queer social locations as well as queer theory.
There are always more questions.
What’s an “affirming theology?”
An affirming theology is a theology that affirms sexual orientations and gender experiences that are not cisgender and/or heterosexual. As more and more congregations and denominations converse and make decisions about LGBTQ lives, the term “affirming” has come to indicate, at the bare minimum, a belief that Christian same sex marriages are valid before God. Affirming theologies may push the boundaries of inclusion further, questioning whether marriage should be our ethical standard for sex, or whether monogamy is the only Christian relationship configuration.
At their core, affirming theologies engage with heterosexist theologies/traditions on the question of inclusion.
Affirming theologies attend to practical questions, such as who may be ordained, who may be married or have sex, who may be a man or a woman or neither, and who may be rightly identified as a Christian. These questions are important to many Christians who are trying to get through their hectic, complicated daily lives. Nonetheless, queer theologies trouble the idea of inclusion, preferring instead to interrogate the powers and categories that dictate who is in and who is out in the first place.
