#gay and christian

[acebiacebasis]

K long vaguely unhappy story time again:

I thought my mom was more mature than this, but wow we had a fucking moment tonight. It ended okay basically because we both decided to move on. But I'm definitely still emotionally *tense* and am so ready to move away again and be my own person. I LOVE the family quality time I get watching shows with them, especially in context like this when it's a show that I got them hooked on, but gosh she could not chill on the homophobia for five seconds.

We're watching White Collar and there is an episode in Season 4 that features the lesbian character (who is a badass and funny and amazing FBI agent) more prominently and queerly. Aka instead of just referencing her having a girlfriend, she actually kisses another woman (undercover shenanigans and sexy criminals and all that jazz). My mom literally asked me to skip ahead when these two gorgeous women were only TALKING on a DATE and I avoided skipping at that point because the focus went back to the main crime plot so soon (like, soon as in she finished asking me plus a couple seconds of my hesitation and surprise that my mom couldn't just watch two people fucking talking and not even like heavily flirting or being touchy-feely or anything, and then the moment ended anyway).

So, we move on from that scene and keep watching the episode unfold, and most of it is not actually queer-related so she doesn't throw a fuss (because literally any other time she likes the show). BUT part of the plot to catch the criminal involves these two women going on another date, so my mom starts to kinda get tense again, and then suddenly they kiss and she legitimately hollers out "Oh! No!" and I think it will be fine because it cuts away but then right away they kiss again and my mom starts yelling "Skip it!" And I just hesitate for a split second again because I've seen it before and I know it'll end soon and I try to tell her this and she's just going on and on at full volume over the TV yelling "Who has the remote?! Skip it!! It's GROSS and I don't want to see it!"

So I pause it, pretty upset myself at this point, and stand up to face her and ask "Why?!" and try to say again that it is SO SHORT a moment (like, I said she couldn't watch it for two seconds and she corrected me that it was at least four 🙄) so then I also pull out the religious card (because of course my mom brought up her opinion that "It's a SIN and it's gross and wrong" and blah blah blah) and I challenge that she watches other shows with divorced people or cheating or fucking murderers and she doesn't skip those conversations... And she tries to kinda blow that off as saying she would or whatever justification but she basically gives up that front and turns to my dad and asks "Doesn't it both you?" And he just quietly says "well yeah but I just don't watch" (which he plays on his phone anyway if the show gets too silly for him in other circumstances so that annoys me but I find overall less offensive) so I jump in and say "You could've done that too! You can just look away if it bothers you that much!"

So mostly at that point I'm frustrated and just really flabbergasted that she could not watch sapphic representation for literal SECONDS and I say she can watch what she wants and toss her the remote and I walk out of the room. *But* then I can hear from my room that she checks in with my dad about still watching it and I hear her start it up again, which is GOOD because I want them to watch it and enjoy it and there wasn't any gay stuff for her to throw a fit about for the rest of it anyway (besides some conversational references that I expected her to skip and she didn't, so my dad must've told her it didn't matter or something)...

Anyway because I'm an absolute sucker for this show I ended up going back out and said "Okay, if you're still watching it then I'll watch it with you." And because of course I want to watch in solidarity with this one queer episode and enjoy the representation. But golly.

------

And another thing is that I already had queerness heavily on the brain. I saw a homophobic post by a fb friend from high school (who I really should probably unfriend, especially cause this isn't the first homophobic post I've seen by him, but instead I just unfollowed because I'm a sucker that can't quite give up being liked or having sources of information yet... But I'm working on that) and anyway he also is a "Christian" and is supposed to have found faith more as an adult and apparently talks about it a lot but from what I can tell it just seems like he's grown into being a bully?

So I have already been feeling convicted again NOT about how queerness is a sin BUT how to bridge my queer communities with my Christian communities because I feel like they should be united and instead they're at war and it breaks my heart.

...if you made it this far, thanks for reading. Also, sorry for us both if you relate.

Prayers for hearts to be opened, I guess.

10-20-24

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[oneinchbarrier]

Homosexual artifacts.

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[anthonysperkins]

Joseph Gonzalez in Brain Damage (1988) dir. Frank Henenlotter Christian Bale in American Psycho (2000) dir. Mary Harron

[eroshaven]

[queerism1969]

[oleandro-drag]

saint sebastian tended by saint irene but they're both drag artists

felt like this might be something this site would enjoy

on stage: oleandro & delfi oraakel, photographer: peroksiid (on ig as oleandro_drag, delfi_oraakel and peroksiid)

[fidelio316]

Asked @flamesofmoonx to do this for me because I’m sure i’m not the only gay Christian out here… i want to show that it is possible to be both things without contradictions.

Show yourselves, show your pride and spread it hard and wide!

[avalovesindie]

I am by no means an expert but it seems to me “your body does not belong to you” is a major theme of right wing authoritarianism and, interestingly, modern USAmerican thinking. This underpins so much from abortion to forcing kids to hug their relatives. Your body belongs to the state, or God, or your husband, or your boss, or your doctor. Everything from trans and gay liberation to forcing autistic people to look in your eyes to making cashiers stand for no reason. Your body does not belong to you, but taking care of your body is your responsibility and your responsibility alone, and if you fail in some way, you deserve the consequences.

[deep-space-lines]

okay but like. I just had the weirdest thought about that ‘don’t look I’m naked’ comic. Which is that that’s essentially the same thing Adam and Eve did after they ate the fruit of knowledge of good&evil. So I feel like the theological implications of that could kneecap Gabe if he doesn’t think V1 is a being with free will.

yeah ok. i dunno man. is this anything

((side note. this isn’t necessarily meant to be in-character or story-accurate or take place at any particular point in time, just a way to explore some Thoughts. i was also imagining more that V1’s words aren't actually spoken, more like Gabriel’s more articulate interpretation of whatever garbled mechanical noise V1 is using to communicate. I think an angel could do that.))

and then they fucked nasty the end

[corpsentry]

a glass sun 1/2

[justdavina]

STUNNING Transgender Woman! I Love her Top and Christian Louboutin Pumps!

[mygaythoughtsblog]

André Azevedo (@iam_andreazevedo)

[zanephillips]

Horacio Pancheri and Christian Ramos El juego de las llaves 1.06 "Oscarín… ¡Oscarón!"

[nudemalemuse]