A couple of weeks ago, Earlham School of Religion, my Alma Mater, asked me to write a post for their official blog about my Quaker ministry in Colombia. When I submitted my contribution, I was told it would not be published, for it seemed too personal and polemic for the ESR blog readers. I still think it is a pretty cool text, so I am posting it here. I thank Earlham School of Religion for teaching me to think and write this way, even if now the strength and tone of my voice seems too much for their comfort. 

To talk about Queer Theology in the context of  Earlham School of Religion should be old news for the avid reader of this blog. Anyone who knows a little bit about the comings and goings of ESR´s academic life will know that in every Peace and Justice, Quakerism, Theology, or Bible class there is an unspoken requirement to include at least a unit relating whatever subject matter to this still to date controversial topic.

Perhaps ESR is late scheduling a class that focuses solely  on Queer theology for a whole semester, but even so, the academic curricula shows intentionality in acknowledging the existence of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community, honoring our right to think theologically and live God filled lives.

In countries like Colombia, however, the Good News of queer theological reflection is yet to come. Religious voices still talk the language of sin and abomination, based on their rustic interpretation of passages like Genesis 19. Most of the time, those basing their homophobia in this and other similar biblical texts have not even read them. Others surprisingly miss important points like the fact that the word homosexual does not exist in the Hebrew language, or  that Lot offers his own daughters to the Sodomites to dissuade them to gang rape a couple of male angels.

Having come back to my home country as an open lesbian with an ESR diploma that legitimates my exercising theological thinking, has left more than one local religious leader and LGBT rights advocate breathless. The first ones are either quiet about these matters in fear of losing their privilege in the church, or still sending LGBT folk to some kind of “queer anonymous” institution to follow a twelve step program into straightness.  Human rights advocates on the other hand, think of anything religious as their kryptonite. After all, most of the time Jesus´ cross in the hands of religious and political elite becomes an obstacle to human rights activism.

In the meantime, I have spent part of my days preparing advent prayers for the LGBT community in town, sharing my views in panels of inter-faith and ecumenical groups in the city, writing articles about the subject in Catholic publications, and being streamed on the internet as I put the subject on the agenda of the Latin American Historical Peace Churches Summit in the Dominican Republic.

Not feeling that is enough, I have most recently traveled to a town of extreme armed conflict with my girlfriend, an expert in human sexual and reproductive rights, to teach religious leaders of various sorts a workshop that puts her expertise and mine in conversation; all this happening in a geographical area where “homosexuals” appear in various lists as military targets.   

Priests and pastors worship their biased reading of Scripture; State, guerrilla, and paramilitary armies kill the gay and transgendered folk by the dozen and apply “corrective rape” to lesbian women; human rights advocates deny the LGBT community their fundamental right to freely express and develop their spirituality.

 In the meantime, I spend my days having people imagine a nativity scene with a lesbian Mary, a gay Joseph, and transgendered Magi; having people think of Lazarus making his way out of the tomb as a coming out experience, and equating my own story of becoming a Latin American lesbian theologian to that of Jonah becoming a prophet.

I knew God was up to something when after moving from the Mid West to Boston in search for a wide and rich lesbian community, back in 2008, I went through the experience of standing in a Massachusetts town stuffed with kissing women while having the following epiphany: “This looks like my crowd, but it is NOT my crowd. I need to go where I can find a woman that whispers to my ear in Spanish.” The deed is done. Praise the Lord!!!