Three Radical (Religious) Ideas for Queer Liberation

The Wild Reed’s 2023 Queer Appreciation series continues with something that’s actually from 2019. I toyed with including content that’s four years old, but then realized it’s actually still very relevant, not only for this year but (sadly) for probably the next several years, perhaps decades.

Let me explain. . . . For its June-July 2019 Pride issue, Out magazine featured “50 Radical Ideas for Queer Liberation.” While not all of these ideas resonated with me, many of them did, including three of them (Ideas 34-36) that were grouped together under the heading “Religions All Over the World Will Affirm, Accept, and Uplift Queer and Trans People.”

Clearly, we’re still a long way off from collectively embodying such a liberating religious idea. All the more reason then to continue to highlight it . . . and its three components as first published by Out magazine in 2019.

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IDEAS 34-36: Religions All Over the World Will Affirm,
Accept, and Uplift Queer and Trans People

Religion has played an outsized role in the persecution and marginalization of LGBTQ+ folks all over the world, practically since the beginning of what’s considered “modern civilization.” With its ties to and power over government, religious texts have been weaponized, wielded by religious authorities to enforce conformity, cisheteronormativity, and repression of sexual and gender expression. As a result, there is not just blood on their hands – it’s up to their ears, God – in almost all of their names and expressions – has been invoked where queer children are cast on the street, as we are psychologically tormented into so-called conversion, as we are raped into submission, and as we are murdered, whether by our hands or theirs.

But now, queer people are not just taking center stage, demanding representation in the arenas of politics and entertainment – they’re also reclaiming the pulpit. We asked a group of queer and transgender Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith leaders to describe their dreams for their religions, and to imagine a future where queerness is next to godliness.

– Phillip Picardi

IDEA 34: The Next Generation of Christian Leadership
Will Be Queer and Trans Women of Color

First, all of the Christian churches have to issue an apology to queer and trans people. Knowing Christianity’s ability to do harm should already make us humble about anything that we say. Apologies help to make space for people to do what they need in order to move forward with their lives. With apologizing comes letting go of the expectation that LGBTQ+ people will automatically trust these Christian churches in return.

The next step would be deferring. This is very consistent with Jesus, and with his way of embodiment – he deferred to the working class, to women, to people who were materially marginalized by the Roman Empire. For us to be faithful to his vision for the world, we have to defer and let those who have been hurt and harmed by Christianity be the ones who lead and transform the faith. In that way, there should be a moratorium on straight, white, male, cisgender leadership in the churches. Instead, queer women of color, sex workers, and trans people should lead these denominations over the next 50 years.

And finally, the churches as a whole needs to listen to survivors of any kind. Christianity is very text-based, whether that’s biblical, hymn, or sermon – but I think one text that’s often missing in church decision-making is the text of human lives. We must listen to what people have experienced, how they’ve been harmed, and how churches can move forward in humane ways. Giving credence to personal witness is a universal Christian value. Often, with great harm comes great wisdom.

– Rev. Broderick Greer, Episcopal priest

IDEA 35: Judaism Will Decolonize Itself

One of the oldest standing synagogues in the Western world is in Barbados, which is where members of my family were enslaved. That synagogue, of course, has been there since the early days of the slave trade. When I tried to bring this up among members of my faith community, I was met with resistance. It took me time and interactions with other Jews to understand that my Blackness shapes how I interpret the lessons of Judaism. This has become a frame for me, and one of the challenges we’ve faced around inclusion of Black Jews in the American mainstream Jewish community.

Throughout my experience, there’s a reluctance to identify how colonialism has impacted our faith, from Eastern European Jews to the Sephardim and Mizrahim. But if there is universality to be found, it’s that Judaism thrives in the message of the future liberation.

The uncomfortable truth is that, in order to live out this message, Jews need to engage in deep conversations about the very idea that we’re entitled to a homeland. The Israeli government denies Palestinian people the right to live or be there, and it has made very clear that Jewish people are to be treated as first-class, which of course means there are second class citizens. That does not make a democracy.

We should understand that freedom is a world without borders – physically and figuratively. And therefore, we can advocate for the Palestinian right of return, just like Jews have in Israel. We can understand that Palestinians have a right to live on the lands that are the traditional places of their families. We can then focus on understanding ourselves as being in good relations with the communities around us.

But also, let’s remove the borders around gender. Let’s offer language for non-binary people in our prayer books. Let’s rethink our gendering of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah to make space for more young people. If we decolonize ourselves – free ourselves from what has been taught, adapted, and miscarried under imperial and colonial rule – we can be free.

– Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

IDEA 36: Islam Will Return to Its True Nature
by Centering Justice

We should examine the role of imperialism in Islam, and emphasize that permissive attitudes toward gender expression and homosexuality were part of the justifications used by Christian Crusaders to invade Muslim lands. The Qur’an is actually so vague and so scarce on the subject of LGBTQ+ people. But there was a stereotype in the West that Muslim cultures were perverted or twisted in this way, because of more permissive or diverse attitudes about what we’d now call queerness.

But after imperialism, we still have remnants of its effects, like the criminalization of homosexuality, or even the idea that Islam and its teaching are opposed to queerness, which breeds ignorance. And now there’s the added problem of state power manifesting these narratives – whether that’s the state power of Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or wherever gay Muslims may be living throughout the world, or even the carceral system of the United States. We cannot combat the violence or marginalization queer Muslims experience without confronting the injustices of state power.

Just as much as we need faith leaders and organizations to declare their acceptance of queer people, we also need queer spaces to be welcoming and accepting of Muslim people, however they may define or express that. All Muslims should, in the future, have the permission to feel beauty about themselves, their Muslimness, and whatever tradition they’re inherited in Islam. Islam is a framework by which one can lead a better life. That’s why our work towards liberation is not quite progressive – in the sense that before or now, it is regressive and needs fixing. Rather, we look at it as a return to one of the most important things in the Qur’an: a movement towards justice. That includes the liberation of queer and trans people, of course. But it’s also for everyone. It’s about disrupting the power altogether.

– The organizers of Masjid Al-Rabia,
a Muslim community center in Chicago, IL

– Excerpted from “50 Radical Ideas for Queer Liberation,”
Out magazine, June/July 2019.


NEXT: In St. Paul Schools,
“Trans Advocacy Is Always Advocacy for Everyone”


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Spirituality and the Gay Experience
• Gay Pride as a Christian Event
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Toby Johnson
• Gay People and the Spiritual Life
• The Gifts of Homosexuality
• The Bible and Homosexuality
• For Some Jews, Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians is Yet Another Jewish Tragedy
• Israeli Policy, Not Anti-Semitism, at the Root of Disruption at Creating Change 2016 Conference
• Omar Akersim: Muslim and Gay
• Parvez Sharma on Islam and Homosexuality
• Progressive Perspectives on Islam and Homosexuality in the Aftermath of Orlando
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Afdhere Jama’s “Love Song to the Queer Somali”