**originally posted as an fb status, i decided to put it here too**
though i haven’t said much of anything publicly, i’ve been thinking about the methodist church and its likely impending schism because of the “question” of human sexuality. and most recently i’ve been thinking about the sermon in tennessee at the blackpentecostal church that used homophobia and transphobia and sexism to welcome pence, to illustrate, see, you belong here, your white supremacist xenophobia has a place here, we agree with you.
i’ve been thinking a lot about — and really wanting a feeling for — a sense towards a different kind of world. in this world otherwise, there isn’t even the possibility for one’s sense for connection to others through intimacy being a “question.” in this other world that we struggle to make together, all we do would be an occasion to ask how we can practice justice with one another so that all might flourish in their practice of gender identity, in their practice of affectional intimacy in non-coercive ways. that’s it.
detail from: “dancing in one spot number 6” x ashon crawley
i’ve been thinking about this because the kinds of messages that say queerness is sinful and shameful and embarrassing and should be relinquished and destroyed are so pernicious and insidious and harmful.
even if you somehow manage — with the help and work and energy and struggle of community — to begin to think otherwise about affection and pleasure and intimacy and, yes too, sex, there is absolutely no guarantee that even if you somehow manage to find relationship (friendship, romantic; these words are imprecisions and cannot capture fully the multiple ways we relate to one another but shorthand here, you feel me) with others that it will somehow be grounded in the same or even similar thoughts, convictions, shared compassions, shared imaginations. you can’t assume that there will be shared intuitions, ideas, intentions about the religious, the spiritual, the political, about “causes” for affectional orientation (is it “biological,” is it “socially constructed”; the very question of its “construction” is itself a problem), for example.
that anyone of us finds semblance of peace and relationship after working against all these terrible messages about our simply trying to live and breathe and be is really a miracle at all.
one of the things i try to gesture towards in The Lonely Letters, because it took me so long to figure out, is that one form of heartbreak that is difficult to discuss emerges from having loved someone deeply but because there is no reconciliation about what that love means, even though it is beautiful and brings joy and absolute delight, it is continually questioned and forestalled and broken by the ones engaging it. they are struggling to share a similar sense of and for what their love means because they disagree deeply about the religious, the spiritual, the political, the “cause” for their affections. and this even after having accepted the interrogation of doctrine and theology that reductively considers their practice of queerness sinful.
sometimes even when attempting to fight it with all one’s might, one loses the struggle, the force of the oceanic surround of messaging that engulfs becomes too much to stand against. it is heartbreaking.
so much potential for relating to one another in deep and loving and non-coercive and reciprocal and joyful ways obstructed because of the refusal to think of the fullness of our lives as beautiful. i keep thinking about how that preacher, and certainly he is not the only one or the first time i’ve heard such a sentiment, said another man better not touch him. what is so very explicit to me are the ways patriarchy as a form of control and violence and also desired protection is about refusing the kind of touch that undoes and unmakes us, touch that would underscore the fact of our vulnerability, the fact of needing tenderness and caress. it is sad. it is heartbreaking.
the courage to seek alternatives in this world is such a gift. and i am thankful for the gifts, the examples that practice relationship with me daily, that remind me we can do differently, we can be otherwise. there is no guarantee that one will find it. there is no guarantee that, if after finding it, it will be sustained. it is such a struggle but this world otherwise is beautiful. and it is worth the pursuit.