Last year, a woman priest married two of my good friends. One friend is a cisgendered lesbian and her partner is a transmac man. Yes, they’re both Catholic — and the priest is, too.
Conversations surrounding Pope Francis’ approval for priests to bless same-sex couples may have simmered down for now since he made a historic change to Vatican policy in December, allowing priests to bless queer couples.
But a swath of LGBTQ Catholics pushing for inclusion in the Church see the historic moment as an opportunity to advance the advocacy they’ve done for decades. Still, online discourse has ranged from outrage to calling the new measure performative or unsubstantial, as explained by trans Christian writer Charlotte Clymer.
“There will be no shortage of critical takes on this, both from conservatives who feel it’s a betrayal of Scripture (it is not) and progressives who believe it doesn’t go far enough, the latter of which would be similar to finding suitable water in the middle of a desert and whining that it doesn’t come with ice.”
For queer Catholics like me and my friends, our stance is more complex, and echoes beyond the walls of the institutional church.
There’s an underlying double stigma familiar to queer Catholics that downplays the significance of blessing same-sex marriage — if you’re religious, you’re not progressive enough. If you’re too progressive, you’re not religious enough.
With the heightened intensity of the religious right during this election year, queer Catholics are imperative to building a more inclusive and intersectional movement for gay rights. One hundred thirty bills targeting transgender rights have been filed so far this year and 325 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed as of late January. The stakes for gay rights are too high to force queer religious folks to choose between two parts that make them whole.
The tension between sexual identity and faith is also much more nuanced for queer Catholics of color. A…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply