The Cultural and Social Effects of Religion on Queer1 People

Religion holds a heavy weight in our society; regardless if you are religious yourself, the underlying values of most mainstream religions permeate into our societal values. In this paper, the religions I will discuss as having negative perceptions of Queer people are Christian denominations and Orthodox Jewish denominations since it is what most of the studies looked to reach their conclusions. This is specifically problematic for those who identify as Queer (LGBT) who, under the values of these religions, are seen as going against all moral values. As said by Sherkat, “Americans are conflicted over their core values surrounding the perceived sanctity of family and marriage and their own rising individualism and efforts to tailor their life experiences to their personal choice”(2002:347). In this paper, I wish to cover three main points. First, to discuss how having a religious identity can be both potentially uplifting and cause a lot of grief for Queer people. They often struggle with their own feeling about their identities which are often times conflicting in values. Also, I will search for how the coming out process of Queer people may be more difficult for Queer people who hold more traditional religious values. Next, I will show how, in our society, religion has permeated through our culture and has potentially affected parents who are both religious and not religious; causing them to have trouble accepting their Queer child’s identity. Finally, I would like to look at how the politics of our society are being run by religious values and affecting society’s perceived identities of Queer people. In our society, Queer people have become the symbols of a culture heavily entrenched with religious values as religion has affected their identity, their self acceptance, and the acceptance or rejection from others

Queerituality : Reforming What it Means to be a Religious Queer

College settings often place students in a petri dish where they are able to reflect on their innermost identities, values, and how they come to know the world around them. Through intentional efforts, student affairs professionals can create spaces where students are able to explore identities that society often states as being mutually exclusive. There is a body of research to help student affairs practitioners support queer-identified students developmentally (e.g. Cass’ Identity Model, Fassinger’s Model of Gay and Lesbian Identity Development, and D’Augelli’s Model of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identity Development). The topic of spirituality as it relates to queer students has been under-researched (Buchanan, Dzelme, Harris, & Hecker, 2001; DuMontier, 2000; Love, Bock, Jannarone, & Richardson, 2005; Stevens, 2004). Recent research has emerged providing a model to understand the complexity of multiple dimensions of identity and to infuse meaning-making as a part of identity development (Abes & Jones, 2004; Abes, Jones, & McEwen, 2007; Jones & Abes, 2013; Jones & McEwen, 2000). As we move forward, something to be considered is the way queer students shape their identity in the context of heteronormativity. The present models work well, but fail to understand the student experience in a world where queer students subvert heteronormativity in order to more fully realize their own identity (Abes & Kasch, 2007; Jones & Abes, 2013). In this article the author examines the ways in which queer students reform their queer and religious identities, grounding the discussion in queer theory, and examining the role of queer authorship as a developmental understanding of “queerituality”

Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Recent Lesbian and Gay Victories

Part I of this essay will introduce the queer theories underlying my critique and will outline the discrete positioning of lesbian and gay identity and community which labels these cases “victories.” The intersectionality of queer identity is the key blind spot in the litigation model. The queer continuum, a re-conceptualization of Adrienne Rich\u27s lesbian continuum, delineates the spectrum of queer identity. Part II will explore the facts, issues and holdings of these four cases. My examination of these cases will reveal how they grant some rights to “but-for” queers, who, “but-for” their being lesbian or gay, would be “perfect citizens.” I will discuss how the rules and applications of these cases either exclude some queer communities or address issues irrelevant to other communities. The communities whose interest I specifically address are poor queers, queers of color, sexual subversives, and gender subversive queers. These limitations should figure prominently in the consideration of litigation\u27s role in queer activism. In Part III, I conclude by outlining the implications of this critique for the relationship between queer communities and litigation

Que(er/ry)ing Christianity: Questions, Answers, and More Questions

Caught at a divide between fundamentalist Judeo-Christian rhetoric and secular queer discourse, queer Christians face difficult obstacles in enacting/ embodying their identity. Bohache (2003) claims that a queer Christology, or developing a queer view of Christianity, is a potentially beneficial way to reconcile this identity gap. To explore this claim, I demonstrate a need to also examine the way in which a queer Christian body enacts a queer and Christian identity by juxtaposing my own narrative as a queer Christian in a religious setting against queer theory. Using Pelias’ (1999) guidelines for poetic essay, I weave queer theory throughout my own story as a means to explore how a queering of Christianity can be performed or questioned. Though many may be uncomfortable with a dialogue that leaves nothing but questions, I find that those questions are what keep us revisiting these identity intersections that are constantly in flux and encourages continuing conversations

Where’s My Queer BBQ?: Supporting Queer Students at Historically Women’s Colleges

The experiences of Queer students at institutions of higher education have long been the subject of scholarship. Scholars explored research on campus climate, experience, and identity development. In the past, scholarship on historically women’s institutions explored leadership, history, and sexuality. However, the experiences of Queer students on historically women’s campuses are largely unstudied. As a graduate of a historically women’s institution who identifies as a Queer woman, I will reflect on my own experience of being a Queer student at a women’s college, and identify where Queer students receive the support they need to succeed

Queering identity : becoming queer in the work of Cassils

This chapter explores the work of genderqueer artist Cassils in order to address the question of what it is to be human from a queer perspective. The challenges from queer and postmodern scholarship to the “identity politics” so central to earlier activist and academic agendas have been well documented. Yet, notwithstanding these valid critiques, identity remains a powerful organizing concept in contemporary experience. These contradictory stances on identity serve as a prompt for thinking about what queer brings to our understandings of being human now and in the near future

JJ-trace identities and invariant theory

We generalize the notion of trace identity to $J$-trace. Our main result is that all $J$-traces of $M_{n,n}$ are consequence of those of degree $\frac12n(n + 3)$. This also gives an indirect description of the queer trace identities of $M_n(E)$

Reclaiming Sacred Space

I wrote this piece for myself as a hybrid of personal discovery and academic inquiry, and I hope it can guide and empower others like myself. In this piece, I examine the intersections of queer identity with religious and spiritual identity development and discuss how practitioners can help students reclaim sacred space. Foregrounding my personal narrative and expanding with scholarship, I show why this development deserves attention from student affairs professionals. I give both programmatic and institutional considerations to review when centering religious and spiritual development for LGBTQ students

Its Teeth in His Body, Out of 60 Dogs

“Its Teeth in His Body, Out of 60 Dogs” studies how visual resignification, reassemblage and the process of cut-up intersect in profound ways with queer theory and gender theory. The main theoretical underpinning of my project is Rosalind Krauss’ concept of the visual index where any reproduced image’s inherent message can be resignified or reactivated when it is placed next to other visual referents. I am interested in how the queer artist’s process of selection, cut-up and resignification can create a unique identity outside of received institutional codifications and stereotypes as described by Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. This identity embodies Lee Edelman’s concept of queer “jouissance,” when the queer overwhelms or cut-ups these cultural assemblages by creating an intervention that involves pure enjoyment or eroticism. This process of externalizing jouissance through cut-up will articulate how these disparate materials can be reassembled into a distinctly queer identity