Thursday, April 05, 2012

Conservatives attack Kitt’s queer Christ article

“The Crucifixion of the Christ”
by Becki Jayne Harrelson
appeared on the HuffPo article
Newsbusters.org, a major conservative watchdog group, posted an attack today on my recent Huff Post article on the queer Christ.

They called my ideas about the queer Christ “laughable” and “riddled with distortions, half-truths, fantasies, and baseless speculations” in an article titled “Huffington Post Promotes ‘Queer Christ.’” With a goal of “exposing and combating liberal media bias,” Newsbusters is a project of the Media Research Center, which has an annual budget of more than $10 million.

But even these wealthy conservatives cannot deny that Jesus may have been queer! They just believe that if he was homosexual, he was celibate. (I never said he wasn’t.)

As Newsbusters put it:

Cherry began her last paragraph with this ridiculous quote: “Being human, Jesus must have had sexual feelings. Being divine, Christ lives in every individual of every different shade of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

But being the perfect human, Christ was able to direct and control His impulses. Homosexuals are indeed welcomed by Christians – and can and do live happy and fulfilled lives – while still holding to Christian teachings on homosexuality.

At least they sent a lot more readers to my original article at Huff Post, Queer Christ Arises to Liberate and Heal.

Conservatives have called me names before and even gave me the “Dumb Dora Award for Blasphemous Burlesque.” But this is the first time that I’ve seen a detailed right-wing rebuttal the concept of a queer Christ. The fact that Newsbusters went to the trouble of denouncing the queer Christ actually proves the point I made at the beginning of my HuffPo piece: “Visions of a queer Christ are on the rise as Easter approaches this year.”

4 comments:

Trudie said...

Sadly, what the "wealthy conservatives" fail to realize is that whatever Jesus' sexuality, he explained over and over again that God's worldview rejects arrogance, abuse of power and judgmentalism. I am currently reading Patrick Cheng's amazing theological treatise "Radical Love", which I got because you featured it on your recent blog. He makes a wonderful case for the queerness not only of Christ, but of the entire GENUINE understanding of "God with us" as the fundamental reality of humanity's redemption.

Becki Jayne said...

You are doing something right, Kitt, for such an extreme reaction. No one knows with absolute certainty Jesus' sexuality. But...

Fear not! Rejoice! When a wingnut head explodes, an angel gets wings. :D

Kittredge Cherry said...

Thanks for all your comments, Trudie, Becki Jayne and David! I’m loving each one. David, I appreciate your statement that “in a very real way you continued this mission of Christ in our times.” That’s what I thought this morning when I decided to write about this attack from Newsbusters instead of getting the gay Passion series posted on time today. It’s important to remember Christ’s Passion -- but also to live it! I just posted today’s installment about Jesus being mocked and abused by the soldiers.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to keep up with replying to every comment as it comes in this week, but I am reading them all and they are a big contribution to my reflections and writing here.

Kittredge Cherry said...

Today an Anglican priest published a big article at the Guardian about Jesus being homosexual. Ah, more people are coming to welcome the possibility of a queer Christ, which will enable them to see the Christ within us queers. Here’s a quote an a link to the original article:

“After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I felt I was left with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a century of my Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been homosexual. Had he been devoid of sexuality, he would not have been truly human. To believe that would be heretical. Heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual: Jesus could have been any of these. There can be no certainty which. The homosexual option simply seems the most likely. The intimate relationship with the beloved disciple points in that direction. It would be so interpreted in any person today.” -- Paul Oestreicher today in the Guardian. Thanks to Madpriest for alerting me to this great article.

“Was Jesus gay? Probably” by Paul Oestreicher (the Guardian