"Jesus is not a homophobe" shirt speaks on Day of Silence for LGBT youth

Maverick Couch, second from left, with his mother, Tonya, and his friends Josh and Taylor at his April 3 press conference in Cincinnati (photo from Lambda Legal)

Photo from Lambda Legal

A gay teen in a T-shirt that says, “Jesus is not a homophobe” is among those taking a stand for LGBT youth today on the Day of Silence.

Today is the Day of Silence, a national student-led protest of anti-LGBT bullying in schools. On April 20 students from middle school through college take a vow of silence to emphasize the silencing effect of anti-LGBT harassment. During their silence, students explain their message with printed cards, buttons, stickers, T-shirts and such.

Today’s silent protestors include Maverick Couch, a 16-year-old gay Ohio student who won a legal fight this month for the right to wear a T-shirt that says: “Jesus was not a homophobe.”

Couch wore the shirt to his high school in Waynesville, Ohio, for the Day of Silence in 2011. The school principal ordered him to turn the shirt inside out because it “had to do with religion” and “religion and state have to be separate.” Later the school district defended the action by denouncing the shirt’s message as “sexual in nature and therefore indecent and inappropriate in a school setting.”

On April 3 Lambda Legal filed suit against the Wayne Local School District on Maverick’s behalf, arguing that they violated Couch’s First Amendment right to free speech. The very next day a federal judge ruled that Couch can wear his T-shirt while the case proceeds -- but only on the Day of Silence.

Couch’s experience shows the power of combining LGBT and Christian messages. I have done so many projects about the queer Christ that it almost seems tame to wear a T-shirt saying “Jesus is not a homophobe.” But it sure made an impact!

Jesus himself never said anything directly about homosexuality in the Bible, but he often encouraged love for all, including outcasts and enemies. Surely he would agree that he is “not a homophobe.”

The Day of Silence feels like great progress to me when I remember my own high school years in the 1970s.  Back then every day was a type of  “day of silence” in which we queer kids were afraid to identify ourselves.

Founded in 1996, the Day of Silence is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The first Day of Silence was organized at the University of Virginia in response to a class assignment on non-violent protest. More than 8,000 schools have participated in the event, which is held every year in April.
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Related links:

Dayofsilence.org (official website)

Student Can Wear Pro-Gay Jesus T-shirt (Advocate)

Couch v. Wayne Local School District (Lambda Legal)

Teen wins right to wear 'Jesus Is Not a Homophobe' T-shirt to school (MSNBC)

Maverick Couch, Gay High School Student, Sues School Over Ban Of His 'Jesus Is Not A Homophobe' T-Shirt (Huffington Post)

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This post is part of the LGBT Calendar series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people of faith and our allies.
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Jesus is Not a Homophobe by wesdesd
Print your own t shirt on zazzle.

Sor Juana de la Cruz: Nun who loved a countess in 17th-century Mexico City

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Miguel Cabrera, 1750 (Wikimedia Commons)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th-century Mexican nun whose critically acclaimed writings include lesbian love poetry. She is considered one of the greatest Latin American poets, an early advocate of women’s rights, and some say, North America's first lesbian feminist writer. Her feast day is today (April 17).

For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Nun who loved a countess in 17th-century Mexico City

Sor Juana (Nov. 12, 1648 - April 17, 1695) was born out of wedlock near Mexico City in what was then New Spain. She was a witty, intellectually gifted girl who loved learning. Girls of her time were rarely educated, but she learned to read in her grandfather’s book-filled house.

When she was 16, she asked for her parents’ permission to disguise herself as a male student in order to attend university, which did not accept women. They refused, and instead she entered the convent in 1667. In her world, the convent was the only place where a woman could pursue education.

Sor Juana’s convent cell became Mexico City’s intellectual hub. Instead of an ascetic room, Sor Juana had a suite that was like a modern apartment. Her library contained an estimated 4,000 books, the largest collection in Mexico. The portrait from 1750 shows her in her amazing library, surrounded by her many books.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

By Lewis Williams, SFO trinitystores.com

She turned her nun’s quarters into a salon, visited by the city’s intellectual elite. Among them was Countess Maria Luisa de Paredes, vicereine of Mexico. The two women became passionate friends. It’s unclear whether they were lesbians by today’s definition, but Maria Luisa inspired Sor Juana to write amorous love poems, such as:

That you’re a woman far away
is no hindrance to my love:
for the soul, as you well know,
distance and sex don’t count.

Click here for more of Sor Juana’s lesbian poems in English and Spanish.

The romance between Sor Juana and Maria Luisa has long been an inspiration for authors and film makers. Poet and Chicano studies scholar Alicia Gaspar de Alba writes about it vividly in her novel “Sor Juana’s Second Dream.” The novel became the basis for the play “The Nun and the Countess” by Odalys Nanín.

Gaspar de Alba also writes about Sor Juana in her new book “[Un]framing the ‘Bad Woman’: Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui, and Other Rebels with a Cause.” It was published in 2014 by the University of Texas.

María Luisa Bemberg, one of Latin America’s foremost female directors, explored the love between the nun and the countess in “I, the Worst of All” (Spanish: Yo, la peor de todas). The 1990 film was Argentina’s Academy Award entry for Best Foreign Language Film that year. The DVD cover uses a quote from the Boston Globe to describe the film: “Lesbian passion seething behind convent walls.” It includes woman-to-woman eroticism without objectifying the women. The movie is based on “Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith” by Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz of Mexico.

Production began in fall 2014 on a movie based on Gaspar de Alba's novel. Mexican actress Ana de La Reguera will play Sor Juana in "Juana de Asbaje," the film adaptation of Gaspar de Alba’s novel. She co-wrote the screenplay with the film's director, Rene Bueno.

Church authorities cracked down on Sor Juana, not because of her lesbian poetry, but for “La Respuesta,” her classic defense of women’s rights in response to opposition from the clergy. Threatened by the Inquisition, Sor Juana was silenced for the final three years of her life. At age 46, she died after taking care of her sisters in an outbreak of plague.

She is not recognized as a saint by the male-dominated church hierarchy that she criticized, but Sor Juana holds a place in the informal communion of saints honored by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of faith and our allies.  She is especially revered as a role model by Latina feminists.

The icon that appears with this post was painted by Colorado artist Lewis Williams of the Secular Franciscan Order (SFO). Sor Juana sits between Mexico City’s two volcanoes, the male Popocatépetl and the female Iztaccíhuatl, symbolizing the conflict between men and women that she experienced in trying to get an education. She holds a book with a quote from her writings: “The most unforgivable crime is to place people’s stature in doubt.”

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Related links:

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz at the Legacy Project

Sor Juana de la Cruz: La monja le encantó la Condesa en la Cidade do México en el siglo 17 (Santos Queer)

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Related books:

“Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography” (2014) by Theresa A. Yugar with a foreword by Rosemary Radford Ruether

“Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works” (2015), translated by Edith Grossman with an introduction by Julia Alvarez

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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

Icons of Sor Juana de la Cruz and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at Trinity Stores

The Seminarian: Gay theology student looks for love in new DVD

“The Seminarian,” a drama about a closeted gay seminarian’s search for love, was released on DVD this week.

Ryan, the title character, is completing a thesis on “The Divine Gift of Love” at an evangelical seminary while struggling in a relationship with a man who won’t commit. Questions of love, loneliness, faith and suffering are illuminated by Ryan’s interactions with his distant gay lover, two gay classmates, and the devout mother who doesn’t know about his sexual orientation.

Surprisingly, these evangelical seminarians apparently feel no conflict over being gay and Christian. The Bible passages used to condemn homosexuality are barely even mentioned. They don’t worry much about whether to stay in the closet either. Coming out issues do arise, but in true 21st-century style, these young gays show no paranoia about hiding their sexual orientation, even in a hostile seminary setting. They’re not even worried about using their degrees to get a job after graduation. Ryan focuses on a more universal question: How can love be a gift from God when it causes so much suffering?

This is a sweet, slow-paced film with no gratuitous sex. It would probably qualify for an R rating based on brief male frontal nudity and some low-key sex scenes. The film grows out of first-hand experiences at a conservative seminary. Writer-director Joshua Lim recently attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where the movie was shot. Lim was born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore.

Viewers with seminary degrees will get a kick out of the film’s valiant efforts to show the drama within such intellectual labors as library research and writing a master’s thesis in theology. Many may find understated inspiration here.
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Related link:
Trailer for The Seminarian

Our 25th anniversary is today!

Kittredge Cherry, right, and Audrey are united in Holy Union on April 11, 1987 (photo by Lisa Wigoda)

A gift received at our Holy Union

My beloved Audrey and I were joined in a Holy Union ceremony 25 years ago today on April 11, 1987 at Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco. Today on our 25th anniversary, we invite you to share our joy!

Our wedding was so long ago that nobody even dared to use the term “wedding” for the blessing of our same-sex relationship. Domestic partnerships and civil unions were still at least a dozen years away from becoming law. Marriage equality was non-existent as a concept. It wasn’t even at the stage of being an impossible dream. Many of the guests that we invited didn’t even understand what we were inviting them to witness.

Public opinion was so universally against us that nobody had even bothered yet to take a poll about it. The first Gallup poll on “marriages between homosexuals” was in 1996, with 68 percent against and 27 percent in favor. We became part of the rising tide that turned public opinion around. By 2011, 53 percent favored same-sex marriage.

But nothing could stop us from pledging our love to each other before God and community. After blessing us, the pastor declared, “Let no one -- let no church, let no state -- put asunder that which God has joined together!”

And we are still together 25 years later!

Kittredge Cherry, right, and Audrey -- 25 years after our Holy Union. Love kept us together.

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Related links:

Marriage Between Homosexuals Is Nothing New for Some in S.F. (1989 Los Angeles Times article about our Holy Union)

Public opinion of same-sex marriage (Wikipedia)

Happy Easter from Jesus In Love and Kittredge Cherry!

Queer Resurrection (Atgyfodiad Queer) by Andrew Craig Williams

Christ is risen!  Rejoice!

Easter is a promise that God renews every spring. May this holy day call you to new life and remind you that nothing can destroy your dreams.

A rainbow greets the risen Christ as he leaves his tomb in “Queer Resurrection” by Andrew Craig Williams. The title in Welsh is “Atgyfodiad Queer.” Williams is a queer artist, writer and music maker based in Wales who blogs at andrewcraigwilliams.blogspot.com. The Bible quote comes from John 11:25, when Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  He created the image this year specifically for Jesus in Love's Easter greeting.  Thanks, Andy!

Here is an Easter basket of other treats for you to enjoy. New this year:

Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision with art by Douglas Blanchard and new text by Kittredge Cherry.  Please comment!

Highlights from years past at the Jesus in Love Blog:

Rainbow cross lights the way for all

Holy Week series with excerpts from "Jesus in Love: At the Cross" by Kittredge Cherry

"Easter Day: Foreplay to Eternity prayer" by James Koenig

Kitt’s Easter message with wild mustard flowers