No theme. Rafiki: This is two well-worn storylines–Romeo & Juliet plus coming out amid religious homophobia–made distinctive because it’s a) set in Kenya and b) great to look at. The daughters of rival politicians fall in love, one is high femme and one is soft butch, everyone’s clothes are fabulous and the setting is full of color and verve; and there are beatings and exorcisms and jail, and then a very rushed happy-ish ending. Definitely worth watching if you’re interested... Read more
There are three signs posted up in the gay bar we see in Paul Bogart’s 1988 adaptation of Torch Song Trilogy, over the doorway into the back room where you can go for anonymous sex. They say (this is from memory not notes, so the first one may be slightly wrong) MANAGEMENT TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY PARADISE WATCH YOUR WALLET. These perfect signs are the markers of a certain kind of place and time, which can evoke nostalgia once it’s safely... Read more
In Catholic spirituality silence is associated with humility and reverence. Silence is the abyss in which we encounter God; it is a form of poverty, in which we cede the right to be heard; it is a refuge from the clamor of media/entertainment/Twitter/”the take economy.” It is properly opposed not to singing but to noise. (EE Cummings wrote, “(silence is the blood whose flesh/is singing).”) This is the perspective of Robert Cardinal Sarah’s 2016 The Power of Silence. In gay... Read more
I’m reading Caroline Walker Bynum’s excellent Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, and I threw a little bit of it into my Revoice presentation. But I didn’t quote this prayer, since I hadn’t gotten that far in the book yet! It’s from St. Gertrude the Great (Gertrude of Helfta) and what I find so striking here–and so necessary for gay Christians, and Catholics in these times–is the combination of Christ as good Lover and... Read more
part one; part two. Celibacy is beautiful because celibacy is a witness to our trust in God and in the resurrection of the dead. We witness through celibacy in three ways. First, for St. Augustine, one of the primary purposes of procreation is to bring forth the Messiah. So once the Messiah has come, celibacy becomes open to us, a new form of freedom. By living celibately we proclaim that the Messiah has come in Christ and is already among... Read more
part one. Celibacy frees (or pushes!) us to form and strengthen kinds of relationship which might otherwise go neglected. # celibate people are godparents, friends inc covenant friends, monks nuns and priests. Celibate partners (sometimes analogized to a monastery of two), crisis pregnancy counselors, adoptive & foster parents, wife’s or husband’s best friend (one of the pillars which helps support their marriage), “auntie,” caregiver to aging parents. Missionaries, whose relationships are to peoples who need the Gospel. Members of intentional... Read more
These are my notes from the workshop I gave at Revoice on “ecstasy in celibacy.” Lightly edited. The handout from the workshop is here. I opened with prayer: Jesus our Beauty, Jesus our Joy, fill our hearts. Jesus our King, Jesus our Peace, guide our thoughts. Come, Holy Spirit, and renew our hearts—renew our minds—and renew the face of the earth. Amen. My first task was to manage expectations. By which I mean, lower expectations! First of all, I AM... Read more
So after Revoice ended, a couple of us were still high on the excitement and decided to watch this 1999 comedy about a cheerleader (Natasha Lyonne) who’s sent–by mistake! surely!!–to an ex-gay camp. I liked it well enough when I first saw it but remembered the actual humor as being predictable and insufficiently incisive. I thought more highly of it this time around, so here are some notes. # The look of it is relentlessly cartoony, televangelism as drag. I... Read more
Hey y’all. I had a terrific time at Revoice 2k19, where I presented a workshop on ecstasy in celibacy. I’ll post my notes tomorrow, but for now, here’s the handout I used, so you can see how the presentation was organized. The cover of the handout was the best color xerox I could afford of the beautiful painting of St. Bernard over which I rhapsodized here. Five purposes of celibacy I. to give oneself more fully to the community, the... Read more
with the diary of a courtesan-turned-Dominican, among other works: I’m about to plunge into Brenna Moore’s Sacred Dread: Raïssa Maritain, the Allure of Suffering, and the French Catholic Revival (1905–1944)—an exploration of the role of suffering in the thought of a Jewish convert at a time when such conversions were especially fraught. Also hope to read Liane de Pougy’s diaries, published as My Blue Notebooks. more including a history of gangsta rap and Straussian Socrateses (Socrati?) Read more
Eve Tushnet
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