This is an interview I did with my friend Peter. I wanted to talk to him because he’s lived through a tumultuous period in Church and American history and come through with his faith and sunny disposition basically intact. How does somebody end up as a faithful, practicing, openly gay Catholic in his 50s? (Warning: The answer is pretty long! This is a super-long post really.) I met with Peter in his apartment. The background for our conversation was the... Read more
interviews me for RNS: A few decades ago, there were basically two options for people who wanted to follow Jesus but were attracted to the same gender: They could either throw off religion and embrace their sexuality, or they could remain in the faith and hide their sexual orientations. Today, there are other options. Some–like Matthew Vines and David Gushee–are attempting to make a biblical case for same-sex relationships. Others–such as Julie Rodgers and Wesley Hill–are leading a movement of celibate gay Christians. ... Read more
The title of All Aunt Hagar’s Children gives you an idea of one of the strengths of this short-story collection: Edward P. Jones has woven a tapestry portrait of a community. Or, to switch metaphors, he has laid a table where everyone in the family can come, get their due, and have their say. The stories aren’t linked by anything other than their setting: black D.C., mostly black Catholic D.C., from the late 19th century to the latter half of... Read more
Very kind & thoughtful review of the book, at New Directions: …Part One of Gay and Catholic is Eve’s own account of coming out as a lesbian in her atheist family, falling in love with the Catholic church in college, choosing to be baptized, and then confronting her alcoholism – a story made all the more interesting because its pieces seem to be scrambled and assembled in the opposite order from your average gay Christian autobiography. Eve has a remarkable... Read more
Dept of Things I Found on Wikipedia: Read more
at Surprising Faith: Alicia: What do you think it means to be Catholic? Your Catholicism seems much more intellectual than mine ever was, and I considered myself a fairly committed Catholic. Does Catholicism require us to understand some/most of it? Or is it enough to go through the sacraments and say that you believe in the Nicene Creed (even if you don’t think about it all that hard)? Eve: I don’t really think I have much of a definition of what... Read more
reviewing a show at the National Museum of African Art: I’m sitting in hell with a couple of little boys, who are trying to prove they’re not scared. We’re watching a cloth-wrapped figure prostrate itself and bang its fists against the floor, as sobs and wordless singing give way to a howled “I, I, I surrender!” Behind us stretches a huge black coiling thing that looks like a well-fed python. “It’s just a video,” one kid says in a subdued... Read more
with a small post: A while ago I was talking to my spiritual director about some anxieties I was feeling in one of my friendships. This was a close friendship which had been tested by time (and by my own idiocy) but I was still having a hard time trusting that it would endure, and coping with the changes that were occurring in the friendship. My spiritual director nodded and said, “It sounds like you’re ‘attached’ to this friend, in... Read more
“You know, I don’t know what’s become of you,” Idabelle said. “I could say the same bout you.” He took a beer from the icebox, needing something to do with his hands because he knew his were the greater sins. –in All Aunt Hagar’s Children Read more
with not my strongest piece, but I think the underlying point is necessary. One thing I wish I’d added is that gay people who accept the Christian sexual ethic are both the ones serving our neediest and the ones in need: We too have been rejected by our parents and even kicked out of our homes for coming out, and have suffered other economic consequences–sometimes both the economic injustices associated with being gay and economic injustices associated with celibacy or... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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