{"id":2763,"date":"2021-12-10T22:41:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T02:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mudbloodcatholic\/?p=2763"},"modified":"2021-12-10T22:41:49","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T02:41:49","slug":"review-tenderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mudbloodcatholic\/2021\/12\/review-tenderness\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: “Tenderness”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Eve Tushnet, author of Gay and Catholic<\/em><\/a>, Amends<\/em><\/a>, and Punishment: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>, has just released another book! This is a sequel to her partly-memoir debut work, Gay and Catholic<\/em>, and deals more with the practical side of figuring out how to do<\/em> Catholicism as a gay person without getting homophobia poisoning. It\u2019s called Tenderness: A Gay Christian\u2019s Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God\u2019s Extravagant Love<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I rarely pre-order books, but I pre-ordered this one. It showed up last week, and I finished it tonight. (I usually get through books a lot faster, but it\u2019s been a bear of a December at work.) Let\u2019s dive in!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s divided into four unequal parts. The first part is \u201cThe Gay Christian Drinking Game,\u201d which goes over the trauma conga line a lot of us endure as LGBTQ people growing up and\/or living in the church.1<\/sup> The second part discusses new ways of conceptualizing same-sex love: how to draw correct distinctions between gay love (or more accurately, loves) and gay sex, how gay sexuality can point us toward aspects of Christian community our society neglects or even suppresses, and some (not all) of the ways celibacy can be experienced as a blessing rather than a burden. The third and longest part, \u201cThe Church Suffering,\u201d deals with a lot of the hardships of being a gay Christian\u2014some that come from within, many that others impose upon us. The fourth part, which has a large number of especially short chapters, gives pointers on ways to find God\u2019s tenderness through a variety of practices, some explicitly spiritual, others not.<\/p>\n

The Strong Points<\/h4>\n

Eve is one of the most approachable<\/em> writers I\u2019ve ever found. Everything she says feels, for lack of a better word, comfortable: she isn\u2019t straining to be chummy (which I find cloying), she never feels arch or abstract or precious. It\u2019s really pleasant and refreshing to read something like that; you almost feel better afterwards.<\/p>\n

But anyway, on to the, you know, topic of the book. I found the advice she gave really positive; in one or two cases, it gave me that little flutter of nerves you get when you recognize \u201cThis is a really good idea, and I\u2019m quite afraid to try it!\u201d A lot of it is advice that I think every Christian would do well to try. The chapter on forgiveness\u2014tellingly titled \u201cIf I\u2019m Celibate, Can I Still Flirt With Anger?\u201d\u2014is especially good. So are the two closing chapters, \u201cIt\u2019s His Body and I\u2019ll Cry if I Want to\u201d (on adoration) and \u201cAll the Names of God\u201d (on finding new and nourishing forms of prayer).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Besides all of that, though, I think this book represents an advance in \u2026 let\u2019s call it \u201cSide B2<\/sup> politics.\u201d I\u2019ve been comparatively radical and open to queer theory since before my conversion, but a lot of Side B Christians are pretty socially conservative. Sometimes that\u2019s just a difference in temperament, and I try (with mixed success) not to be judgy about that. Other times it makes me really uncomfortable and seems to excuse or even prop up things I think are genuinely unjust.<\/p>\n

I was therefore especially thrilled by the following excerpt:<\/p>\n

Christian homophobia means that gay people hear, over and over again, many true things that are said in ways or in contexts that make them lies. \u2026 [For example,] \u201cHomosexuality is just a social construct.\u201d This, I think, is more common among conservative Catholics. Protestants get more into how you can\u2019t limit God\u2019s power; Catholics always think we can translate the Christian sexual ethic into secularese<\/em>. Anyway, this statement is mostly true but not quite<\/em> as true as its proponents (I\u2019m one, really) think. \u2026<\/p>\n

One way to tell when the social-construct argument is being abused is to ask what we\u2019re supposed to do about it. Nine times out of ten, your straight conservative interlocutor thinks you should stop calling yourself gay, considering yourself a part of the gay community, and being gay in ways that straight Christians might have to notice and think about. In exchange, they might agree to stop calling themselves \u201cheterosexual\u201d\u2014though of course no one would expect them to stop wearing their wedding ring, or talking about their fianc\u00e9e, or using their spouse\u2019s employer-provided health insurance. As long as you agree to make it harder to talk about your life, they\u2019ll agree to make it harder to talk about their privilege.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a decent rule of thumb: When a truth is being spoken in order to pressure only a marginalized group to change, with no change expected of the majority, the truth becomes a falsehood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

GET \u2018EM, GIRL.<\/p>\n

The Weak Points<\/h4>\n

I literally don\u2019t have anything to put in this category! So I\u2019m instead going to talk about something Tenderness<\/em> could perhaps have included, but didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a uniquely LGBTQ experience, but I think it\u2019s relevant to LGBTQ Christians in some unique ways: the feeling of being not only abandoned or wounded, but specifically betrayed<\/em> by the church, due to the open and rampant corruption of so many Christian leaders. The hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy is perhaps the most glaring. But there are plenty of figures like Jerry Falwell or Doug Wilson3<\/sup> or the Duggars in the Protestant world: men and women who breathed fire against gay and trans people for decades, only to turn out to have not only skeletons in their own closets, but the exact skeletons they were frying us for<\/em>. (To be blunt, maybe even unkind, it leaves you wondering whether there might be a private reason so many of these people are so sure that all gay people are pedophiles.)<\/p>\n

Like I said, hurt and horror over Christian sexual abuse is not a uniquely queer experience. But not everybody gets made scapegoats as remorselessly and incessantly as we are. I think a lot of what Eve wrote in Tenderness<\/em> can be brought to that wound, but I would have been (and would still be!) interested to hear her discuss that element in LGBTQ Christian life more particularly.<\/p>\n

Should You Buy It?<\/h4>\n

Yes! A+. Buy it for the gay Christian who\u2019s in your life. Buy it for yourself. Buy it for your gay Christian self who\u2019s by definition in your life. It\u2019s excellent.<\/p>\n

\n

1<\/sup>I use the uncapitalized church<\/em> here because I mean Christianity in general, including but not limited to the Catholic Church (and bodies with apostolic succession more generally).<\/p>\n

2<\/sup>For anyone unfamiliar, Side B<\/em> is a longstanding nickname used by and for LGBTQ-identifying Christians who believe in a \u201ctraditional\u201d sexual ethic, i.e. that Christian marriage is properly between one man and one woman. This covers a lot of gay Catholics, including Eve and myself, as well as a number of gay Protestant authors like Wesley Hill, Bridget Eileen Rivera (though I don\u2019t think she uses the term), and Gregory Coles.<\/p>\n

3<\/sup>For those who aren\u2019t aware, Doug Wilson was (and to some remains) a Reformed luminary who, among other things, encouraged a man he knew was a pedophile to get married and start a family; I include this link to Rod Dreher\u2019s article on the subject<\/a>, lest anybody accuse me of being unfair to Wilson.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eve Tushnet, author of Gay and Catholic, Amends, and Punishment: A Love Story, has just released another book! This is a sequel to her partly-memoir debut work, Gay and Catholic, and deals more with the practical side of figuring out how to do Catholicism as a gay person without getting homophobia poisoning. It\u2019s called Tenderness: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4203,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,51,97,12,54,81,82,98,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chastity","category-church","category-culture-war","category-eros","category-gay","category-homophobia","category-prayer","category-recommendations","category-review"],"yoast_head":"\nReview: "Tenderness"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Eve Tushnet, author of Gay and Catholic, Amends, and Punishment: A Love Story, has just released another book! 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