Abstract
Slouching towards Gaytheism: Christianity and Queer Survival in America
W.C. Harris
New York, NY: SUNY Press, 2014. 277 pp. $80.00
Upon reading W.C. Harris’s polemical book one wonders if one has finished a satire because some of the ideas incorporated verge on the farcically absurd. His central thesis is that homophobia won’t be eliminated in this country until religion, especially Christianity, is ended. Harris, an English professor at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, proposes a new era of “gaytheism,” meaning that LGBT people who find themselves in need of “queer communal belonging” (27) should reject religion and become atheists. The book is an angry diatribe on the “consistently antagonistic [and] often murderous impact of religious discourse in America on its queer constituents” (13). He cites examples from evangelical purity balls that are part of Christian abstinence culture and ex-gay ministries to show how destructive institutional religions have acted towards LGBTs—hardly a novel concept. What is “groundbreaking” is his contention that liberal religion (in both its gay and straight incarnations, such as Metropolitan Community Church), despite its noble intentions, still exhibits “deep-seated heteronormative aversions to embracing certain elements of gay affect or queer experience” (94) as well as never being free of reactionary beliefs with its “dangerously self-authorizing moral investment, its tendentious invidious narratives of change, and its intransigence toward reason and ethical objectivity” (93), such that gay Christians must reject this strand of religion as well.
Harris seems most offended by mainstream Christianity’s promotion of monogamous lesbian/gay relationships and its condemnation of casual intimacy, denounced as promiscuity. The limited understanding of spirituality (a term he derides) that queer people should accept must be transgressive, subversive, and liberating. This is where the satirical elements enter, because influenced by the work of gay psychoanalytic theorist Tim Dean, Harris’s ideal community promotes unprotected sex where, by breeding viruses in each other’s bodies, gay men develop new intimate kinships and form a “bug brotherhood” of fraternal relatives as well as “transmitting a cultural legacy” (78). Harris acknowledges that some will say his proposal is irresponsible, “encouraging risky, destructive behavior, posing admitted health dangers” (86). But he replies to the critics that the church is also risky behavior for queers. If nothing else, Harris is consistent in taking seriously gays’ status as tradition-breakers, with their maltreatment and discrimination allowing them to be outsiders willing to “reject heterosexual roles in an anti-social aesthetic” (112). You can’t get more anti-social than nurturing an epidemic.
The book is primarily a love poem to the virtues of atheism from an LGBT perspective with generous quotes from the latest gurus of skepticism, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, to bolster his arguments, even lambasting writer Dan Savage’s anti-bullying “It Gets Better” campaign (hint: it doesn’t). Certainly, one can relate to Harris’s frustration over Christianity’s long history of oppression and homophobia. Despite the last revolutionary 40 years whereby mainline Protestant denominations have embraced openly gay clergy, one has the sense that for Harris even if religions definitively accepted all LGBT people tomorrow, it would be too little too late. It is hard to imagine the depths of disillusionment and cynicism in a person who believes the ideal community for gay men is one willing to spread disease. Still Harris does challenge us when he remarks that it is the debating itself of whether to give queer citizens equality that is so damaging and demeaning. Harris’s chilling attack on religion should remind the church that in spite of incredible growth it still has a long road ahead in both its outreach and contrition toward LGBT people.
What I find extraordinary is that in all Harris’s rancor and bitterness, the one question he fails to ask is that if religion is so onerous toward LGBTs, why have so many opted to stay “under appalling circumstances” and not leave. Obviously, despite its many imperfections, faith communities provide some spiritual solace and sustenance for LGBT people as it does for heterosexuals. Nor does it dawn on Harris that conversion is always a two way street—that the radical change in Protestant denominations has occurred precisely because LGBTs remained and fought for their equal rights as baptized children of God. All Christians are more unconditionally loving because of the presence of queer people, both camps having learned to dialogue and exercise charity toward each other. For those looking for a grievance manual on everything wrong with the church in regards to gays and lesbians, not to mention how poisonous religion can be at its exclusive worst, then this is the book for you. For anyone seeking how transformative the Gospel can be both individually and socially by opening one’s eyes to the presence of God in a people and controversial issue where you would least expect it, avoid Slouching towards Gaytheism at all costs.