Lionel Blue on tap

Wow, you can get old Thoughts for the Day and search by author and/or date - which means you can listen to the lovely Lionel Blue whenever you want. It's a pity you can't search by topic and religion, though.

Meet the Sisters

Meet the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Embarrassingly, I almost forgot to include them in my essay! How could I miss out such wonderful people? Not only do they dress in fabulous outfits, they also do wonderful work in raising awareness - of safer sex, LGBT rights, and AIDS. Their spiritual beliefs vary from atheist and agnostic to "a nice mix of Judaeo-Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Wicca-Faerie Traditions. I guess I'm a Sufi of sorts". And they have such wonderful names - Sister Tilly Comes Again, for example. And their motto / mission statement is about spreading love and joy and dispelling guilt. Wonderful!

the art of Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin

Featured in Kittredge Cherry's latest book, Art that Dares, Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin's work is a series of dramatic (sometimes disturbing, as in the series In Hate We Trust) photos. Her series Ecce Homo (key scenes from the life of Christ with a queer twist) is amazing. It received a very varied reception; some Christians saw it as a sacred expression of Jesus' relationship with outcasts; others saw it as a "satanic trick" and one man attacked two of the pictures with an axe - what a sicko. Ohlson Wallin based the tableaux on classic paintings. The full story appears in Art that Dares (Cherry, 2007). Check out Ohlson Wallin's website; better still, buy the book.

being 'musical'

Stephen Hough (Summerskill, 2006: 210) suggests a non-essentialist explanation for the association of gay men with the arts:

“To use ‘musical’ as a euphemism for homosexual is rather flattering when you think about it. It suggests a sensitivity, a creativity, an ability to attune to sound and beauty. … It is not an accident that music and the arts were always a tolerant environment for gay men. It was a world where appreciation for the ‘feminine’ was not seen as a weakness, and where strength did not have to manifest itself in violence and coarseness. … It was the perfect place in which to indulge a sense of the extravagant and exuberant, as well as offering ideal camouflage. A mask, a costume, an affecting melody, a graceful leap were all perfect alibis for those whose affections danced to a different tune.”

Queer occultism

Occultism exists at the interface between the Pagan revival and Christianity, and is occasionally relevant to the theme of queer spirituality, since the Pagan revival had its roots in occult traditions and radical counter-cultures of the nineteenth century (Hutton, 1999: 72), and some prominent gay men were involved in occultism (Owen, 2004: 215) and Paganism (Hutton, 1999: 50), and some moved between traditions. Edward Carpenter had been ordained as an Anglican priest in order to take up an Oxford fellowship before turning to Paganism and socialism (Taylor, 1998); Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson wrote books advocating a return to Paganism (Hutton, 1999: 29). Oscar Wilde and some of his family were involved in the Theosophical Movement -- though sadly the movement did not support him after his arrest, trial and conviction (Owen, 2004: 112). Wilde was received into the Catholic church on his deathbed (Holland, 1985 [1948]: 14), and spent a lot of time in Reading prison reading the New Testament in Greek (Wilde, 1996 [1905]: 63).

James Bidgood

Precious few people seem to have heard of the fabulous Pierre et Gilles, so presumably even less have heard of the lovely James Bidgood (who influenced their work).

I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of Corps Divins (P & G's more recent work) off the Marketplace of Amazon.fr - and the photos are beautiful. Particularly the Mercury one.

Anyway, I googled for James Bidgood and found more information than I had previously. He made a film called Pink Narcissus in the 60s and you can now get it on DVD.

Here are some of Bidgood's photos:

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Pierre et Gilles

The French photographers Pierre et Gilles have produced numerous images of Christian saints, Hindu deities, and classical deities (Marcadé and Cameron, 1997: 197-223), and many of them are gay icons in one way or another (Vallet, 2006). The series of photographs of saints begins in 1987 with an image of Saint Sebastian, looking remarkably calm as he is transfixed with arrows, lashed to a tree-stump with garlands of roses. Sebastian has been a symbol of same-sex love at least since the Renaissance (Conner et al, 1997: 297), hence Derek Jarman’s remarkable film of the same name, and Pierre et Gilles created two more images of him in 1994 (Sébastien de la Mer) and 1996 (Le martyre de Saint Sébastien). Sebastian was also painted by numerous Renaissance painters, including Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, nicknamed ’Il Sodoma’ (Conner et al, 1997: 85). Pierre et Gilles have produced numerous other saints and deities, all depicted in an ornate and beautiful style. These include Joan of Arc, presumably chosen by the artists for her gender-bending activities and possible lesbianism (Conner et al, 1997: 190), whom they depicted in 1988 and 1997, dressed in armour and gazing into the distance. They also produced an image of Sainte Affligée, known in English as Uncumber or Wilgefortis, a legendary figure who grew a beard to avoid marriage (Becker-Huberti, undated). There are numerous other saint pictures, some of which seem to have homoerotic connotations, but mostly seem somewhat randomly selected.

Pagan deities that they have depicted include Adonis (1992), Amphytrite (1989), Bacchus (1991), Medusa (1990), Orpheus (1990), Venus (1991, 1992 and 2000), Adonis (1992 and 1999), Eros (2003), Mercury (2001), Ganymede (2001), and Diana (1997). Medusa is sometimes seen as a lesbian icon (Conner et al, 1997: 229). Orpheus chose male lovers after failing to retrieve Eurydice from the underworld, and it was for this that the Maenads tore him apart; legend has it that his friend Sappho buried his head (Conner et al, 1997: 258). Adonis was the eromenos of Dionysos (Conner et al, 1997: 43). Eros was also a symbol of same-sex love in ancient Greece (Conner et al, 1997: 132), among the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians for example. In alchemical texts, Mercury was frequently depicted as an androgyne; in Pierre et Gilles’ 2001 work, he appears as a graceful and muscular youth. Ganymede is well-known as the eromenos of Zeus, and the term Ganymede (or its Latin equivalent, ‘catamite’) was used as a term for young men who took the receptive role in homoerotic relationships in the medieval period by both pro- and anti-homosexual writers (Conner et al, 1997: 155). According to mythology, Diana shunned the company of men and preferred the company of women. It would seem from this brief survey that the association of the deity or saint with same-sex love or gender-bending may be a factor in their selection by Pierre et Gilles as a subject.

The Divine Feminine

The third wave of feminism was characterised by a decrease in emphasis upon separatist strategies and by an increased awareness of women-loving women and women of colour and the problematisation of the concept of gender (Juschka, 2001: 568). This development was reflected in theology and the study of religions by feminist scholars engaging with queer theory.

The resurgence of interest in goddesses was a significant feature of the resurgence of Paganism (Hutton, 1999) There is also a move among some Christian feminists to refer to ‘Mother God’.

Whilst it seems logical for feminists to honour the divine feminine, a goddess, or goddesses, this can be problematic if there is assumed to be one God and one Goddess (as is often the case with popular books on Wicca). A single divine essence without gender, or including all possible genders and sexualities, or an assumption that there are many deities, some of whom might be queer, is relatively unproblematic from a queer perspective; but the idea that there is one God and one Goddess excludes the possibility of their being queer, can lead to heteronormativity, and is sometimes used to justify homophobia among Pagans.

However, many lesbians find the idea of a single Goddess attractive, sometimes because they have been molested by men (Foltz, 2000), sometimes because they do not feel the need for ‘balance‘ (Rose, undated).

The divine feminine is still not widely accepted in Christianity, although it is widely considered to be a defining feature of Paganism, belief in it being one of Three Principles of the Pagan Federation. It is very important to feminists and lesbians, although some queer-identified people might prefer the androgynous divine.
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Foltz, TG (2000). Sober Witches and Goddess Practitioners: Women’s Spirituality and Sobriety. Diskus, 6: 1. [online] Available from: http://web.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus/foltz.html Accessed 3-5-2007

Hutton, Ronald (1999), The Triumph of the Moon: a history of modern Pagan witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Juschka, Darlene M., ed. (2001), Feminism in the Study of Religion: a Reader. London and New York: Continuum.

“Mama Rose” (undated). Why go Dianic? http://www.iit.edu/~phillips/personal/philos/dianic.html Accessed 3-5-2007