On the difference between Christian queer allyship and exploitation (guest post by Xenologer)

From Sunday’s post:

I see why ‘doing God’ as a community might seem politically expedient. I understand the urge to demonstrate religion need not entail queerphobia. Despite this post, I value religious allies – and I recognise queer believers face all manner of challenges that mean they need inclusion and support. I’m not here to deny them that – queer spaces, most of the time, should welcome those of all beliefs and none – but I will argue the following: overt public religiosity stands in the way of this, and believers (queer or not) in LGBT space should be considerate.

Xenologer, who also has a blog, responds:

Personally, I have appreciated and seen the benefits of Christian orgs offering their basically unearned place of automatic credibility and moral high ground to queer people and queer causes. The phone banks against Indiana’s anti-gay proposed constitutional amendment took place in a church. I’d like to explain the difference – for me – between what this essay is talking about and what progressive people of faith did for us in Indy.

The insistence for many on cramming their gay-friendly Christian theology into LGBT events seems less like ‘we are here to support you’ and more [like] ‘if we are nice to you, will you please keep us from becoming obsolete?’ It’s a demand, not an offer. It’s always on Christian terms and we always have to include them and even center them so that they can reassure themselves they’re not like Those Other Christians.

For contrast, take LifeJourney Church, which let Freedom Indiana use their space to phone bank against HJR-3/6. I never felt like the fact that we were in a church was supposed to matter to us. There was no necessary deference to Christianity required as the price of their assistance. They offered help and then let LGBT people take the reins.

Basically, it’s the same choice available to all allies. Crappy faux-allies will say, ‘You have our support as long as you use it to improve our PR.’ Actual allyship means saying, ‘Here’s what we’ve got available. Is that useful? Cool. Use it. Let us know if you need more stuff to use,’ and not demanding that the help come with those ‘and be sure to tell everyone we did it’ strings.

Christian theology comes from a text full of such diverse and often contradictory content that people can come to the text with whatever they want and walk away from it completely unchanged (but with shiny new scriptural support for whatever they wanted to think). As a result, yes, Christianity can be spun to be queer-friendly. However: supporting LGBT people as a way to show off how modern and cosmopolitan the religion can be so that its frequent backward arsery doesn’t render it obsolete? That’s gross. That’s not allyship, but it is what I see a lot.

I find it really alienating that in so many LGBT circles the drive to assimilate into a Christian-dominant notion of respectability is so important. Not everybody wants to be A Good Christian Just Like You Cis-Het Christians, and not everybody wants to be a prop in someone else’s quest to do that. Furthermore, we shouldn’t have to let Christians use us for their PR. LGBT people are the ones who need help, and treating us like a resource for churches that wanna bedazzle Christianity is hella exploitative.

I can’t wait until LGBT people don’t need help from churches, and honestly? The churches that are our actual allies can’t wait either. They’re the allies who are working to make themselves obsolete. Churches that use us for their PR as a symbol for how modern they are? To show that they are so good at Jesusing that they’ll even *gasp* be nice to TEH QWURZ? They like us right where we are, and never forget it.

On the difference between Christian queer allyship and exploitation (guest post by Xenologer)
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