My band Bearsnail is headed on tour late-February and early-March! If you want to help us hit the road, please consider donating to our Indie-GoGo Campaign.
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But what concerns me more than the comparison is that George fails to see the obvious similarities between Catholicism and the Klan. Indeed, the Catholic Church’s legacy is one of genocide and mass murder. The church was instrumental in the violent colonization of Native Nations in the Americas. The church’s complicit silence and lack of political perspective aided the Nazi party. Indeed, the current pope was a Nazi. The church’s ongoing denial of the value of condoms promotes the widespread death and sickness of people whose sexual proclivities fall outside of the narrow scope of what the church deems moral. Ultimately, which is more disruptive—genocide in the Americas, tacitly supporting the holocaust, appointing a former Nazi as your leader and directly aiding the AIDS epidemic for nearly 20 years; or a bunch of singing gays, passing a church and by their presence, somehow disrupting the service? The hypocrisy the Cardinal demonstrates, to compare a hate mongering group that wills genocide–not unlike the historical Catholic Church—with the LGBTQ community, a fundamentally oppressed group (indeed oppressed by the church itself), demonstrates the ongoing commitment Catholic leadership has to denying their roots, their privilege and the power they secured through mass murder. Until the Catholic Church atones for its sins and quits committing political violence against oppressed communities, the biggest disruption to its spiritual practice comes from within the church hierarchy. George’s careless comment pales in comparison to the horror of the church casting a former Nazi in the role of most infallible living person on earth. The institution is rotten.
Our elders are subject to all sorts of discrimination from their peers to their caretakers. Because LGBTQ elders tend to have fewer children, they lack many of the resources that others in senior housing have. The article looks optimistically towards LGBTQ senior housing initiatives as one solution. But housing isn’t everthing. Family is. Which presents younger queer activists with a huge challenge—indeed the challenge of family. Where are we? Why are we not showing up for our LGBTQ elders? How can we offer our support? Our predecessors fought hard to get out of the closet—they struggled through the AIDS epidemic and lost countless peers to the disease. They faced homophobia in the work place and have struggled to have their relationships honored by the law. They deserve better than we are providing. If we are indeed family, we have an obligation to show up for them. Today at The Precarious I answered the following question:
And then I quit coffee…and sweets…and refined carbohydrates…and…and…and… I’m not writing this shit to sound virtuous. None of it is based in ethics and even if it were I don’t put a whole lot of stock in individual lifestyle changes. Over these last few weeks the changes I’ve noticed are rather remarkable. My brain has cleared up a bit. I’ve been reading a lot more. My sex drive has ramped up and I’m sleeping better. While I had a vague idea that I was abusing booze, coffee and food to suppress hard feelings, I had no idea how many positive feelings I was suppressing as well. Yet quitting isn’t just easy—I’ve been going out less. When I have gone out, I’ve had to wrestle with a deeper level of social anxiety (which seems to be getting a bit better each week). I haven’t had the nervous energy to regularly plow through a day on 5 hours of sleep. If I’m tired, I need to crash. Quitting has slowed my participation in a workaholic, consumer culture. Before I was eating tons of fast food against my better personal political and health judgment. I haven’t touched it since I quit—there’s simply nothing to eat at those restaurants that conforms to the limits I’ve imposed on myself. While I have continued to work relatively nonstop, I’ve find myself able to slow down at the end of the day and put off tomorrow’s work for tomorrow without squashing my feelings with booze and recharging my system with coffee. In some since this chemical shift has untangled me from some my nastier consumer habits. By no means am I straight edge or morally committed to getting drugs out of everybody’s systems. I believe drugs, alcohol and caffeine included, can be and have been instrumental tools for personal growth. I don’t think I have anything left to learn from them. Thus I am learning from a whole new way of being that I haven’t experienced once in my life—daily living without caffeine and refined sugars to bring me up and shitty food and booze to crash me down. I’m taking it day-by-day and enjoying the shift.
Hey Queer Radical readers–I’ve answered this question today at The Precarious. Let me know what you think about the answer!
This anthology challenge queer theory to center critiques of the settler-colonial state within the field’s analysis and to reimagine both queer theory and Native studies as mutually beneficial frameworks for decolonizing ourselves, the land and our activism. The book centers itself around a series of discussions and debates by Native LGBTQ2 scholars yet invites participation from non-Native, non-LGBTQ2 people alike to explore the role of the ally in decolonizing queer theory and activism and queering Native studies and social struggle. From the “subjectless critique” offered by Andrea Smith to analysis of erotics of sovereignty in the intimate poetry of Qwo-Li Driskill, the anthology as a whole demonstrates how an attack can be waged on the settler-colonial state both through centering structural analysis and exploring memory, ancestry and language. Filled with debates and disagreements on the specifics, Queer Indigenous Studies provides space for discussions about how we can engage the broader radical project of uprooting heteropatriarchy, the settler state and its legacies. Anybody with an investment in queer theory, Native studies or activism should read this anthology. It challenges all of us to engage the monumental task of dismantling the settler state, acknowledging our shared histories and this moment of settler-colonialism and struggling to decolonize the land and ourselves. This book has the power to shift the entire framework we bring to social struggle and to uproot the colonial legacies lurking within non-Native queer theory.
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Check out the answer on my Monday column at the new online magazine: The Precarious. |
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The term “family” used to irritate me when it described the umbrella of LGBTQ folks and how we might best support each other. But discarding it entirely is a terrible move. 
A few weeks ago I decided to quit boozing it up. I had run out of whisky and after not drinking one night, found myself having a hangover. I thought—maybe I should lay off the booze for a couple days—and continued to have a hangover. Thus realizing my body had become physically dependent and that I was pretty damned sure I was psychologically dependent, I figured I had little yet to learn from alcohol and I might as well give it up.
Dear Queer Radical,
It’s rare that I’m stunned by new developments in queer theory. The field often obsesses over destabalizing identity at the expense of acknowledging broader cultural and political violence. Queer theory often fails to connect to broader artistic, cultural, national and activist endeavors. Thus, I was bulldozed by the sharp analysis and challenging demands of “
This has been a wild week at Queer Radical! Thanks to some of you I won Best Activist Bloger in Denver! Good news! In sadder news, the blog was hacked twice-expertly-by people who want to shut this content down. Getting the backups for the site required a pretty penny and I don’t have that many in my pocket! I need your help.
You can only imagine how irritated this question made me…
