LGBT Biography & Memoir (Faith Based)

It is important for our community growth that we share, and hear, our stories.

Ford, Michael

Disclosures Conversations Gay and Spiritual
Darton Longman Todd, 2004

Recommended by QTC
Listed by Martin Pendergast

Michael Ford in this book tells of interviews with several prominent gay men and lesbians, laiety and clergy, who have wrestled with issues of faith and church.

Lynch, Father Bernard

A Priest on Trial

Bloomsbury, 1993

Recommended by QTC;
Listed by Martin Pendergast

(Catholic Church, Biography)

McGinley, Dugan:

Acts of Faith, Acts of Love: Gay Catholic Autobiographies as Sacred Texts
Continuum, 2004

Listed by Martin Pendergast

Pomfrett, Scott

Since My Last Confession
A gay catholic memoir
(Arcade Publishing, 2008)

Highly Recommended by QTC

A wonderful antidote to the serious tone of so many of the other books. Funny, touching and provocative, this should be on everyone’s reading list.

Schinnick, Maurice:

This Remarkable Gift: Being Gay and Catholic
(Allen & Unwin, 1998)

Listed by Martin Pendergast

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Queer Saints and Martyrs (& Others)

James Stoll, Unitarian Pioneer of LGBT Inclusion in Church December 8, 2012

Rev. James Lewis Stoll, who died on December 8th 1994, was a Unitarian Universalist minister who became the first ordained minister of any religion in the United States or Canada to come out as gay. He did so at the annual Continental Conference of Student Religious Liberals on September 5, 1969 in La Foret, Colorado. Later, he led the effort that convinced […]

Blessed Charles de Foucauld December 1, 2012

CHARLES DE FOUCAULD (Brother Charles of Jesus) was born in Strasbourg, France on September 15th, 1858. Orphaned at the age of six, he and his sister Marie were raised by their grandfather in whose footsteps he followed by taking up a military career.He lost his faith as an adolescent.His taste for easy living was well known to all and yet he showed that he c […]

Blessed Bernardo de Hoyos: "The Spouse of Christ" November 30, 2012

In Catholic spiritual tradition, there is an important and honoured place for the idea of "The Bride of Christ". At one level, we are taught to think of the Church as a whole as such a bride of Christ, and the wedding at Cana as a metaphor for the marriage of Christ to his bride, the Church. At another level, religious women think of themselves as […]

Harvey Milk November 27, 2012

b. May 22, 1930 d. November 27, 1978Harvey Milk became the first openly gay person to be elected to a significant public office when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He served eleven months before he was assassinated."The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it. […]

Queer Scripture

The Gay Centurion March 15, 2012

In Catholic tradition, Longinus is the name given to the Roman centurion at the crucifixion who pierced Christ's side with his spear. Some writers, like Paul Halsall of the LGBT Catholic Handbook, also identify him with the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his "beloved boy", who was ill. It is this second person that I am interested in here. […]

Faith vs Religion: Ecclesiolatry, Scribes and Pharisees. February 6, 2012

There is an important distinction between "faith", which refers to belief and a relationship with the divine, and "religion", which refers primarily to the human structures which support it, with their rules, rituals, and clerical castes. They are obviously linked, interdependent, and ideally, support each other. There are grave dangers t […]

The Bible and Textual Abuse: The Case of "malakoi" and "arsenokoites". January 24, 2012

Sane and rational discussion of the Bible and same-sex relationships are bedevilled by difficulties with language, arising from problems with translations on the one hand, and vastly different cultural conditions which make it difficult sometimes to make sense of the applicability of the words, even where the literal meaning is clear. This is especially imp […]

Trans in Scripture May 6, 2011

The Ethiopian Eunuch is our most famous trancestor. However, there are many more scattered through the Bible, both visible and invisible. We shall meet many more later. -Lewis ReayThe Many Eunuchs Hidden in ScriptureThere are numerous trans themes and characters in Scripture. If these are not immediately familiar to us, this is because often, they are simply […]

Queer Spirituality

"The Last Judgement", and the Homoerotic Spirituality of Michaelangelo. November 14, 2010

One of the great paradox's of queer church history is that a period of extreme persecution of "sodomites" by the Inquisition, directly at their own hands or indirectly by secular authorities at their instigation, largely coincided with a remarkable series of popes who had sex with men, who protected family and friends who did so, or spent vast […]

James Alison on Growing Up Gay November 2, 2010

James Alison is another important theologian for gay men, although he described himself not as a "gay theologian", but as a theologian who writes from a gay (male) perspective. He was formerly a Dominican priest, who like Fr John McNeill,, was forced out of the priesthood for daring to speak honestly, in his case about gay priests. He has since cre […]

Come Out, Stand Proud. (The Catechism Commands It!) October 11, 2010

Yes, really - in a manner of speaking. Browsing through the Catechism section on sexuality, which you will find under the sixth commandment, I was struck by two passages in particular:"Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity." (2333)and"Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological wor […]

Was Jesus a Second Class Citizen? August 11, 2010

At Religion Dispatches Magazine, Louis A. Ruprecht makes an important point: One of the more striking things about all of the ink that has been spilled over California’s now- infamous Proposition 8, and its long legal aftermath, is the almost reflexive assumption on all sides that marriage, somehow, is a norm, a desirable norm. And so the argument swiftly be […]

Clerical Abuse Watch

The Catholic Church's Secret Sex-Crime Files September 7, 2011

The five co-defendants sit close enough to shake hands in the Philadelphia courtroom, but they never once acknowledge one another. Father James Brennan, a 47-year-old priest accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, looks sad and stooped in a navy sweater, unshaven and sniffling. Edward Avery, a defrocked priest in his sixties, wears an unsettlingly pleasant expr […]

Australian Professor says church suppressed child abuse report September 5, 2011

"A LEADING child protection expert has urged the Victorian government to hold a public inquiry into the handling of child-sex cases by a Catholic religious order after the Catholic Church suppressed a report it asked him to write. Sydney University law professor Patrick Parkinson wrote yesterday to the Victorian Attorney-General, Robert Clark, and Polic […]

Clerical abusers shielded by 'cabal' -Dr Diarmuid Martin September 4, 2011

The Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has admitted that "a cabal" protecting clerical sex abusers may be operating at the highest levels in the Catholic Church. Dr Martin said: "There may be a cabal in Cloyne. They may have friends in other parts of the Irish Church. They may have friends in Irish society. There may be friends in the Vat […]

Queering the Church (towards a reality-based theology)

Bookmarks

Queers in History

It’s a Queer World

Queer Families