the only B in your bonnet

if you think they/them pronouns are incompatible with side B this might not be the blog for you, but I invite you to listen and learn. || "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil. 1:6)

[perennial-bee]

I'm trans.

[morepopcornplease]

Starting to think we gay Catholics should start praying for the intercession of Dunstan Thompson and Phillip Trower.

they’re not Saints —not even blesseds— but as a convert friend of mine once said, “best way to make a deceased Catholic a saint is to start asking for their intercession!”

[morepopcornplease]

Since folks have asked!

I will, shamelessly, c+p excerpts from both Diana Gioia’s essay Two Poets Named Dunstan Thompson and Eve Tushnet’s book Tenderness:

Eve Tushnet:

“In 1945, two men met in wartime London. Dunstan Thompson was a poet and socialite: a Harvard dropout raised Catholic in Maryland, now serving in the US Army. Phillip Trower was a British intelligence officer. Thompson was stationed in England, where the two men crossed paths—the beginning of a love that would last for both their lifetimes, reshape Thompson’s poetry, and help reconcile their souls to God.

… “The changes love was working in their lives began to show in Thompson’s poetry first. His previous poems were turbulent, guilt-racked, feverish tales of men degraded and even destroyed by lovers who are part angel, part demon.”

Dana Gioia:

“[in Thompson’s earlier poetry] The speaker compulsively bares his suffering and confusion to the reader—his hunger for male love, sexual guilt, painful romantic rejection, fear of death. Today these may be standard topics in undergraduate writing workshops, but in the wartime years these were not easy confessions to make, especially for an American in uniform. Thompson’s self-exposure came at the risk of public shame and potential persecution—particularly the admission of homosexual affairs with fellow servicemen, which not only broke the law but also violated strict social codes of silence.”

Eve Tushnet:

“But in the aftermath of war, under the influences of country life and domestic happiness, Thompson’s poetry grew calm … now Thompson was openly grateful and unashamedly at home. He no longer believed himself incapable of holding love and responsibility together in one hand. He was cherished and he cherished someone else. And in that atmosphere of sudden calm he became again, for the first time since Harvard, a practicing Catholic. 

… “ in 1952, after seven years with Trower, Thompson told his partner that he planned to make his confession and return to practicing his faith. Decades later, Trower recalled: ‘If he took this step, Dunstan explained before he set out for London, the nature of our relationship would have to change. We should have to live chastely. It is also possible he would be told we could no longer live together. Was I prepared for this. I said Yes.’

… “Whatever complex mix of emotions of sacrifice or liberation he experienced with Thompson’s return to the faith, six months later Trower, raised Anglican, joined his partner in the Catholic Church.”

Dana Gioia:

“The two men also made the bold move to ask for ecclesiastical permission to live together as a celibate couple, which, mirabile dictu, was granted. (Their spiritual advisor wisely felt that they would live their faith more successfully together than apart.) Although their platonic lifestyle has been criticized by some gay commentators (and their ecclesiastical license has astonished some Catholic ones), the couples decision evidently worked. The two men spent the rest of their life together as a loving, contented, and a very Catholic couple—a happiness attested to over the years by many visitors, both gay and straight.

… “ A common assumption about Thompson’s career is that he changed from a glorious gay pagan celebrating the world, the flesh, and the devil to a pious Catholic contemplating eternity, the soul, and salvation. such a neat dichotomy makes it easy to generalize about the poetry. The problem is that a careful study of the work itself does not support the theory that Thompson changed (in Edward Fields pithy but inaccurate formula) ‘ from brilliant bad boy to repentant sinner’.

… “ The early poetry is as deeply and explicitly theological as the later work. What mostly differs is the speaker’s perceived relationship towards grace and redemption. Edward Fields formula is exactly backwards: only in Thompson’s early work does the persona of the guilt-ridden sinner appear.”

Eve Tushnet:

“ The second Dunstan Thompson is the same person as the first one, but now liberated and given peace by Christ—and by the other man he loved.”

for your consideration for sainthood:

from left to right: Phillip Trower, Dunstan Thompson. England, 1949.

[tiresias-katolikos]

A few weeks after I first learned about these lovely, holy gents, I had a moment of intense emotional and spiritual pain (brought on by neo-Jansenists doing their "hate-everyone-who-wouldn't-pass-muster-for-a-1950s-sitcom" shtick, of course). I screamed out to this pair of kings from the depths of my suffering, "Dunstan and Philip, can you boyos be my gay Catholic dads??" The pain didn't really go away, but it seemed mitigated by, I swear, two presences who projected an air of bemused tenderness. I think they might have manifested to me and adopted me as their weird, asexual, biromantic, anything-but-traditionally-female kiddo.

[inklings-challenge]

“Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”

-G.K. Chesterton

[perennial-bee]

do you mean to tell me that most women feel “like women” and not just gelatinous cubes who happen to bleed once a month

[perennial-bee]

this post is 3 years old but for some reason it's gone around again and people have added comments I don't necessarily endorse so i just want to be very clear this blog is trans positive. thanks.

[quiche-quibbles]

Christian Hot take #?

Christians often treat the Bible to the point of idolatry.

Exhibit A:

[perennial-bee]

[makingqueerhistory]

Queer history and the history of disability are inherently connected. Beyond the myriad of queer disabled people throughout history, the medicalization of queer people has existed for a long time and continues to this day. This means that a lot of the abuses of disabled people have overlapped onto the queer community, and ideally this would give queer people a greater understanding and ability to stand in solidarity with the disabled community. In practice, this often isn’t the case. Eugenicist beliefs, ableist rhetoric, and a deep fear of aging and losing access to an abled body, are all things that run rampant within the queer community. It is past time to do better.

There is so much to learn from the people sitting on the intersection, and the queer people who have been forced through the medical system because of their queerness. Queerness and disability are connected, and that’s a strength for both communities. Within queer history is the history of disability and within the history of disability is queer history. To learn one is to learn the other, and let that be the joy of it.

[morepopcornplease]

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

-CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

[c3rises]

u kno. lgbt ppl who, despite abuse from religious family members or the church themselves, feel a strong connection to their faith and choose to be active within it are legitimately and genuinely incredibly brave

[consoleyourself-deactivated2025]

Getting kinda tired of seeing my Catholic&Christian friends on here reblogging posts about how all trans folks are predatory, grooming perverts and then following up with how sad it is that dysphoric people are being tricked into irreversible surgery to try and solve their problems.

I'm sure there *is* some minority of trans adults out there that are predatory....just like there is a minority of priests, parents, teachers, etc. thst are predatory.

But the implication seems to be that trans folks are both scheming perpetrators and naive victims. But there is no thought or consideration given in these posts to the genuine anguish and suffering that people feel from dysphoria. Do any of you know how that feels? Do you know how it feels to be struggling with these feelings and then see your friends make thinly veiled accusations that "dysphoria isn't real, and actually you are just a disgusting pervert"? Do you know how dehumanizing it is to look past the suffering people experience and make blanket generalizations about how they actually feel and why they do what they do?

I get it. You think transitioning is wrong. It hurts people. You want to bring that to light. You want to have someone to blame. You want people to avoid harming themselves in ways that can't be undone. It's a noble and good thing to want to help people avoid doing harm to themselves. But please. Stop dismissing their struggles as an 'evil fetish' or a result of manipulation by the 'evil left.' Please have a bit more compassion and consideration, especially for your side B friends that *aren't* acting on these feelings, but still struggling with them.

I know you're not bad people. I know you are my loving friends that only intentionally seek the good of others. I don't mean to be condescending. But you're not going to reach people, especially people in the midst of transition, or post transition, or considering transition by demonizing or infantilizing them. Even if those blanket statements were true, they're not particularly helpful. If you want to make a difference in a trans friend's life (side b or otherwise)....take a minute to talk to them. Ask them how they're feeling. Ask how you can pray for them. Remember that they are people and not a nameless talking point.

Thanks for reading through my rant. God bless.

Comments, reblogs, and criticisms welcome.

[nebuleeart]

HAPPY PRIDE!!! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[ramblingpilgrim]

Non-affirming Christian, and especially Catholic, fam:

When talking about queer issues in the church, if you are not recognizing the implications of Church teaching on sexuality a practical level, and are only contemplating those teachings in terms of abstractions, you're going to fall very short of understanding queer perspectives, values, why people believe what they do, and why people would disagree with you. It can and will make you an ineffective witness.

If the first thing you're going to is natural theology, or the symbolism of Christ and the Church in marriage, you need to pause for a second. The symbolism is beautiful, but if you're only focusing on that, you are only focusing on something that is very abstract to us all right now.

On a concrete level, non-affirming theology asks difficult things of queer people. Concretely, when it comes down to brass tacks and everyday life, you're saying that queer people:

- can feel powerful attraction and even love for another person, just like straight people feel for their own spouses, but that love cannot be expressed sexually, and possibly romantically, depending on your theology. That you can love and care for somebody so much it hurts, and even if they love you that much in return, you cannot be married and express that love in a physical or sexual way.

- cannot find companionship in marriage to certain people. In the case of those who are exclusively attracted to those of the same gender, this may be foregoing the companionship of marriage entirely. For these, it must be recognized that this may leave them with very limited options as they get older. It is absolutely possible to share a home with friends or family. However, in more individualistic societies like the United States, this becomes less available over time, as friends get married and have families of their own, and as our families age. In the United States in particular, it is normalized to prioritize only the nuclear family. Consider, that when you don't have the option to get married or have kids, you are exponentially more likely to be alone more than not. I know many straight Christians who have expressed their struggles about not being able to find a spouse. The gnawing loneliness is something that is common to that narrative. Consider that, for many of your queer audience members, that is what you are asking to them to commit to. Coming home to no one. Eating alone. Having your friends consistently be unavailable because they have families to prioritize. They have to think harder about who is their emergency contact. They have to make additional plans in case they need a medical procedure, they have car trouble, or something goes wrong, because there is not one main person or group of people that they may be living with. Finances may be tighter, because they have to rely on one person's income. Could you do that? Would you be comfortable committing to that for the rest of your life?

- in the case of asexual folks, you may be asking them to commit to the above. Or you may be asking them, in some cases, to commit to having sex that repulses them and amounts to something they have to endure in order to have a valid marriage, in spite of the fact that St Joseph and the Virgin Mary lived in abstinence for their marriage.

- for transgender folks, I want you to imagine something. Imagine the times that you have looked in the mirror and, for some reason or another, you genuinely dislike how you look that day. The person in the mirror doesn't look right. You don't connect with them - with you. The clothes aren't fitting the right way. You notice every single imperfection and thing you hate about yourself. You internalize it. But now it's your sex, an inescapable reality. For trans folks, it is so deeply, physiologically embedded that hormones can actually alleviate it. If you are not affirming regarding transition, the alternative that the person has is to potentially live with something similar for the rest of their lives. For the sake of religious beliefs, you are asking many trans folks to forego medical treatment that is very effective at reducing those feelings. You may advocate other treatments, which are often less effective. Could you commit to that for yourself?

- for everyone in this community, you are asking them to abide by beliefs espoused by people who have used those beliefs to justify hatred against them. People who regularly call them disgusting, perverts, groomers, and other slurs. People who go so far as to advocate for laws that oppress them. People who support parents who disown people like them, or people who have been disowned by their own parents for this. People who have communicated that God hates them, and their sin is uniquely heinous. People who say that even if the person wants to, they cannot be in ministry simply because of something they cannot control. People don't acknowledge the person's need for community, and support the Catholic Church's ban on openly queer people in religious life, even when they abide by the teachings of the church and believe them themselves. People who in recent history told suffering, dying, agonizing queer people that this was God's punishment for them - who would leave them alone to waste away in a hospital bed, while it was the members of the queer community who supported, loved, and cared for their physical, communal, and emotional needs.

Beyond your theories of how marriage works, or the deep symbolism it possesses, this is what you are asking on a concrete, practical, daily level.

You may say that not all religious people are like this. That you do not hate queer people, that your area is supportive. That you love the sinner and hate the sin. However, you need to realize that there are more than enough people in the Church for whom that is not true. Who do hate queer people, who do advocate for their death, who do advocate for their discrimination, who do think that God judges queer people uniquely harshly.

Would you want to be part of a community that has actively said and done these things against your own people? Would you commit to routinely being in a space where you are disrespected and often hated? Where people who don't understand one iota of what you're going through tell you all the time about the things that you're doing wrong, without bothering to lift a finger to help you?

Think about it. Seriously think about it.

Queer people are not your enemies. Many of them are not intentionally being ignorant or trying to oppress you. They are not predators. They are not shutting their ears to the truth. They are people who have experiences that you might not understand, who may have been harmed in deep ways by the religious community and by religion. The reasons they disagree with you are not trivial. The more you treat them like they are trivial, the less you will be able to say anything of value to the queer community. The less your gospel will be heard. The less Jesus will be appealing to anyone.

The gospel is the good news. Ask yourself how anything you communicate is good news for queer people.

You may reference how Jesus invited people to take up their crosses, how we were never promised an easy life on this side of eternity. I agree with that. I'm side b, so I follow traditional Church teaching.

However, you also need to consider whether or not that cross that person is bearing is their attraction/gender, or because how so many people supposed to represent God to them have instead rejected them. How many religious folks communicated God's path as one of some nightmarish, hellish vision, instead of the joy and freedom that comes in Christ. How they received insults, abuse, and hatred instead of grace, freedom, and unconditional love.

For every single demographic, religion increases rates of good mental health. Except for LGBT people, who are more likely to commit suicide when they are religious.

Is that good fruit? Is that the freedom Christ spoke about? Is that the unconditional love Christ spoke about when he said that the world will know that we are his disciples because they will see our love?

Realize, that Christ has some very harsh words for bad fruit, because any tree that bears bad for will be hewn down and cast into the fire. The tree that bears bad fruit will be the one that burns. The tree that convinces people that God hates them will be burned. The tree that displays wrath instead of peace and love and justice will be burned.

Understand, that queer people have many reasons to reject your beliefs, most of which do not fall under willful ignorance or desire to just be evil. And if they advocate for acceptance, or care about queer youth, they aren't doing it to destroy society. They're doing it because they've lived through their own hell, and they found a better way for themselves. They found a way to not feel constant self-hatred, or be ceaselessly bullied by people supposed to love them. They have found ways to join community. So, of course, they're going to advocate for that. You may have found similar things in Christ, and you want to talk about him. Consider that they might want to do the same. Maybe they want to be the person they needed when they were younger. The real travesty is that they could not find any of those things that they longed for in the Church.

Know that you represent Christ this month. And know that what you say and do will be associated with not just you, but with Jesus, and with the whole of the Church. If we act monstrously and queer people come to associate Christ and his Church with bile and hatred, the fault is not with the queer people. The fault is ours.

[nerdygaymormon]

[worgengel]

𝕵𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖞𝖔𝖚, 𝖑𝖊𝖙 𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖑𝖊𝖊𝖉 𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖑 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖓 𝖙𝖔𝖚𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖘 𝕰𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖍

[willowofthehearth]

[ID:

Q: How would you describe your gender?" A: loosely

Q: How would you describe your sexual orientation? A: with an "ehhhh" noise and a sort of noncommittal wiggley hand gesture

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

for a catholic blog you post a lot of gay stuff

Or consider: For a gay-stuff blog I post a lot of Catholicism

[morepopcornplease]

happy pride month to this post, specifically

[strawberry-crocodile]

Let me be clear here you do not get to single out trans women's behavior for being "stereotypical" or "maintaining beauty standards" or anything when something like makeup or vocal fry can mean the difference when passing and passing can mean life or death.

to specifically condemn trans women for this, as though we have any sort of institutional power, is TERF rhetoric. okay thank you.

[bimbinis]

Saying that trans women uphold gender hegemony by wearing skirts and makeup is like saying that immigrants uphold nationalism by applying for greencards

[intothelionsden]

happy pride month to all my fellow lgbt christians, whether you're side a/b/y/etc <3

i love you, God loves you, and i'm sorry for any church hurt you've experienced, as well as any interactions you've had with other christians that have hurt you. regardless of if you celebrate pride itself or not, please take the time to do something nice for yourself sometime this june

also. if i catch anyone being nasty in the reblogs/replies i will block you :) lgbt christians are part of the church too and i'm sick of how some of y'all act