#queer saints

[queerasfact]

In North Africa in 203 CE, two young women, Felicity and Perpetua, were martyred side-by-side. Both had left conventional, patriarchal family structures to seek a chosen family among the nascent Christian community. They have gone on to become known as the patron saints of same-sex couples, and serve as a source of inspiration for queer Christians, especially queer women of colour.

Check out our podcast if you’d like to learn more!

[teawiththegods]

New Book!

It’s so interesting how this came out right when I began researching the saints wanting to find the ones who might have had their queerness and/or feminist/progressive beliefs erased or manipulated.

[a-queer-seminarian]

From Burning Butch by RB Mertz, 2022

The professor touring with us told us about Saint Francis’s father, a wealthy guy who ran a fabric company—meaning that he provided the wealthiest, most stylish people their clothing. Francis just wanted to go around in rags and help the poor, and this was embarrassing to his father, who threatened to disinherit him if he kept it up.

One day, Francis took off all his clothes in the middle of the street, in the middle of the town, and folded them up, all those fine fabrics that had made his family rich, and handed them back to his father. “My only father is my Father in Heaven,” Francis said, and he stood there, naked in front of the whole town. What a badass.

“From then on, he lived “like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field,” in a complicated, dire, but occasionally blissful poverty. He died naked in the cold winter, on the altar of a church he’d built with his own hands, surrounded by men and women who’d followed him into poverty.

For my confirmation back in eighth grade, we were supposed to pick a patron saint, and I picked Saint Francis because he talked to animals, plants, and planets and called them his brothers and sisters. The lady in charge of confirmation at the church looked uncomfortable, and after class, she pulled me aside and said it was “very strongly suggested” that we pick a saint of our own gender. When I heard that, I instantly picked a female saint so that no one would suspect there was anything amiss about my gender.

Saint Claire and all the women saints cut their hair short as a sign of holiness, but I knew I could never cut my hair short. When I’d tried to get it “short” at the hairdresser as a kid, the lady had given me a Dorothy Hamill bowl cut that I hated.  For a while, I thought it might be literally impossible for scissors to cut female hair shorter than a certain length, because people’s reactions made it seem so outlandish when I asked for it, until I stopped asking.

I chose Saint Catherine of Siena, the patron saint of artists, because I wanted to be an artist and because she had a vagina. All over Europe there were statues of dead saints, broken and decayed into new shapes and colors. I imagined the female thing I was encased in chipping away, like giving my clothes back to God.

[butchdykejesuschrist]

Saint Marinos The Monk,

Pray for and with gender diverse children, as if they were your adopted child. As well as trans men in the clergy and in consecrated life, as they follow your path.

Intercede on behalf of all transgender, transsexual, transvestite, two-spirit, and gender-non-conforming peoples - that we might be fully accepted by the church and permitted to openly participate in church life, ordainment, and religious orders - if we are called to do so.

Through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

[dominiondoesstuff]

Saint Sebastian (1615) x EYCTE Alex Turner (2016)

St. Sebastian, ora pro nobis! 🌈🏹🩸

[adverbian]

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

January 20, 2025: Today is the feast day of Saint Sebastian, hottest and queerest of all the martyrs.

Sebastian, you worked in secret to protect your community from government persecution, to protect those who had to hide away the truth about themselves.

You kept your courage and your faith when the ones who had been your friends and comrades-in-arms turned on you, and the arrows of persecution and hatred pierced your body.

You were left for dead by those who despised you, but you lived.

You lived, through your own strength, and through the compassion and help of your friend Irene.

You returned to speak truth and righteousness to imperial power, to resist the persecution of your community, even at the cost of your own life.

Your suffering is tangled with rapture; your agony is bound up with ecstasy. You remind us that pleasure is sacred, too.

You have been a protector against plague, against the enemy's attack, and in the eternal struggle against injustice, even when the forces arrayed against us seem insurmountable.

Pray for us, Sebastian, if there's anyone out there listening at all. Grant us the strength to survive together. Grant us the strength to survive for each other.

And now, a reading from the letter of John Darnielle to the Merkin Concert Hall in New York.

Bless the arrows that strike us where we stand.

[uskomatontakinkohan]

Me reading 1 Samuel 18:1–4:

As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David (OMG!)

and Jonathan loved him as his own soul (OMG OMG!!!)

And Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house (NOBODY PANICK!!!)

Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.(IT’S HAPPENING!!!!)

And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt. (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEEEEEEN!!!!!!!!!)

[anniflamma]

"He was a Hungarian by birth named George, and upon him was placed a golden necklace; and he was loved by Boris beyond measure."

Made this for the long post I did for these two saints.