242 - Queer Theology with Brian G. Murphy

Full transcript available

QueerTheology.com

Brian G. Murphy is an activist, educator, certified relationship coach, and was raised as an evangelical Christian. Now he practices faith-based activism and social justice work, co-founding Legalize Trans, creating QueerTheology.com in partnership with Father Shannon Kearns, and speaking at countless colleges and conferences, and even teaching a course on the intersection of polyamory and Christianity.

Polyamory and queerness in Christianity

One of the reasons Brian and Father Shannon started Queer Theology was to redirect focus from trying to discover where in the bible it says being queer is okay to the realization that being queer isn’t limited to constantly trying to battle for acceptable existence.

“There's so much more to being queer than just always defending ourselves against what we're not, and we get stuck in the oppressor's game when we only focus on these things.”

Brian

Similarly, some people search for the biblical acceptance of polyamory, which can be complicated, since the culture was different, and there’s a bigger picture to consider when looking for acceptance. It's tempting to get stuck in the details and lose sight of the bigger picture and the significance of what was in that time and place. Therefore, there are much more effective and rewarding ways to explore queerness in Christianity, like analyzing and interpreting based on the current time. For example, if God has an abundance of love and it’s not limited, then our love is also not finite, and polyamory is a way of exhibiting that infinite love. Force monogamy, on the other hand, is not.

For more anecdotes from Brian and a more in-depth discussion about the intersection of Christianity and polyamory, be sure to listen to the full episode.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're going to be asking the hard questions, about how to reconcile being queer, or non-monogamous, or really anything non-mainstream with the Judeo Christian values that are such a part of Western upbringing. Whether Christianity has played an important role in your life, it is so deeply embedded in our Western culture that it's worth trying to understand it. Since the three of us are completely unqualified to talk about that, we're being joined today-

Emily: Especially me.

Jase: We're being joined today by Brian G. Murphy. He is an activist, an educator, a certified relationship coach, who grew up evangelical Christian, like Dedeker and myself did. He grew up evangelical Christian in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Wow, so governmental. For the past decade, has been engaged in faith based activism and social justice work. He also co-founded Legalize Trans, and most recently partnered with, Father Shannon T.L. Kearns to create queertheology.com. He has spoken about faith, sexuality, gender and justice at dozens of colleges and conferences across the US and taught a course on the intersection of Christianity and polyamory this past summer. Brian, thanks so much for joining us.

Brian: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Jase: Yes, so when we started doing Drunk Bible Study, which is a little over a year ago now, I came across Queer Theology online. I came across your podcast actually first, then the site through that. I read a few things, listen to a little bit and signed up for the mailing list. Then this last, was it winter? No, it was last summer.

Brian: Last one in the summer, yes. Early summer.

Jase: Right. Then last summer is when I saw on the mailing list that you were doing the Christianity and Polyamory course. That's when I reached out, and we talked on the phone a little bit because you were like, "Hey, I'm actually going to be talking about some multiamory stuff in that course."

Jase: That was-

Brian: Why, thank you. You're a great resource to refer people to.

Jase: Yes, so I signed up for the course and joined. It's been great, but I was wondering if you could start out by telling us, what led you to create Queer Theology? The site, or the podcast, which came first? What led to that?

Brian: Yes, it all came around the same time. The very first thing that we did was a course on how to read the Bible clearly, from a queer lens. Then after we did that a few times, we created the podcast to go along with it, that was free for everyone. Every week, we take a queer lens to a different passage from the Bible for the theology nerds out there. We follow the lectionary, switch churches around the world. It's like pick a different passage every week. It's a set thing that all Roman Catholic Churches are reading the same passage every- on any given Sunday. All these other churches-

Jase: Really?

Brian: Yes.

Emily: Is it by a date? Like on this date?

Brian: You go to lectionary.com. Yes, for every Sunday there's a set off a hymn or Bible reading, a song, gospel, then a Christian Bible that's not the gospel. The Protestant churches that are, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, some of them follow it. Some of them just do their own thing. They don't have to do it if they don't want to. We bring our queer to take to it every single week.

Emily: Very cool.

Jase: The lectionary is a three-year cycle, right?

Brian: Yes, it's a three-year cycle, so it repeats itself, but we only do one. Generally speaking, we only do one verse per week. There's a lot to cover. Sometimes we repeat passages, because it's like, "Well, it's been three years. We have something new to say to this." If you're growing at the image of a local Christian, one of the things that I was taught, was that there's one correct way to understand any given text. You would think, "He did it once, it's done." Actually, there's-- you bring a lot of different perspectives, texts have different meanings. It's oftentimes even intentionally, authors trying to convey multiple different things. We find, even when we do the same passage a year or three years later, that there's something new to say about it.

Dedeker: That's really interesting because I've definitely found as we've been playing around with recording Drunk Bible study, that we'll come across some ambiguous passage. Where we pause and we're like, "What is this? What does this mean?" I'll remember from my upbringing, I'm like, "Oh yes, the pastor said this. This is what it means. Okay, this is the meaning. There you go. We got the meaning. Now, let's move on." I still have that drive very much in me of, "Yes, this is covered. Check. I got the answer. I can tell you what it means." It was really an adjustment for me. Even though I haven't gone to church in decades now, it was still an adjustment to even open up to that idea of, "Yes, there's many, many different lenses that we can put on this. Many, many different potential meanings behind this. It's not necessarily empirical." Well-

Brian: Yes, a big part of-- Sorry.

Emily: No, not at all. Yes, just what we-- Also, there's a lot of different translations, so the meaning can be slightly adjusted through each translation as well.

Brian: Yes, when we were talking before the show, I was saying to Emily that, sometimes it's helpful to not have any background to it because a lot of the work that we do at queertheology.com is helping people unlearn what they've learned before they can start learning something new. It's placed because we have people that have been out for years, and are affirming of themselves, but then still get caught in, "Well, the Bible says this. The Bible says that." It's like, "Well, it might not say exactly that thing that your pastor told you when you were 14."

Dedeker: That's mind blowing to me.

Dedeker: What?

Jase: Yes. One of our-

Brian: Yes, evangelical churches make you believe that they're the only right way to understand things and everyone else is not real, and that's just bullshit.

Emily: Yes, that's too bad.

Jase: Yes.

Dedeker: Yes, I was going to say, with this collaboration that you're doing with Father Shannon Kearns, how did that come to pass?

Brian: Yes, we met through a mutual best friend back when he used to live in New York City, and when I used to live in New York City. He moved to Minnesota and we stayed in touch. We just GChat had a bunch back when GChat was a thing. Then started doing weekly Skype calls just to check in on our various projects that we are working on. I was working for myself, and he was in between jobs. One day we were talking and he's like, "I just realized no one owns queertheology.com." I was like, "Should I get that?"

Emily: You're like, "Yes."

Brian: I was like, "You should definitely get that." We bought it on that Skype call, then sat on it for six months. We were like, "What are you going to do with this?" Then had this idea to teach this common course on how to read the Bible from a queer perspective. Made a one-page website, did that, it's sold out, and we were like, "Great, let's do more of this." Then just over the past six years have been incrementally growing in terms of, what we see the community needing and the audience needing and building what we wish we had when we were younger, and to being responsive to stuff that's happening in the world. Because if this stuff doesn't have something to say about the here and now, then what's the point Yes, we've just been iterating ever since.

Dedeker: Yes, that's funny. There's some similarities that are with the multiamory origin story of noticing that a particular URL was not purchased.

Just hopping on that right away.

Brian: I love it.

Dedeker: Over the course of the six years, I imagine you've gotten probably a mix of reactions and response to that. I would think that you'd be getting more positive response than negative, or else I would think that this wouldn't still be happening.

Brian: Yes. I think the overwhelming response has been positive. It's been from a mix of adults who grew up Christian, and aren't anymore, or still are. It's been helpful for them in their process. It's been from parents of LGBTQ kids, or adult children that are trying to figure it out. Sometimes that are-- We've gotten messages from parents that are like, "My child just came out to me as, bi, or trans, or whatever. My religion, I think that it's wrong, but I don't. That seems not right, so I'm just researching and trying to figure this out." It's the whole spectrum of people who aren't affirming, and maybe want to be people who are affirming queer folks, non-queer folks. Then of course, we'd get hate mail all the time. but that's like I've been doing this work for so long and it's like, "Okay."

Emily: You don't even care.

Jase: You are used to it at this point.

Brian: It's like Westboro Baptist Church called me a crybaby pervert, so at this point like, "Where do you go?

Dedeker: I'll put that on a T-shirt, honestly, if I were you. To get the attention of the big boys I guess as it were, that's a little bit of a badge of honor.

Brian: I know.

Dedeker: It can also wrap up in like death threats and-

Brian: Exactly.

Dedeker: - in all kinds of terrible triggering stuff.

Emily: Wow.

Dedeker: Let's let's bring since you recently did this course about the intersection of Christianity and polyamory, let's bring polyamory non-monogamy into the conversation and let's start before talking about the Christian perspective on it. Let's just talk about the intersections of queerness and polyamory, but also the important distinction that they're not the same thing necessarily.

Brian: For sure. Yes. I know. I did this cross country activism thing called this whole first equality ride, which visits colleges and universities across the country that discriminate against queer folks to be like vicious fucked up. What are you doing? Some of them are like, "This is great. Come on, let's talk about it. We'll have like Bible studies or lectures or group discussions," and some schools are like, "This is our property line. If you cross, we will arrest you."

Dedeker: Jeez.

Emily: Wow.

Brian: So like, "Okay, we're coming."

Dedeker: Kumkum boy.

Brian: I did that for two months, and that was a whole mix of really intense Christians, a really intense like vegan, polyamorous, atheists. That was my first introduction to non-monogamy. Is like a buttoned-up evangelical Christian kid that had just come out a few years prior. I was like, "It's okay to be gay because God loves me, but you have to be a Christian in order to get to heaven and blah, blah, blah." All that. Terrible, toxic stuff.

I saw that I got this like first TTs of an open relationship or polyamorous relationships and then-- When I was dating my boyfriend for two years, and we were considering opening up our relationship and I went out searching for resources and found all the usual suspects like the ethical slut and stuff like that, and this was eight years ago, so there was even less of it, and it was realizing that queer folks have been doing non-monogamy and polyamory and open relationships for a really long time.

Also, I was finding like formal open and poly books and articles and websites and communities had queerness in it, in that there were usually some bi folks definitely bi women, sometimes bi men, but it was very much this sort of straight ethos to it, and bi men who were in relationships with women who would sometimes play with guys. You would rarely-- I rarely encountered lots of groups of bachelors gays or poly space or gay men.

There's this, like, we're both doing this thing and there's some overlap there, but it's not all one big happy queer poly family. That sort of led us to how do I find the poly resources that speak to my experience, and people that are-- Like me and where I feel safe, honestly.

Dedeker: Right. Was that part of what inspired you to start creating some of your own resources?

Brian: Yes. I started informally just like became, and I don't know, eight years ago, so it happened so quickly. Me and my boyfriend were the first open couple that any of our friends knew and I think now a lot of our friends are in open polyamorous relationships. I just became the guy that people would be like, "Tell me more about this." It started with have you ever do that to like, so how does this work?

Emily: Interesting.

Brian: For whatever reason, just like gay in particular one, finding resonating with poly resources, and I went to some poly meetups and poly cocktails and it was nice and fun, but there was definitely this sort of a little bit of an authoring experience. I've done poly for a long time and had to do this informal networking with friends and whenever I would find a person or a couple that were also not just like and I don't ask sometimes open relationship like actually poly be like, "You're like one of us? Do you get it?" Both with great theology and with my own work on YouTube being like creating the change. I wish to see in the world and creating resources that I wish that I had.

Dedeker: Yes, definitely. Let's sprinkle the Christianity back into it. With queerness and the queer community in general, and then also with polyamory and the polyamorous community in general, how do you feel like Christianity, and just to say that makes it sound like such a monolith, but what do you think the general Christian treatment has been of both of them and how they've been different?

Brian: Yes, I think the mainstream, loudest most vocal type of Christianity in the US and Europe has been very anti-LGBT and very anti-poly. I think that it's tricky to say that there's a Christian perspective on anything. Even if you read the Bible, there's like not a Christian sexual ethic or Christian understanding of marriage. There's polygamous marriages in the Bible, there's monogamous marriages in the Bible. Paul says that everyone should be celibate and single for their whole lives like singleness is the Christian ideal, and so--

Emily: Sorry, spoilers for me. I'm like, "Why?"

Dedeker: Emily is reacting because we haven't gotten to that part of the Bible.

Brian: That's always a way forward, but--

Emily: Yes, I'll probably forget about it between now and then.

Brian: Christian being like, everyone should really be single. That's like what God wants for you. That's also in the Bible and so--

Emily: Fascinating. A lot of picking and choosing.

Brian: Yes, there is a lot of picking and choosing. I think they accuse us being queer people or poly people of picking and choosing, but I think evangelical Christians and conservative Christians are the really big cherry pickers themselves.

Jase: Yes.

Emily: Yes, fascinating, wow.

Jase: It was interesting when you were mentioning earlier about doing the cross country thing talking about different campuses, and you were saying for yourself, you were newly out as being gay, but it sounded like still, the idea of non monogamy was still a little bit like, "Whoa, but that's kind of out there." I think that's interesting to choose it. I've noticed this with a variety of things, but it's like, maybe someone could re-examine their faith based on an experience they've had, whether it's about their own sexual attraction or about non monogamy or something and they'll find a way to maybe reconcile that for themselves with the Bible, but still all the other things that they were taught were bad they're still bad. They still have that.

Brian: Yes. When we were doing the Christian polyamory course, I got an email from someone who described himself as a gay man and said, "How dare you do this course on polyamory when the Bible is so clearly against it?" I was like, "Dude, the Bible is much more clearly like pro-non-monogamy than it is pro-gay. I don't know, what world you're living." Yes, I think it's like a process that we all carry our own shame and baggage and are working on the pain points in our life, and so if you don't have a desire to be poly, you might not necessarily notice that that's an area that needs your attention until someone forces you to.

It took a while for me to figured out that it was like okay to be monogamous and polyamorous and I think as a gay man-- I'm actually bisexual but I came out as gay for-- It took me a while to figure out that I was bi, but so as like a gay man, I was like I have to be the right type of gay, and they say that we're promiscuous and we can't have meaningful relationships and all of our relationships are open relationships and so I have to be monogamous and go to church and get married and have 2.5 kids that I can prove my goodness, and the lie is that you can never be good enough. Like, "Why try?" I see secular queer folks, sometimes they're okay with the queer thing, but not with the poly thing and so it takes some work still.

Emily: Can I just back up for a second and ask like, you said that in the Bible there's a lot more instances where it's okay to be polyamorous or non-monogamous or polygamous or something, but less okay to be queer or to be gay, but I only recall in my short time of reading the Bible, that one passage in Leviticus where they were talking about how it's not okay to lie a man with a man, and or is there more on it later on?

Brian: It's tricky because homosexuality as an identity concept, just didn't exist 3,000, 2,000 years ago. There's a few other passages in the Bible that folks point to be like, this is why you can't be gay. There's like seven passages. They're called the clobber passages.

Emily: We're talking about that.

Jase: Let's combine that into one question. Just real quick, I note here that Emily has a question on our document here to ask about the clobber passages and what those are.

Emily: Part of it was what the heck is that? Because I didn't know what it was what you have just said it. Why don't you tell us what it is, and then, yes, talk about queerness in the Bible and these clobber passages, what exactly that is and what it encapsulates.

Brian: Sure. There are seven passages that traditionally anti-LGBT Christians point to to say that homosexuality is a sin. Obviously, in all of this, no one's talking about trans stuff. Maybe there's two passages that folks point to to say, "This is why you shouldn't be trans." Shay wrote a whole article about that on our website a few years ago. It's the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, that passage that you're referring to in Leviticus, it says, "A man shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination."

Romans 1, which is a letter from Paul to the Romans that's weird. This particular part of the passage is weird and lots of imagery. Then this first Timothy that has these two words that no one really knows what the meanings are, but conservative Christians say that it means being gay. I think--

Dedeker: You just rattle those off. I'm very impressed.

Brian: When you think you might be going to hell because of this, you spend a lot of time time. The trick is this, I spent many years trying to read these passages over and over and over and over again. If I could just find the right translation or the right analysis, it would all click and it would be okay to be gay. That point just never came because there's always a counterpoint in a counterpoint to the counterpoint, so you just get stuck on these seven passages.

The reason why we started queer theology, that calmness to say , "There's so much more to being queer than just always defending ourselves against what we're not and we get stuck in the oppressor's game when we only focus on these things, so a more faithful way to look at the Bible is to zoom out and say , "How do queerness and Christianity go together just in general, and what does queerness have to add to this conversation?" I see a similar path happening with polyamory that it can be really tempting to be , "Show me in the Bible where it says it's okay to be polyamorous," or, "Show me in the Bible where it says it's not okay to be polyamorous."

It's not always helpful because it was a completely different culture, so when we're talking about a man marrying multiple women, that seems to be condoned by God and society. Sure but also what's happening with consent there, and do they really have agency? Sometimes there's slaves or concubines happening there. It's just a different time and place and we have to -- It's tempting to get stuck in the details and lose sight of the bigger picture and what was the significance and all of that in that time and in that place. That's maybe not as snappy and sound buddy and sexy, but it's, I think, important to work and so--

Dedeker: More important.

Brian: Yes.

Dedeker: Well, it's interesting that you frame it as sexy because I was going to frame it as just-- I think there's a little bit of almost sadness in the sense that, as human beings, we're so desperate for things, to just be freaking clear for once.

Can you just, for once, tell me clearly what's right? What's wrong? Is it okay to be gay? Is it not okay to be gay? Is it okay to be non-monogamous? Is it not? Can you just point me somewhere so that it's clear so I don't have to think about it and worry about it? There's just so few avenues of life that actually give us clarity about anything, unfortunately.

Brian: Yes, absolutely. We got messages all the time, email, social media, Tumblr. That's like. Is it okay to be polyamorous? Is it okay to be gay? Is it okay to masturbate? is it okay to watch porn? One of my recent partners who grew up atheist also was like, "People message you on Tumblr asking it's okay."

Emily: But they're on Tumblr.

Dedeker: Yes, exactly.

Jase: Not anymore.

Brian: Yes. There's definitely this human desire for black and white and ordering meaning. Conservative churches, anti-gay churches, anti-poly churches, played to that and they said like, "We have all of the answers. If you just follow these rules, your life will go well." For some people, it does. Then for anyone whose life either doesn't go well, who doesn't follow the rules, they get kicked out, or ashamed, or shunned. It's terrible.

Jase: It's interesting. I've heard both you and Fryer Shay say, basically, the same thing that you just did about why focusing on those clobber passages, and just like, "Well, how do I then use this same analytical rule-based reading to now say that either these rules are invalid or there's other places that have rules that say, "It's okay," how that's not really helpful place to be, because you're playing the oppressor's game. I thought that wording was interesting. I've heard both of you say a variation on that. That basically what you mean is playing this game of, "Let's define rules and legalize it, or what?

Brian: Yes. I didn't come up with a concept for Audre Lorde has this quote like, "The master's tools will never tear down the master's house." Especially with queerness in the Bible in those passages, it's a yes. That passage in Leviticus is almost, certainly, not actually condemning modern-day queer people, and can rigorously, academically study it, and also, at the end of the day, that is not fulfilling and not life-giving who just be stuck reading about ancient Hebrew and ancient Israelite cultures, and that there's a more effective, more efficient way of exploring queerness in Christianity and seeing the goodness of queer people and queer lives than trying to be an archeologist.

Dedeker: That is interesting that-

Brian: Also, the scholarship is the same. All of those books were written 30 years ago. You can read a book on Leviticus, or Romans, or Corinthians that will really go into depth then prove, if you will. At least in my mind that those passages don't mean what anti-queer people say that they mean. Clearly that is not enough. Just the scholarship being there is not enough to move hearts and minds and the culture. Humans are making machines, so faith is a way that people look for meaning, how can we tap into that thing that's bigger than ourselves to really unlock the power of queerness rather than getting trapped in defining these passages that someone else told us, describe us that they clearly don't but they'll just keep saying like, "Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Yes, it does." Over and over again until we're dead, so pack up and move on.

Dedeker: I get it that to a certain extent that it just presents you with this insurmountable obstacle, preventing you from being able to pursue what the good stuff might be on the other side of that. I know that you and Fryer Shay, you're teaching an entire course on this, but I'm wondering if you could give us a sampling, or a tasting, if you will, because it's like, when you take out, when you're not focusing on those clobber passages and you're not focusing on, "Just let's build a biblically*sound argument for justifying our existence," what are the other things in the Bible that you found that really do bring out the power of queerness like you just said?

Brian: I think this is an ancient practice that rabbis throughout the ages would look at the text and say like, "This is what it means for our time." Jesus in many ways was looking at. Jesus was Jewish looking at his sacred texts and saying like, "This is what this means for my time and place." This idea that we're like engaging with the text and saying like, "What does this mean for me here and now, and what does my experience have to? How to cannot illuminate this particular passage, or this story, or whatever?"

Is like not something that we made up in 2019. It's been going on for millennia. I think one of the ideas about God is that God loves us and there's this abundance of God's love and God is not finite and limited. I think in polyamory, that is a same key concept right that like, "My love is not finite. My love for multiple partners doesn't diminish my love for any of them." You can see this is a way that I can live out this idea of abundant, infinite love through polyamory, whereas it's okay to be monogamous. Forced monogamy has this idea of, there's a limited amount of love. In some ways, it's antithetical to, I think the Christian and Jewish understanding of God's expansive love for us.

Emily: There are still a lot of objections out there to non-monogamy and the Bible. I think that some things that, at least that I've seen in my very brief reading, which I'm only up to Deuteronomy at this point. Adam and Eve were only two people, and they created all of humanity and then also this idea of two becoming one flesh.

Jase: That's a Spice Girl song, right?

Brian: Yes.

Emily: Is it?

Jase: "And two become one ."

Emily: I don't know if they say one flesh-

Jase: Maybe not.

Emily: -I guess it is, but those are some common objections to non-monogamy, what would you say about that, for instance, if people throw things like that out there, then would you be, "Well, actually?"

Brian: I love this idea of two becoming one flesh, I actually wrote an article a few years ago called What Promiscuity Taught Me About God's Love , which was living as a-

Emily: I love that.

Brian: -I was starting to put together these ideas on promiscuity, and sex positivity and sex positivity and non-monogamy that then became this course. I think that's true, or can be true, or can be this beautiful thing that you merge with someone else, and not you lose yourself, but that you create something new. There's me and my boyfriend and then our relationship, there's this other thing that we've created by this mystical magic of our beings coming together.

Emily: Your love, yes.

Brian: That's real and I think also about-- There's just a metaphor where these two become one that we learn in Bible Sunday school, which is sex, is like doc tape. If you stick it on something, and then you rip it off, it hurts when you rip it off, and then little pieces of skin and hair get left behind.

Dedeker: No, Emily this is literally an object lesson that Sunday school teachers will use, they will stick tape to multiple people, and it's usually essentially-

Emily: I don't think there is this one day-

Dedeker: -a quick woman with a piece of tape usually, or a piece of chewed-up gum-

Brian: A chewed-up gum.

Dedeker: -that's rather common object lesson.

Emily: I'm sorry, that is child abuse, that is not okay .

Brian: Yes, all over the country whole different animations clearly written up to get there-

Emily: People are sticking tape on kids, and tearing it off.

Brian: It teaches you on a fundamental level I'm up shooter piece of gum is like, "What a terrible thing to teach a child, right?"

Emily: Yes. The idea is that you're eventually your sex tape becomes less sticky, and then it doesn't work anymore, and then you're fundamentally broken and you'll end your life because you-

Emily: I hate everything about that.

Brian: -had sex with too many people, really terrible. I think that you can reclaim this metaphor because not that the tape ever stops being sticky, but that I think that all of the people that I've ever dated have a lot of little bits and pieces of themselves behind on me. I carry them around with me and I hope that I have left a little bit of piece of myself with them behind. That's true for boyfriends but it's also been true for just kinky hookups, or pipe runners, or casual dates, or even one-night stands, sometimes for this. We have a digital magazine called Spin Spear, and I wrote for our sex and bodies issue like a player for a one-night stand.

There can be something beautiful and wonderful about a one-night stand event, that you're vulnerable and you trust each other, and you're intimate, and you're taking care of each other, that there's something really beautiful can happen there also. This idea that "it's only special" if it's with a long-term partner, I think is not true in my experience, and then also that you run out of stuff to leave behind if you have sex with more than one person, it's just not real for me. It's been like an additive thing that my life has become enriched by the people that I have either dated or hooked up with.

That's not to say that sometimes sex is coercive or bad, and I've had my fair share of really terrible sexual experiences also, I don't want to be like, "Sex is always a beautiful divine thing."

Emily: Sure.

Brian: It can be, sex with your spouse can be sacred, and blowing a stranger in a glory hole can also be sacred.

Jase: I know on the other side that having sex with your spouse can also be coercive, and shitty, both can go both ways.

Brian: Yes, absolutely.

Dedeker: Go ahead Jase.

Jase: No, I think I solved the tape metaphor.

Dedeker: You solved it.

Jase: Yes, like you were saying there this tape that, but the problem with their metaphor is that then your tape gets less sticky, but if you're using that vinyl bondage tape that only sticks to itself,-

Brian: There you go.

Jase: -then it doesn't lose its stickiness , anyway, go ahead.

Dedeker: You can create a program to try to introduce bondage tape into Sunday school across the land.

Emily: There you go.

Dedeker: Also, that sentiment of that this can be sacred regardless of the type of sex that you're having, it does echo stuff that we talked about with our guests a couple of years ago Jessica Graham. She wrote a book that was about mindfulness meditation slightly more from a Buddhist perspective, but she also writes a lot about the intersection of spirituality, and sex. I came to a lot of same conclusions of a weird kinky hookup in an alleyway with someone that you just met, and let's presume everyone's making the best healthiest safest choices that that can also be a spiritual experience.

She shared with me getting so much resistance over saying things like that, and I just think there is this huge cultural resistance to this idea that any casual sex can be sacred whatsoever. Even if you're totally divorced of any kind of spirituality, I think that even on a just a plain old cultural level, what's baked into the casual sex experience is none of us can be serious because goodness you're such a weirdo, if you're taking this seriously. We have to be completely devoid of any emotions or engagement or investment in this. It's purely just about having sex and then not texting each other or whatever.

Brian: Yes, and if we have a casual hookup then you're now no longer long-term partner material for some reason.

Dedeker: Just a strange script that we've been trained to follow for these things.

Emily: That's super unfortunate.

Brian: That is true I think of something like queer people internalize this like a right way to be queer. Even straight say's mono people when they're single have to navigate this. I think it just compounds if you're trying to be open or poly if you're queer if your openness or poliness involves casual sex and not just multiple long-term relationships. I even gone from the Christian polyamory, of course, like, "Well, I can understand if you're in a triad, or if you have these multiple long-term loving partnerships," that is okay, but I don't know the trinity being an orgy, like, "What are you talking about?"

It blows people's mind and I think that our culture is super, super second sex-negative whether what you were saying at the beginning of this episode that Christianity, in particular, permeates everything, and this sex-negative anti-queer, puritanical version of Christianity permeates everything. Even people that never grew up Christian or a no longer identified Christian oftentimes have this religious baggage to unpack.

Jase: All right, gosh, can I rewind back to earlier on in this conversation. Any idea of saying, "Okay, I've I figured out how to reconcile being gay, or being queer, or something' but not monogamy, or things like that." Saying that idea that, "Okay, if I'm going to be Christian and gay, or just gay in general, I want to try to prove everyone wrong about all their stereotypes about me." I'm going to try to go really hard the opposite way of being super monogamous, super marriage based, super kid-focused, whatever it is.

I think I've definitely seen in ourselves and also in our community that same thing with polyamory of like, "Let's try to fight against this image that none of our relationships are serious, and so we're going to treat them super seriously ." Not allow relationships to be casual when maybe that would have been the healthier way for them to be, or other things that. I guess it's making me think about with all of this tricky thing between how do you show people that all polyamorous people are not this one way, or that all gay people are not this one way, while also leaving room for, "But even if they are those things that's also okay."

That's hard. That's a hard message to sell it's not a very sexy message to sell, it's harder to put that on a postcard.

Brian: Exactly, sound bites.

Jase: Like your slogan love wins, cool, great, now everyone can be monogamously married as opposed to love wins, but so does casual sex. That's a harder postcard to make.

Brian: Yes. I think there's this idea that's sometimes called respectability politics, that if we can just brush-up enough that they'll like us enough. I think black folks started out with this idea of we have to wear suits and be proper and incremental. First of all, the gays get married and then maybe we'll start talking about bi folks and then after that, we can start talking about trans people, and start with the most "least offensive" idea or identity and work from there, we've just seen that isn't effective.

After gay marriage passed in Massachusetts, they lost tons of funding around LGBT issues, LGBT homeless shelters had to shut down. The focus goes elsewhere, not like rich, white, cis gays who want to get monogamously married aren't coming back for trans people of color. On the flip side of that, I forget who said it but this idea none of us are free until all of us are free and that arising tide lifts all ships, that the more effective efficient way of addressing or organizing activism is to try and cut out those both cultural stigmas themselves and say, "Why do these exist?" Also work to change structural policy that stands in the way so that we can all live a more free and independent life.

I wish that the lesbian and gay movement, rather than focusing on gay marriage, had said, "We need to radically redefine what family means." Queer folks have been defining family outside of the preview of the state forever because we haven't been allowed to access this. Rather than fighting to be allowed into this traditionally oppressive, traditionally patriarchal system that doles out rights based upon respectability and says, "You're in and you're not," we had said, "No, we know how to form family, we take care of each other," like lesbians taking care of gay men as they were dying of AIDS in the '80s and queer chosen family and this fluidity amongst lovers and friends and partners and parents.

I think queer folks have this beautiful gift to offer and it frustrates me that some people pointed all that energy towards gay marriage because I think, if marriage is going to exist, obviously gay people should be able to get married. There's something more beautiful and revolutionary that we have to offer the world and thankfully, queer folks are still organizing around that and trying to share that. I think more so and more so beginning to merge with poly and non-monogamous folks that are also doing that work from a different perspective. Who knows what the future holds? But I think that's where I would like to see it go.

Dedeker: Well, it reminds me, this was something that I was not aware of until- only in the retrospect did I become aware of this. Around 2015 and leading up to 2015, when gay marriage was legalized that there were quite a number of queer voices who were speaking up about, "Actually, I don't want marriage to be the thing, I want it to be something else, we need to be pushing for something else." It's not about, like you said, getting admitted to this exclusive club that's still very patriarchal and has all this baggage.

I remember at that time, it seems like the mainstream wasn't really focusing a lot of those voices because they don't fit into this convenient, from a more liberal leftist perspective, it doesn't fit into this convenient, "If you're detracting gay marriage, you're a bad person and if you're a pro-gay marriage, you're a good person," it fits into this weird in-between of, "Oh, wait, you're pro-gay rights but you don't necessarily think that we should just be pouring our energy into gay marriage." I've put myself in the hypothetical of- because at some point, someone's going to actually try to push for non-monogamous marriage.

Brian: Yes.

Dedeker: I don't think that's actually realistically going to be a thing that happens or is successful, but at some point, someone's going to push for it, there's going to be some media coverage on it. I know that where I stand, what I feel is I'm like, "Hell, no, this is not what I want to be pushing for." Again, that same feeling of, "Yes, I think that may be- sure, if someone who is non-monogamous wants to get married, they should be able to access that," but I don't want this to be the thing. Realizing there is a weird discomfort there in being perceived as maybe "part of the problem", depriving people of rights rather than part of a force trying to just redirect attention and energy to maybe something that is more important and powerful and beautiful like things like chosen families that queer communities have been essentially mastering for decades.

Brian: Absolutely. I think like we should all have healthcare because we deserve healthcare. We should be able to form the families that we want to form.

Dedeker: Amen.

Brian: To bring you back to Christianity for a second, my understanding of Christianity and of the Hebrew Bible is, there's this really powerful critique of empire and the state throughout the Hebrew and the Christian Bible. From a Christian perspective, you can also say, pouring all of this energy into assimilating into the state and the empire is not necessarily a helpful or a smart move. I think that there's-

Dedeker: It's not very Christ-like when you think about it.

Brian: Jesus was executed by the Roman empire as a prisoner of the state for being a political insurrectionist and that context, that's fucking awesome. I think Jesus was probably not polyamorous in the way that we understand polyamory today but I think a lot of the ideals that Jesus was working around in terms of healing people and standing up against the state and creating this unconventional family of sorts and befriending women who are caught in sexual scandal or accused at least of a sexual scandal. I made this video called "Jesus is polyamorous", which really pissed off lots of Christians.

Dedeker: Yes. I was about to-

Emily: We were going to ask about it.

Dedeker: We're not like a got-you kind of show but I was about to got-you and be like, "Wait, but you made a video that said that Jesus was polyamorous and pansexual and everyone loved it and no one disagreed with you." Right?

Brian: Everyone loved it.

Emily: Obviously.

Dedeker: Tell us a little bit about that video and the reaction to it.

Brian: I think this particular video is looking at this- it's just with this one particular passage and effusions where the writers of effusions talking about Christ's relationship to the church as analogous to a marriage relationship, a man's marriage to a woman. Also elsewhere in the book, the author talks about how the church is comprised of the whole body of believers. It's all these people and Jesus is metaphysically married to the church. Which conservative Christians would say, the church is one single entity, and also it's clearly not.

I think people got hung up on me saying Jesus was polyamorous like a historical reality, whereas what I was saying is Jesus or Christ as this theological figure, is polyamorous. I think that's a distinction, you could also make the claim that Jesus is asexual or Jesus is gay or Jesus is trans if that resonates with you. Jesus was- the story goes, born of this Virgin Mary, didn't have a father, therefore no Y chromosomes, then only X X chromosomes. Jesus is in some way gender nonconforming or trans or intersex. If that is something that speaks to you, great.

Dedeker: Interesting.

Brian: Also, Jesus, if he was a person who had two human parents, there's this myth-- The writers of the Bible know what they're doing. "Jesus is Lord" is a saying that appears in the Bible and it's because at the time the Roman emperor, Caesar is Lord, is the political saying of the day. So, to say, "Jesus is Lord," means, therefore Ceasar is not. It was this treasonous political claim, just as much as it was a theological claim. Playing with language and making these claims about Jesus to say, this is why Jesus is important and this is where the heart of God is on this matter is what Christians have always done. I was doing that, we were doing that to say, "This is where the heart of God is," it's with poly-folks and abundant, expansive love and connection.

Dedeker: In kind of a pokey way.

Jase: Like the writers of the Bible, you knew what you were doing and being a little dissenting.

Brian: Yes. I knew that-

Jase: Sorry. There was this one particular article that was fed to my newsfeed, that was a response to your video. I'm sure you-- Well, actually I don't know if you read stuff like that but I'm not going to read it to you.

Brian: I've read some of them, but there was a lot.

Jase: There was a lot. I'm sure, yes. One thing though that was interesting about this is he's going through line by line and making arguments and whatever. There's this one particular quote from the author of this article that said, "If you call yourself a Christian and believe every word of the Bible to be true, integrating polyamory with your faith is like trying to mix oil and water together." What was funny as I read that and I was like, I think Brian would agree with you.

If you believe all of these words are literally true, then maybe yes. I think that to me at least touched on the core thing that changed for me in my relationship to the Bible, when I first started looking into it in college, was for me, it started with coming from a place of translation and realizing that most of this is translations of translations.

This is before even getting into the fact that there have been political reasons for things being added or edited out over the hundreds of years or thousands of years that these different texts have been around. To me, that struck on a core point of it. It seems you were saying something very similar actually that it's the difference between looking at it as a literal rulebook versus looking at what was actually happening in context.

Brian: Yes, to take the Bible seriously and faithfully, you can't take it literally. Also, it doesn't want to be taken literally. Every word of the Bible can't actually be true because the Bible contradicts itself in places.

Dedeker: Yes, a lot.

Brian: Especially you're going to- you've seen it. The first two chapters of Genesis are contradictory incompatible accounts of creation. They're just different. That's okay because they're not trying to write a science textbook. The authors of the Bible aren't trying to write a guide to sex and dating especially like not a guide to sex and dating in the third millennia. I think that it's not about saying, "I have to justify every single part of this thing." It's like, what's happening here, what's trying to be said here? How does that fit? We also have to recognize that they didn't know about physics necessarily or astronomy or biology. They weren't necessarily trying to. I think conservative Christians sometimes say like, "This is our rule book. I was told that the Bible stands for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth."

Dedeker: Oh, God, that freaking acronym.

Emily: What is it? What is it?

Brian: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. The 10 Commandments-

Jase: Emily's face. That's a lot.

Dedeker: I can not roll my eyes harder. Not because I think it's necessarily a bad acronym, it's so tired of-

Emily: Oh, it's for Bible, okay.

Dedeker: Oh, my Goodness. Emily.

Jase: Jeez, Emily.

Dedeker: What did you think it was?

Emily: I thought it for a minute it was Bibs and then I was like, "No, it's not. It's Bible." I'm so sorry. I've had a glass of wine. I wasn't getting ready for drunk Bible study. It's been a long day. All right. Wow, but okay.

Jase: Sorry, please continue.

Emily: That's a thing.

Brian: Going back to what you all were saying earlier that people want a rulebook, they want to say, "Tell me what is good and what is okay?" They just say, "This is what it means. This is what it means. This is what it means." That's, in some ways, easier than diving into like, "When was this written? I know that it says it was written by Moses, but actually it was probably written in BC 700. Who was it written to?" As opposed to saying like, "What do they leave out?" That's all much more-- It's like reading Shakespeare.

If you just read Shakespeare in 10th grade English class not exactly knowing what's going on, you don't realize that. He's cracking smutty jokes or he's taking a jab at the monarchy. It's similar to that with the Bible. Certain types of Christians have said, "All you have to do is just read the Bible and you don't have to worry about that. We'll tell you what it means." We're saying, "Well, they have a perspective and they have a bias and an agenda." We said we're Queer Theology and there's Christianity Polyamory and there's Black Liberation Theology but very rarely does someone say. "I'm a Rich White Male Theology." That's what I'm doing. I'm a patriarchal theology right now.

That's what's happening. We're also looking at this text and wrestling with it and trying to figure out what does it mean and how does it apply to our lives. I think the more you study it seriously, the more that you can see it as a book or collection of books written by oppressed people for oppressed people to give them hope and encouragement to survive and thrive and fight the good fight.

Emily: To go along those lines for our listeners our non-monogamous or otherwise listeners, are there historical things that one should think about when reading the Bible and specifically also if the Bible is being used against queer and non-monogamous folk, then what are historical things that people can think about when reading it?

Brian: Sure, or teaching a whole course on-

Emily: I'm assuming yes, just like a couple, I don't know.

Brian: I think where I always start with is you don't even necessarily have to do that. You are just good and whole as you are and you don't need this Bible to tell you that. If the messages that you're receiving from Christianity are not life-giving to you and you have too much trauma and it doesn't feel good, and is not serving you, it's okay to leave that behind, in the same way that we don't have to be a good gay person by getting married or a good poly person by having long-term relationships. You don't have to be a good poly Christian by staying Christian or a good gay Christian by staying Christian. If it's just shit, just move on and that's okay. I think that Jesus would be okay with that also. One of the passages that I go to a lot is in Matthew 7, I think, where Jesus is talking about you can just-- Emily is like, "Sure."

Emily: I believe you. You've done a really amazing job rattling off these things.

Brian: Jesus is giving this parable or speech or whatever and he's saying, "People are going to come proclaiming the Gospel saying, "Just speak for me," and how you can decipher whether or not what they're saying is actually of me or of God is that you can judge a tree by its fruit. A good tree is going to bear good fruit. A bad tree is going to bear bad fruit. If you look at theology that is anti-LGBT or anti-poly or anti-women, you can then look at the fruits of that and see that people- depression, anxiety, fracturing relationships, oppression, rape, all of these bad fruits stem from this bad theology, whereas if you look at affirming theology whether that's LGBT affirming or poly-affirming theology, you can to see the good fruits of that. Jesus wasn't like, "What you have to do is get a doctorate in religion and learn Greek and Hebrew and-"

Emily: Become a theologian.

Brian: "Become a republican, become a republican and assent to this set of theoretical beliefs and say that you're not having sex until marriage but you probably are anyways, but you feel bad about it, then that's how you and inherit eternal life." Jesus was like, "I've come to proclaim release for the prisoners and healing of sight for the blind and to set the captives free. We're going to bring in the year of the Lord's favor of canceling debts and really fucking shit up in a good way."

Jesus was like, "Come and follow me and do this work of building a better world." If you're interested in- there's all sorts of books that you can read and I can give you some links to put in the show notes if you want, but I think first and foremost, if you're doing the work of building a better world, you're doing the work of God as the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles describe it. That right there is enough. You don't have to always have an academic justification for your inherent goodness.

Dedeker: That's really beautiful. That's very moving.

Jase: Also you were correct. It's Matthew 7:15. That's what you were looking for.

Dedeker: Oh, good, Jase. Thank you.

Jase: I just had to make sure.

Emily: I heard like a little dog running across something but I think it was Jase's finger-

Jase: On the keyboard.

Dedeker: Tippity tapping.

Emily: Yes. I was like, "It's a dog running above-"

Dedeker: Making sure that you're not wrong. I like us closing on that note of "let's fuck shit up but in a good way". Brain, thank you so much for being with us. Where can our listeners find more of you and more of your work?

Brian: You can find me on all the social medias @ThisIsBGM and thisisbgm.com and my YouTube is not that. It's ThisIsBGM.com/YouTube.

Dedeker: Great. Excellent. If people are interested in the Queer Theology course as well, they can go to queertheology.com correct?

Brian: Yes, queertheology.com and that will link to all of our courses and all of our social media and our various free resources as well.

Dedeker: Great.

Jase: By the time this episode comes out, I will just be finishing reading the Bible course, which I'm in the middle of when we're recording this, but by the time this comes out, it'll be ending.

Emily: Wait, does that mean that you've read the whole thing again?

Jase: No, actually, in this course, this particular one, you end up- each person picks just one section of the Bible, like one chapter or one section of verses that you study through the whole thing, but this particular one, that's what they're doing to more teach tools to look at the Bible rather than like, "We're going to teach you how to understand the Bible," like Brian's been saying this whole time, right? It's not so much about we're going to give you the answers, it's more like, we're going to teach you how to think about the Bible.