If you really want to get around to reading the Bible, but all that pesky homophobic language is in the way, a man just took to Kickstarter to create a more gay-friendly version.
Brooklyn-based translator and poet Robert Whitehead is taking on the project he christens The Queer Bible, and we’ll let him tell you all about it in his own words:
The Queer Bible is my reclamation, through translation, of the queer mythic potential of Biblical stories. I want to make an inclusive, celebratory space within the text that undoes the implicit sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, hierarchical oppression, slut-shaming, etc. and reconstitutes the feminine, the queer, the outcast, the strange.
He claims that he’s writing The Queer Bible to take a stand against the homophobia that is so often exercised under the guise of “religious freedom”:
Unfortunately, the Bible has been misused by religious, political, or cultural leaders and institutions to negatively influence the lives of queer people. Recently in the US, a county clerk in Kentucky started a national conversation when she refused marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Biblical grounds. In Omaha, NE, religious affiliation and Biblical teachings are being used as arguments to keep young people from receiving comprehensive sexual education that includes information on gender identity and sexual orientation. A religious university in Portland, OR, wants to ban transgender students from their campus and is using the Bible to back it up.
And, he hopes that the whole thing is empowering for LGBT people:
How about we take this to the next level?
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I see the radical act of this project as having the potential to assert the power of queerness against the brutal conservative, literalist reading of this religious text. I see this project as telling my own story and the story of countless queers who have been told they are wrong because it is written in the Bible. I see this project as using Biblical idiom as the material for representation of a queer mythic and psychological existence. It is a project of queer liberation, queer representation, and queer celebration.
Check out the video below. It looks like this is something that will actually happen, since the Kickstarter surpassed its initial $2k goal with 20 more days to go. Here’s to gaying up Genesis…we suppose.
Victor Barry
Take all the bad stuff out of the Bible and it is a short story.
Jayuar Allen
Why not it was man who created it and wrote it and rewrote it creating branches of Christianity and man who uses it to their own gain of power. So whats stopping him???
John Malin
I’d suggest that he begin his research with biblical scholarship online. For instance, Sodom and G. are NOT about homosexuality, but about the inhospitable treatment of strangers. Who knew?
joeyty
I doubt Robert Whitehead is really from Brooklyn.
Billy Budd
He will have A LOT of trouble rewriting the first testament. It is nasty all over. I would rather delete all of it and focus exclusively on Jesus.
trell
Rewriting the Bible without homophobia? While we’re at it, can we also take out bigotry, mysoginism, race hate & messages of genocide?
We’d be left with something like
“In the beginning was the….something. Then Life happened. Later, some people tried to make sense of it all, failed and instead wrote some made up stories about it to try to explain it all. Those stories kind of stuck around and caused a lot of arguments. The End”
JJinAus
What about the slavery, stoning of women, rape etc?
Martin Talbot
Respect yourself, others, and reality ! The end ! LOL
jayj150
I feel like the efforts of gay people to make Christianity, or religion in general, more gay friendly are unnecessary, counterproductive and, frankly, pathetic. ‘Christianity’ is not the government, they have the right to be delusional and even bigoted as long as they don’t try to impose it on public policy. If they want to believe that homosexual sex in an abomination, be my guest, it’s a free country, just don’t try to deny me of my civil rights based on that belief. When gay people desperately try to find religious reasons for Christians to like us, your are reducing yourself to playing their game and giving them more power by legitimizing the importance of religion. They should treat us with respect because we are fellow human beings and fellow citizens, not because a religious book says so. If you reduce the discourse to that, they’ll win because they’ll always find excuses to hate us. The bible, or any religious text, should not society’s compass to treat others. When we try to find religious reasons for them not to hate us, we’re not achieving that purpose, we’re just making religion(and religious bigots) more powerful.
Brent Labee
will it have a brooklyn accent?
Paco
The Queen James Bible?
joeyty
@Brent Labee: Doubtful. And neither does Robert Whitehead.