I about fell out of my chair when I read this article.
The Presbyterian Church USA is now going to allow ordination of gay and lesbian ministers. This is a big deal given the history over this battle within over the last 20 years.
I grew up going to different Christian churches but the vast majority of the time we went to a Presbyterian Church in Western NY.
I have not attended a church service in nearly a decade but I recognize the importance of this decision and struggle that it took to get to this point within the church.
The discussion at the time I was last involved was minimal at best and resulted in a resounding “never.”
For gay and lesbian Presbyterians this is a milestone that can only be surpassed by the Presbytery allowing same sex marriage which I hope is just down the road.
Maybe it is time for you to come back to the Presbyterian Church! Speaking as an elder of our small Presbyterian Church (USA), we would be happy to see you there.
HI Gail! Thank you for the invitation! I do enjoy getting around to visit churches of various faith's and would certainly enjoy a visit to another! Glad to have the Presbytery involved in such an important issue.
Chris
Gay, lesbian, and queer theory examine the ways in which sexuality and sexual difference play with, within, and against the very conditions of meaning that allow a word to be uttered. As such, any text, even one as "factual" and "nonsexual" as a parking ticket or a recipe for a casserole, can become the object of gay, lesbian, and queer theorization.
Although gay, lesbian, and queer theory are related practices, the three terms delineate separate emphases marked by different assumptions about the relationship between gender and sexuality.
In two germinal essays, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex" (1975) and "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" (1975), Gayle Rubin elaborates a theory that has become central: that gender difference and sexual difference are related but are not the same.
Gender difference refers to those spectrums of meaning governed by the binary terms man/woman, whereas sexual difference refers to those governed by the binary terms heterosexual/homosexual. Typically, sexual difference is expressed through gender difference; hence the common stereotypes of the feminine gay man and the masculine lesbian, wherein a deviance in relation to sexuality is made meaningful through a deviance in gender identification.
Although sexual difference and gender difference are almost inextricable from each other in Western cultures, it should theoretically be possible to separate them and to examine the interplays between and within them. Moreover, how gender and sexual difference interact in any given text can provide clues about the ways in which power operates in the culture producing that text. Reading these clues, by and large, has been the goal of gay, lesbian, and queer theory.
With Rubin's distinction in mind, gay, lesbian, and queer theory can be roughly defined: Gay theory examines sexual difference as it is applicable to the male gender; lesbian theory examines sexual difference as it is applicable to the female gender; queer theory attempts to examine sexual difference separate from gender altogether, or with a radical deprivileging of the status of gender in traditional discourses.
In practice, these categories seldom remain intact, and gay, lesbian, and queer theory exist as interdependent discourses that both facilitate and contest each other. Moreover, all three types of theory are eclectic and draw on other theoretical discourses such as psychoanalysis, cultural materialism, Marxism, semiotics, structuralism, and feminism.