About Weddings:

Being queer in the church is lonely. Being queer in the straight world is lonely. Being queer in evangelical circles is a never ending set of booby traps and realtionships that never quite settle. I believe in the communion of saints, and I believe in working together towards mutually agreeable solutions. So, I break bread and try to engage in people's lives. I buy books for their kids, I ask about their wives or husbands, I listen when they tell me things that that they feel like they cannot tell their pastors or their more conservative friends. We pray together. I go home alone.

Usually this works. I love my evangelical friends. We are both very cautious, I don't give them too much detail about what goes on in my queer life; they are very careful not to tell me how much they think that life is sinful. The conversations we have are academic (bracketed, footnoted, with bibliography). There is never any real intimacy.

Because of the peculiar irony of the Anglican church and it's more conservative edges--often there are hints of the glass closet. I can talk about the male organist's male partner over dinner for example, but those are kind of rare.

All of this is context. There is more context. Maybe in a seperate email, maybe in one that is less intellectual.

I love Chris. I like Amy. After all of the chaos of their courtship, I am glad they are getting married. The last week has not been about me and I know that. But it has struck me as a metaphor for the church. I spend a lot of money, and a lot of time, working on behalf of someone else, so they will get the privileges that they would sooner see me not have. The homilist has worked on making sure that I do not have these privileges.

Then I go to the rehearsal, and the readings are explicit in their exclusion. They make sure that what was assumed and hinted at, is made clear. You and I have talked about how the queer contingent of the Anglican church is taking over, and you and I have disagreed about whether that is the case. But the viciousness of hetero-sexism, is that the isolation of glbtq voices in the church is because of scripture and tradition. The circle will not be brought wide enough to fully allow for that isolation to end.

So this is the question of schism--with all of that stated; is loving Chris and loving the church enough, to continually isolate myself, healthy. Schism is often constructed as active, as an explicit split, as a kind of fuck you gesture. But could schism be a floating away, via a kind of refusal or inertia?