The Major Challenges of Gay Theology Today

 

Traduction anglaise de: «De drie belangrijkste uitdagingen van een hedendaagse homo-theologie», dans [G. Ménard Et al.], En Hij is mens geworden. Reflecties op theologie en homosexualiteit, Aalsmeer (Pays-Bas), Boekmakerij/Uitgeverij Luyten, 1989, 136p., 87-103.


Introduction

In this presentation, I would like to identify what appears to me to be three major challenges which gay theology has to take up today, the three most important perhaps, if one excludes a fourth - but possibly first and basic one - which would be the challenge of its very existence... And it is to take up theses challenges, of course, that the theology workshops which have taken place these days have been organized. And I would ask to be allowed a parenthesis to recall, in that respect - I think it is not completeley irrelevant - how this idea was born.

Last December, we remember it, an important international conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies was held in Amsterdam Vrije Universiteit, which notably included workshops on homosexuality and theology, in which several inspiring papers were presented. On the occasion of that conference, to which I was quite happy to participate, the St. Sebastiaan Group also invited me to share some reflections[1] in the wake of my earlier writings on gay liberation theology. I mentioned it then, and I repeat it now: it was a real emotion for me to realize that there were people in this country who had bothered to take some interest in the essay[2] I published nearly ten years ago (and in French, moreover) and had found some inspiration in it.

I had the opportunity and pleasure to discuss with some of the people who had both taken part in the Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? Conference and attended my own lecture - there, at the Conference, and here, at the KTUA. Now, I was struck by an observation someone made, - an observation somehow critical about the production of that «gay theology», pointing out notably to the fact that it had a tendency to remain a project more than a consistent reality, that it seemed to have problems to take off, if I may say so; more precisely - and for example -, that it was often restating the essentially «hermeneutic nature» of all theology (including gay theology) but without grasping very much the task of undertaking that theological hermeneutic of gay condition, more or less turning around in the hermeneutic circle, so to say, or marking time in apologetics... In other words, and to paraphrase one of Immanuel Kant's famous writings, that we had an annoying tendency to remain at the stage of «prolegomena to any future gay theology»...

Except perhaps - and I guess there was some admirative envy in that acknowledgement - as far as lesbian/feminist theology was concerned, considering inspiring topics developed by lesbian/feminist theologians (among other things, around the re-discovery of the importance of friendship ). But, then, we also had the impression that, inspiring though it might be, this lesbian/feminist theology was obviously not adequate or sufficient as far as the needs of a more specifically gay male theology were concerned.

I must admit that I had to agree with that critical observation although I also felt a bit annoyed and a bit sad insofar as, having written that essay several years ago, and having given to it the subtitle «signposts towards a gay liberation theology», I had really expected and hoped that other people, elsewhere, on their own, or even maybe in the wake of my own modest suggestions, would precisely continue the job, articulate and unfold that program. (And, I would say, all the more that, for all sorts of professional reasons, I myself somehow had to take some distance with theology and explore other research fields, more in anthropological than in theological perspectives.)

However, for several reasons which would certainly be interesting although too long to develop here, I think that we have to acknowledge that, finally, little has been done in that direction, and at least certainly not enough, although I believe that we need - more than ever - further reflection on gay theology, ethics and spirituality.

So, last December, when I felt genuine enthusiasm among many of the people I met here, I guess this somehow shook my own «theological enthusiasm» - if I may say so! - and, in any case, I suggested that we organize those workshops on gay theology. I was myself very interested to come back, not only this time to give a lecture (which of course flatters me a lot, but I hate being a soloist) and more as a participant in a research community taking in charge its own theological responsibility. Gay theology is still mainly an exciting project, an inspiring utopia ? O.K., then, let's roll up our sleeves and make it...

And my feeling is that, modest as it may be, the result of those workshops is already a concrete and encouraging sign of hope for the present and for the future.

*

So, I come back to these three major challenges - or tasks - which, as it seems to me, can be disclosed today, and about which I would like to share some reflections. I would center the three of them around what appears to me to be itself a dramatic challenge of our days: AIDS.

 

AIDS as a theological challenge

 

In that respect, the first challenge is, I would say, terribly simple: it is to face theologically this dramatic reality of AIDS.

The second one might look a bit strange, paradoxical or anachonic. I would say it urges us to remember - or maybe more precisely not to forget, not to occult, not to deny - the very challenge of gay experience before AIDS and, still more precisely, the theological challenge of the gay sexual creativity which emerged and blossomed before the thunderstroke of AIDS.

And the third one would of course lead us to address the - theological - question of being gay after AIDS, or more precisely, in a world in which - let us face it - we are going to have to live with AIDS for some time.

This triple view of course suggests that the emergence of AIDS on the sexual scene of our times represent a kind of a turning point, a critical event which draws a line between «before» and «after», somehow forcing us to look at reality keeping that demarcation in mind. This reading of the present is naturally disputable as are all historical dividing lines and boundaries. It is no doubt an interpretation of reality, not reality itself, not a law of history. Yet, if one does not harden it, I think it can be a useful and relevant tool, one that can help us find our way, providing signposts and landmarks in our social and theological interpretation of the present.[3]

To be sure, if we consider things from an objective - I would even say «statistical» - point of view, one could say that giving as much importance to AIDS, putting as much emphasis on its impact, is exaggerated, insofar as other realities after all (several diseases, pollution, nuclear weapons, for example) are responsible for a lot more casualties, are much more threatening and should then, logically, alarm us more.

And, yet, because it is still little known, because of its lethal consequences and epidemic spread, AIDS has a terribly striking power on the imagination of our peers - or, to borrow Susan Sontag's extremely interesting idea, AIDS, unlike many other diseases, has a formidable metaphorical power which accounts for the importance that has to be given to it.

Now, - and it is very important to restate it - AIDS is certainly not a gay private property. Fortunately - If I may say - public opinion has made progress in acknowledging that. Gays are not the only ones in cause. And this is important in two different ways: because gays do not have to carry alone the burden of that reality, but also because they should not forget that other people are concerned. Indeed, it is not only sophisticated industrial western metropolis that have to cope with AIDS but also small underdeveloped communities of the African bush...

And, yet, AIDS addresses gays and even summons them in a very special way, insofar as - we know it - its diffusion is to a large extent connected with gay lifestyles, with a sexual behaviour which has been asserted as legitimate and good, something to be proud of and happy with, but which, despite all safe sex precautions and gadgets, finds itself questioned today. And, here, I am not adopting a medical or epidemiological point of view, of course, but a symbolic and cultural one: what is at stake is actually not the number of sexual partners somebody has or what one can or cannot do with them, with or without risk. What is at stake is a certain view of free circulating sexuality which gay liberation has claimed and which, to a large extent, founded the modern gay identity itself. (My feeling is that, in that respect, the fact of having three partners in a lifetime - or three in a weekend ! - is really only a matter of degree - not of nature...)

AIDS indeed has become gay's number one ennemy. It is of course not the first ennemy gays have met nor the only one they still have to fight: intolerance, ignorance, fear, reactionary conservatism have not vanished from our world. But these ennemies, if I may say, attack from the outside (although we know of course that they can also be internalized) and, as such, they can be resisted, fought ; they can generate - and they have actually generated resistance, spurred courage, inspired creativity and created solidarity.

AIDS, however, somehow attacks «from the inside», so to say, which is probably its most vicious and terrifying aspect. So much so that it took a long time for many gays to admit that AIDS was not necessarily a sadistic secret invention of the CIA (or of the KGB, depending on which side one's paranoia was more sensitive!) to eliminate homosexuals and other perverts... AIDS indeed threatens what constitutes gays' most intimate indentity as gays. For that reason, I think that it is, in a very particular way, the major war they have to wage today. (Of course, there's a lot of other issues that gays have to deal with as human beings today, but I deliberately limit myself to the scope of what is specific in the experience of gay people).

*

Three theological challenges

So, I said, three challenges:

- to face AIDS;

- to remember and preserve the attainments of gay sexuality before the emergence of AIDS;

- to cope with a gay existence with AIDS around.

I suppose that some might be tempted to interpret these challenges within the schema of a hegelian dialectic... I imagine that is a possibility although it is not really my suggestion here. I would more willingly use three technical terms of our old theological tradition - because I like them, and the idea of using them to discuss such a modern reality - and say that we have to cope with a dramatic kairos between a necessary anamnesis and an equally inevitable parenesis opening on the future.

 

1. kairos

First challenge: to cope with the unexpected kairos which represents the emergence of AIDS in our lives and environment, as well in society as in the believing community.

People have died, are dying because of AIDS. I suppose many of you know some of them. I know some of them. Acquaintances but also close friends, former lovers perhaps. People who are our people ; people who resemble us; somehow, people who could be us, are dying because of their sexuality. Bodies become untouchable because they have touched other bodies...

I would like to come back to that remarkable idea suggested by the American writer Susan Sontag[4] some years ago and which is probably familiar to many of you, namely that certain illnesses throughout history have also been invested as metaphors, that is, as cultural images through which something else is said by culture.

Of course, we think here of ancient leprosy, of Middle Ages plague, of 19th century tuberculosis (a disease of the poor classes, but also a «chic» disease in certain milieux, insofar as it was associated with the excessive, passionate life of artists, for example). But we can also think of modern cancer which, on the contrary, has quite often been seen as the metaphor of a suffocating - suffocated - life under the stress and multifarious pollution of modern life. (One might think, here, of the quite moving biography of this young Swiss of the Zürich upper society, Fritz Zorn[5], who, trying to undersrtand the cancer he was dying of, showed to what extents he had been - and those are his own words - «educated to death».)

Insofar as it has been very much linked with the forbidden, immoral, excessive behaviour of homosexuals and drug addicts, it is of course not very surprising that AIDS has widely become the metaphor of a marginal, dangerous, reproved existence, and, therefore, not without analogy with the medieval plague, the image of a silent threat to the whole of society.

Diseases generally cease to be metaphors when they cease to be mysterious, when they are vanquished, at least controlled. The problem is of course that it would probably be naive to hope for a victory over AIDS in the near future.

The English language has this expression: «to add insult to injury». If it belongs to scientists to find ways to eliminate the injury, society as a whole is summoned to avoid the insult. In other words, to resist and fight the metaphorical parasites of AIDS.

Yet, as far as the theological task is concerned, one could also turn the proposition the other way round and suggest that one of the most urgent challenges is to reverse/invert the metaphor, that is, to re-discover and spread the one metaphor that Christ himself proposed on his Sermon on the Mount: for Christianity, indeed, and according to that founding charter of Christian behaviour, the one who suffers remains the living, priviledged metaphor of Christ himself, Christ who spent his public life healing bodies - by touching them.

In that respect, one can think here of some of the strongest and most inspiring figures of Christian history who have eminently undestood that truth of the Gospel and spent their lives caring for those who suffer; and who, doing this, have not only contributed to diminish physical and moral suffering, but even more, perhaps, to proclaim, assert and maintain the absolute dignity of those who carry in their own flesh that mysterious communion to the cross of Christ: the leper whom saint Francis kissed - or Father Damian in Molokai -, seeing in him the human face of Christ, he's got AIDS, today...

This is, I think, a challenge which the Christian community has to face today and which gay theology has to take up in priority, again and again, in time and out of time.

There are others: it would be absurd, crual, hypocrit - and properly insulting - that Christians and Christian communities which question themselves today about their caring responsibility towards people with AIDS heal with one hand without noticing that they hurt - cause injure - with the other. It would be nonsense - and even cynicism - if the Church, for example, preached compassion towards gays having AIDS whilst closing its doors to gays who want to gather and pray as such. One would then be tempted to find similarities between such an attitude and the attitude that was widespread in several streams of the American army during the Vietnam war, and according to which the only «good» Vietnamese were... dead Vietnamese!

But there is more than that. If AIDS is such a theological challenge, it is also because it questions some basic traditional attitudes and positions of the Christian Church which are to be seen - at least indirectly - as responsible for the diffusion of AIDS. What I mean is simply - but terribly enough - that one consequence of the traditional moral teaching of the Church about sexuality (and especially homosexuality) was that it discouraged stable loving relationships and encouraged on the contrary anonymous, promiscuous sexual behaviour (including among the clergy): that is, precisely the type of sexual behaviour which presents high risk of spreading AIDS... And this, we know it, under the incredible argument that a stable homosexual relationship is a «permanent occasion of sin» whereas occasional sex - well... we know that the flesh is weak, don't we...

There is a saying of one of the Fathers of the primitive Church which goes like this: «Feed your hungry brother. If you have not fed him, you have killed him». I would freely adapt it to the situation and suggest that the first challenge of gay theology is to summon the Christian community as a whole: «Save your brother. Insofar as your morals has led him in a situation with high risks of AIDS, you may have killed him».

This is not «apologetics». I would say this is rather, somehow, wartime theology...

 

2. Anamnesis

Second challenge - anamnesis, I suggested...

The brutal emergence of AIDS generated all sorts of effects - including of course the development and spread of - let us say - «less risky» sexual habits, notably among gays: most North American saunas have closed their doors, for example; backrooms have disappeared from the majority of bars where they existed; cruising itself has become more careful - and possibly less compulsive; variant sexual practices have become more popular. I do not insist, all this is quite well known.

A lot of our peers - and this is, I think, quite positive - have developed a more acurate consciousness that sexuality implies risks and responsibilities; that it can be - and is - fun, but that it is not an innocuous game, a toy without consequence. As the Eastern spiritual traditions have it: there is karma involved...

But we have also become the witnesses of new attitudes, very critical indeed of sexual behaviours connected with the spread of AIDS notably among gay males. From the conservative streams of society and so called «moral majorities» - that probably goes without saying. But also - and this is more significant - from the inside of the gay world itself, from people who, less than ten years ago, were fervent preachers of free, easy going, limitless sexuality. And what we can hear, more than exceptionally, is something like a quite fundamental judgment, loaded with consequence: «We have been too far». Somehow, it is the very sexual freedom and creativity of the gay lifestyles which is thus questioned - and rather rapidly judged -, that sexual freedom and creativity for which gays, in many respects, have been cultural pioneers (and this, of course, without saying that all gays and only gays will recognize themselves in that picture).

If the increase of sexual responsibility (notably among gays) is something that, of course, we have to be proud of and happy with, something that has to be mentioned and praised, something that bears witness of the moral sense of the gay world, - my feeling is that there is also a risk of losing, of occulting and even of denying something very precious, unique and irreplaceable of the gay experience of sexuality such as it blossomed before the emergence of AIDS, including through what could possibly be called its «excesses». And I use that word - excess - deliberately.

My suggestion is that it is extremely important to realize, remember, recall and reaffirm that gay sexuality, even through these so-called «excesses», was and still is a valid and valuable contribution insofar as it has questioned and shaken a long cultural and religious tradition of puritanism and Christian contempt of the flesh - which, at all events, does not appear so much more «evangelical» than those supposedly excessive behaviours. Indeed, it is necessary to consider them in the broader perspective of a general economy of history and of Christian history in particular. And I would like to suggest a paradoxical parallel, borrowing the example from the first centuries of the Church.

We know for instance that the value of evangelical chastity was far from obvious in and for the Ancient World. To insert it in the culture of the time, to propose it as a meaningful and fruitful possibility of human desire, it was probably inevitable that excesses be committed. And there were: one thinks here of the harsh, rigorous ascetic practices of several Desert Fathers and ermits; or - and it is somehow even more troubling - of the dramatic example of men like Origene, eminent theologian of his time, who literally castrated themselves in accordance - well, so they understood! - with Jesus's words about those becoming eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven... (Cf. Mt 19:12) Orthodox Christianity of course did not approve of such a behaviour, nor dit it canonize it. Yet somehow it did not vomit it either - trying rather to understand.

It happens indeed that those who open new roads and explore new territories take risks, sometimes lose their way and even break their neck. I would like to think - in a teilhardian perspective, maybe - that somehow, mysteriously, they none the less belong to the communion of the saints.

In any case, I think that the gay experience of sexuality should be given a similar treatment. The hypothetical «excess» of the sexual creativity of gay liberation has in many ways questioned the traditional Christian understanding of sexuality. It has helped (re)introduce within Christianity what I would call a dionysiac element (or sensibility) which has been excluded for centuries by mainstrean orthodoxy, mostly because Christianity was born in an ascetic world, influenced by the austere and rationalistic atmosphere of very apollinian Greek philosophical trends, very pessimistic, at that, as far as the body and sexuality were concerned - but, then, thinking it over, very un-Christian in that respect.

Nietzsche - we know it - is probably one of the modern thinkers who felt with the best intuition that aborted possibility of Christianity - aborted but genuine: the possibility of a Christian faith in which the figure of Dionysos, the Lord of the Dance, could also be at home - or, to put it the other way round, the possibility of a dionysiac figure of Christ. My suggestion is that gay experience has offered a unique and extremely valuable contribution to that possibility:

- through what the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli[6] calls «ethical immoralism», that is, a rejection of moral norms which pretend to know what human beings are and to teach them what they ought to be (and we see the result from the Inquisition to the Goulags!) but, then, an immoralism which paradoxically creates genuine new ethical values and thus regenerates the social body;

- through the worship of beauty and of the body, also, which, in its own particular way, has acknowledged - and paid hommage to - the importance and dignity of the body - without which the Gospel is meaningless, without which, to quote Paul, our faith is empty. This worship, we know it, has traditionally been left aside by the Christian theological tradition (we do not know what to do with beauty, how to deal with it) and abandoned (most of the time not without contempt) to the realm of artists;

- through the exploration of other meaningful uses of the sexual language, different not only from its sole procreative end but also from its close, interpersonal communicational significance in a marriage-type relationship: sexuality as communion more than communication, perhaps (again, in a festive, dionysiac way), celebration of life and pleasure, sexuality as ecstasy[7]; I would even say sexuality as a religious experience, both social and cosmic, - not the only one of course, but a possible one which the severe patriarchal faith of the Old Testament stigmatized in its fierce opposition to the «pagan» cults of the Ancient World;

- and also through the questioning and redefinition of sex roles traditionally assigned to men and women in a religious tradition and Christian-oriented civilization based on a certain conception of masculine and feminine identities, of men-women relationships inherited from the Old Testament heterosexualist theology and Greek dualistic philosophy more than from the Gospel itself.

It would be a temptation - and a sad one - for gay theology, under the impact of AIDS, to put aside such fundamental characteristics of the gay experience as it blossomed through the gay liberation of the 60s and 70s. In other words, it would be a temptation and a mistake for gay theology to adopt a «low profile», to accept uncritically the assumption that «we have been too far», to turn into a «straight» gay theology, if I may say so, for example trying to insert the theology, ethics and spirituality of homosexuality within the frame of a more or less traditional (that is, heterosexual and monogamous) theology of sexuality - which is good as far as it goes but which cannot be the starting point of a gay theology and spirituality, if only because, despite a lot of similarities, the dynamics of same-sex relationships cannot be simply assimilated to heterosexuality.

On the contrary, I would say that it is at its paroxysm, and in its paroxystic aspects and dimensions, that the gay experience of sexuality has to be dealt with theologically, has to become the object of a Christian hermeneutic of the present, and is liable of a fruitful and unique contribution to a believing understanding of the Christian faith beyond Old Testament anthropology and Greek dualism, - that is, right into the Gospel.

Some, of course, might argue that, interesting as it might be, such a suggestion comes perhaps a little late; that, in any case, it would have been much easier to imagine such a theological program a few years ago - that is, again, before the shaking emergence of AIDS. In other words, and to quote Ecclesiastes freely, some might suggest that, with AIDS around, we need a theology not so much for a time when it is fit to embrace but rather for a season where it is wiser to refrain from embracing...

This would not be my suggestion.

 

3. Parenesis

But I guess it brings us to the last part of my presentation, my third so-called challenge, the one which I quite pompously announced as parenesis - or maybe, as Lenin would have said more simply: «what is to be done, now?»...

I will not develop that section very much. First, because this presentation is already longish, also perhaps because I do not feel myself very gifted for parenesis, or just simply because, honestly, I did not really have time to develop this idea very far beyond intuition. But also, of course, because this third challenge - which gay theology and spirituality for a time with AIDS around? - to a large extent proceeds from the two first ones I have tried to point out rapidly.

At least, I would say this: one might consider that the brutal emergence of AIDS on the scene of contemporary western sexuality marks the end of what one could call a certain «state of innocence» which, to a large extent, can be seen as having characterized the so-called contemporary «sexual revolution», and gay sexuality in particular: innocence of Paradise, maybe, or innocence of childhood... And, thus, one might suggest that the major challenge of a contemporary gay spirituality (and of a theology capable of shedding light on it) would therefore consist in rediscovering this «state of innocence», in finding it again - but, of course, at a second level, a little in the sense that Christ invited his disciples to become like children again.

We are of course aware that, in common sense and current language, the usual opposite of innocence is guilt. And indeed there would be a tempation to see this end of a state of innocence in terms of guilt, as it is certainly the case for many of our peers with the trauma of AIDS. Guilt and its close sister: fear.

I think this tempation has to be resisted firmly (at least insofar as that guilt would be a neurotic guilt, not one which leads to maturation and forgiveness. But this is something that would deserve further exploration).

I would more willingly suggest here the idea - or rather, image  - of depth, insofar as the gay experience may - I think - be seen as having been characterized by something like an «unbearable lightness» - to borrow the title of Kundera's novel freely - of which the butterfly was probably and significantly a well chosen symbol.

Saying this, of course, I do not suggest that the experience of gays limited itself to the unconscious and superficial level of epidermic sexuality. But I want to stress and claim what seems to me to have been a particularly original and important contribution of gays to contemporary culture. And, here, I suppose one could think of gay male camp, and all its shades, from Oscar Wilde's dandyism to Amsterdam flikker subculture, as an encompassing metaphor of what I want to suggest here (which would bring us back again to the thema of motiv of the clowns I had an opportunity to develop in the past[8]).

Now, I do not think the idea of depth is in contradiction with the idea of lightness. Or, in other words, a deepening of experience does not necessarily mean a heavy experience. Perhaps its main incidence on gay experience however - and, henceforth, on the perspectives of a gay theology - is to remind of the unavoidable presence of the Cross on the path of our lives. To be sure, it has always been there, in the very heart of gay experience, individual and collective, through oppression on all its forms. And this very city of Amsterdam reminds the world that for thousands of homosexuals, not so long ago, the Cross took the shape of a pink triangle.

Yet it is possible that, in the wake of gay liberation, and of the great forward strides that were realized, gays had a tendency - or a temptation -to forget it, at least in the noisy whirlpool of western capitals. Indeed, somehow - thinking it over -, it was after all not so difficult to be «proud of being gay» within a flamboyant crowd of good looking, healthy young men celebrating life, dancing it, cruising it, making love to it and fighting for it, creating news areas of culture, new possibilities for desire... That was, I would say, «first innoncence» - or maybe more precisely «narcissic» innocence (not so much in a pathological sense, yet in the sense of an «illusion of omnipotence» that has to be overcome and which, anyway, has already been seriously shaken by the ravages of AIDS).

Well, the challenge now might be to remain proud of being gay beyond the temptation of narcissim, even through the shocking figure of AIDS - which is of course a metaphor of death - that is, of a human limit - in the very heart of our lives.

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1 Published in Catharsis, 15, 3 (1987-88) 49-56, under the title «Van Sodom nach Exodus». |retour au texte / back to text |

 

2 De Sodome à l'Exode. Jalons pour une théologie de la libération gaie. Préface de Gregory Baum. Montréal, Univers, 1980. (2e édition, Montréal, Guy Saint-Jean, éditeur, 1983). |retour au texte / back to text |

 

3 I am of course aware that this suggestion bears the mark of the social-cultural environment were it was developed. More precisely, it is rooted in the present context of North-America, where AIDS has generated - and still generates - reactions which might often be seen as close to accute psychosis... I was personally struck to notice that the situation - or «atmosphere» - seems to be quite different in the Netherlands. This may be partly due to the old tolerant, «non hysterical» tradition of the Dutch culture as well as to the extremely well «organized» structures of the Dutch society (this including the gay milieux) which might explain why Holland has apparently been able to cope with AIDS in a rather pragmatic - and relatively efficient - way, avoiding much of the irrational panic which can still be witnessed in other countries (the US or Bavaria, for instance). Yet I believe that the suggestions of this lecture can still present some relevance. |retour au texte / back to text |

 

4 Illness as Metaphor. New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978. |retour au texte / back to text |

 

5 Mars. Kindler Verlag, München, 1977. |retour au texte / back to text |

 

6 Cf., e.g., L'ombre de Dionysos. Contribution à une sociologie de l'orgie. Paris, Méridiens-Anthropos, 1982. |retour au texte / back to text |

 

7 Which of course brings back the - very old! - problem of the articulation of eros and agapè in the Christian theology of sexuality, a task which might also be considered an important challenge for gay theology. In that respect, I am particularly grateful to one of the participants of the workshops, J. Demandt, for having quite opportunely recalled and stressed the importance of the theme of lust in any reflection on gay experience (including theological), a theme which theology - or perhaps just intellectual talk! - has a frequent tendency to elude with what might look like some sort of blushing embarrass... |retour au texte / back to text |

 

8 Cf. De Sodome à l'Exode, Ch. IV, 5: «Le clown et le martyr», pp. 215 ff. |retour au texte / back to text |

 

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