Putting the Sin Back in Religion: Queerness, Secularism and Religion
In this podcast episode Rachael lays the ground work from her scholarship in order to underscore the ways in which religion has been constructed as an oppressive vehicle to overcome. In doing so Rachael depicts the difficult and unarticulated relationships among secularism, religion, and queer liberation to ask why the secular does not guarantee a tolerant state alongside LGBTQ+ rights, but also how it can be possible for LGBTQ+ rights to thrive primarily in secular environments. This episode aims to make clear that while secularity may be compatible with progress in some forms, it is not a linear process, and therefore, it does not lead to emancipation for all. Rachael shows us that stories that focus on queer religion challenge us to rethink the relationship between LGBTQ+ emancipation, queer rights, and religious forms and thereby provide an approach for analyzing the establishment of queer identities when navigating enactments of religious resistance and negotiation.