This is more of a rambling post than most of my posts- though you might think they are all rambling.  

And most likely this post is less geared towards this Queer Look at the Bible blog, but hopefully as I write, it won’t seem that disconnected- unless I run out of steam or decide I’m not sure what I am saying.

As much as it was exciting to see Obama win, it was disappointing to see all the bans against gay marriage pass. Not really surprising but disappointing none the less. Are queer people to become the “new” acceptable victims of discrimination?  So, no, it isn’t all that new, but perhaps we are coming up against the last big (the last??) hurdle until we have greater equality. And here is where I see this blog as important.  As the Bible and religious views are the weapons being used to support the discrimination, there is no better time to keep adding voices to the dialogue about the Bible.  We do not need to dismantle any belief in the Bible, we simply need to recontextualize it- shine a light in it to see more of it instead of less.

As a kid I remember being afraid of going down the steps to my grandmother’s basement.  There was a scary area to the right of the steps, and it was as if something  could hide in there and get me.  The older I got, this became less as I was able to see more- walk under the steps and into that area on the right- which was just storage.  The area didn’t change, just my perspective, the context from which I considered it.

A call for queer visibility is nothing new.  National Coming Out Day has been around for a while, and we have known that as you let people know you are gay, their fear of gay people disapates.  but we are still a fairly invisible group.  Not so much invisible as easily blended into the background.  Well camoflauged. And that may need to change.  Our visibility needs to grow.  Our ability to demonstrate our economic power needs to grow, and our ability to frame the issues as equal rights needs to grow.

Yesterday, I saw a post to Twitter, where someone- a strong Obama supporter- was calling gay marriage an abomination.  But s/he was estactic that Obama was winning.  This agent of change, this man, a product of a mixed race marriage was being hope to America.  It would not have been too many decades ago, when a mixed race marriage itself would have been called the abomination!  How big of a change is that?  And are people willing to begin to see and accept these historical uses of the Bibble as a weapon?  

What do you think?