Queer theology recognises the existence of oppression of queer people in the Church and society at large. It recognises that ignorance and hatred often lie at the heart of oppression. It also recognises that the Church (and organised religion in general) has done a lot to encourage such oppression in the past, and that elements of the Church still encourage such oppression.

"We confess that the institutional church has often judged, alienated and excluded from the community of faith gay, lesbian and bisexual persons, or has been complicit by its silence."

"We agree to celebrate, support and honor commitment ceremonies of homosexual people, recognizing the difficulty of maintaining such partnerships in the absence of the social validations, role models and legal frameworks that support heterosexual marriages."

"We honor our encounters with the Spirit in nature and through our own and each other's bodies."

"We seek to move beyond individual survival strategies that merely react to oppression and towards collectively affirming life patterns that nurture and grow queer identities."

I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his son John, and I have my George.

King James I of England and VI of Scotland addressing the Privy Council, in 1617 with an official affirmation of his right to love men.

queer is less an identity that a critique of identity

queer is a zone of possibilities, which is inflected by a sense of potentiality that is yet articulated

the driving force of queer is its indeterminancy, flexibility and openendedness

queer becomes a strengthened critique of heterosexuality and its binary constructions of all sexualities

all homogenising categories such as race, class, gender, and sexuality have been exposed by poststructural discources as fictitious and normative

within the context of hiv/aids sexual practices have been stressed over sexual identities in order to challenge to notions of aids as a gay disease

It is not good for a queer to be alone

The story of Adam and Eve has suffered greatly and the hands of theologians with a heterosexual orientation. Knowing that the hebrew word "adam" is not a personal name but means all people, helps us to understand how the story expresses the hopes and aspirations of all people (rather than just an event in the lives of two people, who died a long time ago) Each of us is born alone and finds fulfilment in becoming one flesh with another, who seems to fashioned from a part of us. How else can we explain this spiritual, emotional and physical union of two people. From this perspective we can begin to see how the story explores issues of intimacy and personal responsibility. The joyous moving together and apart, of becoming one flesh and becoming oneself.

To treat the story as a ancient explanation of gender differences is to miss the point. The point is not that men and women are different but that two people can become one flesh. By comparing the story of Adam and Eve with similiar stories from other religious traditions we may see the distinctive points that are being made in Genesis.

St. Aelred of Rievaulx

abbot c.1110 - 1167

He is one of the most lovable saints. Of noble birth, Aelred first lived at the court of David, Kind of Scotland. There they thought him happy. He wrote: 'nevertheless the wound in my heart caused me unspeakable torments and I could not bear the intolerable burden of my sins". Breaking the closest ties, he resolved to leave the world. "It was then, O my God," he went on, "that I began to taste the comfort, the joy, and the profound peace which is found after seeking you and serving you".

In 1135, at the age of twenty-six, Aelred entered the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx. Ten years later he became abbot, which he remained until his death in 1167. This monastery, where a great fervor and charity reigned, counted more than three hundred monks. Aelred who only sought "to love and to be loved", tasted pure happiness there whist making others happy. Among the writings of St. Aelred there is one in which the charms of spiritual friendship are extolled in an incomparable manner.

Aelred on the Need for Intimate Companionship

"It is no small consolation in this life to have someone you can unite with you in an intimate affection and the embrace of a holy love, someone in whom your spirit can rest, to whom you can pour out your soul, to whose pleasant exchanges, as to soothing songs, you can fly in sorrow... with whose spiritual kisses, as with remedial salves, you may draw out all the weariness of your restless anxieties. A man who can shed tears with you in your worries, be happy with you when things go well, search out with you the answers to your problems, whom with the ties of charity you can lead into the depths of your heart; ... where the sweetness of the Spirit flows between you, where you so join yourself and cleave to him that soul mingles with soul and two become one."

Of all the gifts Aelred has given the Church, the one most uniquely his is the joyous affirmation that we move toward God in and through our relationships with other people, not apart from or in spite of them. It is important, too, to remember who those particular individuals were, whose love taught Aelred of the love of God. Aelred himself speaks of losing his heart to one boy and then another during his school days. He was a man of strong passions, who spoke openly of the men for whom he had deeply romantic attachments. After the death of one monk whom he clearly loved, he wrote: