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In the Catholic world, today's the feast of the Holy Family. There's lots of talk on this day about how all families are holy β and at the same time, much of that talk focuses on (implicit) gender complementarity, with a focus on Adam and Eve followed by Mary and Joseph. /1
These are the biblical model of family, we're told: man + woman + children. (What's not mentioned is that if we literalize both the creation story and the story of Jesus's birth, we end up, in the creation story, with siblings procreating with siblings.) /2
(And if we literalize the gospel story about Mary and Joseph, we end up with the rather odd model of family that includes a mother who was ostensibly a virgin throughout her life, and a husband who never lay with her.
A strange model of family to hold up as idealβ¦.) /3
A strange model of family to hold up as idealβ¦.) /3
I say all this not to quibble or quarrel, but because metaphors literalized without much awareness of the dangers of literalizing them have a way of taking on a life of their own and becoming harmful. /4
The church does harm especially to LGBTQ people and their holy families when it implies that ONLY male + female + children can = family. This implication is based on a literalization of biblical stories that aren't about gender and gender complementarity at all. /5
The inability β the deliberate failure β of the Catholic church to include queer people and queer families in their model of "holy family" is deeply harmful to queer people and all those who love queer people.
It's, in fact, harmful to the whole human race as holy family. /6
It's, in fact, harmful to the whole human race as holy family. /6
