LGBTQ+ Politics and Religion (Transcript)

Featuring: Catherine Fox on her Lindchester chronicles, where she explored contemporary issues such as gay marriage; Kim McLelland on paganism and LGBT identities; and queer jewish writer and educator, sam sax at an event by the Manchester Writing School.

Listen to the episode on Soundcloud here.

Rah! Podcast Episode 02: LGBTQ+ Politics and Religion

Rah! Opening Jingle

Julian Holloway: Hello, everybody and welcome to the Rah podcast at Manchester Metropolitan University. My name is Julian Holloway I'm hosting this show. I'm a lecturer in Human Geography here at Manchester Met and the podcast will showcase some of the excellent work being done by our students and staff within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities here at Manchester Metropolitan University. Each episode will be themed along all sorts of different topics from history to poetry to architecture, but today we're looking at the intersection and the focus of LGBTQ politics and religion and focusing on how religion can often provide spaces of belonging for those who historically have felt excluded. Don't forget, you can join the conversation on Twitter by hash tagging #RAH_Podcast. So first, on this episode we hear from Catherine Wilcox about her Linchester Chronicles. Catherine initially serialised this work on a blog and this format allowed her to explore contemporary issues such as gay marriage and other LGBT issues in the church. After Catherine, I interview Kim McClelland on the intersection of paganism and again LGBT communities and identities. And finally, we end the episode listening to Sam Sax performing some of his queer poetry as an event hosted by the Manchester Writing School back in November. So on with the show.  

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Julian: So now we're joined by Dr. Catherine Wilcox, who lectures in Creative Writing here in the Department of English at Manchester Met. Welcome, Catherine. 

Catherine Wilcox: Thank you.  

Julian: Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. You write under the pseudonym Catherine Fox? 

Catherine: I do Yes. 

Julian: How did that come about? 

Catherine: Deep undercover. Well, I think initially because my husband who's ordained he's a, he's a priest. And indeed now he's a bishop, I felt I needed a little bit of breathing space between his role and mine so that I wasn't immediately known as the one who wrote those novels. 

Julian: Right, have they become known as those novels? We’re going to come back to these obviously. 

Catherine: Slightly, yes. (Laughter) 

Julian: So you're the author of seven novels so far. 

Catherine: That’s right. Yeah.  

Julian: And I guess the one that you're most famous, is that right, the right way of saying it? For, is the, is the chronicles the lead, Lynn Linchester 

Catherine: Linchester Chronicles. Those are my, certainly my most recent books. Yes. 

Julian: The ones that people know you for sort of thing? 

Catherine: Yes, I think because I wrote three novels about 20 years ago. 

Julian: Right. 

Catherine: And then I had a, kind of a long layoff period when I wasn't writing any more fiction. So I think the first lot had a fan base. But the new series has attracted a slightly different group of people. And the hope, of course, is that they go back and read the first ones.  

Julian: Absolutely, yes. But I noticed you describe yourself as a self-confessed Cathedral junkie.  

Catherine: Yes. Yes.  

Julian: What does that entail? What does it, being a Cathedral junkie entail? 

Catherine: Well, I think it's a, it's a love of those big sacred spaces, I think. And the, along with that, that sense of entering something bigger than myself, and being part of a world of faith and a sense of all those centuries of prayer in that space, but also The, the choral tradition of, particularly choral Evensong where you can slide in and, it’s like to me a glimpse of heaven, a lot of kind of mediaeval music, beautifully sung, and the Book of Common Prayer language and those prayers that have been prayed for so long and still resonate today for a lot of people, including me, I think that was probably what it was. But then added to that was all those years living on Cathedral closes first in Litchfield and then in Liverpool. It gets into your bloodstream ready. 

Julian: Tell us about Linchester this fictional diocese. 

Catherine: Yes, I think I wanted to have a go at recreating a 21st century version of, of what Anthony Trollops Barchester Chronicles might have felt like when they first came out, they were serialised, so you had to wait for the next instalment in the next periodical that it was published in and it was about a fictional diocese, Barchester in his case, but the characters were so immediately recognisable as the sort of people that live in Cathedral places. And with the sort of dilemmas and predicaments that people find themselves in. It almost felt real. So I wanted to generate some new fiction that felt like that. And it seems to me the obvious way to recapture the serialised aspect was to blog the novel in weekly instalments. 

Julian: So that was the inspiration for blogging? 

Catherine: Yes, it was, but also to have the kind of Victorian narrator who's unashamedly appearing in the text and commenting. 

Julian:  Right. 

Catherine: That's quite, quite unfashionable in terms of good Creative Writing practice, where on the whole, the narrative voice is quite self-effacing and you don't kind of “dear reader” people and buttonhole them. So that was great fun to be able to do that and to introduce characters and comment on them and invite the reader to empathise. 

Julian: You have a lot of characters in your novels. Is that a deliberate thing in order to bring in all those different voices, and maybe different perspectives? 

Catherine: Yes, yes it was though I think the process revealed to me that I didn't have any of the main viewpoint characters who would have been voting leave.  

Julian: Right.  

Catherine: And that was a real wake up call. It was as if, and I think this is the experience of a lot of people who maybe work in universities, live in a big metropolis, so I lived at that stage in Liverpool working in Manchester. I don’t think I seriously knew anyone who was voting leave. 

Julian: I know exactly the feeling, and it's the, it's the, I believe the contemporary phrase for it would be the echo chamber that we live in, in terms of our opinions.  

Catherine: That's true. Yes. And I was, that was a shock because I was paying a lot of attention to getting the spectrum of church doctrine on the hot potatoes that the Church of England is still you know, trying to sort out: equal marriage, role of women, different approaches to how you deal with the, the central texts of our faith. So how do you interpret the Bible so I thought I'd, I'd have a whole, full spectrum. I try and make all of them in some way empathetic. So if you don't agree with me you think, okay, I see why they hold that view. But I just simply missed that whole half the population of Great Britain, I think in in future books, I want to redress that balance. 

Julian: So, do you, in your novels, there is this humorous edge, but do you try and bring in those moments where, you know, a clergy are dealing in various different ways with the big events of life, I suppose. As you say, of the extremes of life. 

Catherine: Yeah, Yes, I do.  

Julian: That could be quite tricky to write about, I would have thought. 

Catherine: I think we have the language for gravitas. So it's, without being flippant or ironic, this is something that churches still do, we're able to be serious about the big serious things, as well as having a good laugh. So the great canon of literature that we draw on - the hymns, the Bible passages, the services - they still somehow resonate even if people aren't quite familiar with singing hymns, for example. There's something, there's a sort of elevated language, more poetical, that's not just dull and prosaic that, somehow. It's not that you know what to say to someone who's grieving, but that you can inhabit that space with them without feeling awkward or that your language is inadequate. 

Julian: Your readership is do you imagine it just as the Christian community or Anglican community? Or beyond? 

Catherine: Well I think it’s, initially that. That it's quite, quite lovely to have that sense - ah someone's telling our story, we're all a bit weird, but here's our story. So it does presuppose either a working knowledge of the Church of England or at anywhere a nosiness about what's going on. So I think it's sort of, it's like a view through a stained glass window, into what faith feels like from the inside. And that might be quite different for how people think it's gunna feel. 

Julian: In terms of some of the big issues then the facing Anglicanism, the Church of England, or I guess religion in a broader sense, you try and bring those in. So for example, how do you, how do you sort of approach things like LGBTQ issues well and the church? 

Julian: Well, by having a range of characters, some of whom are very gay and very out, and others who have adopted a very conservative attitude to gay and lesbian people and try to get into their consciousness and show why they think what they think and in the first novel, this central story is about someone who's so far back in the closet they're not even aware there's a closet right but reaches a crisis point where it's no longer possible to hide from, from that and just to look at the potential scandal there. And then how it's partly hushed up, whether that's a good thing. Is it? Or is it the least, worst thing? What should we do in, in response to shortcomings, failures in public office? How much of this is private? How much should it be in the public domain? It’s just, to my mind really interesting, because it's not clear. And the other thing I suppose I wanted to say, through the novels is, it's complicated. 

Julian: Do you think you’ll keep returning to Linchester though? Do you think it’s something that you -  

Catherine: Probably not in the same format. I don't see myself blogging, again, like that. But I feel that there are more novels in me, but probably set in, in something a bit, a bit bleaker. Although there will always be comedy, I guess, and there will always be hope (laughter) it will be a different flavour. I don't know yet what it is. But I think there's some big state of the nation novels to be written in the next five years. And I hope to be part of that. 

Julian: Fantastic. 

Catherine: I don't know quite how it's going to work out. So I will finish this fantasy novel then I'm going to write a much more Gothic fantasy novel set in Second World War with evil fairies, I think. 

Julian: Ooo that sounds fantastic. (Laughter) 

Catherine: And hauntings and that sort of thing. Just, I just need to take a break from the stuff I have been doing. And I suppose partly to let the reservoirs fill up again. 

Julian: Absolutely, because it's must be quite a draining in some ways. 

Catherine: Well, this is you, just, I think you, you've used up everything you, you have, in order to say that kind of thing. You just need to go and live a little bit more, think a bit more. Just let it grow again. 

Julian: Well, we look forward to seeing what to read next. So Dr. Catherine Wilcox, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast. 

Catherine: Thank you very much. 

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Julian: So also working on this fascinating subject on the intersection of religion and LGBTQ identities and communities is Kim McClellan who's joined me in the studio. Hello Kim.  

Kim McClellan: Hi  

Julian: Kim is a freelance journalist and documentary maker – is that right? And currently working for gaydio? 

Kim: Yeah. 

Julian: Can you tell me a bit more gaydio?  

Kim: Well it’s Manchester's – well it’s nationwide now - but it's Manchester's LGBT radio station.  

Julian: Fantastic. So you you’re used to radio Studios. 

Kim: I just I did a bit of work for them for Transgender Day of Remembrance.  

Julian: Right. Okay. Yeah. 

Kim:  I'm just contributing work as and, as and when for them.  

Julian: Brilliant. Brilliant. And you've just completed an MA in multimedia journalism? 

Kim:  Yep.  

Julian: On issues and topics around gender religions and sexuality. And in particular your dissertation focused on the intersection of paganism and LGBT community. 

Kim: That's right. Yeah.  

Julian: So how did the inspiration come about for that?  

Kim: Well, I, I am actually interested in paganism myself. I would consider myself a pagan now. I'm also a transgender woman. I'm also attracted to women, so that makes me lesbian or bisexual. I got a sense that there was a crossover because I know that Christianity is not always very accepting of LGBT people and I know more than one pagan who is on some, is trans or gay or whatever. So I knew there was a crossover. And I wanted to examine the reasons for that, really. And also find out whether there was as much of a crossover as I thought there was. 

Julian: Is there a community in Manchester and beyond of LGBT people and, and pagans is there, or is it, tends to be a more individual path and you kind of cross paths? 
Kim: I don't know myself of any specifically LGBT pagan groups.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah.  

Kim: Though I've heard from some of the people I interviewed, that there were, there were groups like that. But yeah, I mean, there's obviously quite a good LGBT community. There is a pagan group that meets up once a month, although I don't think they're doing so anymore, but they were when I was doing the research for them. And yeah, there's a Facebook group for pagans, for Manchester pagans, and I mean, yeah that are these groups all over the country. 

Julian: So what were you hoping to kind of uncover with your research what were you, what were, what were you, sort of seeking to ask and trying to find out from your research? 

Kim: Firstly, I guess kind of confirmation that there was a crossover, there were a lot of LGBT people that were drawn to paganism, or pagans that were some kind of LGBT. But I was also looking for, kind of looking to contrast experiences of being LGBT in Christian circles versus experiences of LGBT and pagans.  

Julian: So in some ways, it is comparative? 

Kim: Yeah, and just what people's experiences were being pagan and LGBT, how accepted they were and how this contrasted with other religions. I was looking for that sort of information, as I thought it would make an interesting documentary. 

Julian: Absolutely, yeah.  

Kim: Actually only two of the people I interviewed were ex-Christian and pagan, but they kind of confirmed what I expected: that they didn't feel very welcomed or belonging in Christianity because of their sexuality and they found that paganism was more, much more accepting.  

Julian: Is that the case then? Would you say that the paganism is more accepting of LGBT? 

Kim: It seems to be on the whole, there are some exceptions I know about. 

Julian: Right. 

Kim: Like Dianic Wicca sometimes seems to be a lot of radical feminists who are not accepting of trans women, don't view trans women as women.  

Julian: Yes, I’ve recently been reading about that. But that's not all the case across all Dianic Wicca I guess. 

Kim: I guess. Yeah. And I've heard of certain homophobic groups, some of the people mentioned, from some forms in Norse paganism is very masculinised. 

Julian: Yeah, yeah. 

Kim: But there's, all these things tend to be the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, paganism is very diversity friendly. So it's very welcoming to all sorts of people and sex isn't such a big deal to pagans as it might be to Christians, it seems. So they're just, yeah more accepting of LGBT people on the whole.  

Julian: Is there, would you say that there's a particular aspect we could, when we think about paganism it's a, it's a very broad term. I was going to say broad church then but maybe that’s not the appropriate thing. Everything from Wicca, witchcraft, hedonism, to druidry, etc, etc. Did you find in your research that there's particular branches or traditions or contemporary traditions or older traditions that LGBT people are attracted to? 

Kim: No other people I spoke to were quite diverse, I think in terms of forms of paganism they were attracted to, in fact, a lot seemed to be not of any particular path. This is quite common, actually. 

Julian: Right?  

Kim: More common than being a specific path is, is kind of being a bit more eclectic. But, 

Julian: Do you think that paganism allows that eclecticism? Is that something in the nature of paganism that allows that eclecticism? 

Kim: Yeah, Pete Jennings said something interesting in, in my documentary that he said, it seems to attract people, I guess, free thinkers, it seems to attract people who are comfortable thinking for themselves, because you sort of have to find your own path within it. There's no Bible or Pope or whatever. 

Julian: Exactly. There's no set book and there's no set readings that one has to follow. You have to find your own. Did you find people, I think you've mentioned earlier, that come from different faith backgrounds to find paganism or have they come from a desire for spirituality in some form and came to paganism that way? Or had they come from a Christian or other type of backgrounds? 

Kim: I spoke to, a couple of people I spoke to were from a Christian background, and, and were looking for something else. But then a lot of people were like, not raised religious at all and seem to have come to paganism from, I guess, agnosticism, or atheism.  

Julian: I mentioned something in your research about Saint Ninians’s church in Chorlton, is there - what was the relationship to Christianity that you brought into your into your research?  

Kim: I wanted to provide balance. 

Julian: Right?  

Kim: Because I didn't want it just to be saying all Christianity is bad. And I knew that there were LGBT-friendly churches out there. So I specifically did a Google search to look for one found Saint Ninians, of course. 

Julian: Can you tell me about Saint Ninians? I don't know much about them? 

Kim: So then I emailed them and Philip Jones spoke to me from them. Yeah, it's a church in Chorlton. The building, they do have a normal kind of service as well but them they have an LGBT specific service. It's quite interesting.  

Julian: So you would you count yourself as a pagan then, Kim?  

Kim: Yes, I don't follow any particular path. I've been interested in mythology since I was a teenager really and spent much of my young adult life questioning faith. And yeah, I seem to have come to a sort of pagan belief, but it's very much I tread my own path. I’ve got quite an eclectic Pantheon on my alter really from different Pantheons and I don't even view the gods as literal beings. 

Julian: Right, in what sense? 

Kim: They’re symbolic to me of aspects of nature or aspects of human spiritual experience. And I'm sort of agnostic about deity, full stop, but I do sort of believe I'm a bit of a pantheist I believe there's a kind of presence or energy that you can kind of tap into that just exists in the universe in nature. 

Julian: Do you plan to take this research further in terms of this, this intersection between LGBT and paganism? 

Kim: I am interested in doing a lot more documentaries about LGBT stuff and religion and alternative religions. So I may well return to paganism and LGBT at some point. I'm interested in covering other religions as well, Hinduism, Buddhism. I'm interested in various aspects of LGBT stuff I wanted to do documentaries about gender identity definitely and Kink and polyamory and stuff. I've got quite a lot of things I really want to, 

Julian: To do list. (Laughter) I mean, in terms of the relationship between these, these, I don’t want to say two things, because they’re obviously combined in your research, but LGBTQ and, and religion there is there's lots of scope to take this further isn't there in terms of questions to be asked and groups to meet and people to meet? 

Kim: Yeah. They’re subjects that interest me a lot.  

Julian: Fantastic. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Kim, for joining us today on this podcast. Thank you very much. 

Kim: Thank you. 

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Julian: That takes us nicely into our final segment of today's episode. Last month, Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met invited Sam Sax to perform a reading of his poetry. Sam Sax is a queer Jewish writer and educator. And his poetry particularly explores the intersection of his identity as being both queer and Jewish. So over to Andrew McMillan, who introduced Sam at the event, explaining his personal connection to Sam’s poetry. 

Andrew Macmillan: Sam Sax is a queer Jewish writer, an educator, he is a poet of great esteem, of great power. And it's one of the great thrills I think, in my professional life, that I get to introduce him. I first came across Sam’s work the morning after the Pulse nightclub massacre in America. I was staying in America at the time and woke up in my hotel room and rolled over in bed away from the news and to the latest copy of poetry magazine that had just come out that month. And I wanted there to try and find some comfort and solace away from what was happening in the world. And the first poems that I turned to in that issue were Sam’s, and how else it seemed to me at that time to respond to terror, but to speak openly and freely about the life that you're living. I continue to keep returning to Sam's work since. Its work that is full of the body, it’s work that is full of life and most importantly to me, it seems that it is full of truth. It's a real honour to be able to bring Sam to you this evening and I hope that you really enjoy what's about to come. So please welcome Sam Sax. (Applause) 

Sam Sax: Alright, so my first poem’s gonna be this, I had a lisp growing up. Okay, so we had to fill out these forms in order to like train out the lisp as we like practised. So like it would be um, Sally smothers small insects right? That was actually alright. So this model is in those forms we had to fill out. It’s called lisp: 

There are more S's in possession than I remember. My name hinges on the S. It’s serpentine, has sibilance is simple. Six letters, a symbol different from its size. Sound shapes how we think about objects, the mouth shapes how sound spills out how a speaker’s seen. Astigmatism is the homosexual mystique. My parents sought treatments. I was sent to a speech pathologist, in sixth grade I was schooled. Practice silence syllabic syntax. My voice sat in the high branches, my voice a spoon filled with sugar and semen. I licked silk when I spoke, I spilt milk when I sang, when I sang, sick men tore wings from city birds. So I straightened my sound into a masculinist I. The S is derived from the Semitic letter shin, meaning my swishyness is Hebraic is inherited. It’s semantic. No matter what was sacrificed, the tongue the Isaac, a son against the stone of my soft palate. Still, I slipped my hands into my neighbor's waistband and pulled back pincers, Sisyphus with the sissiest lips. Parseltongued assassin, sassy and passing for the poisoned sea. Now when I say please can I suck your ****? I sound straight as the still second hand on a dead watch. 

(Applause) 

Sam: Thank you. Okay, so this is one about many problems about pigs, but it’s, there’s only one other I’m going to read tonight. It’s uh, Ode to Miss Piggy: 

Oh great porcine drag queen. You who erudite in the slaughterhouse shadow. Eyelashes Like swords teased up to challenge heaven, eternal in your powdered foundation, refusing every day the knife’s, inevitable and unkosher ending. Be-snouted fount of youth, seminal queer iconoclast. Pearls to bed, pearls in the junkyard, pearls on television, diva of late night, of talk shows and Prime Time. Door-kicker for non-conventional romance, shown us how to love across identities as arbitrary as phylum and species. Bless that impossible couple how you took an entire frog inside you and remain the same bad big, karate chop anyone dumb enough to disrespect said hi-YAH. What little faggot would look upon you and be seen and salved and saved. You who never question you're destined for stardom. Oh, Miss Miss. Oh, great swine demi-monde. Oh, Dame pig, I'm yours ‘till I end. You my religion, how I understand all us now. We are ourselves and the hand inside that guides us. We who are given voice by the same spirit that gives voice to everyone we've ever loved.  

(Applause) 

Sam: I wrote this one yesterday. No, that's not true two days ago, and read it out for the first time at um, my other reading. It's called the tree of life. And that's like, you know, the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. First-rate classic. There's also like, the, like another phrase for the Torah, the great book. And then it's also the name of the synagogue, the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh that, where a man killed 11 folks, like two weeks ago. And so I’ve been trying to try figure out 
How to write on that: 

This November, 11 elders were executed in the Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest attack on Jewish Americans in history. And there's no way to make sense of that sentence in language. To diagram or scan it. The more you look, the more the words break down like eggs in the coward’s stomach. The word Pittsburgh tears apart into birds, the word synagogue unspools into a length of red thread. Elders becomes a plum tree young and flowering again. No way to language this. To use the sentence without breaking it. Oh, Pittsburgh, I am with you in Pittsburgh. I am Pittsburghed in Pittsburgh. I am un-elder there as I am here elderflower. Here I am a synagogue in Pittsburgh filled with the bright laughter of guns from the dart gun fire of children my people, an ex-dance species. My people are geniuses at turning trauma into text, at turning soil and planting improper nouns there. The killer said screw your optics I'm going in and he did. Language is to be believed if not trusted. The killer said all Jews must die and this is also true. All us must. Even the Gentiles among us return to dust. And that dust returns us to Pittsburgh, where we cough at the clean air, where we execute the American sun. Where we act like we aren’t already history. 

(Applause) 

Sam: I wrote this one after the current president of the United States said he was going to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. Just like cuz, you know, and immediately, like war broke out. And I was struck by like how, I mean, I'm always struck by language. But especially how like you got can utter like make an utterance and then that leads immediately to war elsewhere later. People losing their lives or ability to move across borders and then move freely across borders and how that, like is tied to the work that we're doing on the page. Yeah. Um. Anyway, so it's called everyone's an expert at something: 

The more I learn, the more I learn I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. To someone who doesn't care a fig for poetry, they'd likely think I knew a lot. Yet in most bookshops, I'm lost. Shelves heavy with the bodies of forgotten writers. It's relative. A president can say audacity or a president can say sad and both eat the same cured meat of Empire. When I say I carry my people inside me I don't mean a country. The star that hangs from my neck is simply a way of saying Israel is not a physical place but can be written down and carried anywhere. It says my people are most beautiful when the moving, when movement, when our only state is the liquid state of water is adapting to its container. Homeland sometimes just means what books you've read, what stories you've spread with your sneakers, my people, any place you live long enough to build the bombs is a place you've lived too long. It's relative. My friends the only thing I know for sure is the missiles on television are only beautiful if you've never known suffering. My friends. The only country I will ever pledge my allegiance to is your music, is under investigation for treason. 

(Applause) 

Rah! Mini Closing Jingle 

Julian: And that brings us to the end of our podcast on LGBT identities, politics and religion. I hope you found it fascinating. Thank you very much for listening. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter for future podcast updates. You can find us on Twitter @mmu_RAH. And for more information on all the research and events we discussed in the episode, please make sure you go to the Rah website for the full links and tune back in soon for more episodes on the research and work being done in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities here at Manchester Met. So until next time, goodbye.  

Rah! Closing Jingle 

Julian: This episode of the Rah podcast was produced by Lucy Simpson, edited by Mia Abeyawardene, and mixed and presented by me, Julian Holloway