Holy Queer Answers
Is Being Gay a Sin?
No. Holy Queer argues that being gay is not a sin. The deeper question is why so many people were taught that queerness separates them from God when the heart of the gospel is love, liberation, and belonging.
Holy Queer Answers
No. Holy Queer argues that being gay is not a sin. The deeper question is why so many people were taught that queerness separates them from God when the heart of the gospel is love, liberation, and belonging.
From Holy Queer
Holy Queer does not begin with the assumption that queer people are a problem to be solved. It begins with the lived reality of Black queer people who have been named, labeled, excluded, and wounded by religious traditions that often spoke about them without ever truly seeing them.
The book challenges the idea that gayness itself is sinful by asking readers to examine the inherited interpretations that produced that belief. It argues that many anti-gay conclusions were shaped by fear, tradition, cultural control, and the human tendency to confuse God's voice with human prejudice.
Rather than treating queerness as a defect, Holy Queer asks what becomes possible when queerness is understood as part of the vast creativity of God. The book insists that God's love is not fragile, conditional, or threatened by the fullness of human identity.
What Holy Queer Proclaims
Holy Queer proclaims that queerness is not evidence of divine rejection.
It is not a spiritual disqualification.
It is not an obstacle to God.
It is one of the places where God's love, creativity, and liberating power can be seen.
The question is not whether God can love gay people.
The question is who taught us God ever stopped.
Critical Acclaim
"This powerful and insightful book exemplifies a deep Black prophetic Christian witness that will touch souls, change minds, and transform the lives of all of us..."
— Cornel West
"Holy Queer is beautiful, haunting, disruptive, prophetic, and healing... fashioned in the brave-as-hell style of bell hooks..."
— Gary Dorrien
Named one of Religion News Service's Top Religion & Spirituality Books of 2023.
A Black queer gospel by Rev. Karmen Michael Smith. For everyone who was told they had to choose between God and themselves.