Godly Homonormativity: Christian LGBT Organizing in Contemporary Poland

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the emergence of Christian LGBT organizing in Poland and the production of what I term godly homonormativity via a particular strand of organizing exemplified by Wiara i Tęcza (WiT; Faith and Rainbow). I argue that despite being an important initiative representing people—LGBT Christians—whose voices are often excluded from the mainstream LGBT movement, WiT’s project is a largely assimilationist one, seeking acceptance within the existing patriarchal and highly inequitable power relationship of the Catholic Church. Consequently, WiT is generative of a mostly normalizing set of ideas that reinforces rather than challenges heteronormativity and that also colludes with the neoliberal project that promotes “a privileged form of gay life that attempts to replicate aspects of state”—and in the case of WiT church—endorsed “heterosexual primacy and prestige located in the home” (Brown, 2009, p. 1499).