Like a Scene Out of Voltaire

I have had music from Duran Duran's album Rio in my head since Friday.  You might ask why.  In my Church History II class on Thursday night, my teacher talked about Voltaire, which took me back to high school, to the Duran Duran song "Last Chance on the Stairway," and this lyric: "Funny it’s just like a scene out of Voltaire, twisting out of sight.”  I thought about the book by Voltaire that I found on a remainder table at a B. Dalton's.  I bought it because of that lyric.  I don't remember Voltaire, but I can sing almost every song on Rio.

I went down several music internet rabbit holes on Friday as I was writing my paper for my Queer Theology class.  I made this Facebook post:  "Listening to Violent Femmes songs, editing my Queer Theology paper on Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic," as one does on the last Friday of March."  And later, I made this Facebook post:  "And now I'm listening to Darius Rucker and missing Columbia (South Carolina) and the apartment on Heidt Street that was close enough to Rockafellas that we could hear Hootie and the Blowfish for free--Darius Rucker's version of "Straight to Hell" and "Wagon Wheel" may be my favorites of each song."

Along the way, someone asked me what Queer Theology is--a good question.  I will confess that the Queer Theology class has spent more time on Queer Theory than I expected.  Happily, if it had been a class in Queer Theory, I'd have happily signed up for that too.  I'm happy with the response I wrote to the question, and I want to capture it here, where it will be easier to find in the future, if I need it:

"It can be many things. At it's most basic level, Queer Theology could look at the Bible and see what the Bible says about non-heterosexual existence. But my seminary class started with the understanding that we didn't need to do that, that we are all created as good by God and loved by God, regardless of gender or sexual desire, that we don't need to prove that God loves us all. So the class that I'm in is looking at Queer Theory and seeing what it can tell us about Queer Theology--in other words, what Queer Theory can tell us about God and what it means to follow God and what it means to live in the systems of empire that we do. There's lots of Queer Theory around gender and how we experience gender and how we perform gender. There's lots of Queer Theory that looks at how we are shaped (in all ways, not just gender and sex) by the societies and cultures we live in--does that research affect the way we see ourselves and God? I would say that it does, but this answer is already getting quite long, so I'll stop here. I will say that it's been a fascinating class, and I'm really glad to be part of it--it shows me that there are so many ways of approaching the question of how to be the best human/believer possible."

Even at the end of an intense week, I'm happy to say that I'm still so thrilled with the classes that I'm taking this term.  Most of them are classes that are rarely offered from a distance, so I'm so glad to have had this opportunity.