Church officials and followers from many different demoninations have long used the Bible to argue that homosexuality and transgender identities are abominations in the eyes of God.
A few passages, especially two in the book of Leviticus, which many claim have been taken out of context or misinterpreted, have contributed to discrimination against LGBT people in a variety of ways, including the blocking of legal same-sex marriage in the United States and proposing criminal punishment (or even death) in other countries around the world.
Still, many, not just religious LGBT people, refuse to read the Bible this way. What's more, some have even gone so far as to look for examples of LGBT people within the Bible or Christian history.
While many would freely admit that most of the men and woman of yore were not gay or transgender as defined by our modern standards, they would assert that these people were involved in non-heteronormative relationships, presented non-traditional gender identities, or understood, approached, and complicated aspects of faith with relation to sexuality and/or gender identity.
Performing a "queering" (or re-appropriating/re-imagining/claiming based on available evidence) of religious texts and lives is one tactic LGBT people have widely used throughout history to see or find themselves and each other in a world where they have been forced to remain hidden. It is a way to celebrate and honor those who did not live "straight" lives and to discover role models and trail blazers who may have been obscured, forgotten, or stripped of their queerness.
In honor of St. Nick's Day, we're taking a look at 10 "queer" saints (who can be found in the slideshow below along with their saint days and the calendars on which the dates can be found):
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![St. Joan Of Arc, May 30, (Old Roman Calendar)]()
While most people think that Joan of Arc was executed for witchcraft, according to "The Transgender Studies" reader By Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, the French peasant-turned-soldier was actually put to death for dressing as a man.
"Joan was condemned because of her assertion that her transvestism was a religious duty and that she regarded her visions as higher than the authority of the church. In the verbatim proceedings of her interrogation... the court records show that Joan's judges found her transvestism repugnant and demanded that she wear women's clothing. Joan refused, knowing her defiance meant she was considered damned... She vowed, "For nothing in this world will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man's dress."
She eventually recanted and was sentenced to life in prison wearing women's clothing.
However, as Stryker and Whittle note, "within days she resumed male dress." When asked why she had reverted, she said that she preferred men's clothing to women's.
She was sentenced to death for dressing as a man with the Inquisition's judges stating "time and again you have relapsed, as a dog returns to its vomit."
Photo: Image provided by brxo on Flickr.com
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![St. Uncumber (AKA Wilgefortis), July 20 (Old Roman Calendar)]()
Legend has it a noblewoman named Wilgefortis was to be entered into an arranged marriage.
Unable to bear the thought of wedding her father's choice -- a pagan king -- she took a vow of virginity and prayed to be made physically ugly in order to avoid going through with the nuptials.
As a result, Wilgefortis's prayers were supposedly answered and she grew a beard.
Though she was then was freed from following through with the marriage, her hirsute saving grace angered her father so greatly he had her crucified.
Image provided by rpscott123 on Flickr.com
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![Saint Sergius And Saint Bacchus, October 7 (Old Roman Calendar)]()
Sergius and Bacchus were Roman soldiers -- and lovers -- who were persecuted for being Christians and humiliated by being forced to wear women's clothing before being murdered -- Bacchus first and Sergius a few days later.
As the following passage shows, Bacchus -- already dead -- appeared to Sergius and told him that the prize of martyrdom would be their reunion:
Meanwhile the blessed Serge, deeply depressed and heartsick over the loss of Bacchus, wept and cried out, "No longer, brother and fellow soldier, will we chant together, 'Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!' You have been unyoked from me and gone up to heaven, leaving me alone on earth, bereft [literally, "made single"], without comfort." After he uttered these things, the same night the blessed Bacchus suddenly appeared to him with a face as radiant as an angel's, wearing an officer's uniform, and spoke to him. "Why do you grieve and mourn, brother? If I have been taken from you in body, I am still with you in the bond of union, chanting and reciting, 'I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou hast enlarged my heart.' Hurry then, yourself, brother, through beautiful and perfect confession to pursue and obtain me, when finishing the course. For the crown of justice for me is with you.''
Their cult was one of the most intense in the eastern Mediterranean, with a huge pilgrimage site at Sergiopolis (Rusapha), notes Paul Halsall on his Calendar of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Saints.
Image provided by sixpee2013 on Flickr.com
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![St. Anselm Of Canterbury, April 21 (All Western Calendars)]()
Anselm was born in Italy in 1033 and joined the Benedictine monastery of Bec in Normandy in 1056, according to Rictor Norton.
Though he was celibate, many point to Anselm's letters as examples of being filled with, as Norton puts it, "the erotic force behind his yearning and frustrated desire, his heartbreak and even jealousy... The intensity of his emotional experience with his pupils and the `beloved lover' (dilecto dilectori) to whom he addresses his epistles makes clear his gay sensibility."
In 1102 The Council of London wanted to pass ecclesiastical legislation which made -- for the first time in English history -- homosexual behaviour was a sin. But, as Norton notes, Anselm, as Archbishop of Canterbury, "prohibited the publication of their decree, advising the Council that homosexuality was widespread and few men were embarrassed by it or had even been aware it was a serious matter; he felt that although sodomites should not be admitted to the priesthood, confessors should take into account mitigating factors such as age and marital status before prescribing penance, and he advised counselling rather than punishment."
Image provided by pasotraspaso on Flickr.com
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![St. Apollinaria/Dorotheos Of Egypt, January 5 (Orthodox Calendars)]()
According to The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, St. Apollinaria asked for her parents' blessing to make a pilgrimage to the East instead of being married. Once she made it to Alexandria, she donned monks' clothing and after fasting and praying for several years in a marsh -- and a visitation from an angel -- she joined a monastery, became a monk, and renamed herself Dorotheus.
St. Apollinaria's parents had another daughter who was supposedly possessed by demons. They sent her to the monastery where Dorotheus (Apollinaria) was -- unbeknownst to them -- living. Dorotheus healed the girl by praying. When the sister returned home she was possessed again, this time by a demon who made her appear pregnant and who claimed that Dorotheus had raped the girl.
The parents, outraged, sent soldiers to the monastery to arrest the monk.
Dorotheus (Apollinaria) confessed to the crime and returned to the home of her parents. Once there, she told his parents her secret, healed her sister once again, and then returned to the monastery.
It wasn't until her death that it was revealed that Dorotheus had the physical body of a woman.
Image provided by bl0ndeeo2 on Flickr.com
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![Alcuin Of Tours (Or York), May 20, (Episcopal Church USA)]()
In the 8th century Alcuin studied in the cathedral school at York, where he became a monk and teacher. He went on to help King Charles the Great, aka Charlemagne, achieve a great deal of reform in the Church.
John Boswell, in "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality," notes, "The prominence of love in Alcuin's writings, all of which are addressed to other males, is striking."
Aside for some very queer poetry, consider the following letter he wrote to a male bishop friend:
"I think of your love and friendship with such sweet memories, reverend bishop, that I long for that lovely time when I may be able to clutch the neck of your
sweetness with the fingers of my desires. Alas, if only it were granted to me... to be transported to you, how I would sink into your embraces... how much would I cover, with
tightly pressed lips, not only your eyes, ears and mouth, but also your every finger and toe, not once but many a time."
Image provided by dtron on Flickr.com
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![Cardinal Newman, August 11]()
Not yet a saint -- he was beatified in 2010 but requires the proof of one more miracle before he can be canonized -- Cardinal Newman, or John Henry Newman, lived during the 19th century.
He helped found the Catholic University of Ireland and wrote many books and popular hymns.
He doesn't have a feast day yet, but his "die natalis," or the anniversary of his death (the term means "day of birth" but refers to the day the person was "born into heaven"), is celebrated on August 11.
Though he was celibate, many consider him to have lived a gay life. He had several passionate friendships with male friends including Ambrose St John, with whom he insisted on being buried.
According to NihilObstat.info:
"It was Cardinal Newman's dying wish that he be buried with his closest friend in the grounds of the house they shared as priests. The cardinal repeated on three occasions his desire to be buried with his friend, including shortly before his death in 1890.
'I wish,with all my heart, to be buried in Fr Ambrose St John's grave -- and I give this as my last, my imperative will,' he wrote, later adding: 'This I confirm and insist on.'"
Image provided by nikoretro on Flickr.com
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![Saint Julian Of Norwich, April 22 (Church Of England)]()
An English mystic who lived during the 14th century, Julian's name isn't the only genderqueer aspect of her story.
The saint claimed to have visions and documented them in "Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love."
In the book Julian appears to "queer" God and Jesus by applying the female gender to each in passages like "[Christ] our natural mother, our gracious mother" and "A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself."
She also writes, "In this I saw that all the debts we owe, by God's command, to fatherhood and motherhood by reason of God's fatherhood and motherhood."
Image provided by celesteh on Flickr.com
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![St. Paulinus Of Nola, June 22 (Old Roman Calendar)]()
St. Paulinus lived in 4th/5th century Roman empire and was in love with another man, Ausonius, to whom he wrote many touching love poems.
One of these poems is even included in "The Penguin Book Of Homosexual Verse."
Image provided by TMAB2003 on Flickr.com
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![Saints Symeon of Emesa and John, July 21 (Orthodox Calendars)]()
Symeon and his mother and John with his new wife met on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and soon the men abandoned their families to be together and serve God.
According to the Calendar of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Saints, in the first monastery they joined, the two men were blessed together, rather than separately, which some have viewed as an "early monastic version of the adelphopiia ceremony," a version of a same-sex marriage ceremony.
From there, Symeon and John left the monastery and lived as "hermits." After twenty-nine years together, Symeon decided to go out on his own prompting John to plead:
"Please, for the Lord's sake, do not leave wretched me... Rather for the sake of Him who joined us, do not wish to be parted from your brother. You know that, after God, I have no one except you, my brother, but I renounced all and was bound to you, and now you wish to leave me in the desert, as in an open sea. Remember that day when we drew lost and went down to the Lord Nikon, that we agreed not to be separated from one another. Remember that fearful day when we were clothed in the holy habit, and we two were as one soul, so that all were astonished at our love. Don't forget the words of the great monk... Please don't lest I die and God demands an account of my soul from You."
Image provided by Sean MacEntee on Flickr.com
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