Contexts, Contestations, ‘Contradictions’

1. Making Space for Queer Identifying Religious Youthhttp://queerreligiousyouth.wordpress.com/Yvette Taylor, Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Researchtaylory@lsbu.ac.uk

2. Contexts, Contestations, ‘Contradictions’ UK debates on the Civil Partnership Act (2004) and The Equality Act (2006) and the proposed government plans to legalize gay marriage by 2015 ‘Religious Leaders are out of Touch with Sexuality Issues’ The Guardian

3. IntersectionalityA concern with sexuality is apparent within scholarly work on ‘intersectionality’ as a spoke on the ‘intersectional wheel’, but these intersections are often minimally gestured towards rather than empirically substantiated, demonstrated and ‘delivered’; the formalistic addition and repetition of ‘intersectionality’ leaves out the intimate interconnections, mutualconstitutions and messiness of everyday identifications and lived experiences (Taylor et al, 2010, Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality). ‘understanding complexities posed by intersections ofdifferent axes of differentiation is as pressing today as it has always been’(Brah and Phoenix, 2004: 75).

4. Intersectional Methods …corrective methodological approach prompts intersectional and queer investigations to ‘check and balance’ each other not only by calibrating answers more precisely but also by developing new questions and methods … corrective methodological approaches always reflect possible hegemonic speaker-positions, which may vary over time and may even vanish in one context and re-emerge in another (Yekani et al. in Taylor, 2010)

5. Intersectional Methods Individual interviews and social identities mapping exercises–Key themes include: the location of religion in their lives; changes in religiosity over time; management of religious and sexual identities; religious identities and family life; participation in ‘community’ spaces; biographies, transitions and materialities. The interview process is supported through a social identities mapping exercise where participants construct A3 maps that represent important sites in their everyday lives and the ways in which their identities change across these spaces and times. This exercise is characteristic of the work within participatory research where participants are open to shape agendas (Kindon et al., 2008). Personal diaries–participants keep a diary over 1 month to reflect upon the multi-intersections of their religious and sexual identities, the ways that these are mediated by space and time and the strategies they adopt in the management of their identities (Taylor, 2007).

6. Mapping Exercises

7. Mapping Exercises

8. Mapping Exercises

9. Mapping Exercises

10. PI and RA keep interview diaries. Research reflexivity? ‘… a matter of positioning and access to the means of telling. It is also about the ability to be heard’ (Skeggs, 2002: 352). ‘… a mobile relation to identity on the side of the knower in relation to the known’ (Adkins, 2002: 340) Intersecting Insider/Outsider Positions: Mapping Me?

11. Insider-outsider-visitor Julian, 20 …when I looked at him, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of my future. While I’m still developing, he is the finished product-he’s got a fair-paying job, a nice suburban house and a family, and I always assured that was what I was going to end up with… … trying to play happy families… …Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Steve… …But to be honest, God’s been kind of confusing me lately, as in spite of all this…

12. Initial Findings University as ‘protected’ space? ‘…if you’d asked me kind of within the first three months before I went to University ‘How long have you got until you go to University?’ I could tell you the exact number of days; I started counting down from 100. When I was in year 9 I could tell you, it was like ‘6 years until I go to University, 5 years before I go to University…’ Nicola, 21

13. Initial Findings ‘Church Hopping’ ‘The reason I am MCC in some ways is because I have a friend who really wanted to go and he did want someone to go with him and he knew that I was a church-hopper, and he asked if I’d like to go with him and I said yes, and I do enjoy it…’ (Rebecca, 22). ‘…we went church hopping to find … church to fit in and it’s like, ‘Right, we’re going to go to the gay church but we can’t tell that it’s a gay church because if she tells her Dad he won’t let her go’ and so they just said, ‘Oh we’ll go to a church that’s near here, the City Hall’ and we were walking along and they’re like, ‘Oh go to the gay church!’ and I thought I’d misheard them and I was like…, Nicola, 21

14. Initial Findings ‘Coming-out’ before God ‘…Because they haven’t preached any homophobia, it doesn’t lead me to believe that they are pro homosexuals. Just because you don’t say anything bad about someone, doesn’t mean you are necessarily pro them…’, Mark, 21. ‘Sometimes I think, ‘What if I’m wrong?’ Then I think, ‘Well, if I’m wrong and I get to heaven, again, does God care more about who I slept with or more about how I walked through the world and what I did to help other people?’ And if God is loving and forgiving as Christianity teaches, then when I get up there, if I’m wrong and I’m sorry about it, God isn’t going to be fling me into hell for something that I’m sorry about. So in good conscience, I think I can continue to live this life unless something proves me absolutely wrong’, Claire, 24.

15. Initial Findings Negotiating Christian and Queer identities ‘Probably gay dominates Christian quite a bit but that’s just because it’s easier to be gay than it is to be Christian, on an outwards appearance. I can walk round with a cross round my neck and if anyone asks me I’ll say I’m a Christian, but you can kind of tell, people don’t really need to ask that, you can tell, especially if you’re holding hands with a girl, it’s not like I can walk round holding hands with Jesus’, Nicola, 21.

16. Initial Findings Negotiating Christian and Queer identities ‘…. Now, I am really happy to say that I am ‘queer’, non-sexually queer, like sort of in terms of what it means, just… I mean, like when I say ‘queer’ I actually just mean normative, and normative is subjective, that’s the whole point, but I mean ‘my view’ of normative, and part of it’s straight but it’s not all of it, like, even music, which is a big think in my life, I love music of the Renaissance … Like, why did I like that as a 13-year-old boy? I honestly don’t know. So I suppose that’s what I mean when I say ‘queer’, I was just always a little bit weird’, John, 21).

17. Initial Findings Queering Religion? ‘…so that there wasn’t this insistence on God being ‘he’…’ (Claire, 24), ‘…really eclectic mix…’ (Nicola, 21) ‘…So I think sometimes there’s potentially, it’s unintentional but because the group is so close and they all know each other so well, I think sometimes for newcomers there’s kind of a sense of forced into action sometimes, and then the obvious problem with Communion the other day where I said ‘No’ and then someone did come up to me and ask why I didn’t take it and I found that uncomfortable.’ (Rebecca, 22).

18. Making Space for Queer Identifying Religious Youth http://queerreligiousyouth.wordpress.com/Yvette Taylor, Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Researchtaylory@lsbu.ac.uk