Professional Documents
Culture Documents
“Coming Out” or “Inviting In”: Interrogating our Rhetoric and Rethinking our Pastoral
Counseling Approaches with LGBTQ Brothers and Sisters
It often happens that we have knowledge of what oppresses us but we do not have the means to
change the rules of the game of oppression. Knowledge is certainly important in the process of
transformation, but it is not enough to bring about actual change. To change the very conditions that
produce relationships of domination, there must be a collective process of education. There must be
agreement, a minimal consensus, a common analysis to intercept what has become habitual. As
{Pierre] Bourdieu says, there must be a change in the symbolic order and then a change in actual
practice, in the daily life of the culture. The domain of theology is particularly the domain of the
symbolic production of meaning…a privileged place of action in view of a revolution in
symbolism.[17]
Gebara’s thoughts are instructive for LGBTQ people in this present moment. It is clear that
we have knowledge of that which oppresses us, namely, heteronormative practices, heterosexist
ideologies, hetero-streamed theologies, but we often do not possess the means to “change the rules”
of these forms of oppression. This project, Beyond Apologetics, is a critical intervention in what Gebara
calls “the game of oppression.” I offer this presentation as a means to seriously consider the
symbols, the rhetoric, the paradigms and the language through which we negotiate our identities and
experiences in the world. By refusing to pronounce symbols and paradigms , namely the metaphors
“coming out’ and “the closet”, that order and constrict the ways in which we self-represent, we
begin the revolutionary process of moving from a mode of opposition, survival and “getting by” to
a process of communal harmony, advancement and “getting over.” By changing the words we use
and creating new paradigms, we will actually engage in a strategy of resistance that may hopefully
transform all of us.