Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Saintly Slash

So this showed up in my Facebook feed today: Martha and Mary of Bethany: Sisters or lesbian couple?

Seriously??? I would like to hope this is just one of those random things that the internet spews forth under the principle of "bullhorns for everyone", but then, there's the Ruth/Naomi and David/Jonathan crowd, both of which made appearances in the same-sex blessing rite's lessons. For those of you who haven't run across it, there's this genre of "slash fiction", which originated in the 1960s-'70s SF fandom with heterosexual women writing stories of homosexual relationships between Kirk and Spock of Star Trek fame. This was abbreviated to "Kirk/Spock" and branched out to include other fictional characters paired in highly emotionalized relationships. I suppose it's a bit unfair of me to compare these extra-biblical matchups to fan fiction, but really, it's not that hard to figure out what's up with Ruth and Naomi (loyalty) or David and Jonathan (friendship/philia). Mary and Martha are more of a Bert and Ernie arrangement, but again, at least as they function in the gospel stories, it's right out there in the open.

But then queer studies or whatever got their, um, well, hands on these, and every two characters of the same sex have to be "shipped" (as they say) in what, to the, um, uninitiated, come across as prurient speculation. Or perhaps the point is to épater les orthodoxes. But it's the twenty-first century, and it is impossible to say anything genuinely shocking anymore on the internet. Thus, I give this my measuredly Anglican assessment:

Give unto me a break.

1 comment:

Undergroundpewster said...

Looking at some of the posts on that blog makes one realize how far we can stray once we try to reinterpret the Bible in order to justify our earthly desires.