“As he did last year, Obama today declared June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.”

We don’t need to be told that June is Pride month - right across the globe, in city after city, week after week, Pride parades and festivals of all kinds will remind us of the fact. Indeed, it’s already begun (for example, in Moscow, and in Romania), and will continue after June into July as well. Enjoy.

What there will not be, is too many public festivals specifically devoted to Christian gay pride (although many of the general Pride events will have clear and visible religious participation). So, in partial compensation, I will do my little bit by bring you throughout the month, a daily reminder of the queer themes in our faith, themes that help us to identify as ”queer Catholic”, or gay Christian, with pride, and not in shame or guilt.

There are many of these: there are LGBT affirmative passages in Scripture, and queer readings of many others. There is a history of recognising same sex relationships in the early church, and many of our recognised saints and martyrs had unorthodox sexual or gender identities. The spiritual traditions and teachers are far more gay-friendly than “traditional” Catholics might care to admit. There is no shortage of material. Across the month, I will try to offer a cross-section of all these, with a combination of re-posting some of the more important pieces from the past year, and new material were I can. I hope you will find the series affirming and uplifting. To put you in the mood, I offer a simple collection of pictures of Pride parades, from cities large and small, from several continents, from previous summers :

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