Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith

by Mihee Kim-Kort

Identity is deeply important. It frames how we see, how we color, how we move and breathe through this world. It’s a point of contact for others and the way we get under each other’s skin and, eventually, connect to one another. But it’s mediated by generations, economic systems, and cultural processes, and it’s imposed upon us by social, familial, political expectations. Identity is clothes and gestures, language and eye shape, hair length and skin color, body shape and genitalia. Identity is reiterated through language and images, and then regulated by structures of power and ideology such as state agencies and religious institutions. We are all constantly negotiating our identities in relation to each other and to what is happening in the world, and this process takes place within the communities and networks we find ourselves. It’s no wonder that we gravitate to colors to begin organizing human existence. Identity is so complex, and we have to start from somewhere.