A Queer Fidelity: Reinventing Christian Marriage

In this article, the author questions so-called traditional teachings about marriage and the ways they come to be ‘performed’ in daily practice in relation to the on-going debates about the status of same-sex relationships in both church and society. Reflecting upon his own life as well as a broad range of historical and analytical sources, he considers what it means to be ‘a good husband’ today. Failing to meet common criteria associated with this phrase in at least three ways—he is divorced, he lives with another man, and he refuses the equation of fidelity with sexual exclusivity— and convinced that Christian institutions should reflect human realities even as they also contour individual life choices, he endeavors to re-imagine marriage. Returning to the fundamental meaning of fidelity, he proposes a new relational norm—a queer fidelity. This ethic entails vows of radical honesty, deep loyalty, and substantive accountability, which together may sustain a strong but flexible bond characterized by mutual care, hospitality, and embrace of the stranger. He argues, in fact, that such queer fidelity is a more faithful Christian structure for human relationality than exclusivity.