Laws about sexual practices were indeed based upon religious beliefs until the sixties, when in Winnipeg, a teenage couple stood at the verge of being convicted of oral sex -- an unnatural sex practice -- and then sent to jail. The judge, the saints of all faiths be praised, said that to jail people for an act of mutual love, and a common type of sexual practice, was ridiculous.
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Marriage, it's claimed, is a religious prerogative but history doesn't back that claim. In fact, in the Bible, there is very little said about marriage, other than the social event surrounding it. Early Christian bishops saw the sanctity of marriage and the endless procreation of children as means by which the flock could be held together and increased. By the nineteenth century, governments in the Western world took a share of the action, marrying ordinary citizens in a civil service and doing something that the churches avoided: handing out divorces.
The son of Irish immigrants, Judge grew up in Brooklyn and decided while still in his teens to join the Franciscan religious order. He was ordained as a priest in 1961, battled alcoholism with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and developed a passion for ministering to marginalized communities.
"Canonizing this people's saint would compel the Catholic Church to be more welcoming to LGBT Catholics," she wrote. "More powerfully, it would help to shatter the strict code of silence surrounding all things sexual that exacerbated clerical abuse and its cover-up."
Issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer(LGBTQ) sexualities and gender identities are complex and continue to beextremely contentious for archipelagic and diasporic Puerto Ricans, mirroringthe enormous advances and profound challenges experienced across the UnitedStates and Latin America. (1) Profound biases, frequently the result ofintolerance linked to traditional patriarchal and sexist thinking, havehampered demands for basic civil rights. (2) Conservative religious thinking,whether linked to the Catholic Church or to the numerous Pentecostal andEvangelical churches that dominate political debates in Puerto Rico, hascreated additional obstacles. (3) Notable recent achievements include thedecriminalization of sodomy in 2003; the publication of landmark books andanthologies; the establishment of a biennial academic conference in 2006 andof a leading film festival in 2009; the election of an openly lesbian lawyerto lead the Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico in 2012 and of an openly gaypolitical candidate in San Juan that same year; the successful boycott of ahomophobic television program that led to the program's cancelation in2013; the naming of an openly lesbian judge to the Puerto Rico Supreme Courtin 2014; the recognition of equal marriage rights in 2015; and theauthorization to change sex markers on birth certificates in 2018. These havebeen accompanied by a thriving queer arts and business scene encompassingmusic, dance, theater, film, literature, alternative community centers, bars,and nightclubs. These achievements are unstable in a time of risingconservatism and economic precarity, particularly given the long-termfinancial crisis that started in 2006 and the impact of Hurricanes Irma andMaria in 2017.
Equally shocking, the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando,Florida, on June 12, 2016, also garnered enormous attention, and led many toreflect on the effects of gun violence, homophobia, and intolerance in theUnited States. (43) The death of 49 persons, most of them LGBT, including 23Puerto Ricans, and the injury of many more who were attending "LatinNight" at Pulse motivated Latinx activists, artists, writers, andscholars to react forcefully, particularly as mainstream media frequentlyneglected to mention the ethnic identity of the victims. (44) Among thesescholars, Lilliana Ramos Collado (2016) reflected on the significance of theLGBTT monument designed by Alberto de la Cruz, which was erected in San Juanbarely two weeks after the Pulse incident as a remembrance to the victims.(45) The monument stands at the site where the traditional yearly San JuanLGBTQ pride march concludes at Parque del Tercer Milenio near Escambronbeach. Meanwhile, the LGBTQ Latinx community of Orlando has come together andcreated QLatinx, an organization that "seeks to center and empower themost marginalized members of our community, establish affirming andsupportive healing spaces, build a strong and united community, and worktowards a society free of fear, violence, and hate." (46)
Notably, Puerto Rican megastar Ricky Martin's coming out asgay on his website and on Twitter on March 29, 2010 (Martin'sdeclaration "I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexualman"), generated significant international news coverage. (53)Martin's public disclosure coincided with the publication of his memoirtitled Me in English and Yo in Spanish. At the same time, Martin has been thesubject of attacks from the self-described "Apostol" (Apostle) andEvangelical media personality Pastor Wanda Rolon (also referred to as"Wanda Rolex," given her extravagant tastes and her penchant forexpensive wristwatches), who has spoken disparagingly of the actor andmusician, referring to Martin as an "embajador del infierno" (anambassador from hell). (54)
Notable developments in the dramatic arts and performance includethe premiere of the Festival de Teatro de Tercer Amor (Third Love TheaterFestival) in 2006 at Teatro Coribantes in Hato Rey (San Juan), which in 2018celebrated its thirteenth edition, and the work of individual artists such asJavier Cardona, Jorge Merced (profiled in this issue), Awilda Rodriguez Lora("La Performera"), Lio Villahermosa (also profiled), and KairianaNunez Santaliz. (76) Appealing to a general audience, the Festival del TercerAmor, as it is also known, showcases straightforward and not particularlyexperimental or alternative representation; it has included important playsby women and about lesbianism. (77) While the festival has thrived and servedas a space for community building, Festival director Rafael Rojas accused theInstitute of Puerto Rican Culture of censorship in 2017 when the governmentagency withdrew its financial support. (78)
Parades serve as a space of community validation and groupconsolidation. These range from LGBTQ-specific events such as the yearlyMarcha del Orgullo LGBTTIQ de Puerto Rico held without interruption in SanJuan since 1991, which is organized by the Colectivo Orgullo Arcoiris (COA),to the Boqueron (Cabo Rojo) pride parade and weekend festival, held for thesixteenth year in 2018. (93) They also include local community events in thediaspora such as the Chicago People's Puerto Rican Parade held yearly inHumboldt Park, which prominently features drag and trans Cacica Queens and,since 2018, a gay Cacique King. (94) Notably, the 2016 National Puerto RicanDay Parade in New York City, which was held on June 12, included recognitionfor the first time ever of Puerto Rican LGBTQ pioneers such as activist PedroJulio Serrano, gay boxer Orlando "El Fenomeno" Cruz, equal marriagelawsuit plaintiffs Ada Conde and Ivonne Alvarez, and transgender pioneerSoraya Santiago, who is featured in Mala Mala. (95) Posthumous recognitionwas made to trans activist Sylvia Rivera and to the lesbian educator andcommunity leader Antonia Pantoja, who founded ASPIRA. (96) Sadly, this paradeoccurred on the same day as the Pulse Orlando massacre, highlighting theprecariousness of our limited gains.
Universities in Puerto Rico have been slow to fully embrace LGBTQstudies, but meaningful gains have been made, ranging from the teaching ofspecific classes, the work of student organizations, individualscholar's research, and hosting larger, public events. Unfortunately,scholarly research indicates that many university students in Puerto Ricostill harbor homophobic views. (98) One landmark achievement was theestablishment in 2006 of the Coloquio Del Otro La'o, an LGBTQ academicconference at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, which has been heldbiennially without interruption and has always been accompanied by thepublication of the conference proceedings. (99) Christopher Powers andJocelyn A. Geliga Vargas discuss this history in their interview withconference organizers Lissette Rolon Collazo and Beatriz Llenin Figueroafeatured in this issue of CENTRO Journal.
Finally, it is important to recognize the importance of particularscholarly publications. One example is Javier E. Laureano's pioneeringhistory volume San Juan gay: conquista de un espacio urbano de 1948 a 1991,published in 2016, which follows in the tradition of other historiographicalefforts such as Aixa Ardin's undergraduate thesis "Elyibiti:historia del activismo LGBTT en Puerto Rico desde los 70 a mediados de los90" (2001). (104) Ardin's thesis was accompanied by a documentaryfilm of the same name. Another valuable contribution is LGBT 101: una miradaintroductoria al colectivo (Vazquez-Rivera et al. 2016), which includes anessay by Ana Irma Rivera-Lassen and eighteen additional chapters by a widerange of scholars and clinical practitioners.
When Cas returns to the bunker everything inevitably changes. He adjusts well enough for having fallen, and he's lived among humans, observed them long enough that he's not a bumbling child. He knows that he has to bathe, eat, sleep, how to use the bathroom, all the basics of everyday life. No, it's worse than that, Sam realizes after a few weeks, Cas isn't like a child, he's like a teenager. 2ff7e9595c
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