It was ultimately a post by someone else on Instagram which inspired me to think of Pauli Murray and John Boswell within the same framework as important queer elders and saints of the Episcopal Church. I began making connections and tying them into my existing knowledge of US history, LGBTQ history, and Church history. Thus, the PATRON SAINTS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY project was born.

The personal and professional lives of these two saints highlight the intersections of gender and sexuality with many other aspects of our lives: race, culture, history, language, religion, medicine, and law, just to name a few. They have much to teach us and we still have much to learn from them. Therefore, in this project, we approach them as honored teachers and elders and address them respectfully as REVEREND Murray and PROFESSOR Boswell.

I am undertaking this project as an artist and communicator, not an expert. Reverend Murray and Professor Boswell were real people whose wisdom was earned through a great deal of suffering, and I try to be very careful about how I portray them and the words I put into their mouths. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to email me at faithfulheretic@proton.me or reach out to me on Instagram @faithful_heretic_memes.

This began, as a lot of my projects do, on Instagram. I started pairing Reverend Murray and Professor Boswell when I wanted communicate their wisdom to my audience, and it turned into a series of posts addressing various issues in our modern lives as LGBTQ people. I asked my followers if they would be interested in some of those posts in a printable zine format, and the response was encouraging.

Each zine is 8 pages and is meant to be printed on a single double-sided sheet. You'll need to cut each sheet in half "hamburger-style" and stitch, glue, or staple the spine.

These zines are free to print and distribute however you like. If you want to exchange them for money, it should be "pay what you want," and all proceeds above the cost of printing should be donated locally.

🔥 "Label Discourse" [PDF]

🔥 These people aren't REAL saints, are they?
Pauli Murray has been honored with a feast day (July 1) on the Episcopal calendar since 2012. John Boswell does not currently have a feast day, but he has a dedicated community of people who honor his memory and, in the last handful of years, have been calling for his life and work to be re-evaluated for their impact on the Church. (Boswell himself was raised Episcopalian before converting to Roman Catholicism as a teenager. He remained involved with Episcopalians for the rest of his life.)

🔥 Why did you give Pauli Murray she/her pronouns? I thought they were trans/nonbinary/genderqueer!
Reverend Murray was politically and materially a woman, and she used she/her pronouns in her public life. Although many trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people relate to her private struggles with gender and sexuality, these private struggles do not give us license to assign her different pronouns than the ones she used in her own autobiographical writing. They/them pronouns have a long history in English as gender-neutral abstract pronouns, but their use as gender-neutral personal pronouns is a new innovation. Those wishing to understand more of what Reverend Murray's life might have been like as a queer person pre-Stonewall should research lesbian subcultures in the earlier part of the 20th century.

🔥 I heard that John Boswell was "controversial" and "debunked"! Why should I listen to him?
Professor Boswell's work on the history of gays and lesbians in ancient and medieval Christianity generated major controversy in the 80s and 90s. This is, after all, an extremely controversial topic. Unfortunately, his less-scrupulous critics and rivals took advantage of his death from AIDS to smear and suppress his scholarship, an injustice from which his reputation is only beginning to recover. Ultimately, most critiques of his work are ideologically-motivated, and serious scholars take him seriously. His books are still standard texts in medieval history graduate programs. Those who want to delve a little deeper into the controversies surrounding his work should consult this repository.