First you know this man was threatened all the way back to the US that his family would be rounded up and tortured if he told of what happened to him in that prison. I wonder if they had to wait until injuries healed before they could let the public see him? Ron says they maybe starved him and had to feed him again to build up his weight and looks. Poor man I hope he is able to safely get his story out. It is clear the charges against him are fraudulent and made up. Just like the government kept saying he was an MS 13 gang member which two courts found he was not. Also he was living in Maryland and his court case is being heard in DC so why is the Justice department trying his new charges in Tennessee? Why not add the charges to the case being heard now in DC. Clearly they hope to get a much more conservative and racist court there than they would in the northern states. I am surprised they did not charge him in Texas. Hugs.
Mistakenly deported Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in a Tennessee courtroom Friday, hours after he was brought back to the United States to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S.
More than two months after the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia from Maryland to his native El Salvador, a two-count indictment unsealed Friday alleges that he participated in a years long conspiracy to haul undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
The return of Abrego Garcia from his native El Salvador follows a series of court battles in which the Trump administration repeatedly said it was unable to bring him back, drawing the country toward the brink of a constitutional crisis when the administration failed to heed the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return.
MORE: Justice Department investigating 2022 Abrego Garcia traffic stop: Sources
He made his initial court appearance Friday evening in the Middle District of Tennessee, answering “Yes, I understand” in Spanish when U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes asked him if he understood the charges against him.
Judge Homes set a hearing for June 13, where Abrego Garcia will be arraigned on charges and the judge will take up the government’s motion to hold him in pre-trial detention on the grounds that he “poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight” He will remain in federal custody in Tennessee pending next week’s hearing.
“If convicted at trial, the defendant faces a maximum punishment of 10 years’ imprisonment for ‘each alien’ he transported,” said the government’s motion for detention, which also contained an allegation — not included in the indictment — that one of Abrego Garcia’s co-conspirators told authorities that Abrego Garcia participated in the murder of a rival gang member’s mother in El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, in an online press briefing, called the charges against his client “an abuse of power.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is placed in the back seat of a truck by ICE agents after arriving in Nashville, Tenn., June 6, 2025.
ABC News
“They’ll stop at nothing at all — even some of the most preposterous charges imaginable — just to avoid admitting that they made a mistake, which is what everyone knows happened in this case,” said attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.
“Mr. Garcia is going to be vigorously defending the charges against him,” the attorney said.
The decision to pursue the indictment against Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.
Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade and involved the domestic transport of thousands of noncitizens from Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.
Abrego Garcia is alleged to have participated in more than 100 such trips, according to the indictment. Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources familiar with the investigation said.
MORE: Timeline: Wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
Abrego Garcia is the only member of the alleged conspiracy charged in the indictment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, at a Friday afternoon press conference, thanked Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for “agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.”
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country,” Bondi said.
Bondi said that if Abrego Garcia is convicted of the charges, upon the completion of his sentence he will be deported back to his home country of El Salvador.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said. “They found this was his full time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche listens during a news conference about Kilmar Abrego Garcia at the Justice Department, June 6, 2025, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
In a statement to ABC News, Abrego Garcia’s attorney said that he’s going to keep fighting to ensure Abrego Garcia receives a fair trial.
“From the beginning, this case has made one thing painfully clear: The government had the power to bring him back at any time. Instead, they chose to play games with the court and with a man’s life,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “We’re not just fighting for Kilmar — we’re fighting to ensure due process rights are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow, this could be any one of us — if we let power go unchecked, if we ignore our Constitution.”
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13. His wife and attorneys deny that he is an MS-13 member.
The Trump administration has acknowledged in court filings that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador in March was in error, because it violated a U.S. immigration court order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to his native country, according to immigration court records. An immigration judge had determined that Abrego Garcia would likely face persecution there by local gangs that had allegedly terrorized him and his family.
The administration argued, however, that Abrego Garcia should not be returned to the U.S. because he is a member of the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13, a claim his family and attorneys have denied. In recent weeks, Trump administration officials have been publicizing Abrego Garcia’s interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges.
After Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit over his deportation, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
Abrego Garcia was initially sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison but was believed to have later been transferred to a different facility in the country.
The criminal investigation that led to the charges was launched in April as federal authorities began scrutinizing the circumstances of a 2022 traffic stop of Abrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, according to the sources. Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told police they had been working construction in Missouri.
According to body camera footage of the 2022 traffic stop, the Tennessee troopers — after questioning Abrego Garcia — discussed among themselves their suspicions that Abrego Garcia might be transporting people for money because nine people were traveling without luggage, but Abrego Garcia was not ticketed or charged.
The officers ultimately allowed Abrego Garcia to drive on with just a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report about the stop released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Asked what circumstances have changed since Abrego Garcia was not taken in custody during that traffic stop in Tennessee, Bondi replied, “What has changed is Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our borders are again secure, and thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Abrego Garcia — this investigation continued with actually amazing police work, and we were able to track this case and stop this international smuggling ring from continuing.”
Asked by ABC News’ Pierre Thomas asked whether this should be seen as resolving the separate civil case in Maryland in which a federal judge ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “There’s a big difference between what the state of play was before the indictment and after the indictment. And so the reason why he is back and was returned was because an arrest warrant which was presented to the government and in El Salvador. So there’s, there’s a big difference there as far as whether it makes the ongoing litigation in Maryland moot. I would think so, but we don’t know about this. He just landed today.”
As ABC News first reported last month, the Justice Department had been quietly investigating the Tenessee traffic stop. As part of the probe, federal agents in late April visited a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama to question Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, a convicted felon who was the registered owner of the vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving when stopped on Interstate 40 east of Nashville, sources previously told ABC News. Hernandez-Reyes was not present at the traffic stop.
MORE: Newly released video shows Abrego Garcia’s 2022 Tennessee traffic stop
Hernandez-Reyes, 38, is currently serving a 30-month sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a prior felony conviction for illegal transportation of aliens.
After being granted limited immunity, Hernandez-Reyes allegedly told investigators that he previously operated a “taxi service” based in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego Garcia around 2015 and claimed to have hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to various locations in the United States, sources told ABC News.
When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first publicized, Abrego Garcia’s wife said her husband sometimes transported groups of fellow construction workers between job sites.
“Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot respond to the claims,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in mid-April.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who flew to El Salvador and met with Abrego Garcia shortly after his deportation, said Friday that the Trump administration had “relented” regarding his return.
“After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems the Trump Admin has relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen posted on X. “This has never been about the man — it’s about his constitutional rights & the rights of all.”
Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager in 2012, according to court records. He had been living in Maryland for the past 13 years, and married Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, in 2019. The couple has one child together.
ABC News’ Laura Romero contributed to this report.
June 7, 1712 The Pennsylvania Assembly banned the importation of slaves into the colony.
June 7, 1892 Homer Plessy, a Creole of European and African descent, was arrested and jailed for sitting in a Louisiana railroad car designated for white people only. Plessy had violated an 1890 state law, the Louisiana Separate Car Act, that called for racially segregated rail facilities. He then went to court, claiming the law violated the 13th and 14th amendments, but Judge John Howard Ferguson found him guilty anyhow. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Plessy’s guilty verdict to stand by an 8-1 majority. The decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, established the doctrine of “separate but equal” [separate facilities for white and black people,] institutionalizing and legalizing segregation in the United States public transportation until 1946 in Morgan v. Virginia [see June 3, 1946]. More about Homer Plessy Read the decision
June 7, 1997 Seven activists are arrested for distributing copies of the Bill of Rights outside the Bradbury Science Museum, part of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the primary nuclear research facility in the U.S.
from Heather Cox Richardson. Though our current president has little respect for U.S. veterans, that is not true of anybody I know. Even anti-war I believe our current service people and our veterans are deserving of all benefits of their citizenship and especially added benefits of their service to the U.S. Many readers here are military veterans. My mother’s brother-in-law, my (favorite!) Uncle Jack, served as a U.S. Marine in WWII. My father served in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict. All of us know and love someone who’s served us in this honorable and unique fashion. While our president doesn’t think to respect that, or even think about it at all, the rest of us do. I know we are thankful. And now, from Heather Cox Richardson, history expert,
Today the U.S. political world was consumed today by a public fight between President Donald J. Trump and his former sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk invested about $290 million into the 2024 election, vowing to elect Trump in order to get rid of government investigations into his businesses he worried would “take [him] down.”
When Trump took office, Musk became a fixture in the White House, attending Cabinet meetings and heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That group set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds at the same time that its staff sucked up information on Americans that could feed the training of artificial intelligence and killed the investigations into his businesses Musk had worried about.
In February, Musk posted on social media: “I love [Donald Trump] as much as a straight man can love another man.”
But Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome even as his antics hurt sales of his signature car, the Tesla, inspiring Trump to do a car commercial for him on the White House grounds. Just a week ago, Musk officially left the White House on the same day that an article in the New York Times documented his heavy drug use on the campaign.
Then, on Tuesday, June 3, he took a public stand against the omnibus bill Trump desperately wants Congress to pass, posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
And with that, the falling out began.
This morning, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Musk. Ron Filipkowski of Meidas followed the saga from there.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”
Trump then suggested that “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk promptly said he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station.
The two men continued to go back and forth, with Musk saying that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” a reference to the records compiled by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump was friendly. Musk also said Trump’s tariffs will cause a recession, and agreed with another poster who suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Trump responded to that attack far more weakly than one would have expected, simply turning back to the omnibus bill and insisting it “is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.”
Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
It’s quite a gamble, since Trump controls the government contracts on which Musk’s fortune was built and on which he still relies. Some MAGA loyalists appear to see the fight as a victory for Trump and are thrilled to see Musk’s star fall. MAGA influencer Steve Bannon told Tyler Pager of the New York Times that he has advised Trump to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts and launch a formal investigation of his drug use and his immigration status.
Kylie Robison and Aarian Marshall of Wired noted that TrumpCoin lost more than $100 million in value during the fight. Tesla stock lost $152 billion of value from its market capitalization, prompting Filipkowski to note that the total came to about $9 billion per tweet.
Economist Robert Reich had perhaps the best summary of the fight today when he noted, “That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists—and that they both individually wield such massive power—is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy.”
Indeed, today’s White House and today’s America are very different from what they were eighty-one years ago.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his twenty-ninth Fireside Chat on June 5, 1944, and had good news for the American people. The day before, on June 4, Rome had fallen to Allied troops. “The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands,” Roosevelt said.
The president pointed out that it was “significant that Rome has been liberated by the armed forces of many nations. The American and British armies—who bore the chief burdens of battle—found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant Canadians. The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific, the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans, the Poles and the East Indians—all of them fought with us on the bloody approaches to the city of Rome. The Italians, too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired, have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German trespassers on their soil.”
This group of ordinary men from many different countries had worked together to defeat the forces of fascism.
But FDR warned Americans that the fall of Rome was only the beginning. “We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself,” he said. [T]he victory still lies some distance ahead. That distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that. But it will be tough and it will be costly.”
FDR knew something his audience did not. On the other side of the Atlantic, paratroopers, their faces darkened with cocoa, were already dropping into France, and the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allies were on their way across the English channel.
The order of the day from their commander Dwight D. Eisenhower that day had read: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
“Your task will not be an easy one,” it read, but it assured the troops that the Germans had suffered great defeats and Allied bombing had reduced German strength, while “[o]ur Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!”
Eisenhower’s public confidence did not reflect his understanding that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was a gamble. On June 5, in pencil on a sheet of paper, he had written a message to be communicated in case the invasion failed.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” it read. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and dedication to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
On the morning of June 6, 1944, five naval assault divisions stormed the beaches of Normandy. Seven thousand ships and landing craft operated by more than 195,000 naval personnel from eight countries brought almost 133,000 troops to beaches given the code names UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD. By the end of the day, more than 10,000 Allied troops were wounded or killed, but the Allies had established a foothold in France that would permit them to flood troops, vehicles, and supplies into Europe. When FDR held a press conference later that day, officials and press alike were jubilant.
Some bits from each one since the last time. Still NSFW. Tissue alert for some.
Queer History 128: The Day The Initiative Died by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
Also The Day California Told Bigots to Go Fuck Themselves Read on Substack
How Teachers, Ronald Reagan, and Harvey Milk Crushed the Most Dangerous Anti-Gay Ballot Measure in American History
Picture this: It’s 1978, and a conservative state legislator from Orange County wants to ban every gay and lesbian teacher in California. Not just fire the ones who are out—he wants to hunt down anyone who might be gay, anyone who supports gay rights, anyone who so much as suggests that maybe gay people deserve basic human dignity. This wasn’t just about removing teachers. This was about erasing an entire community from public life.
John Briggs thought he had the perfect plan. Fresh off Anita Bryant’s homophobic “Save Our Children” crusade in Florida, he figured California would be easy pickings. He was dead fucking wrong. On November 7, 1978, California voters didn’t just reject Proposition 6—they obliterated it. The Briggs Initiative went down by more than a million votes, losing even in Briggs’s own conservative Orange County stronghold.
Behind that victory was one of the most unlikely coalitions in American political history: a martyred gay supervisor, a future Republican president, grassroots activists, Catholic bishops, and thousands of teachers who refused to let fear win. This is the story of how they did it—and why it matters more than ever today. (snip-MORE)
Queer History 131: Michelangelo by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
The Divine Cock: Why Michelangelo Was Almost Certainly Gay as Hell Read on Substack
You think you know Michelangelo? The guy who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and carved David from a massive chunk of marble? Here’s what they don’t teach you in art history class: the Renaissance master was probably queer as a three-dollar bill, and the evidence is splattered all over his life’s work like paint on a studio floor.
michelangelo
For nearly 250 years, Michelangelo’s own family censored his love letters and poems, changing every masculine pronoun to feminine ones to hide the uncomfortable truth that the “divine one” was divinely attracted to other men. When scholars finally uncovered the original texts in the 1890s, they found a treasure trove of homoerotic passion that would make even modern romance novels blush. (snip-MORE-do go read it!)
Queer History & Culture 127: Alan Turing by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
A tortured genius whose code-breaking saved millions, only to be destroyed by the very society he protected Read on Substack
The bastards killed him. Not with bullets or blades, but with something far more insidious—the slow, methodical destruction of a man’s soul through legal persecution, chemical castration, and the systematic erasure of his humanity. Alan Mathison Turing didn’t just die on June 7, 1954; he was murdered by a society so goddamn backward that it chose to destroy one of the greatest minds in human history rather than accept that he loved men.
(snip)
The Making of a Revolutionary Mind
Born in 1912 to a British colonial family, Turing’s brilliance blazed early and fierce. At Sherborne School, while other boys were playing cricket and learning to be proper English gentlemen, young Alan was already wrestling with mathematical concepts that would have made university professors weep. His first love affair wasn’t with numbers, though—it was with Christopher Morcom, a fellow student whose death from tuberculosis would haunt Turing for the rest of his tragically short life.
That early loss carved something deep into Turing’s psyche. Here was a boy-genius, already grappling with his sexuality in an era when homosexuality was not just taboo but literally criminal, watching the person he loved waste away and die. The philosophical implications would torment him: if consciousness could be snuffed out so easily, what made it real in the first place? This question would drive his later work on artificial intelligence, but it also planted the seeds of a profound existential loneliness that would follow him like a shadow.
At King’s College, Cambridge, Turing found his intellectual home among the mathematical elite, but he also found something else: a community of gay men who lived in the shadows, speaking in codes, loving in secret. The irony is fucking brutal—here was a man who would become history’s greatest codebreaker, learning his first lessons in cryptography from the necessity of hiding his own identity. (snip-MORE, it should be known)
Queer History 129: The Genital Mutilation of the 1880s by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
In the fucking darkness of the 1880s, American medicine—that supposed bastion of healing and hope—turned into a goddamn chamber of horrors for LGBTQIA+ people. What began as medical “curiosity” quickly devolved into systematic torture disguised as treatment, launching over a century of medical persecution that would destroy countless lives and shatter the trust between queer people and healthcare forever.
The medical establishment, drunk on its newfound authority and desperate to appear scientific, decided that love between same-sex individuals was a disease to be cured. These weren’t healers—they were executioners in white coats, armed with instruments of torture and backed by the full weight of societal approval. The brutality that followed would make the Inquisition blush. (snip-MORE)
Queer History 130: The Lavender Scare by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
When Joe McCarthy Declared War on America’s LGBTQIA+ Read on Substack
n 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy stood before a crowd in Wheeling, West Virginia, and launched what would become the most sustained attack on LGBTQIA+ Americans in the nation’s history. While his speech focused on supposed Communist infiltration of the State Department, McCarthy’s paranoid rantings about “security risks” would soon expand into a full-scale witch hunt against homosexual federal employees. This wasn’t just political theater—this was the birth of the Lavender Scare, a systematic campaign of terror that would destroy thousands of lives and poison American democracy for decades.
McCarthy didn’t just stumble upon anti-gay persecution as a political tool—he weaponized it with surgical precision. The bastard understood that while Americans might eventually get tired of hunting Communists, they would never tire of persecuting queers. Homophobia was the gift that kept on giving, a renewable resource of hatred that could fuel his political ambitions indefinitely. What began as anti-Communist hysteria quickly metastasized into something far more insidious: the systematic elimination of LGBTQIA+ people from American public life. (snip-MORE)
June 6, 1936 First issue of Peace News published in England. PeaceNews home page (Peace News subscriptions are no longer available. See this blog entry. -A. There is still useful information on its home page, etc.)
June 6, 1949 George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published. It described a world in which totalitarian government controls the behavior of all, including the way one thinks.
This was summed up in the government’s slogans: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength.
June 6, 1966 James H. Meredith, the first African American ever to attend the University of Mississippi, was shot by a sniper in the back and legs while on a lone “March Against Fear.” He was walking the 220 miles from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage others to stand up for their rights and self-respect, and to register to vote. Law enforcement officers and reporters following him witnessed the attack, and the shooter was arrested. Read more
June 6, 1968 Comedian Dick Gregory began a hunger strike in the Olympia, Washington, jail after his arrest with others at a fish-in, an act of civil disobedience in support of the fishing rights of the Nisqually Indian Tribe. See what happened after his arrest
June 6, 1971 40 members of the American Indian Movement camped in the sacred Black Hills, or Paha Sapa, atop Mount Rushmore; 20 were arrested. They were demanding the U.S. honor the terms of the 1868 treaty with the Sioux Nation granting them the Black Hills territory. Read more
June 6, 1989 The FBI and the Department of Energy, tipped off by plant workers, raided the Rocky Flats nuclear production facility. They found numerous violations of federal anti-pollution laws including massive contamination of water and soil. Rockwell International, the operator of the facility, was fined $18.5 million.
“Queer” is not about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it), but “queer” as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” —bell hooks
I’ve always been queer, but it took me a while to realize it. Even after coming out as gay, I still struggled with the language of “queer” because I grew up hearing it used as a slur. In many places, it still is. I remember the shocked look on the faces of a lecture audience in rural England when I said “queer” — as if I had uttered a curse word.
This is how the word sits with many people — even within the LGBTQIA+ community. But over the years, as I’ve wrestled with my identity, learned the history of LGBTQIA+ liberation, and developed my beliefs, I’ve come to resonate deeply with being queer, just as much as with being Christian.
In fact, for me, to be an authentic Christian — one who seeks to follow the life and teachings of Jesus — is to be queer. Let me explain.
To be queer generally means one of two things. First, it’s a catch-all phrase for the LGBTQIA+ community — those who embrace a non-heterosexual orientation and/or non-cisgender identity. Second, queer also means to disrupt arbitrary norms, making space for diverse, often marginalized, expressions to flourish.
To be queer means resisting the repression of our true selves and the forces that demand we conform to others’ ideas of who we should be. It’s a declaration of our commitment to live authentically — who God created us to be — not who society or religion says we must become.
In this sense, queerness is holy. It affirms that God doesn’t make mistakes — that our unique expression reflects God’s creativity — and refuses to blaspheme the Creator by suppressing that divine image. When seen this way, queerness is a calling every person should aspire to.
To follow Jesus is to refuse conformity, as Paul wrote: “[to] be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). This means shifting how we see ourselves and others — removing the masks we were taught to wear, the roles we were conditioned to play. In this way, queerness is deeply aligned with the way of Jesus.
bell hooks defines queerness as “being at odds with everything around it.” That feels exactly right. We live in a world shaped by systems built to benefit particular people. What’s considered “normal” is often an invention — crafted to maintain control and marginalize difference. Nothing has always been the way it is, and it shouldn’t remain the same.
Today, there’s a rising awareness of the value of diversity and pluralism by many in society (while diversity is also demonized by many). More people are becoming suspicious of those who demonize difference and cling to the status quo. The past century has shown us that the status quo is often built on lies that lead to oppression.
Our society was set up by people who established norms to benefit themselves. But as the world grows more connected and aware of diverse ways of being, movements of resistance have chipped away at this conformity and demanded a new, inclusive path. These movements are “queering” society — questioning and resisting what’s been called normal — and they’ve made the world more just and diverse.
One of the most resistant institutions to queering has been Christianity. This isn’t surprising. Religion resists change, and Christian institutions have fought nearly every cultural shift from desegregation to women’s voting rights to rock music. Those willing to reform are often labeled heretics and excluded from church power. But every so often, resistance sparks reform in the church. The Protestant Reformation, the abolitionist movement, and the fight for women’s rights have all queered Christianity by disrupting norms and pushing forward new expressions of faith.
The inclusion of queer people in Christianity is another such movement. Today, nearly every mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. officially affirms queer people. We can serve as clergy, marry, and be fully embraced. While there are many local congregations in each denomination that resist these changes, the movement for inclusion is well underway. This is a remarkable shift.
Just last year, Pope Francis announced that Catholic priests may bless same-sex couples. A few months before, he said transgender people could be baptized and serve as godparents. Though these don’t change Catholic doctrine, they marked major steps forward that made many lay queer Catholics feel more included in their churches.
Still, there is much work to do. The truth remains that most Christians worldwide still uphold anti-queer theology. Many still preach that homosexuality is an abomination. Many still teach that women must submit to men and cannot lead.
Progressive Christians sometimes believe the church is rapidly changing, but that’s often just the view from our bubble. Most Christians still cling to rigid, patriarchal theology. And I’ve come to believe that the only way to challenge that resistance is through queering.
Not every LGBTQIA+ Christian agrees with this strategy. There are many queer Christians who would prefer to simply shift the church’s understanding of the six clobber passages and be accepted into the traditional Christian institution with its traditional sexual ethics, understanding of relationships, and devotion to conservative theology otherwise. I understand that desire; I once had it too. But I’ve come to believe it’s actually counterproductive to our flourishing as queer people.
The more I’ve studied Scripture and listened to queer stories, the more convinced I’ve become: The issue isn’t a few misinterpreted Bible verses — it’s that Christianity was institutionalized. A few hundred years after Jesus, his radical movement was merged with the Roman Empire and transformed into rules, dogma, and rigid orthodoxy.
Other perspectives were labeled heresy, punished, and driven underground. What remained became dominant: a version of Christianity that, frankly, looks nothing like Jesus.
When I became a Christian, it was because I wanted to follow Jesus — not an institution. But I was quickly taught that faithfulness to Jesus meant faithfulness to the church. I learned the doctrines and ethics of my church and saw that the more I conformed, the more I was accepted — and even celebrated.
From adopting the politics of my pastors to unquestioningly espousing conservative theology, to even dressing in ways that mirrored the evangelical subculture, I learned that through conforming and contorting myself to look, believe, vote, and act like what was seen as normative for evangelical Christians, my inclusion would be solidified.
I gained status and privilege. I was affirmed by my church and I believed that this meant I was close to God. But I felt uneasy, even early on. As I read Scripture, I struggled to see our theology or ethics reflected in Jesus’ life. Jesus lived on the margins of religious and political power. He constantly challenged the status quo and resisted exclusionary doctrine.
I came to see that neither I nor my church looked like Jesus. That realization was unsettling. Eventually, it led me to believe that queering Christianity wasn’t just permissible — it was necessary. Not only for LGBTQIA+ inclusion, but for everything and everyone.
Rather than blindly accepting church authority, I began to pursue truth wherever it led and invited others to do the same. My ministry became about queering Christianity, not just including queer people in the traditional frameworks of the church.
That meant challenging every theology and ethic that doesn’t reflect Jesus’ ethic of love. It meant reimagining how we follow Jesus — beyond traditional Christianity.
This is, I believe, the most faithful path. But it’s also the hardest. It requires us to stop seeking the affirmation of and inclusion in the old structures and instead focus on building subversive, queerly spiritual communities that reflect the Spirit of Christ.
It means being open to truth from everywhere and everyone — because all truth is God’s truth — and letting it shape our spiritual journeys.
It means getting used to being called heretics. Excluded even from some so-called affirming churches that find our vision too radical. But our goal isn’t to be welcomed because we conform — it’s to create a community that welcomes all expressions and beliefs, grounded in the love and example of Jesus in whatever form that takes.
Our goal isn’t even to be “Christians,” really. Jesus never used that word. Never spoke a Christian doctrine. Never stepped inside a Christian church. So inclusion in the traditional institutions of Christianity isn’t the point.
The point is a truly queer revolution of faith that liberates us all to show up authentically, that remains open to the voice of our still-speaking God in the most unlikely people and places, and that understands that the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached and embodied can never be contained in the rigid boundaries of any institution, but is found among the diversity, complexity, and beauty of all of our human experiences.
Editor’s note: This essay is an adaptation from Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table. It has been adapted with the permission of St. Martin’s Essentials.
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