# Finals Notes

## A1

1. Setup
- Platforming intersection of queer community and religious community
- Does NOT look like partnering with the church necessarily, more like validating queer identities in religious communities etc.
- Obviously still reasonable to call out the church
-
2. Why queer religious folks ought be cared about
- They experience unique oppression
- They experience oppression for both queerness and religion
- Intersectional harm is the queerphobia within religious communities
- e.g. invalidation by conservative religious doctrine
- Narratives of religious and queer communities operate opppsitionally leading to erasure
- Conclusion: group is uniquely oppressed and erase and therefore is one we ought care about especially

3. Helping queer religious individuals come to terms
- Identity is represented in unique ways and validated
- Closeted people now see people they can talk about which validates their jntersectional identity
- Platforming makes role models for the vulnerable stakeholders identified above that is particularly beneficial
- Younger members especially are empowered
- Normalizing identity among members of the religious community
- If one comes out the rest will here because of how it normalizes
- C: Help and empower intersection

4. Benefits discourse
- The harm of conservative religious members is symmetric
- Also we don't give a fuck about the Westboro Baptist Church
- Discourse looks like raising points about the queer religious community not otherwise heard
- Opens opportunities to care about this particularly vulnerable stakeholder
- Likely to sway moderate religious voices who are open to persuasion because of increased exposure

## N1

R. Wrong conception of the model
- Leads to erasure

1. Characterization
- Organized religion repeatedly subjugates the queer movement
- Queer people would be discomfited with their oppressors being included
- e.g. Catholic Church, Islam theology
- Most important context is that it requires leadership from these religious movements
- Not enough to pick the least cancellable queer religious folks

2. Messaging
- Messaging of inviting institutions to be leaders is inherently problematic
- Act of embracement looks like platforming religious people and therefore deplatforming queer people despite the inherently contradictory goals
- Religiosity is inherently contradictory for some queer people because of the baggage associated with it
- Once religious queers get in power under this model religion comes in more

3. Why does this change the community for the worse?
- Leadership characterization
- You get to set the agenda!
- Even if you get allies they are particularly superficial with regards to how they view the queer spectrum
- See difference between love is love and trans people
- Tone, sensitivity and funding
- Queer movement is nowhere near done, see also the developing world
- Needs to be as broad and ideologically pure as possible
- This impacts it adversely and we cannot therefore stand for it
- Leadership sets the tone of mainstream coverage
- Cannot stand by criticism when you actively platform religious leaders

4. Why are religious leaders particularly bad
- Take positions of prominence away from queer people
- Subconscious biases lead to people seeing them as Very Good allies even when they are less than perfect
- Appear hypocritical
- Still have some career interests in a queerphobic institution
- R: Analysis on young people
- "Now churches will be accepting" AND "Conservatives can't change" wot????

## A2

R: fuckin sick burn on the opposition
- It is a valid fiat of the topic to characrerize these leaders as done at first

1. Religious + queers are compatible
- Characterization and impact of young queer religious people goes unresponded to
- Difficult to change because you get born into religion in a large number of cases
- Since religion comes before queerness often you get conflict
- Harms bought to you at first: alienation from your community, harms of erasure, spiritual harms of abandonment of God

2. Why is critique not a good thing
- Embracing religion is more likely to reveal the hypocrisy
- Denying the existence of the intersection of religious people and queer people is very very silly
- Creates the harms which they gave at first to begin with

3. Change the movement for the better
- These individuals were likely to be queer so Neg's point contingent on characterization fell
- News coverage was not the main thing: the main benefit was a small scale benefit to a previously underrepresented and erased intersectional group
- The existence of these leaders makes you feel valid in having your cake both ways
- Can't criticize allies? wot
- I can pick and choose parts of theology that I disagree with
- People harmed by religious institutions were most important stakeholders, harmed by this model: Issue here is that queer religious people were NOT the oppressors, they were some of the only people who could understand it
- Still bought you plenty of benefit because neither identity erased each other
- Facilitated healing because you resolved that internal conflict

## Studix

I: Queer religious people have preferenced the religious institutions
- This necessarily informs their priorities and how they construct their identity
- Do not require them to be platformed

1. Is there any positive reform of organized religion
- Interests of queer movement are not sufficiently compelling to these people: pick and choose queerness
- Giving over to religion indicates that they were unlikely to agitate for change
- No reciprocity from organized religion because it isn't enforced, nor is it something they believe in or something they will be convinced of
- Capable of stifling discussion and stultifying
- Can't pick and choose benefits because of aff mechanisms
- Credibility lended by leaders, appearance of hypocrisy afforded by about face turn on religion
- No evidence they would be focussing on the queer aspects of their identity
- Additionally religious conceptions of surrender of your self are opposed to queer selfdeterminism
- Necessarily ties you to religious organizations that drive wedges into a queer community which could otherwise be united + crushes it

2. Queers harmed vs. benefited
- Lends credibility to narratives about the jntersection of these identities which religious institutions abuse to leverage against them
- Do not need the entrenchment of predominately religious interests in a predominately queer movement

## A3

I: Continued banter holy shit dog
- We have the fiat dude
- Let it fucking go
- Opposition case is contingent on imperfect characterization
- Rhetoric about deprioritizing queer or religious identities is EXACTLY the harm in this debate
- Not good enough to not deny their existence

1. How does this impact the movement as a whole
- *Strips opportunity from other queers to lead this movement:* These people are also queer, falls the fuck out or is a unique harm we address
- People you DO lock out still have some degree of power because of secondary position
- *Harmful to queers oppressed by the religious community:* A harm that gets negated entirely because you can connect with those people, acknowledge those harms and begin to redress them
- *Unlikely to represent the queer community:* Fiat lets us pick the best leaders
- Clearly they must EXIST at least, denial of this denies existence of intersection
- *Shifts direction of movement:* We didn't have to replace everyone BUT we could put LITERALLY ANYONE at the head of the movement
- *Right wing people will weaponize this:* Capable of nuancing around this because it's consistent with narratives of acceptance but criticism

2. How does this impact discourse and young queers
- Gives people role models
- Contact theory: can swing moderates by persuading them of the social utility
- *Benefit is marginal because you can't convince conservatives:* Symmetric
- FAR harder to get traction when you do have religious queers in the movement
- EVEN IF none of these benefits stand you are likely to get more challenges to queerphobic powers
- Unquestioned: Hard to prop narratives of religious intolerance when you prove it is possible to exist outside them
- Did not need McFucking Quid Pro Quo for the benefit to stand because it is dependent on the queer movement platforming them not religion
- *Entrenches dominant religion:* Fiat multiple religions
- At the worst case we get a good degree of rep

## N3

I: Gotcha about institutional involvement
- A1 concession showed this flaw

1. How does the motion affect the queer movement
- Characterization must be more than aff claims
- Soliciting the approval of religious institutions and placement of religious queers at the top of the movement
- Motion does not affect preexisting religious queer movements, meaning the people bought in prioritize religion
- Even if this wasn't true the messaging was particularly adverse re: priorities
- Leadership has a very powerful effect because of their power over it
- Dilutes purity of movement
- Poor economics
- Acts of embracement makes criticism difficult
- etc.
- Difficult to criticize your own leaders
- Necessary to compromise on fundamental tenets to do so which is really fucking bad
- Ostracize and invalidate people hurt by religious communities
- *People who take this leadership are uniquely oppressed* so is everyone else bitch
- Failed to prove they were especially important
- Unengaged: Material about how the subservience of religion clashes with individuality
- C: Helping the intersection is not worth these harms

2. How does it affect the intersection
- Minimization of their own model minimized their benefits too
- We thought role nodels were fine but leadership was not
- Well-spoken queers would not talk you out of religious beliefs because you think it is God telling you otherwise
- Want religious institutions to bow to us, not other way around
- No unique benefits under opp
- Scale
- Religious organizations have small queer populations because of how bad they are