Welcome to the latest in our on-going column, ev0king the Question. Here, we invite regular ev0ke contributors and guests to share their thoughts on a particular question. Sometimes, it will be silly. Sometimes, it will be serious. Sometimes, a little bit of both.
Below, find this month’s question, and answers from Pagans and polytheists from a variety of backgrounds and traditions. Do you have thoughts of your own? If so, please feel free to share them below.
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The Question: What might a sacred story immortalizing an LGBTQIA+ icon look like today? Do you factor Stonewall, Pride, or marriage equality into your sacred cosmology? Do you view some deities as being particularly linked with LGBTQIA identities or breaking gender norms?
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[Rebecca Buchanan is an author, poet, and regular contributor to ev0ke.]
To answer the last question first, I view Deities as beyond human conceptions of gender. As divine beings, they can assume any form they wish or no form at all. Humans project ideas of gender and sex upon them, and Deities will take forms that are understandable to our tiny human brains.
Are any Deities particularly interested in LGTBQIA+ issues and rights? I can’t say for certain. Are some of them keenly interested in the needs of their devotees? Yes. Do humans look to Deities whom we associate with LGTBQIA+ issues for guidance and support? Yep, totally. Do the Deities object? If so, I think we would have heard by now. As such, I see nothing wrong with activists, poets, artists, and others calling on Deities with whom they have built a relationship or whom inspire them to change the world. The Gods are ultimately virtuous, and justice and love are two of the highest virtues.
Who are these Deities? As I am most familiar with the Hellenic pantheon, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, and Hermes immediately come to mind. So does the apotheosized Antinous. Deities of civil law and order can also be called upon, such as Themis and the Horae.
As to the second question, yes, the expansion of human rights does factor into my sacred cosmology. Creation is neutral, amoral. Humanity is not. We have slowly — so slowly, so painfully — been expanding our conception of rights, of who can be considered “human” and what that entails. We can’t stop now. We can’t backtrack. We have to keep going, forward, upward, towards the better world we can all see just over the horizon.
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[Ashley Nicole Hunter is the founder of ev0ke.]
In telling the story of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the prime minister of Iceland from 2009 to 2013 and the first openly LGBTQIA+ leader of a nation, I would put her story in poem form. It would mimic the Havamal as closely as possible to be true to her heritage. I would also blend in some of that work, such as
Cattle die,
friends die,
and the same with you;
but I know of something that never dies
and that’s a person’s deeds.
Her deeds would be the emphasis in this work.
I would tell of her work as an airline steward, how she was a friend to the working man, and how stood against attempts to stop her with the cry
“Minn tími mun koma!” (“My time will come!”). The height of the poem would talk about how she led the country through the global recession of 2009 when the banks almost destroyed her country, led the first left-wing government of Iceland, helped create a new constitution for the country, and had one of the first same-sex marriages when Iceland legalized same-sex marriage in 2010.
Her story would be a call for other LGBTQIA+ people, not to change themselves, but to change the world around them.
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