Elyse Ambrose (Religious Studies, UCR) in conversation with Dr. Leonard Curry (Theology, Xavier University)

In A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive Elyse Ambrose looks to an archive of Blackqueerness as an authoritative source for religious ethical reflection. This approach counters the disintegrative norms of anti-Black and anti-body traditionalism in Christian sexual ethics, even those that strive to be liberative. It builds upon a tradition of Black queer and LGBTQ+-centered critique at the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and religion through exploring the moral imagination of sexual and gender non-conformist communities in 1920's Harlem (their rent parties, blues environments, and Hamilton Lodge Ball); ethics and theology blackqueering the disciplines; and contemporary oral histories (including photographs of the subjects by the scholar-artist) of those doing ethics in their Blackqueerness. These serve as integrative sites that signal Blackqueer ethical counter-patterns of communal belonging, individual and collective becoming, goodness, embodied spirit/inspirited bodies, and shared thriving. Emphases on both personal and social right-relatedness mark a shift from Christian sexual ethics based on rules, toward a communal relations-based transreligious ethics of sexuality.