Review from Christian Scholar's Review, xxvi, 4, Summer 1997. pp. 573-574.

      Occasionally a reputable publisher will publish a work consisting largely of uninformed opinion because its subject matter is timely and it has shock value. If the work explicitly deconstructs cherished traditions, then its strategy is timely as well, and its author may dismiss reasoning as an Enlightenment blip on an otherwise subjective landscape. Jesus Acted Up is such a book. It is hard to find one good thing to say about it.

      Goss lashes out against those who oppress him for being queer. He is oppressed by words: "Gay and lesbian identities were produced from the social effects of homophobic discursive practice.'' (32) He is oppressed by the "intolerance'' of those who have "failed to create a genuine dialogue over sadomasochism.'' (157) He claims the "epistemological privilege of the oppressed.'' (105) He does not mean maturely, as liberation theology teaches us, that his suffering gives him special insights into what it means to be a victim and an outcast. He means adolescently that we must listen to his emotional outbursts as though he were proposing a new truth.

      Goss is entitled to his opinions. He believes that there is a conspiracy against gays. (20) It sounds like paranoia to me. He believes that coming out as gay should be a new sacrament. (130) I disagree, but at least I can understand him, based on all of life as sacrament. Goss uses the Greek `basileia' instead of `kingdom' because he wants to appropriate feminist insights; he therefore avoids any translation of a feminine word by a masculine word. As a linguist, I claim he confuses grammatical gender with biological gender.

      Goss is not entitled to support his case with faulty reasoning based on faulty assumptions. Six examples will establish my point.

1. Was Jesus queer, "possibly with Lazarus''? (82) Goss misreads Jewish culture.
2. Are 10% of alumni of Jesuit colleges and universities queer? (154) Kinsey's 10% number had been discredited by 1990,⁽¹⁾ but even if it were true of Kinsey's population, on what grounds does Goss apply it to Jesuit alumni?
3. Goss reverses cause and effect: "Gay and lesbian identities were produced from the social effects of homophobic discursive practice.'' (32) Against what were homophobes homophobic if not gays and lesbians? Or another reversal of cause and effect: The demoniacs of the NT were mentally ill because of class oppression. (107) But what oppressed class were they before they were demoniacs?
4. Goss argues from silence: "Authoritative'' discourse and "heterosexist'' history have "made it difficult to retrieve the same-sex practices of ... Shakespeare [and] Michelangelo.'' (47) Could the practices be difficult to retrieve because they didn't happen?
5. Goss makes claims about ex-gays without checking facts: He claims that ex-gay organizations convert gays "to heterosexuality in order to be saved.'' (70) But that is not true of Evergreen, of Homosexuals Anonymous, of Life Ministry, of Genesis Counseling, of New Hope Ministry, or of any of the 75 additional organizations worldwide under Exodus International.⁽²⁾
6. Tarring churches with lies, Goss concludes: "explicit ecclesiastical approval'' of "mass death from AIDS'' is a "genocidal persecution of lesbians and gay men.'' (103) He bases this on fundamentalist churches that "have blocked entry of HIV-positive people into the United States.'' (103) This ties together two falsehoods. No church is approving death from AIDS. Nor are most AIDS victims overseas gay. Some churches think that immigration should be closed to all people with infectious diseases, not because they are fundamentalist churches, not all such churches, and not singling out HIV-positive as different from all other infectious diseases.

      Goss's book tells us more about his deep pain than about his subject matter. And to that pain we should listen.

      1. 1. Reisman, Judith A. and Edward W. Eichel. Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People (Lafayette, LA: Lochinvar-Huntington House, 1990).

      2. 2. For a complete up-to-date list of such organizations, see my web site.