Bisexuality & The Bible with Henry Corrigan

This week, in our LGBT Australian Podcast Let's Be Perfectly Queer:

Can you be bisexual and still believe in God?

In this episode of Let’s Be Perfectly Queer, Archie sits down with bisexual author and poet Henry Corrigan, whose latest queer horror novella Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light has made waves in LGBTQ+ literary circles.

Together, they explore Henry’s journey growing up Catholic, navigating religious ideas, and his decision to read the Bible cover to cover. From confronting outdated beliefs to finding unexpected hope in scripture, Henry shares how his bisexual identity and spiritual path can be intertwined.

In this episode, hear about:

• Henry’s bestselling queer horror fiction
• The history behind biblical interpretations of homosexuality
• How the Bible has evolved through centuries and cultures
• Misconceptions around Sodom & Gomorrah, Leviticus, and divine wrath
• Henry's favourite person from the bible.
• Henry’s powerful call for compassion, accountability, and progress in faith communities
• How queerness and spirituality can coexist 
  
  

"...reading the Bible is like talking to an older relative and getting their perspective on things. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. You can't take it as whole cloth. You've got to take it with a grain of salt and choose which teachings, which are the better teachings you want to follow"

Plus: Archie and Henry unpack how queer people are often hurt most by those who claim to act in God’s name and how reclaiming faith can be an act of resistance and radical self-love.


🎧 So grab your headphones, hit play while we learn something new... and until next time, stay perfectly queer!

Archie & Katie 🌈

Check out Henry Corrigan
instagram: @henrycorrigan08
novel: Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light 

Transcript

Podcast: Let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast

Episode Title: Bisexuality and the Bible with Henry Corrigan

Host(s): Archie

Guest(s): Henry Corrigan

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Archie (Host) | 00:00:05 to 00:00:27
Welcome to let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie, and today I'm joined by author Henry Corrigan. Questions of how you identify, seeking answers to clarify whether queen or somewhere in between. Let's be Perfectly queer. Hi, Henry, and welcome to the show.

Henry (Guest) | 00:00:27 to 00:00:37
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Archie. It's a pleasure to be here. You're very welcome. Thanks for reaching out and wanting to jump on board. I take any and all opportunities that I can, especially with the.

Henry (Guest) | 00:00:37 to 00:00:49
Once I saw the title of your podcast, I'm like, I gotta check this. I gotta see what this is like. No, you guys have been really great, so thank you very much for this opportunity. I really can't thank you enough. Oh, you're welcome.

Archie (Host) | 00:00:49 to 00:00:59
So before we do get started into our episode, did you want to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are? Sure. Absolutely. Again, my name is Henry Corrigan. I'm a published author and poet.

Henry (Guest) | 00:00:59 to 00:01:30
I'm a bisexual creative as well. My most recent publication was called Somewhere Quiet Full of Light. It's a LGBTQ haunted house story. It was published on May 15, so it's just over a month old, and it reached top 100 in LGBTQ horror fiction on Amazon, the top 200,000 on Amazon for the better part of a week. And it's was actually just recently reviewed by Ginger Nuts of Horror, and they absolutely loved it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:01:30 to 00:01:47
They. Jim McLeod is a wonderful human being, and he's basically crowed about it for, like, a while. He used words like, I don't want to brag too much, but he made my month for the review that. And it was how much it touched him. So it's the Elton Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light.

Henry (Guest) | 00:01:47 to 00:02:12
It's about two gay dads who move their family to an abandoned house in upstate New York. It's all about the price of perfection, the sting of trying to leave poverty behind, and how love and guilt can often look the same and be twisted into each other. It sounds very interesting and, you know, you've done a great job, so definitely toot your own horde, right? You've made, like, the top list of the. What was it?

Archie (Host) | 00:02:12 to 00:02:18
The top hundred. Is that what you said of the LGBT? Is that what you said? Yeah. Top 100 of LGB plus horror fiction.

Henry (Guest) | 00:02:18 to 00:02:21
Yeah. That's incredible. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes.

Henry (Guest) | 00:02:22 to 00:02:52
I have to give a big shout out to David Jack Fletcher and Slashik Horror Press, because they are the. Have been an absolute joy to work with, and they're the reason that this book has seen the light of day and it's as good as it is. And the COVID was created by a friend of theirs and it's the biggest thing that I've been getting the most compliments about and I really, I can't thank them enough. It is a very cool looking cover. I really, when I saw it, I was like, that's a really cool cover.

Archie (Host) | 00:02:52 to 00:03:16
It's, it's simplistic, but it's also, it catches your eye really nicely. So it's been designed very well. Yeah, I know they say that, you know, you don't judge a book by its cover, but in actual publishing you totally do. So I'm not a big reader because, you know, having adhd, I get very distracted very easily. But if I like a cover, then I'm like, oh, well, I'm going to buy that book anyway just because I like that cover and I'm going to attempt to read it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:03:16 to 00:03:36
Yeah, I have. One of my beta readers has ADHD as well and she, so she has to read things in smaller chunks because it makes it easier for her. And the Somewhere Quiet Full of Light is a novella, so it's 123 pages. So it doesn't require a lot of time. It's something that you can read in a couple of hours.

Henry (Guest) | 00:03:36 to 00:04:02
So she really appreciated that. And I actually, I have a couple of other novellas that I've drafted and written and I actually really appreciate them just because they tend to be a lot leaner stories and you don't need to flesh things and you don't need a tremendous amount of detail to be able to really hit home with what you're trying to say. Yeah, I might actually be able to get through your book then. If it's a short novella, I might be able to get through that one. If you do read it, I appreciate it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:04:02 to 00:04:11
If you don't, I appreciate just the opportunity to talk about it. So whatever it is. So thank you very much. Oh, good. You emailed us and something that you said was very interesting.

Archie (Host) | 00:04:11 to 00:04:26
You grew up Catholic, so did I. And you struggled with your faith. Did you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up on Long Island, New York, and my parents were not a very religious people.

Henry (Guest) | 00:04:26 to 00:04:51
What they were really looking for when they enrolled myself and my brother into Catholic school was just a really good education because my brother is older than I am and he wasn't getting the kind of support, I guess, from the public schools at the time. You know, the rigidity that he really needed. So they sent us to both Catholic school. So religion for my parents was never a big deal. For my grandparents it very much was.

Henry (Guest) | 00:04:51 to 00:05:15
My grandmother was very much the person who, when I was a teenager gave me like the Left behind series. And I actually really appreciated it. I thought it was good at the time. But as I've gotten older and I've done more reading, I've gone to school, I've gotten my bachelor's, my mba, I've worked out in the private sector, I've worked in the public sector, the federal sector and the like. And it's.

Henry (Guest) | 00:05:15 to 00:05:46
The more that I've grown up, the more that I've had to look back and see how many different versions of God I've been told have existed. So I've heard everything from God hates gays, to God loves everyone to God is merciful, God is vengeful, God is slow to anger. I eventually I wanted to really find my own or find what version of God it is that I really wanted, that I really encountered. And the. So I decided to sit down and read the Bible.

Henry (Guest) | 00:05:46 to 00:06:21
I actually read a couple different versions of it. I read the new American version and the King James version and I wanted to start by actually finding out which version of God it was that I encountered. And the funny thing is, is that while reading both versions of the book, I encountered all of them. So every version of God that you've ever heard of, vengeful, hateful, loving, kind, they're all here. And that's, I think the biggest takeaway that I've had is that the Bible has not only changed drastically and I think most people understand that.

Henry (Guest) | 00:06:21 to 00:06:49
And you know, the Bible has changed over the course of centuries. Like the, the King James Version alone is the authorised version of the Bible, but it's also the most political. It was drastically changed to meet number of religious factions that were campaigning and competing against each other in the 1600s. In English alone, there's 900 different versions of the Bible. And around the world in other languages, there's more than 3,000.

Henry (Guest) | 00:06:49 to 00:07:12
What version of God that you run into depends on what version of the Bible that you read and what version of God you're looking for. So by reading a couple different versions of the Bible, I found all of them. But the God that I believe in or that I've come to believe in is the one that I believe is there, but is still. Is yet to come, is still figuring things out for himself. So that's so interesting.

Archie (Host) | 00:07:12 to 00:07:31
I didn't realise there was so many different versions of the Bible. I had no idea. I didn't either. Have you heard about the documentary called, I think it's called 1946? And when you're talking about the American version of the Bible where they added homosexuality into the Bible and it was never previously in there, when you're looking at the original translation now that I.

Henry (Guest) | 00:07:31 to 00:07:55
Hadn'T heard, that's something I got to look into. Because here's the thing, when someone tells you or yells at you to read the Bible, they don't actually want you to read the Bible. They want you to accept that their interpretation of the Bible is the only real truth. And with 900 different versions of the Bible, there really isn't one. The Bible, more than any other book in the world, is open to interpretation.

Henry (Guest) | 00:07:56 to 00:08:21
And it's only by. When you grow up Catholic, you get the Bible read at you. You don't read it yourself very much. You get small chunks of scriptures and passages, you know, you, you read psalms, you know, and proverbs, but you don't really come to it as a whole. So that's what I really wanted to find out for myself is to get my own take on what it was that I was coming across.

Henry (Guest) | 00:08:21 to 00:08:44
And so no, I didn't know about homosexuality being added into the Bible, at least in the new, the new American Version. But that actually does make a lot of sense when I'm. When I think about it. Because the new American Version and the King James Version are wildly different in terms of what books it is that they include and what they don't. And I don't know if listeners have ever heard the word before.

Henry (Guest) | 00:08:44 to 00:09:08
Apocryphal. I think they've heard the term agnostic before. It's the idea that agnostic text is the idea that the books of the Bible that the teachings of Jesus were not the be all, end all. They were really a key to deeper meanings in faith and in God and the like, you know, was supposed to be more of a travel down the road towards faith. There's a term called apocryphal.

Henry (Guest) | 00:09:08 to 00:09:47
Basically it's the books of the Bible or books that are supposed to be attributed to either Jesus or apostles or that Catholic Church doesn't actually accept as part of the Bible. It's actually part of the canon itself, to use a more secular term. One of the things that I started reading is the Gospel of Thomas, which is considered apocryphal. It's supposed to be a collection of sayings of Jesus, but it's literally just like two or Three lines per line of sayings that are supposed to be attributed to Jesus himself. It's not in the Bible where it's an entire story or a novel or anything like that.

Henry (Guest) | 00:09:47 to 00:10:20
But there's a lot of overlay between what Thomas says that Jesus actually said and what's in the Bible. So reading as widely and as much as you can really helps you understand where things came from and what actually matters to you the most. So, yeah, the. In the Bible reading, at least the new American Version, I know the biggest thing that I came across was that in the King James Version, they use words like foreigner, you know, be kind to the foreigner amongst you. In the new version, they talk about, you know, be kind to the alien among you.

Henry (Guest) | 00:10:20 to 00:10:52
And they do actually use prescription. I don't think they use the words homosexuality itself. But there is that old Leviticus line about, you know, thou shalt not lay on the beddings of a woman as you would with a man, which is one of the most contested lines of all time in biblical history. Because Bible scholars, multiple Bible scholars, will tell you that the original translation of that line doesn't make any real sense. And no one has any real idea as to what it actually means.

Henry (Guest) | 00:10:53 to 00:11:07
And there's multiple instances of that in the Bible. Like there's mentions even in the. The new American Version, in the footnotes of the Bible, they'll say, it's like when they talk about the. The Urim and the Thurim, and we have no idea what that means. We're making a good guess.

Henry (Guest) | 00:11:07 to 00:11:36
We're making a best guess at this point, you know, as to what they were. They believed that they were like these ceremonial, like little sticks or staves they used to bless things, but we have no honest idea. That's so interesting because all these words, like I've heard of agnostic, but everything else I haven't heard of. And that line is so highly debated, and still to this day, because I've even seen people debate that it actually was about paedophilia and having a young boy rather than a man translated later into being a man. Then other people said, no, it was always.

Archie (Host) | 00:11:36 to 00:11:49
That was always the original translation. So nobody really has a definitive answer. And so it's like, like you were saying, it's. Everybody has their own interpretation. My interpretation of a line of the Bible could be completely different based on things that I learned when I was in school.

Archie (Host) | 00:11:49 to 00:12:13
You know, intertextuality, my upbringing, what I surround myself with, means that line could mean something completely different to me. So it's it's really hard to really fully grasp what is the Bible when you can interpret it in so many different ways. Exactly. And it has been interpreted in so many different ways. One of the stories that really jumps out at me is the story of Job leaving the city behind, of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Henry (Guest) | 00:12:13 to 00:12:58
And the idea, the way that it had always been described to me, at least when I was growing up, was that the Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of perversion. And it was very highly linked to homosexuality. And that the idea that, you know, the city wanted to do these horrible things to men and, you know, Job wanted to offer up his daughters to be able instead of doing these, like, terrible perversions to these men rather than that, so that God had to destroy the entire city. Reading the text itself, what it says is that a pair of male angels had come down to Job and were sheltering in his house at the time. And what happened was the rest of the city of Sodom heard that there were angels or male angels that were hiding in his house.

Henry (Guest) | 00:12:58 to 00:13:26
And they. According to the Bible, it says every abled man, both young and old, showed up at Job's house demanding that they be able to do intimacies to the men with inside. And Job steps outside, he's like, please don't do this, okay? I will offer up my own daughters if I have to, to be able to, not to commit sacrilege against these, you know, these heavenly creatures. And the city itself, all the men and everyone, the young and old, they all say no.

Henry (Guest) | 00:13:26 to 00:13:46
And God ends up destroying the city. When you read the text itself and saying, it's like, look, especially when you understand it from the idea of non consent, you understand that they're not describing that. Oh, they want to, you know, they're offering themselves to just have like, homosexual sex with these male angels. Yeah, I gotta try this. I gotta go, you know, I gotta go and do this.

Henry (Guest) | 00:13:46 to 00:14:04
No, they're demanding that they basically turn these, these angels over to the crowd. You're not describing consensual homosexuality. You're not describing a loving or even just a passionate relationship. You're describing gang rape. And when you're describing something like that, you're absolutely.

Henry (Guest) | 00:14:04 to 00:14:17
Burn the entire city down and salt the earth. Okay? Yeah. But don't try and then take this, what is actually a crime, and put it towards an actual loving and passionate relationship. You don't have the right.

Archie (Host) | 00:14:17 to 00:14:44
Have you found now that reading the Bible and you identify as a bisexual man, do you feel like your faith has changed at all since reading the Bible? Or were you practising Catholic or did you feel like you were Catholic pre reading the Bible to post reading it? If that makes sense, what I'm trying to ask. I was a practising Catholic when I was younger and I very much remember telling my mother that I could. And I was very arrogant at the time saying that I knew that God exists or I could prove God exists because I believe that the soul existed.

Henry (Guest) | 00:14:44 to 00:15:11
And over time I, as I got older, I fell out of faith with the church and I've only, in the last, you know, about 15 years, I've gone back to the church itself because, you know, I had a number of life changes and a lot of things. I got married, I had a kid and I found a real comfort in the church. But I've still had that thought in the back of my head. It's like I'm supposed to be Catholic and Christian. I'm also bi.

Henry (Guest) | 00:15:11 to 00:15:50
The two don't tend to gel based on what everyone keeps telling me and even what the church tells me. So I wanted to find out what the Bible actually said and what version of God I've found. And it has absolutely changed my idea of faith and it's made me believe in a much more loving and accepting God than I believe is actually in the Bible itself. Like if you read the Old Testament, it is as I said, the versions of God in the Old Testament are absolutely wrathful, anger, hatred. You know, there's so much that I could go over in the Bible and I will eventually write a book about it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:15:50 to 00:16:45
But the new version, meeting Jesus and his apostles and the like, I found a kinder version of God, but it was a version of God that had grown from the Old Testament but was still, still wasn't at the level that we're trying to achieve today. So there was a great deal of misogyny that was still listed in the Bible itself. There was a great deal of restriction that was still listed in the New Testament itself. And the funny thing about everyone says, or a lot of people say, that with the rise of Christian nationalism and evangelicalism and the fundy movement of prosperity gospels and that they believe that, you know, true Christians believe that, you know, that Jesus is the be all, end all, that he is the light and the true faith of things. And they have to understand that while Jesus is awesome, Jesus is great.

Henry (Guest) | 00:16:45 to 00:16:58
He is not my personal favourite of the entire Bible. He is absolutely amazing. He's just as good as everybody says he is. My personal favourite is a Different character from the Bible. But you have to understand, Jesus came late to the game.

Henry (Guest) | 00:16:58 to 00:17:26
So because the Bible itself, at least the new American version, is like 1400 pages long, a thousand pages of that is the Old Testament. It's all, you know, kings and conquests and slaughter and genocide. It's a lot. Jesus doesn't show up until the New Testament, which is the latter 400 pages. And to be perfectly fair, he's only in it for technically one book of the Bible, because the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all different versions of the same events.

Henry (Guest) | 00:17:26 to 00:17:45
It's four different men describing the same events that they. And what they remember the most from what happened at that time. So technically, Jesus is only around for one book out of the entire Bible. And the rest is either what happened before he showed up or what happened after. So it's very difficult to come to a.

Henry (Guest) | 00:17:46 to 00:18:02
To have a come to Jesus moment when you understand that he wasn't around for very long. He had a massive impact. I'm not going to deny that. And he still does. But it's understanding why it is that when they say, oh, I'm a traditional Christian, I'm more of like an Old Testament person.

Henry (Guest) | 00:18:02 to 00:18:34
It's centuries of blood and conquest that you're dealing with, that when Jesus was born, that God tried to course correct and change the course of the Bible. That's why you had such a schism between traditional Judaism at the time and what eventually became Christianity. Because in the Old Testament, God made it sound like the Israelites were his people and the kingdom of heaven was their prescription. That only belonged to them. When Jesus came along, he said, it belongs to everyone because God created everyone.

Henry (Guest) | 00:18:34 to 00:19:08
So it belongs to the Jews, it belongs to the Gentiles, it belongs to the Romans, the Greeks, anyone who wants to believe and wants to do good works, it belongs to everyone. And that created a schism in the church itself. And understanding that and understanding where the Bible started and what it grew to and what I believe it will can still continue to grow to is what I believe in is I believe in that progress of kindness and compassion. Yeah, it's a little bit funny. I'm gonna go a little bit off topic, but when you were saying, like Jesus was only in 400 pages, it's kind of like the Tom Felton of Harry Potter where he was only in it for 30 minutes but made a big splash.

Archie (Host) | 00:19:08 to 00:19:23
So it doesn't really matter about how many pages you're there. It's about the impact you make. So you have you read the Whole thing now, the whole 1400. That's insane. My ADHD could never have you felt a better connection with your sexuality and your faith.

Archie (Host) | 00:19:23 to 00:19:45
Now, after reading it. Yeah, and after reading it, I've come to understand that the. Just as the Bible and our understanding of the God has changed, I believe that also God has changed over the course of the millennia, the centuries and the like. Because God in the Old Testament was very, very rigid, very wrathful, very. I'm doing this my way.

Henry (Guest) | 00:19:45 to 00:19:59
I don't care about anything else I'm doing. You know, we're just getting this done. And he grew and he changed and came to accept other things. The way that the Bible was described is that when Jesus was born, God became incarnate of man. He became human, essentially.

Henry (Guest) | 00:19:59 to 00:20:23
He understood the foibles, the. The pains, the emotions that everybody deals with. And that's when you really see the idea of God's love start to really grow and take root. Because in the Old Testament, the thing that they talk about most. Well, a lot of the teachings of Jesus, you know, be kind to your neighbour, don't blaspheme, do good works.

Henry (Guest) | 00:20:23 to 00:20:52
All of that existed in the Bible, in the Old Testament. It was there, but it was buried underneath centuries of bloodshed and conquest and genocide. And it's only when the New Testament comes around, when Jesus is born, that the idea of kindness, of compassion, of trying to open the doors wider to more people, really became apparent. And I believe in that. And it's helped me to understand that as a bisexual man, that it's.

Henry (Guest) | 00:20:52 to 00:21:18
The doors aren't shut to me just because of who I am. And it's like I came to my acceptance of my bisexuality later in life. I was like my late 30s, almost 40, when I really understood, when I really accepted it and decided to talk about it, come out to people about it. And the. I think that's the reason that I have a deeper appreciation not for only for my sexuality and who I am, but for my faith.

Henry (Guest) | 00:21:18 to 00:21:41
Because I understand the importance of growth and change and progress. And it's not just a secular idea, it is a religious idea. This has grown and changed over the millennia and it's continuing to do so. And I believe that if faith and people say that in the coming years we will have a more secular country. And I'm totally okay with that.

Henry (Guest) | 00:21:41 to 00:21:57
I am absolutely okay with that. I would want that more than anything else in the world. Because the religion is meant to be the hand that you hold during good times, bad times. It's the friend that you can talk to when you need advice about something. It is not meant to be law.

Henry (Guest) | 00:21:57 to 00:22:15
It is not meant to be the government prescription. It is not meant to be the thing, the sword of Damocles hanging over your head all the time. It's meant to be a friend. It's not meant to be a warden. When people in America particularly, use the Bible as a weapon against the queer community, how do you feel about that?

Henry (Guest) | 00:22:15 to 00:22:35
I know in my heart, and I've known all my life, that it's wrong that there's. Even before I really read the Bible and came to an understanding of God, God himself, I knew that it was wrong the way that people weaponize faith against other people like this. This isn't. This isn't your own teachings. This isn't what you guys say that you're.

Henry (Guest) | 00:22:35 to 00:22:49
That you're supposed to be about. Talking about how God is love, God is kindness. Be kind to the people in your community. Help your neighbour. Literally treat your neighbour as you would want yourself to be treated.

Henry (Guest) | 00:22:49 to 00:23:14
That's not what you're professing here. No, this is wrong. You can't swim in the same waters for however many years without swallowing some of the river. So I can't deal with that kind of fear and that kind of doubt and questioning without worrying myself. I'm like, am I a sinner because of just simply of who I am and how I was born.

Henry (Guest) | 00:23:15 to 00:23:26
So reading the Bible itself has helped to calm that. Essentially running in through the new American version. The. You do run into, like I said, Leviticus. You do run into other prescriptions against it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:23:26 to 00:23:37
Romans, Corinthians. There was one also about. I do not remember the book itself. I have to go back and take a look. But there was one also about how women shall not wear the clothing of men.

Henry (Guest) | 00:23:37 to 00:24:00
Men shall not wear the clothing of women. And reading the Bible itself, I understand, it's almost like. It's like talking to an older relative who might have some really good advice. But you have to understand they're also deeply biassed of where they came from and what they're dealing with. And a lot of their advice, some of it is actually still good.

Henry (Guest) | 00:24:00 to 00:24:20
Some of it is not so, like, at the same time that they say, you know, the men shall not wear the clothing of the women, though the Bible also prescribes that, you know, you shall have a parapet around the roof of your house. So in case. If anybody should fall, it's like, okay, I'm glad. I don't want to get sued. But why is this in the Bible, well, thou shalt not wear clothing stitched from two different cloths.

Henry (Guest) | 00:24:20 to 00:24:57
It's like, what? Why is this a problem? And it comes down to, I think, the idea of, in the Old Testament, of racial purity and the idea of purity itself, because the Bible goes into how. And the Bible specifically says that in the very early Old Testament, that the daughters of the tribes of Israel were not allowed to marry outside of their own father's tribe, their own father's clan, let alone outside of the. Of the religion, religion of the faith itself, of the nation itself, and they were only allowed to marry within their father's clan, which is science has come to understand.

Henry (Guest) | 00:24:58 to 00:25:32
That's not just disgusting, that's dangerous. Reading the Bible. I know now that I have an even greater faith and understanding that those who use the Bible against the gay community are wrong and have been wrong for longer than I've been alive and coming to it now. I understand that there's a sense in the Bible that God is supposed to be perfect. God is supposed to be this, be all, end all, everything that he says is absolutely true and should be taken as gospel and law.

Henry (Guest) | 00:25:32 to 00:25:55
And it's come to understand that there's a real fallible line running through everything. It's like, again, like talking to an older relative. They've had their. They've lived their lives, they've had their experiences and they do still have some advice and they do still care for you, but what they're telling you to do is very much coloured by their own experiences. So you have to take that with a grain of salt.

Henry (Guest) | 00:25:55 to 00:26:07
There's a fallible divinity to it. I remember growing up because when I grew up, I was Catholic. I still. It's hard. Like I say, I'm Catholic, but I'm not a practising Catholic because I don't go to church and I don't do those kind of stuff.

Archie (Host) | 00:26:07 to 00:26:42
And so what I find really interesting is when I grew up in a Catholic school, we never fully read the Bible, but we were given passages exactly. And all the passages were just about acceptance and love, mainly as kids. So it's so interesting seeing the world and using the Bible and using it as a weapon when all we did was learn, hey, that accept everyone no matter what, you should treat them exactly how you want to be treated, no matter what. But then everybody seems to have forgotten those key messages and they focus on certain passages that work for them. I've had an argument with someone and I said, because they'll say, you know, homosexuality is bad, et cetera, et Cetera.

Archie (Host) | 00:26:42 to 00:26:53
And I said, well, you're wearing jeans and a cotton shirt. And that actually goes against the barber. And they're like, what do you mean, can cherry pick? If I want to as well. So it's just interesting when people do that.

Archie (Host) | 00:26:53 to 00:27:20
They cherry pick the parts that work for them as a weapon when it shouldn't be that way. No, And I think one of the biggest reasons for that is why people cherry pick and why say, you know, this is for me, this is not for you. You know, it's because everybody likes to believe that they're special. And everybody likes to believe that what is given to them is specifically only theirs and it doesn't belong to anybody else. Sharing is caring, but sharing is not easy.

Henry (Guest) | 00:27:20 to 00:27:58
That's why also the you had the major schism in Catholicism and in Christianity very early on is because in the original Bible, like I said it was the kingdom of God was supposed to be, or at least the Jews came to understand it, that the kingdom of God was theirs alone. And when Jesus came along and said, it belongs to everyone, it created a schism between everyone, because that was too much for some to bear, at least according to the Bible. That's how it's described. So I have not read the Torah, so I am not going to say that, you know, the Jews were wrong or anything like that. This is entirely how the Bible interprets it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:27:58 to 00:28:21
Like I said, take everything that comes from the Bible and everything that I say with a grain of salt. That's how it's described in the Bible. So people like to believe that they're special, especially when it comes to things such as salvation, things such as a heavenly. I don't want to say reward, because it's not supposed to be a reward. It's not supposed to be something that you get after you die, like you suffer on earth and then you die and you get something great in heaven.

Henry (Guest) | 00:28:21 to 00:28:50
I believe that the kingdom of God is something that we build here today. It's something that we build in our own world by being kind to each other, by continuing to progress and continuing to be better than we were the day before. But it's also part of it is nobody likes to share. And two is people like simple rules. People like knowing what is expected of them, what they need to do and how they can achieve to be able to get, like, the best of things.

Henry (Guest) | 00:28:51 to 00:29:17
And the Bible's early rules, everything from Leviticus to Deuteronomy, which are all rules, all religious laws. That's also why it created a schism when Jesus eventually showed up is because Leviticus and Deuteronomy, again, is the basis of Mosaic Law. And it's not just like the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not do this and that. It's everything about, you know, thou shalt not wear a cloth, Thou shalt not cheat your neighbour. Thou shalt not do this.

Henry (Guest) | 00:29:18 to 00:30:00
And when Jesus eventually showed up, the Pharisees and the Sadducees looked at him and they said, what rules of the Bible are we supposed to follow? And Jesus looked at him and said, it's not the rules that matter. You can follow the rules and not give a damn about your own people at all. You can follow the rules to the letter and not actually do anything good to help anybody or not care or not have faith in anything. Jesus said that it's the faith itself, belief in God, belief in him, in Jesus himself as the Son of God, that really secures your, let's see, your heavenly host, the kingdom of God, that secures you in the eyes of God.

Henry (Guest) | 00:30:01 to 00:30:44
So that created a schism because the Mosaic Law up till that point was considered the be all, end all of everything. And then when Jesus came along and said, it's not really all that important. If faith matters more, being kind to others, treating your neighbour as you would treat yourself, that matters more. And, you know, belief in God, giving homage to Jesus and God himself, that matters more, that created a schism that created real problems for Jesus and his apostles. And later in the Bible, St. Paul and St. James, they talk about the good works of the Bible or doing good works basically, and following not just the Mosaic Law itself, but following the faith of God and Jesus.

Henry (Guest) | 00:30:44 to 00:31:24
And one of the things that I understood when I finished reading the Bible is that the Mosaic Law, it's not about the law, because I don't think it's even really about faith itself. And that's why I say that, that people say that we're going to have a much more secular worldview, at least in America, hopefully in the near future. And I say that's a good thing because we've seen faith get weaponized again and again and again and again. Jesus said that you could follow the law and be terrible to your neighbour anyway and that the law won't save you. I say you can profess your faith and still be terrible to your neighbour.

Henry (Guest) | 00:31:24 to 00:31:50
I say all that really matters is just be good to your neighbour. Whatever it is that you believe in doesn't matter if you believe in God or you don't. It doesn't matter if you're doing it because you think that God would want you to, or being good to your neighbour because you know eventually you're going to need to borrow his lawnmower, you know, the power is going to go out. You know, you need to work together. Superstorm, Superstorm Sandy here in America back in New York, the neighbours came together because we needed help.

Henry (Guest) | 00:31:51 to 00:32:11
Everybody was kind of out of power for days. So just do good works. That's all that matters. You want to get to better days, do good works. It doesn't matter what faith it is that you profess, if you just simply have faith in the ideas of mercy and justice, if you're willing to help each other and hold each other accountable when you mess up.

Henry (Guest) | 00:32:11 to 00:32:24
So that's. I think the two things that we really need most is just mercy. Be merciful to each other, be accepting of each other. More so to the gay community, to other races, to other religions, other faiths. Be open to everyone.

Henry (Guest) | 00:32:25 to 00:32:40
But hold yourself accountable when you try to use faith to weaponize faith. Hold people accountable for their mistakes, for their misdeeds. We need more of that. We don't need more empty professings of a faith. We need mercy and we need justice.

Archie (Host) | 00:32:41 to 00:32:58
Yeah. And it's like everybody wants to throw the first stone, but they don't want to actually look at themselves and say, hey, actually, am I also at fault for some of the stuff that I'm saying? Yeah. When you reached out, you described that you had an unexpected enlightenment. Was there a specific thing in the Bible or was it just how you felt after reading it?

Henry (Guest) | 00:32:58 to 00:33:31
It was actually reading the story of the Israelites and the 40 years that they spent in the desert, leaving Egypt and getting to the land of Israel. And the reason that I say that Jesus is amazing. Okay, I won't knock Jesus at all, but my personal favourite man from the Bible is Moses. And the reason I say that is because he's the most relatable man in the Bible. When I realised, and I had an enlightenment as to what dealing with God or coming to God at the time was like, was by reading about Moses himself.

Henry (Guest) | 00:33:31 to 00:33:44
Because Moses, when God came down and said, moses, I have chosen you. You shall be the one to lead my people. Moses looked at him and said, pick somebody else. Please pick somebody else. You don't understand.

Henry (Guest) | 00:33:44 to 00:34:02
I'm no good at people, I'm no good at talking. You gotta pick somebody else. God says, no, I've chosen you. I'm sticking with you. See, the reason I love Moses so much is because he was wildly unqualified for the job and he knew it and he made no bones about it, he made no qualms about it.

Henry (Guest) | 00:34:03 to 00:34:31
So when he was dealing with the Israelites and trying to lead them out of Egypt, out of slavery in Egypt, to the promised land, the thing about Moses is that it was an incredibly difficult, incredibly trying job for him. And he called the Israelites rebels until the day that he died. It was incredibly hard on him and he hated it, but he did it anyway. He did the job itself. And there was one exchange in the Bible that was really enlightening.

Henry (Guest) | 00:34:31 to 00:34:49
When I said that the reading the Bible is like talking to an older relative and getting their perspective on things. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. You can't take it as whole cloth. You've got to take it with a grain of salt and choose which teachings, which are the better teachings you want to follow. The reason I say that is because of Moses.

Henry (Guest) | 00:34:49 to 00:35:18
Because after they've been travelling for several months, after they left Egypt and they went into the desert to try and find the promised land, the Israelites, they'd been travelling alone for months. They were in a foreign land in the middle of the desert. And Moses went up the mountain, Mount Sinai, to commune with God, to get the Ten Commandments, the tablets themselves, as the laws that the Jews were, some of the Israelites were supposed to follow, and that he was going to come back down. Here's the thing, the Israelites, they've been travelling for months. They've been away from home for months.

Henry (Guest) | 00:35:18 to 00:35:34
They were in a foreign land. They were in the middle of the desert. And Moses didn't just go right up the mountain and then come back down. He was gone for 40 days and 40 nights. So you're in a foreign land, you're away from home, and not only is your prophet, but your God are incommunicado.

Henry (Guest) | 00:35:34 to 00:35:50
For over a month, by the time Moses and God have come down from the mountain, the people of Israel had turned to Aaron, Moses, brother, and said, you know, God's not talking to us. Moses is gone. We're scared. We're alone, we're in a foreign land. We need something to focus on.

Henry (Guest) | 00:35:50 to 00:36:07
We need something that will make us feel like there's something out there protecting us. And so they melted down the gold. They created the golden calf. When Moses and God came down from the mountain, saw the golden calf, God looked at Moses and said, I'm killing them. I am killing every single one of them.

Henry (Guest) | 00:36:07 to 00:36:31
And then I'm starting over with you get out of my way. Moses intercedes on behalf of the Israelites and he talks God out of killing everybody. But here's the thing. He doesn't appeal to God's mercy, He doesn't appeal to his reason or his wisdom. He looks at God and he says, when we left Egypt, you made sure everybody knew you were the one behind this.

Henry (Guest) | 00:36:31 to 00:37:02
You were the real power behind the throne, you were the one working the miracles, you were the one true God. So if you kill these people now, how's that going to make you look? That was the linchpin for me. It's like I understood that there was fallibly divine version of the not just God but ourselves. In one of the footnotes in the Bible itself, early on in Genesis, when it says that God created man in his own image, that line has been used and weaponized against people of other races, other for millennia.

Henry (Guest) | 00:37:02 to 00:37:27
The footnote in the Bible of the new American version says that man resembled God in his dominion over the earth. I've not heard that one before. Neither had I. No, but it said that man resembled God not in his physical sense, because God at the time had no physical body. God didn't have a frame, he was a pillar of smoke, he was a voice out of the clouds, he was amorphous.

Henry (Guest) | 00:37:27 to 00:38:03
So man resembled God in his dominion over the earth. So it's not about physicality, it's not about skin colour, it's not about gender, it's about our ability to work our will onto the world. What we say is the truth, whether it's actually the truth or not. And especially in this post truth world that we're dealing with, what we say goes. And that's I think, part of the fallibly divine version of what I've called come to understand about God is God early on in the Bible was prideful, he was wrathful, he was vengeful.

Henry (Guest) | 00:38:03 to 00:38:34
Later on he becomes more of a compassionate deity, more kind and open. But there's still progression that needs to come. The misogyny is still there, some of the. And again, the homophobia is still there, the racism is still there and it's being brought along by disingenuous followers. So I believe that that's, that was the linchpin for me is understanding the fallibility there and accepting my own fallibility and moving on from there, dedicating myself to progress and always getting better.

Henry (Guest) | 00:38:34 to 00:38:47
That's what matters. I didn't know about that story. And so it kind of shows that there's the human qualities to be able to Relate to him in that sense, and you are going to write a book. Did you want to tell us about that? Yeah, I'm technically, I've already written, but the.

Henry (Guest) | 00:38:47 to 00:39:01
It's in draught form. Yeah, it's. What I did was as I was. I super commute for my day job. Ever since the new administration, ever since Trump took office, I've had to super commute across state lines to be able to get back and forth to my office.

Henry (Guest) | 00:39:01 to 00:39:38
And so I have a couple of hours in the car, easily going back and forth. And so what I've done is I've listened to the Bible, I listened to the King James version on audio while travelling back and forth, and then when I had an idea or an insight or an understanding of something, I would dictate it into my phone and I've been taking notes, I've been writing my own insights and my own interpretations as they've been going along. And once I finished the Bible, I wrapped up the draught version, so it's actually technically already done. I haven't been able to edit it yet. For right now, I'm calling it Fallibly Divine.

Henry (Guest) | 00:39:38 to 00:40:21
And it's about the idea that there is no such thing as perfection. There is no such thing as there's only one way of doing things in the Bible, early in the Old Testament, God says, I will give them one heart and one way so that they might fear me forever for all the good that I will do for them and for the children that will come after them. And I want to believe that it's not about fear, that it's never been about fear and shouldn't have been. That was reading the Old Testament, especially the part about the Israelites heading towards the promised land, going through the desert. When you read it yourself, or at least for me, it didn't read as a divine kind.

Henry (Guest) | 00:40:21 to 00:40:49
God looking out for his people over the course of these 40 years. It reads more like a new parent finding out what it's like to take their kids on a road trip. When you understand the fallibility of things, that the Bible has changed, that God changes over the course of the story, you understand that change is the point. We're meant to change, we're meant to grow, we're meant to be better than we were the day before. People like to say, you know, oh, people don't change.

Henry (Guest) | 00:40:49 to 00:41:06
When they say that, they mean people don't change for the better. And that's because change for the better doesn't just happen. It's not something. It's not like the ocean wearing away at the beach or, you know, a rock getting eroded. Eventually it takes self awareness and conscious action.

Henry (Guest) | 00:41:06 to 00:41:35
You have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I screwed up. I need to do something about this. And that's, I think, what makes God both relatable and divine is the idea of continuously improving and trying to accept the mistakes that I've made in the past and hoping not to repeat them, but making yourself better each and individual day. And that's what I want for myself as well, is to try to be better. I don't always do it, but I'm trying.

Archie (Host) | 00:41:36 to 00:41:56
Before we go, do you have any other books that you have written that you would recommend for our listeners to check out? Yes, absolutely. I'm going to have a new novel, actually, another LGBTQ supernatural slasher, technically that's going to be coming out in spring of 2026. It's called party of a Lifetime. I can't really announce, you know, the publisher yet.

Henry (Guest) | 00:41:56 to 00:42:29
I'm waiting for the publisher to make their announcement and everything, but it'll be coming in the 2026. It's called party of a Lifetime. It's the first in a series, hopefully a trilogy anyway. And it's about four gay teens who reunite after a year after high school to try to reenact the prom that could have been and end up getting dragged down a highway to hell, literally. It's a lot of fun and I had a great time writing the first novel and I've got notes written for the second book and I have a pretty good idea as to where everything's going to end up in the third book.

Henry (Guest) | 00:42:29 to 00:42:51
But I'm really looking forward to that. Really looking forward to seeing what happens with this next book and also seeing this book about the Bible. It sounds really interesting and I really can't wait to hear your kind of take on it because I've had such a great time chatting with you. It's been a lot of fun and I've learned so much, you know, growing up Catholic and I learned more from you than I did with my 10 years of education. So thank you so much for that.

Henry (Guest) | 00:42:52 to 00:43:02
Thank you. Thank you. I hope that our list has enjoyed as well. If you did enjoy it, you can find Henry. We'll put all the links into our show notes so you can check out all of his socials, his books.

Archie (Host) | 00:43:02 to 00:43:13
And if you did like this episode, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe because it does help us get people like Henry on the show. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time. I hope that we have been perfectly queer.

Archie (Host) | 00:43:22 to 00:43:24
Let's be perfectly queer.