Scott's Thesis

Scott has just posted his thesis, “We Other Christians”: Gays, Lesbians, and Spaces of Protest
in the Episcopal Church. The abstract:

With the Episcopal Church’s recent election of openly-gay bishop Gene Robinson and its
blessing of same-sex unions, the intersection of gays and lesbians and faith-based spaces has
become a flashpoint in the ongoing movement for recognition of the rights of gays and
lesbians. However, the geographic literature has very little to say about gays and lesbians in
faith-based spaces, especially mainstream faith-based spaces. In this paper, I analyze openended
surveys conducted with gay and lesbian members of the Episcopal Church to ascertain
why these "other Christians" choose to remain in these sometimes hostile spaces instead of
the more friendly space of gay and lesbian-oriented churches (like the Metropolitan
Community Church). I analyze to what extent these members are creating thirdspaces of
protest and what their responses tell us about identity and the spaces that both shape and are
shaped by these identities. Also, the paper concerns itself with poststructuralist criticisms of
essentialist models of identity and space and examines those criticisms in the context of the
half-closet, the phenomenon where a queer body is both in and out of the closet at any given
time and at any given place. In the end, this research presents models of identity and space
that challenge our traditional views of these two concepts and questions whether these
understandings can be applied outside the subdiscipline of queer geography to the broader
discipline of human geography itself.

Awesome, Scott! You did it! :) Now to wait anxiously for Krista's.