On a spiritual level, how we experience love of humans shapes how we experience love of God. On an intellectual level, it colors how we conceive God. On a physical level, it changes how we manifest and seek the Divine in the world. And on an emotional level, it gives form and meaning to the yearnings of the heart. When I chant Yedid Nefesh, the moving, homophilic, medieval love song for God, I think of my relationship to the yedid, the (male) beloved that is distinctively flavored by my love of men. Theology—thinking rigorously about God—is necessarily impacted by such “queer” self-images, images of the Divine, conceptions of how Divine relates to the world, readings of text, and experiences of how love, religion, and spirituality manifest in the world.

Images of the ineffable are always projections, and relationships to the transcendent always carry the character of myth. Yet to the extent that we conceptualize the One at all, we have no choice but to do so from our conceptions of love, self, and world; tradition, text, and tribe.

Really, if theology is thinking about God, the only way sexuality couldn’t matter would be if we really believed that how we love has nothing to do with how we think, imagine, dream, and create. What an impoverished life that would be.