The TV show Pose tells the story of queer people of colour living in NYC in the 80s and 90s by exploring one of the most culture-defining chapters of LGBTQIA+ history: ‘House culture’ or the Ballroom scene.
Ballroom houses were alternative family structures or ‘chosen family’ units usually led by a ‘house mother’ who would take in and provide for younger queer people. These house children were usually estranged from their families of origin and even marginalised from other [predominantly white] queer spaces, but under the care of a house mother, they would receive a new family and take on the family name.1 These houses became “the means by which members of the Ballroom community experience cultural belonging and care.”2 While not always literal homes, they could be, especially when young queer and trans folk disowned by their own families needed somewhere to shelter: “houses are not just social units of family but sometimes serve as actual physical shelters for members to ‘cohabitate’. Hence, in Ballroom culture houses serve as families and shelters of choice and sometimes of necessity.”3
Ballroom culture
As well as creating kinship structures, houses functioned as units that competed against each other in ballroom events:
“Houses and balls are two core social dimensions of Ballroom culture that are inextricably linked; typically, there are no houses without balls and there are no balls without houses. Ballroom communities are transient and hold balls at different places; the transformation of spaces for balls is linked to the kinship and supportive structures that Ballroom members produce and enjoy. Balls are the events where the essence of the community is expressed.”4
Oriented to Glory
I’ve noticed as I’ve read first-hand descriptions of house culture and ballroom that the theme of glory is always present, like in this scene from Pose:
Damon: “So what exactly is a ball?”
Blanca: “Balls are a gathering of people who are not welcome to gather anywhere else: a celebration of a life that the rest of the world does not deem worthy of celebration. There are categories—people dress up for them, walk. There’s voting, trophies.”
Damon: “Oh, and can you, can you make money?”
Blanca: “Better than money. You can actually make a name for yourself by winning a trophy or two. And in our community, the glory of your name is everything.”
“Welcome to the ballroom world.”
Pose, Season 1, Episode 1
This community places a high value on glory. Extravagant balls were a way of reclaiming their sense of dignity, and they walked categories like ‘Royalty’ as an act of resistance to remind each other what they were made for in a world that treated them more like dust.
This wasn’t just an individualistic glory of self-importance: at its best,5 it was a glory that honoured the entire house.
When a house child was adopted into the family, they took on their house mother’s name and would compete under that name, representing the house at competitions—for example, in Pose, a young Damon is adopted by Blanca Evangelista and walks the ball categories as ‘Damon Evangelista of the House of Evangelista.’ As children who bear their parent’s name, their goal (or ‘telos’) is glory—bringing glory to their house as they walk the categories with dignity and poise.
The child’s glory becomes the house mother’s glory, and the house’s glory is shared with all its family members–because they now share a name and a communal identity.
One’s own glory was inseparable from the glory of their house–their goal was to bring glory to their house mother and in doing so receive some of that glory.
Glorification–or Glory-vocation
I’m struck by the human desire to reach for glory. Even in our imperfect or vain efforts, there’s a longing for something more that I think reveals something of what we were made for. Even the most disempowered orphans of the Ballroom scene knew on some level that they were made to live as fabulous royalty. I believe the house balls achieved something profound for queer dignity that still impacts my freedom decades later, but I also believe that even at their best, the balls could never go far enough.
I’m struck by the human desire to reach for glory. Even in our imperfect or vain efforts, there’s a longing for something more that I think reveals something of what we were made for. Even the most disempowered orphans of the Ballroom scene knew on some level that they were made to live as fabulous royalty. I believe the house balls achieved something profound for queer dignity that still impacts my freedom decades later, but I also believe that even at their best, the balls could never go far enough.6
It’s striking to me, though, how uncannily the social structures of queer history mirror the shape of the gospel story. One could look at it sceptically: we’ve attempted to create a god and a salvation in our own image, a counterfeit that resembles the real thing just enough to scratch that itch. There’s truth in that. Or one could look at it as revealing something deeply spiritual about our intuitions: we find ourselves inescapably drawn to anything resembling what we were made for.
As a Christian, I find this utterly unsurprising. We were made for glory, made to live as fabulous royalty rather than as the dust we came from (Psalm 8; Psalm 113:7-9). We are royalty because we were born from the very beginning as royal heirs, as children in the splitting image of our father the High King (Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:28).7
The Adoption-to-Glory Pipeline
Even despite the shame and carnage we’ve brought on ourselves through human evils, this glory is restored a hundredfold beyond what we started with. The doctrine of adoption paints a remarkable picture of estranged and orphaned children not only being welcomed into a House, not only being given a new family name and a shared identity, but being written into the will as royal heirs. And what’s the family inheritance we’ve become heirs to? Glory!
You received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children. And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ)—if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him.”
Romans 8:15-17
We’ve been promised glory, that thing we knew we were made for–but unlike all our attempts to achieve our own glory by “making a name for ourselves” which from the very beginning have been a failed effort (Genesis 11:4), this is a glory we receive vicariously because of the house we’re attached to. It’s a glory we inherit because our legendary house mother slayed.8
This makes glory a communal pursuit for all the house children. The Apostle Paul describes our collective dignity as entirely dependent on one another, such that the household’s glory depends on restoring the dignity of its less respectable members:
“On the contrary, those members [of the body] that seem to be weaker are essential, and those members we consider less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our unpresentable members are clothed with dignity, but our presentable members do not need this. Instead, God has blended together the body, giving greater honor to the lesser member, so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it.”
1 Corinthians 12:22-26
Just like our collective liberation is bound up with one another’s freedom,9 so is our collective glory. As Head of the house, God our House Mother cannot receive all the glory he deserves while his beloved queer children suffer indignity and shame.
God our House Mother cannot receive all the glory he deserves while his beloved queer children suffer indignity and shame.
On the flipside, we glorify God powerfully by dignifying his lowliest children–because to the extent that the ‘least of these’ are shown to be glorious, we declare how much more glorious our Creator is. If these, the most unrespectable of the house children, are worthy of royalty, how much more majestic is their house mother?
I picture the Christian idea of glorification as the relationship between the sun and moon: the moon doesn’t possess any light of its own, but it can reflect back a stunning—though incomplete—reflection of the brilliance emanating from the sun. We are glorified not by possessing or achieving our own glory, but by turning our faces towards the sun and beaming those light rays back out into the world.10
And that inescapable human urge to keep seeking glory? We get to channel that desire legitimately, because our ‘telos,’ our reason for being IS to bring glory to our house mother. God desires and deserves for every one of their children to be gloriously illumined, displaying the full power of his renewing work… and until every one of his queer children is glorified, we have not yet succeeded in our royal calling as divine imagers in this world.
May we all shine brightly this Pride month. Happy Pride!
Soli Deo gloria.
- Or sometimes a house father, though ‘house mother’ seems to be a role inclusive of all gender identities and it isn’t uncommon for queer men to identify themselves as a house mother. ↩︎
- https://sst.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-02/AR_March%202021_Marlon%20Bailey.pdf ↩︎
- https://sst.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-02/AR_March%202021_Marlon%20Bailey.pdf ↩︎
- https://sst.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-02/AR_March%202021_Marlon%20Bailey.pdf ↩︎
- Of course there are numerous examples of self-centred vainglory in this and other queer subcultures; one could even argue that it’s a common shortcoming of these subcultures that compensate so desperately for a lifetime of feeling their dignity quenched. All of the media I’ve seen exploring the ballroom scene make full acknowledgement of this, even portraying this community in all its cut-throat grandiosity and its messy relationships, alongside the beautiful expressions of humanity. ↩︎
- I’d like to credit Sam Chan’s book Evangelism in a Skeptical World: How to Make the Unbelievable News about Jesus More Believable for this approach of connecting with cultural stories to contextualise the gospel: resonate à dissonate à gospel. ↩︎
- This seems to be true of all created humanity on some level, even before the doctrine of adoption; the ‘image of God’ language in Genesis seems to be connected with the idea of royal parentage with image bearers as children, not just subjects. Paul confirms this in Acts 17 when, speaking to Greek pagans with no knowledge of God yet, he agrees with the universal statement that ‘we are ALL God’s offspring.’ See Carly Crouch, “Genesis 1:26-7 as a Statement of Humanity’s Divine Parentage,” Journal of Theological Studies 61 (2010): 1-15. ↩︎
- What we need is a different kind of glory, one that isn’t about ‘grasping’ for power and stepping over others to get there but about laying down that royal privilege to raise up and empower those left in the dust. This reminds me of the imagery in the stunning ‘Christ hymn’ of Philippians 2 which glorifies Jesus who “though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave.” The dramatic end to the hymn is that, paradoxically, this humiliation is reversed back into glory! “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:6-7, 9-12). ↩︎
- Throughout the history of intersectional liberation movements, activists like Maya Angelou have often emphasised the importance of collective liberation rather than attaining self-interested privilege, declaring that ‘none of us are free til all of us are free.’ In Australia, Murri woman and activist Lilla Watson famously said “your liberation is bound up with mine.” I love that centuries before these activists highlighted the interdependence of human freedom, the Bible made the OG declaration of our collective dignity in passages like 1 Cor 12! ↩︎
- Exodus 33:29-35 is an extraordinary example of this happening literally as Moses’ face starts glowing after an encounter with God! ↩︎
Singled Out 