SPIRIT WOW: IN A MOMENT OF CRISIS, PROVIDENCE COLLEGE'S QUEER COMMUNITY PROVIDES AN EXAMPLE FOR EVERYONE

Excavate Your Queer History.

Last week over 500 faculty, alumni, staff and students of the Catholic Providence College issued a letter of protest in light of the resignation of E Corry Kole, the school’s nonbinary director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Kole had quit citing the college administration’s refusal to let them do their job.

Queer employees of Catholic institutions feeling threatened or driven out is sadly an all too common phenomenon, and usually a horribly dispiriting one for the broader Catholic community in which it occurs.

But what I find particularly striking about the Providence community’s response is that they begin their comments by putting the current moment into the broader context of the broader history of LGBTQ+ struggle for dignity and inclusion at the college. As early as 1961 there were talks by prominent figures at Providence challenging the social and religious thinking of the day on homosexuality. In 1968, a year before Stonewall, the college’s faculty and students had created …