Heg.

In particular, after the terrorist attacks of 11 September (9/11), “West-ern” societies that dominate the (neo)liberal discourse with its attributes of freedom, autonomy, individuality and tolerance imagine themselves in distinction from an apparently non-liberal, intolerant “other”. The “West” perceives itself universalistic as liberal because different from Islamic states, religion and state are separate, women and minorities are not discriminated against. A religious “other” is constructed that supposedly is more misogy-nist and homophobic than the “West”.1

The “Western” model of society perceives itself as a success story, a con-cept which guarantees, together with nation statehood and market econ-omy, democracy for its citizens. In the context of the economic, social and political effects of globalisation leading to precariousness, the limitations of models of society based on capitalism become apparent. Furthermore, numerous critical, deconstructivist, feminist, queer, trans and postcolonial approaches point out that contemporary (neo)liberal societies imagine themselves through the exclusion of the “other” (also the “other” within their own societies), based on the construction of essentialised and hege-monic ideas of race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, religion and so on. This form of epistemic violence is linked to economic and sovereign violence and becomes manifest in biopolitical intrusions in the life of every person.2 The legal order of the state is connected with hegemonic, conservative, theo-logical and ecclesial presumptions. Thus dominant discourses of (Christian) religious communities support epistemic violence.3 Furthermore, in times of global, neoliberal invasion, we notice a symbolical reorganisation of modes of inclusion or exclusion within the nation.4

Even if hegemonic discourses shift historically, the reproduction of the individual and collective body remains central to their regulations. For a long time, in the “West”, the argument of the supposed incapacity to create new life has been central to the marginalisation of LGBTIQ+ forms of life in the church (and nation). Today, there are ever more queer families with chil-dren, and they are visible in public. However, their legal discrimination and experiences of epistemic violence through dominant discourses continues in spite of some improvements in Germany and elsewhere.

The connection between political, economic, symbolic and religious orders and biopolitical regulations has not yet been sufficiently criticised and ana-lysed. Even within theologies that critically discuss their own “establishment”, only slowly the historical, cultural and social construction of intersectional categories of knowledge is acknowledged. Some (feminist) theologies of lib-eration collocate power and resistance only on the surface of political power, but not in an epistemological context, and thus run the risk of essentialising the issues of the marginalised persons they represent (women, the poor, gays and lesbians, black people, etc.) subsuming them under “group identities”, so that the multiple subjectivity of the individual person is hidden beneath the collective identity. It is also problematic to simply call for “equal rights” because (a) recognition as a legal subject also inscribes essentialised hierar-chies and (b) the legal system in the “West” is interconnected with hegemonic, conservative, Christian ideas. Some approaches in gender-sensitive theolo-gies consider only the social dimension of gender and relegate the critique of hetero-patriarchy to queer theology. Some queer theologies on their part overemphasise the performativity of sexuality, but neglect important biopo-litical regulations including questions of care. Finally, some secular, feminist, gender-sensitive and queer approaches are characterised by an essentialised notion of religion.5 I argue therefore that the task of a critical political theol-ogy and religious studies6 is to analyse the relationship between religion and epistemic violence, to deconstruct biopolitical regulations and to develop an imaginary of solidarity and community in a religious context.

The discussion of LGBTIQ+ parenthood can be a helpful step in the dis-covery of both the repressive and productive powers of discourses. In the fol-lowing, I will first illustrate the biopolitical, violent interferences of church and state in the life of the individual and the community using as an example the non-recognition of particular forms of parenthood and of children in rainbow families, showing the connection between religion and biopower, as well as the historical homophobia of Christianity. I will then discuss the formation of subjectivity, agency and social imaginary in the context of resis-tance discourses. The focus lies on Germany because here I experienced the case of biologistic, homophobic, biopolitical interventions of the state and church into child birth and care as well as activism, legal and theological changes.