The “Queen James Bible”, boasted as being the first in the world “gay Bible.”

The Queen James Bible? Sounds like a joke from the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy television show, right? But no, it’s real and part of a large movement in education offering classes in theology from a gay perspective.  The University of Massachusetts-Boston is teaching a course in political theory with the expressed aim of denaturalizing heterosexuality, among its other stated goals. The class fulfills a mandatory diversity requirement at the school.

The College Fix reported Wednesday that the advanced political science course, “Queer Political Theory,” according to an online description in the 2017-18 undergraduate catalog, says that its “primary aims are the de-naturalization of (hetero)sexuality and (hetero)normative gender categories, identities, and expression.”

The course is taught by Professor C. Heike Schotten, who has authored several related publications, among them Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony; To Exist is to Resist: Palestine and the Question of Queer Theory; Men, Masculinity, and Male Domination: Rethinking Feminist Analyses of Sex Work; Homonationalism: From Critique to Diagnosis, or, We Are All Homonational Now; and Nietzsche and Emancipatory Politics: Queer Theory as Anti-Morality.

“Queer Political Theory” is reportedly one of ten courses offered at the college that are with a focus on queer theory.

Author and scholar Nancy Pearcey, whom The Christian Post interviewed earlier this year about her book Love Thy Body First, noted in a Wednesday email to The Christian Post that for a class to aim to “denaturalize” heterosexuality it means it claims no natural basis exists for heterosexuality.

“Yet it is a biological fact that humans are a sexually reproducing species. Clearly there is a biological basis for male-female sexuality. Why would anyone deny such an obvious fact of nature?” she continued.

“The logic is that once you accept that opposite-sex sexuality is natural, the implication is that same-sex sexuality is unnatural. Queer theory wants to avoid that conclusion, so it simply denies that any sexual norms or behaviors are natural. All are social constructions — essentially ideas that humans invent to make sense of their experience.”

A participant holds a rainbow colored placard during Delhi queer pride parade, an event promoting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights, in New Delhi, India, November 30, 2014. Hundreds of participants on Sunday took part in a parade demanding freedom and safety of their community, according to a media release.

Such a perspective constitutes a low, disrespectful view of the body, she maintained. “Courses in queer theory are teaching young people that their identity is not defined by their body but only by their feelings and desires; that we may use our bodies in ways that contradict our biological structure. It teaches them to disdain nature and demean their own bodies,” Pearcey said.

Students at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo are now able to minor in Queer Studies, which was launched in October. Those who minor will “learn how constructions, experiences and expressions of sexuality – including the invention of homo/heterosexuality and ab/normality, intimacy, kinship networks and embodiment – change over time and are lived in relation to interlocking systems of race, ethnicity, religion, class, nation, age, dis/ability and gender,” according to the school’s website.

One of the most competitive and elite liberal arts colleges in America will be offering a class called “Queering the Bible,” according to its course catalog for the upcoming fall semester. Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, which consistently receives top rankings across many indicators of excellence, will offer a course surveying “queer and trans* readings of biblical texts” while employing “queer and trans* theoretical approaches.”

“[T]his class destabilizes long held assumptions about what the bible—and religion—says about gender and sexuality.”

At Swathmore College students can take “Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology” and “Queering the Bible,” he explained. Wellesley College reportedly offers a course called “Rainbow Cowboys (and Girls): Gender, Race, Class and Sexuality in Westerns.” “Contemporary In(queer)ies” is an available course at the University of Alabama.

The “Queering the Bible” class is scheduled to start in the fall and will be taught by an associate professor of religion, Gwynn Kessler, who has a Ph.D. in Rabbinics from Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. In the “Background and Areas of Interest” section of Kessler’s bio, it states that her research “focuses on rabbinic interpretation of Scripture … specifically on rabbinic theology and rabbinic constructions of gender and identity” and that her work is “is situated within, and suffused with, postmodern, feminist, and queer theoretical approaches.”

The UMass-Boston class and the Cal Poly minor are but some of the latest course offerings centered on unusual forms and expressions of human sexuality within academia.

A Massachusetts bishop is urging a professor at a Catholic college to repudiate claims he made years ago when he said Jesus was a “drag king.”The campus of the College of the Holy Cross, based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Professor Tat-Siong Benny Liew, chair of New Testament Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, recently garnered controversy for writing in a scholarly publication years ago that Jesus was a “drag king.

The Most Rev. Robert J. McManus, bishop of the Diocese of Worester, issued a statement Friday explaining that Liew’s past writings were “blasphemous.” “Such positions have no place in the biblical scholarship of a professor who teaches at a Catholic college and who, as such, should be supportive of the college’s Catholic identity and mission,” said Bishop McManus.  “The Church is the steward of her authentic Catholic faith, and Catholic institutions of higher learning have the mission to teach the normative faith of the Church in communion with the Church’s authentic Magisterium.”

McManus went on to state that the college must “ask professor Liew if he rejects the positions he penned some 10 years ago or if he supports and defends those positions today.”

“If he disavows them, then he must state so publicly, so as not to create confusion about the nature of Christ,” continued McManus.

“If he does not, then it is my duty as the Bishop of Worcester to clearly state that such teaching is a danger to the integrity of the Catholic faith and, in prudence, warn the Catholic faithful committed to my pastoral care that such unorthodox teaching has no place in a Catholic college whose mission is to promote and cultivate the Catholic intellectual tradition.”

Holy Cross’ independent journal The Fenwick Review published a story last month noting the controversial theological views Liew espoused.

This includes arguing that the Gospel of John showed Jesus having “queer desires” and involved in “cross-dressing” and “gender indeterminacy.”

TFP Student Action, a project of the organization the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, Property, launched a petition in response to the revelations calling on the college to remove Liew from his position and to issue a formal apology.

“With all my heart and soul, I oppose Liew’s attempt to smear and defame the holy reputation of Our Lord and His Apostles,” read the TFP Action petition, which as of Tuesday has over 15,000 signatures.

“When will Holy Cross apologize for the spiritual harm caused by Liew’s blasphemy and correct this scandal?”

The “Queen James Bible”, boasted as being the first in the world “gay Bible.”

Emir Caner, president of Truett-McConnell University, a Baptist school in Cleveland, Georgia, said of the course on the Todd Starnes radio show: “If there were a list entitled, ‘Best Snowflake Colleges in America,’ I am quite certain that Swarthmore College would be near the top of the list.”

“Keep in mind, this is an institution of higher learning that has produced such ‘accomplished’ politicians as failed presidential candidate Michael Dukakis,” he added.

“While I am not surprised that lost people would so prostitute Scripture, perhaps there is a rainbow at the end of the storm when the student comes across John 3:16 and recognizes God’s unconditional love for them through Jesus Christ,” Caner said. “Perhaps such an open-minded student will recognize the conviction of the Holy Spirit over the noise of liberal indoctrination, bow their knee to the One True Living God and be transformed.”

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, noted that in suggesting that God is “queer” Swarthmore was engaging in “modern day idolatry.”

“When you read the Bible you will discover that God reserved His harshest condemnation for individuals and nations that practiced idolatry — creating an imaginary god who conformed to a culture’s immorality,” Jeffress told the Todd Starnes Radio Show.

Swarthmore reportedly did not return Starnes’ calls seeking comment, including inquiries about whether they would also offer a class called “Queering the Koran” or “Queering Muhammad.”

“Something tells me they won’t be respond[ing] to that query either,” Starnes commented in a Fox News column last week.

Swarthmore College is a private institution located just outside of Philadelphia and was founded by Quakers in 1864. Tuition and fees are $50,822 per year and only 13 percent of applicants are accepted, according to U.S. News and World Report.