Queer desires and emotional regimes in Swedish Free-Church contexts

ABSTRACT This article is based on in-depth interviews with 29 Christian LGBTQ individuals and examines queer desires and feelings in Swedish Free-Church contexts. My point of departure is to analyze how the participants relate to religion and religious practices in connection with the tension that exists between their own emotions and desires and the emotional regime of the free churches to which they belong. The empirical data were interpreted through the theoretical concepts of emotional regimes, emotive dissonance, queerness and heteronormativity. The results show that to experience queer emotions and desires within a free-church community means to constantly be exposed to a hierarchical heteronormativity. Resisting and deviating from the Church's collective emotional regime always involves some form of sanction. Paradoxically, several interviewees testify how an exploration of queer relationships, sexualities and identities could be enabled just because of the heteronormative context.