Homodoxy is a traditional press that publishes literary and theological gay/queer/trans texts.
Its books are unburdened by imprimaturs, tenure committees, and heterosexist ideas of decency and respectability.
An outgrowth of publisher Samuel Ernest’s own eclectically Christian roots and gay desires, Homodoxy is open to writers from any faith or religion, and those whose encounters with Spirit are otherwise unclassifiable.
Homodoxy publishes books worth burning.
Catalogue
Homodoxy features the best new and old LGBTQ literary and theological writing in all forms.
Its catalogue includes new writing, a series of reprints, and a series of short books on one topic.
To get sucked into the whirlwind of Homodoxy’s editorial vision—the spirit of the press—go here.
Books Reprinted in Contemporary Context (BRICC)
- A BRICC is foundational and projectile.
- Includes out-of-print books, collections of previously uncollected writings by important gay/queer voices, and translations, each with a new introduction by a contemporary writer or scholar.
- Similar to the New York Review of Books’ Classics series and McNally Editions.
Unitudes
- A unitude is an exercise of complexity in simplicity and simplicity in complexity.
- For reflections on a big theme important to an author’s life and work. Not comprehensive introductions, but songs, prayers, meditations, arguments that unfold the theme’s complexities.
- Topics could include ministry, prayer, promiscuity, celibacy, gender, salvation, writing, play, history, creation, race, liberation, death, work, etc.
- A series writers who wish to develop something specifically for Homodoxy.
- Similar to Duke’s Practices, Atlantic Editions, and Biblioasis’s Field Notes.
The Rearview
A monthly newsletter for views, reviews, and interviews by the press’s publisher and friends. Subscribers can expect one piece per month delivered to their inbox. Visit here.
History and Present
The Press’s Beginning
In 2020, homodoxy.com went live as a website to share the queer theological writing of Samuel Ernest, its founder. He was then a doctoral student in religious studies at Yale University.
As Sam researched his dissertation on the development of gay theology in the United States and HIV/AIDS, he continued to encounter gays and lesbians with deeply Christian (often Roman Catholic) backgrounds, sensibilities, and, sometimes, intentions who moved into gay neighborhoods and started new presses to publish the work they believed was needed to free their people and build a more beautiful, gay, and equitable world. These women and men played crucial roles in building the gay world and gay press.
Sex and spirit mingled in gay and lesbian liberation-era publications and publishers like Vector, WomanSpirit, and Gay Sunshine Press. An article on Jesus and sexuality would share the page with an advertisement for a local bathhouse. Writers in these venues grappled with scripture and history, but they did not apologize or ask permission from religious authorities to do the work they needed to do.
As Sam progressed through his doctoral studies and surveyed the publishing and academic landscape, he saw a paucity of queer theological imagination and risk-taking. He realized that this lack is not due to insufficient writers, theologians, scholars, and readers; it is due to a lack of institutions built to bring LGBTQ people of faith together as a readership and community.
There is a massive need for a publishing company that continues the tradition of gay and lesbian liberation-era publishing on spirituality and sexuality while speaking from and within our contemporary moment.
There is a massive need for publishers and editors who understand the complexities of LGBTQ lives, desires, faiths, and relationships—publishers and editors with a vision for gay/queer/trans spirituality.
Homodoxy is also inspired by the history and fervor of evangelical publishing and pietist colportage—the distribution of tracts, Bibles, and books as a priestly vocation.
Drawing on the Swedish pietist heritage of his pastor mother and the initial know-how he gained from observing his father’s career in Christian publishing, Sam determined to publish some books.
The First Book
Sam published a few essays on Homodoxy from 2020 to 2022. While preparing a PDF for what he intended to be his manifesto for queer theology, he began to realize he was making a book.
So, Sam made a book. Looking back at his time in graduate school at Yale University and Yale Divinity School, he selected a batch of essays that reflected the development of his thinking about queerness, being a gay man, and Christian faith. The essays were dispatches from his course work, so he titled the book Coarse Work: Essays in Theology and Gay Life. Its first printing of 200 copies was published in 2023, funded by a Kickstarter.
The first run sold out, in part thanks to good people of Possible Futures in New Haven, our local indie bookstore, which started carrying Coarse Work. A second printing with updated font and branding was printed in April 2026. You can purchase it here!
Some Matters of Community, Autonomy, and Self-Determination
Homodoxy is being built during a time of fascism, anti-trans and anti-Black violence, manufactured scarcities of vital resources, genocide, censorship, the normalization of mass surveillance, propaganda, cowardice, and so much courage.
The press’s tagline, books worth burning, reflects a commitment to produce books that are courageous, motivated not to build profit but to preserve and disseminate words, lives, and loves that are under threat in our time. Our books are not all overtly political in their conception and execution, but each participates in its own way in that mission.
Homodoxy is a press that loves trans people, be they transgender, transsexual, binary, nonbinary, etc. It recognizes in gay and trans people a remarkable stewardship of forms of life and writing from previous eras that feed creative lives and communities today.
Homodoxy is a signatory of Publishers for Palestine’s Statement of Solidarity. The press proudly commits to following principles set out by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)—principles based in international law and resisting the normalization of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. More about PACBI may be found here.
We are inspired by the work of magazines like Jewish Currents and presses like LittlePuss, whose editorial leadership create ways to form community around the texts they publish. Their deep love for thought and language is matched by deep love for people in the complexity of their histories and desires.