Hello and welcome to Queer is Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world

and throughout time. I'm Irene. I'm Alice and I'm Jasmine. And today we're going to be talking

about Taurushan, a Taoist god devoted to same-sex love.

Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge the Bunmorang Bonarong people of the Koolin Nation on whose land we record our podcast.

We pay respects to their elders, past and present.

They are the custodians of an oral tradition far older than this podcast.

I have a few content warnings for this episode.

It contains discussions

of homophobia in legal and political systems, as well as cultural homophobia more broadly.

It also contains homophobia in quotations discussing the morality or lack of morality of

gay sex. There's some mentions of relationships between

adolescent boys and adult men. It also contains mentions of infanticide. And there's a brief mention

of execution in a folk story. If you don't want to hear any of those things, that's okay. Skip this

episode. My interest in this episode actually began in Taiwan, where there is currently the only temple dedicated to

this god. The temple, which is in Shinbei, which is like the sort of extended Taipei

region, was founded in 2007 and houses two main gods. That's so recent. Yeah, it's super

recent. It's super recent. I just like, this is a really silly comment, but you don't think of people like building temples. You just kind of think of temples is just like being there. I know that's a really silly comment, but I just feel like religious buildings. I'm just like, yeah, they're just there. They're just always there. I mean, I think that it makes sense that you say that. Because, like, in the context of Catholicism, the religion that we grew up with, it's been declining in Australia for years. There's no reason to build new Catholic churches. Yeah, yeah. And obviously, you'd just see so many old, like, shrines and temples and churches if you go, like, anywhere. So you're just like, yeah, that's an old thing. Yeah, I guess like, if I think of new temples being built, I think of like the Mormons. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was like, there are new churches built often by like evangelical Christian groups and that kind of thing. Yeah. Because that's a type of Christianity that's growing, I guess. Yeah.

But apparently also.

Taoism. Yeah. Also, Taoism. Yeah. Okay. So it's got two gods. What are the two gods?

Yeah, it's got two gods. The first one you don't really need to remember the name of. They are

the founder of the temple and the originator of all things, apparently. They occupy a whole

spiritual, philosophical discourse that we're not going to get into. Okay, so we don't worry about

...