Lavender Mafia

This week Jess & Jack have a conversation about queer imagination. Because of LGBTQ people’s experiences of marginalization and oppression, we tend to have better-developed abilities to envision a world better than this one. We had to, to find hope where it seemed there was none. Many of us came from conservative Christian backgrounds that imparted to us impoverished imaginations. Also: Jack s...

This week Jess & Jack tackle the subject of sexual health. We aren’t medical professionals (although Jess is a nurse-in-law), but we give you (and each other) the queer sex ed class we never got in high school. We talk HIV, and Jacks simps for PreP. Because good sexual health also includes good mental health, we also talk about rooting out bad ideas about sex we inherited from our faiths and f...

This week Jess & Jack talk about desire. Many of us—especially those of us who are LGBTQ—grew up in religious contexts in which desire was treated as irrelevant, selfish, or evil. A common refrain was: “Don’t say you don’t want to be a missionary to Africa; God will send you there,” as well as a particular interpretation of “The heart is deceitful above all things.” We talk about how to re-thi...

This week on After Dark, Jess & Jack talk about sex and disability. Jack talks about dating as a queer disabled man in LA, and Jess shares her experiences as the wife of a disabled woman. They talk about common obstacles that disability introduces, including fatigue, pain, decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, and how to work with them to have a thriving sex life. Check out Roman, Hims, or L...

This week Jess & Jack have a discussion about marriage: our own experiences in gay and straight marriages, expectations vs. reality, what it means to us that gay marriage is legal, and interpreting gay marriage as an image of the love of Christ. Jack argues that sometimes loving your neighbor as yourself means divorcing them, and Jess tells the story of the time she and her girlfriend went to...

This week on After Dark, Jess and Jack talk about tops and bottoms. We debunk common myths and stereotypes, talk about the differences between the ways queer men and queer women use the terms, and the relationships between top/bottom and dominant/submissive and masculine/feminine. Jack talks about why he wants you to be vers (and it’s not for the reason you think), and we give some tips (just the...

In this week’s episode, hosts Jess and Jack talk about gender: our own gender journeys as trans/non-binary and genderqueer persons, how Christianity hindered and helped our gender journeys, and insisting that we’re more when majority culture gender police tell us we’re less. Oh, and who pays for dinner after we abolish the gender binary. In our segment “Margins Corner,” we talk about how we’re edu...

Lavender Mafia After Dark is our series of short-form, sex-positive, adult-themed episodes. Put the kids, pups, and subs to bed; After Dark isn’t for sensitive ears. This week on After Dark, Jess and Jack bond over the subject of BDSM: bondage, domination/submission, and sadism/masochism. We talk about the importance of consent, sex as a roller coaster, our own dom/sub preferences, and how to love...

In this episode, hosts Jess Grace Garcia and Jack Bates have a conversation about family: what it meant to us before we came out, how coming out changed our relationships to our families of origin, and how our queerness led each of us to find family in unexpected places. Follow us @lavmafia on instagram and twitter

Lavender Mafia After Dark is the series of short-form, sex-positive, adult-themed Lavender Mafia episodes. Put the kids, pups, and subs to bed; After Dark isn’t for sensitive ears. And our moms: please don’t listen to this. In this first episode, hosts Jess Grace Garcia and Jack Bates have a conversation about our “Best & Worst” sexual encounters. Jack discovers the life-changing magic of leav...

In the pilot episode of Lavender Mafia, hosts Jess Grace Garcia and Jack Bates have a conversation about what it means to us to be both queer and Christian, exploring the destructive and constructive effects of Christianity and queerness coming into contact with each other in our lives. In our segment “We Come…To Worship!” we talk about Christian music divas and practice queering a song that wasn’...

Hey! Here's a short introduction to who we are, what we're about and why we think there should be one more podcast in the world! Follow us on instagram and twitter at @lavmafia to Be fierce. Keep the faith. And DON'T fuck it up!