MIA HAY COMIC

Mia Hay, an artist, poet, and undergraduate student in Jewish Studies at UT Austin, reflects on two comics she created that revisit biblical “clobber passages” in the light of their own identity—Queer, young, Texan—and how they believe these comics provide important viewpoints for other young people.

These comics aim to reinterpret clobber passages in a way that is accessible to adolescents. Clobber passages are verses from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that are commonly used to victimize and attack

LGBTQ+ people. While a vast amount of scholarship has been done on these verses, academic work rarely exists in a format that is accessible to young people. My idea for this project, which I pursued while in the Gilda Slifka Internship Program at the HadassahBrandeis Institute in summer 2022, originated in my own experiences as a young, Queer person growing up in rural East Texas. I intended to create a guide for Queer kids who find themselves defending their identities against a conservative religious offense, much like I did when I was younger. From there, I remembered how important graphic novels were to me at that age, and my goal with this project evolved into what we see today—a compilation of biblical interpretation and historiography into two comics focused on two distinct themes. In the time that I had, I introduced, discussed, and offered interpretive options for the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative and Biblical Law using traditional academic research methods. The comic on the opposite page focuses on Biblical Law.