ABSTRACT
The scandals of particularity and of the cross tripped many up and on the surface what Paul called "the crucified Christ" did seem to indicate what the Oxford English Dictionary names a scandal: a grossly discreditable circumstance. Nearly a century later, it is still clear that Gladys Bentley wields scandalous creativity and improvisation like she wields song, able to perform across a wide range. Scandal as a queer virtue is concerned with exposing norms that harm souls, dull embodied creativity, and kill sex outside of very narrow margins, all of which, the people believe, harm human capacities for love. It may be that because improvisation in public life is so much a part of queer existence through the centuries, it is part of the scandal of queer sex that it reveals good sex and sexy goods where prevailing norms say there should be none.
