Gay Perspective
Things our [homo]sexuality tells us about the nature of God and the Universe
Toby Johnson
A White Crane Book
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright © 2003, 2008 by Toby Johnson.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief citation or review, without the written permission of White Crane Institute.
White Crane Institute is a 501(c)(3) educational corporation, committed to the certainty that gay consciousness plays a special and important role in the evolution of life on Earth.
White Crane Institute publishes White Crane, the Journal of Gay Wisdom & Culture.
Your contributions and support are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
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www.gaywisdom.org editor@gaywisdom.org
Cover
photos, digital montage and design by Peter Grahame in collaboration
with Toby Johnson.
Grahame's book, Contemplations of the
Heart, A Book of Male Spirit, Photography, Digital Imaging and Text,
can be previewed at www.ironic-horse.com.
Peter and his life partner, Henry Seale, own and operate Ironic Horse Studio in Albuquerque, NM.
Published as a trade paperback by White Crane Books, an imprint of Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.
www.lethepressbooks.com
www.whitecranebooks.org
Originally published by Alyson Books, 2003
Revised edition, October 2008
The author is especially grateful to Nick Street for his editing of the original edition of this book.
ISBN 1-59021-015-8 ISBN-13 978-1-59021-015-4
________________________________________
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Edwin Clark.
Gay perspective : things our homosexuality tells us about the nature of God
and the universe / Toby Johnson. — Rev. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59021-015-4
ISBN-10: 1-59021-015-8
1. Homosexuality—Religious aspects. I. Title.
BL65.H64J63 2008
200.86'64—dc22
2008038289
The White Crane Spirituality Series
White Crane Institute is committed to the certainty that Gay consciousness plays a unique and important role in the evolution of life on Earth. Healthy spirituality entails a healthy sexuality and White Crane Books explore aspects of individual sexual life as well as the positive sexual attitudes and mores of the gay community. Like for all humans, our sexuality has led us back to our spiritual selves and history. Same sex people have, traditionally, been the priests and spiritual guides of the community. White Crane is proud to present these valuable treasures through our Gay Spirituality Series. Our goal is to provide readers with fine books of insight, discernment and spiritual discovery.
More importantly, we seek to re-contextualize spirituality in our everyday lives. We define "spirituality" in the broadest possible terms as "that which provides you a deeper more authentic relationship with yourself, your community and the world at large." The White Crane Spirituality Series was established to keep classics of gay spirituality in print utilizing state-of-the-art printing and publishing technology.
The Myth of the Great Secret: A Search for Spiritual Meaning in the Face of Emptiness
In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld: A Mystical Journey
Plague: A Novel About Healing
Secret Matter
Getting Life in Perspective
The Myth of the Great Secret (Revised Edition): An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
(with Walter L. Williams)
Two Spirits: A Story of Life Among the Navajo
(co-editor with Steve Berman)
Charmed
Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling
Table of Contents
The White Crane Spirituality Series
Preface to the Revised Edition
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
How Our Homosexuality Tells Us Things
Chapter 3:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About Life
Chapter 4:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About Sex
Chapter 5:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About Religion
Chapter 6:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About Church
Chapter 7:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About God
Chapter 8:
More Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About God
Chapter 9:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About the World
Conclusion:
Live As Though The Day Were Here
Preface to the Revised Edition
I have always wondered about a certain question here—do we seek social change and spiritual serenity because we are gay, or are we gay because we seek social and spiritual change? —Paul Reed, Serenity, p. 13
A new religion is being born in our time. The development of "gay identity" and "gay consciousness" is an important facet in this sea-change in consciousness. That is the subject of this book.
As a result of scientific method, human beings' relationship to "Truth" has changed. In the last hundred some years, the Universe has been discovered. We now know that space stretches out nearly a hundred billion light years all around us, started by a Big Bang some14 billion years ago. And we now know that in the same way it stretches up and out enormous distances, so it goes down and in infinitesimally at least as far. And the astrophysicists are discovering that what they see is only a fraction of what's out there; 97% of the cosmos is dark and invisible. This universe is literally bigger, grander and more mysterious—queerer—in scope and nature than any of the gods ever worshipped on Earth.
In addition to the physical universe, we've discovered the mental universe inside each and every person. And we've been compelled to recognize the huge variety of cultures and beliefs that have been shaped by the evolution of life around the world.
Globalization, population pressures, planetary ecological imperatives, bio-molecular engineering, nanotech, cybernetics, I.T. and A.I. technology—with the inevitable "wet-wire" merging genetically redesigned humans and computers into a literal world wide web of consciousness—in a very real way, human nature is changing out from under us.
Explaining these things—where life comes from, where it's going, who controls it all, what it's for, why we're here—used to be the province of religion. Now we see all those explanations pale in comparison to the "reality" of the cosmos.
The struggle of this "new religion" to be born shows up as social change, political strife and war. The Islamist-motivated terrorist war the world is now engaged in is a direct result of the clash between the modern consciousness and the traditional religions of the Middle East. Much of the political conflict at home arises similarly from a clash between modernity and old-time religion and "family values."
So it is not surprising that the rise of what's come to be called—for better or worse—"gay consciousness" is part of the birth of this new religion, both contributing to the strife with the traditional religions and, along with other manifestations of modern thinking, pointing the way to a higher, more inclusive understanding of the spiritual nature of consciousness.
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Under the tutelage of renowned scholar of religion and mythology Joseph Campbell, I learned that to make sense of the variety of the contradictory and often mutually exclusive religious and mythological systems around the world, you had to rise to a higher perspective from which you could see that all the different religions and philosophical world views were just hints and metaphors for an even deeper, higher, more inclusive reality that necessarily transcends them all.
Under the tutelage of Don Clark and the therapists and community organizers who were creating "Gay-oriented Psychotherapy," during the heyday of gay consciousness in the 1970s, I learned that being gay could be understood as a positive personality trait that bestowed certain talents and offered a wide variety of opportunities for a good life and idealistic contribution to human society.
I was a young idealist and activist, not long out of seminary, now living in the gay mecca of San Francisco. I worked as a peer counselor and gay therapist and later as editorial assistant with Toby Marotta on his history and analysis of the homosexual rights movements.
I discovered gay consciousness positively and wholesomely explained sexual and emotional feelings that were otherwise ignored or derided by mainstream culture. I discovered that this liberated gay consciousness granted freedom from rigid gender roles and offered all sorts of opportunities for sexual adventuring and passionate relationship development. I discovered that this consciousness offered a higher perspective on the meaning of life, offered a morality based in interpersonal respect, fraternity and community—and forced a searching and fearless reassessment of my religious upbringing.
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Remember the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. Each man had an idea about what he was experiencing based on which part of the creature he was touching, but none of them was "right," in the sense of being able to put all the experiences together, then rise above them and "see" with a more inclusive, transcendent sense that it was an elephant they were all struggling to explain.
Religion is like that. Every myth is true—but , therefore, necessarily inadequate—insofar as it is a metaphor for some transcendent truth that can only be known through hints and comparisons because we simply don't possess the transcendent perspective or that higher sense with which to perceive it.
To use the popular notions of afterlife as an example: If the "Truth" is like the elephant, then you'd need to come up with a concept of what happens after death that includes: a one-time chance at an everlasting heaven or hell, reincarnation in an endless series of lifetimes with different bodies and personalities and simple extinction—all at the same time.
The insight I had while reading Campbell's books and later listening to him lecture was that to make sense of religion you had to understand it from outside and over and above and that this understanding of all religions from such a higher perspective itself generates a myth, a way of conceiving the world. But it is a myth, a metaphor, that makes sense according to the modern view of reality. It's a metaphor for how consciousness gives itself clues; a metaphor that points to something important and wonderful about what it is to be human. It's a meta-myth, a myth about the nature of myth. This is the myth that can satisfy us today. It makes sense for us to understand that religion is about the nature of mind, not science or history.
Modernization, scientific discovery, psychological—and psycho-sexual—sophistication and globalization are forcing all people to question their inherited religious explanations of the world. We are all like the blind men contesting with one another about what we think is true and realizing we need a higher sense to be able to actually understand it.
Deconstructing religion, conceiving the meta-myth transcends the contest and begins to generate the higher sense ability, which is what is called in traditional terms "Enlightenment" and which may be the next step in evolution for all human beings—that is, empathy and compassion for each other, a direct sense of interconnectedness.
Campbell concluded his most important book The Hero with a Thousand Faces with the idea that because the old religions don't make sense anymore according to the modern view of reality they are losing the power to convey meaning and wonder. Thus the "modern hero-task" must be to bring about the new religious consciousness.
For our ancestors, the worlds envisioned by their myths were obvious. The great bear was a god; the corn maiden was a goddess; the Sun was God; rulers were tyrants and meted out cruel punishments for minor infractions; human sacrifice made sense. There was no conflict between observation and belief. The myth was the way to make sense of what was observed.
Today many religious world views disagree with observation. The major religion of the United States, Biblical-based Christianity, for instance, denies the fundamental discovery of science, in contradiction to evidence, that life evolved on Earth over a vast period of time. That's got it backward. The popular myth ought to incorporate evolution and give it spiritual meaning, not deny it. How can a religion give guidance when it isn't in touch with reality?
For a myth/worldview to "work," it needs to place human experience in a larger context. That larger context then should provide meaning and support in living life. And, maybe even more importantly, it should provide motivation for good living. The myth you live by ought to make you naturally behave well; morality should be automatic.
Down through time and changing with the times, the central imagery of myth and religion has been focused on that which inspires wonder and awe about the issues of survival and social maintenance. These place life in a larger context and provide motivation for living harmoniously with others. They suggest there is something important people should know and need their myths to tell them. Wonder—and the sense of mystery—inspire curiosity, push open the mind and propel the evolution of consciousness.
To primitive humans what was wonderful was first the animal world and then the plant world as hunting and then agriculture were the center of life and main concern for survival; the gods were animal spirits and then plant spirits. Appealing to, and ritually imitating, these spirits assured survival, inspired gratitude and awe at the generosity and fecundity of the world and gave meaning and purpose to life.
As these were brought under control and became routine aspects of daily living, the sense of wonder shifted to the skies; the gods were Sun and Moon and the astrological forces that seemed to influence people's lives. The religions involved calendars and celebration of the cycles of time.
The great religions that evolved two millennia ago again shifted the focus, this time to the moral and mental realms; the personal God of the Religions of the Book arose with the development of social organization, self-awareness and the beginnings of respect for individuals. These religions were (and still are) about obedience to rules and belief in revealed truths.
Today another such shift is happening. The focal point of human wonder has turned to human consciousness itself. This is what we need to know about if we are to survive as a species. Scientific discovery, psychological sophistication and ecological awareness move the focus away from the anthropomorphic personal God outside, projected into external reality enforcing rules and requiring worship, toward the nature of consciousness itself found deep within the individual human person functioning within the complex ecological web of life on the planet. Morality no longer comes from obedience to The Law, but from awareness of others' personal dignity and the obvious imperatives of ecological and interpersonal cooperation. When you empathize with others you automatically can't steal, lie or kill because you'll hurt another person's feelings and you'll feel their feelings as your own.
This sounds like the teaching of Jesus two thousand years, doesn't it? This "new religion" is not a rejection of the past, but a fulfillment.
What exemplifies this shift in consciousness—and works to bring it about—is the understanding of the nature of myth as metaphor about consciousness, the meta-myth of understanding the religions of old as clues to the deeper nature of universal consciousness. This same fascination with consciousness shows up in theoretical physics in quantum theory and the concern with the mind's role in the unfolding of events.
Thus according to Campbell the modern hero-task is to come to terms with and reform society in the image of the "inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine essence that is the life in all of us." (Hero, p. 391) That is what the "god" of the new religion is: Life.
The word "spirit" means breath, that is, Life, consciousness. And from the higher perspective we can now see that this is what the world saviors of old were also talking about. And what cosmic evolution also seems to be about: the Universe becoming alive. In a very real way, the purpose of the Universe can be seen to be the conversion of hydrogen atoms into consciousness and beyond...
We haven't evolved enough yet to even guess what that "beyond" might be.
This is the new religion that we all ought to be striving to believe, one that includes all the stories of the past by making all of them myths. The "new religion" has to harmonize scientific discovery with age-old wisdom about how to live a rich and good life, transcending all the religions of the past but including them as wonderful art forms—understanding all of it as clues to the nature of consciousness.
Fulfilling one of the teaching of Buddha, in this new religion, we're all on our own. We each have to be creating our own religions and can't depend on somebody else to save us. That is to say, we have to follow our own personal spiritual path.
Indeed, this "new religion" is arising, at least within American culture, under the rubric spirituality. "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual" means "I don't believe in any of the details of any specific religion or belong to any institution, but I am concerned about the greater reality of who and what I am as a conscious entity in this huge phenomenon that scientific observation is showing us and I am concerned about how to live correctly in light of that greater reality."
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The first major insight I want to share in this book then is the meta-myth that religion has to be transcended and understood from outside and over and above. The second insight is that being gay offers, and maybe forces, just such a perspective on life and on religion from outside and over and above. That is to say that gay people are naturals for understanding the "new religion" that is evolving in consciousness as human beings cope with modernization, discovery and the consciousness of consciousness.
Not all homosexuals, of course, care about the meta-myth or about transforming religion. Some people who behave homosexually may not even be idealistic or nice people or concerned about greater truth. But what is so is that people who are concerned about greater truth and what's called their relationship with God who are homosexual can find in their homosexuality clues and assistance in rising to the meta-myth and discovering "higher truth."
This is not about how all, or even some, of us homosexuals are, but about how we could be. This is a vision of gay identity and karmic fraternity/community that potentially motivates us for good behavior and sets us up for success and happiness. What I am presenting in this book is a "myth" about gay consciousness, but one that is positive and uplifting, encouraging gay sanctity, in contradistinction to traditional myths about homosexuality that have been negative and destructive, ruling out even the idea of something like "gay sanctity."
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The focus of "spirituality" is the interior life, that is, consciousness's thinking about itself, explaining itself to itself, explaining its choices and motivations and self-awareness.
All people have an interior life. Each person has his or her own interior life and can have very little, if any, experience of anybody else's interior life. Couples who live together for many years begin to share a kind of "telepathy" and know what each other is likely to be thinking, but even with this intimacy, they cannot see through each other's eyes or hear what the other is saying to themselves inside their head.
In the metaphor of British philosopher of consciousness Douglas Harding, each of us experiences that we're different from everybody else around us. Whereas everybody else has a head on top of their shoulders, we have, instead, a world.
We talk to ourselves. We repeat things people have said to us, maybe especially hurtful things. We recite lines of poetry or sacred scripture. We remember movies, novels and stories. We carry on important discussions about choices we should make, feelings we should or shouldn't have, things we hope for in the future, doubts we have about ourselves, fears we suffer, goals and ideals we cherish—all this goes on in our heads and nobody else is listening or can listen.This is our interior life. That we have such an interior life and that it matters what's going on inside our heads is the focus of spirituality. "Spirit," as we just observed, means life and consciousness.
Spirituality is how we struggle to communicate with other people about what's going on in our minds and, especially, how we share with others the good thoughts that have helped us transform our own interior life and made us happy and productive.
In Hindu thought there are five yogas, that is, systems of spiritual practice. Raja yoga is concerned with meditation, insight, philosophies and practices of the mind. Hatha yoga—what we're most familiar with in the West as "yoga"—is concerned with physical exercise and stretching, flow of energies in the body, breathing practices, etc.. Karma yoga is concerned with doing good works, being compassionate, being conscientious about the effects of one's behavior in the larger environment. Bhakti yoga is concerned with devotional, affective feelings for God and spiritual practices that stir the emotions. Tantra yoga is concerned with spiritualizing sexual drive and finding holiness in violating/transcending cultural rules.The five yogas aren't contradictory, though different people tend to specialize in one or another.
Yoga and spirituality mean the same thing.
Spirituality is awareness of the myths and metaphors, symbols and stories that we tell ourselves as we mull over our self-awareness. Spirituality refers to how we explain ourselves to ourselves. As the evolving "new religion," it should encourage us to live well and behave harmoniously with others in ways that foster continued evolution in consciousness so that we increase the happiness of all people and—figuratively and literally—create heaven on earth. That's what evolution should be bringing us to. And now that we human beings have become conscious of evolution, we have the power and responsibility to take charge and guide its direction toward that "heaven" or, to use a term coined by discreetly gay Jungian wiseman Robert A. Johnson, that "Golden World" hinted at in the myths.
Joseph Campbell liked to tell a tale about searching for the Golden World from the medieval Arthurian legends which he said revealed the essence of Western consciousness. He told how the Grail appeared to the Knights of the Round Table in a glorious apparition that signified the goal of the spiritual quest. When it disappeared the Knights vowed to take on themselves the obligation of this quest for the good of all. And they agreed that it would be unseemly to follow in another's footsteps; each should begin in that place in the forest that was darkest and most alone and pursue his path on his own.
This commitment to not follow in the path of another is very different from the traditions in Islam and the Asian religions of imitation of a Master or guru. This was a parallel step in that evolution of consciousness that was occurring in the West around the same time as the development of romantic love.
The obligation is to be true to yourself, to be personally responsible, to choose your behavior (and your partner) out of good sense, accurate knowledge and good will, not obedience to parents, tribal taboos or cultural prejudices. Conscience is how we modern Westerners determine what God wants us to do. We choose our own spiritual paths.
Recognizing your own real feelings and choosing to be gay, because it is true, represents a flowering in the evolution of consciousness of this commitment to psychological honesty and self-determination.
Spirituality is about finding one's personal path to integration and wholeness. It is not about believing in specific doctrines or following a religion (though, of course, belief in doctrine and entertaining certain religious metaphors in one's mind might be part of one's personal path). Spirituality is not religion. It's not about what's revealed or how everybody should behave or believe. It's about how you should believe and behave and experience having a reason to be alive and to participate and contribute positively, lovingly in society—all in ways that makes sense to you in today's world.
With rigorous and brilliant explication, based in the philosophy of his own teacher Bernard Lonergan, S.J., gay spiritual writer Daniel Helminiak shows how "spirituality" is different from "religion." Calling for four transcendental precepts—Be open-minded, Be questioning, Be honest and Be good-willed—he derives a cross-cultural, universally valid "generic spirituality," inclusive of all views theist and nontheist, by delineating the human spirit and its unfolding psychologically. The very title of one of his several books on this subject points to the distinction (and to how religion should evolve): Meditation Without Myth: What I Wish They'd Taught Me in Church about Prayer, Meditation, and the Quest for Peace. Helminiak argues that spiritual growth (i.e., "following your path") is tantamount to on-going personal integration; for a gay person, psychological-spiritual integration of homosexuality sets the ideal, if not always attainable, goal for personal growth.
The aim of so-called "gay spirituality," then, is to derive a sense of the meaning of life, a motive for good behavior and an explanation for our place in the universe that flows directly from and is consistent with our homosexual experience.
"Spirituality" is always about your own unique path. There's no such thing as "everybody spirituality," there's only your spirituality. And your spirituality has to make sense of the experiences you are having. If you're gay—or homosexual—that is, if you experience sexual arousal and attraction for other people of your own sex, then this very important psychological reality has to be explained by your spiritual vision of your life.
For a person who experiences homosexual attractions as a dominant feature in their life, whether they identify as "gay," "queer," "LGBT," etc. or not or feel any association with gay community, their spiritual path simply has to include figuring out what this all-affecting psychological reality means to them.
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It shouldn't seem surprising that there'd be gay spiritualities. Spiritualities are systems of symbols, concepts, and practices. Within the Roman Catholic tradition, a variety of spiritualities are spoken of; different people are advised to pursue spiritual paths appropriate to their interests and temperments. There is, for example, Ignatian spirituality (exemplified in the Jesuit Order) based in a military model (St. Ignatius was a soldier before he founded the religious order). There is Franciscan spirituality based in voluntary simplicity, gentleness and participation in nature (St. Francis talked to animals and taught his followers to practice a special form of poverty.)
It makes sense to speak of men's spirituality and women's spirituality. Mainstream men (that is, straight men) are generally concerned about being a good father and provider, an authority figure, a successful competitor, a defender of the homeland. Men's images of the divine are of God the Father, paterfamilias, rule-giver and victor. Men's God manifests in authority and institution. Women experience in their body the monthly cycles of nature; they are concerned about being a good mother, a home builder, a self-sacrificing benefactor, a life-giver. Her images of the divine include Virgin-Mothers full of grace, and, maybe, moon goddesses, certainly the fecundity of the natural world. Women's God manifests in nature.
Of course, the patterns of masculinity and femininity are changing, in part, because of feminism and gay liberation and, in part, because of the rise in awareness of these issues as psychological motivators; becoming aware of them changes them. These are gross generalizations. But men have traditionally been well-ordered, hierarchical, powerful (violent) and non-emotional. Women have been care-giving, egalitarian, submissive and affective. Traditionally, men's and women's spiritualities have encouraged and distinguished these traits as gender-specific, making them self-fulfilling prophecies and dividing lines between the sexes. And polarity becomes duality.
It might seem a little frivolous, but it is certainly meaningful to speak of dog-lovers' spiritualities. The monasteries of old raised dogs; the brandy-bearing St. Bernards are an example. St. Roch is the patron saint of dog-lovers; he was saved from starvation by a dog who befriended him and brought him tablescraps while he hid in a forest, sick with plague. Such a spirituality might offer images of God as the benevolent master or perhaps as the loyal friend, depending on which way you want to parallel the human to dog relationship to that between persons and God. I personally find great meaning in comparing what I imagine is my cat's experience of me with my experience of God, especially when the cat comes to sit with me in meditation; I doubt the cat, beautiful and cuddly as he is, understands who Toby Johnson is anymore than I can understand who "God" is. The animal world really does give us an insight into the possible qualitative degrees of consciousness.
The so-called "family values" are a spirituality offered to the mainstream of human beings who experience attraction and affection for the opposite sex, couple heterosexually, have offspring and raise families. Such "straight spiritualities" highlight the appropriateness and beauty of masculine/feminine complementariness; they honor stability and portray child-rearing as an essential contribution to human society, a raison d'être and a promise of immortality through progeny; they portray sex as a means to that end, not as an end in itself. Such family values emphasize the future and valorize self-sacrifice.
There are many sorts of such "straight spiritualities," just as there are many contrasting "gay spiritualities." Such a gay spirituality, for men, could focus on living in the present moment, honoring incarnation in the flesh, reveling in uniqueness, valuing adventure and ecstasy, finding divinity in sexual consciousness (as an end in itself), valorizing play and artistic creativity, seeking harmony and oneness beyond the polarities. For lesbians, such a spirituality could focus on competence, honesty, emotional openness, solidarity with the oppressed and—sharing with women's spiritualities in general—awareness of natural cycles, interest in lunar imagery and camaraderie with other women.
The so-called "straight spiritualities" and "gay spiritualities" aren't exclusive or at odds with one another, but they do emphasize different qualities and offer different content, appropriate to the different styles of life and experiences different people are having.
The most common spirituality of gays and lesbians, of course, is participation in church, temple, mosque, etc. as a believer in one's religious heritage—either with a mainstream congregation or with a specifically gay/lesbian fellowship, like the Metropolitan Community Church. Their spirituality and sanctity might be motivated by guilt for being homosexual or by a sense of obligation to be better and more devout than normal to make up for not being "normal" (the "best little boy in the world" syndrome). If they are openly gay in their congregations, they may feel they're transforming the Church and demonstrating honesty and integrity. As gay spiritual activist and writer Christian de la Huerta says, "coming out spiritually" is a revolutionary act and a significant developmental stage in personal growth.
What might make a spirituality "gay" is the conviction that the teachings of religion have to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt because, certainly, they are wrong about the blanket condemnation of homosexuality. And also the focus on gay content: praying for a lover, asking God to make you feel more attractive, experiencing orgasm as a kind of prayer of union with the divine or emphasizing the homosexual imagery in the traditions. A gay or lesbian Christian might consider the daring concept that Jesus was gay. A Sufi might practice spinning while meditating on the seemingly homosexual relationship between Jalaluddin Rumi, founder of the "dervish" order, and his teacher Shams. A Jew might find affirmation of same-sex feelings in the Biblical stories of Ruth and Naomi or of David and Jonathan who loved each other with a love surpassing that of women.
Other forms, of course, have arisen with the development of gay and lesbian culture that are more specifically "gay spirituality." The Body Electric, created by past-Jesuit Joseph Kramer, teaches how to enhance and transform sexual arousal into heightened consciousness and perhaps an experience of, literally, seeing God. The Radical Faeries, called into being by gay liberation pioneer Harry Hay, reclaim pagan and Wiccan holidays, harking back to pre-Christian and nature religions that honored homosexuals as shamans and oracles, but with distinctly modern genderfuck and outrageous drag and costume to celebrate liberated gay consciousness.
In this book I am using the term gay spirituality to mean an even higher perspective on religion—not just being religious and gay, but transcending religion to achieve this higher, more inclusive consciousness of the nature of religion itself, i.e., the "new religion" of the meta-myth.
That gay people can go to church and understand that the preachers (and the Bible) are wrong when they talk about homosexuality; that they can add sexual arousal to their meditative practice or call upon God to join them in orgasm or dress up like a satyr and dance around a fire in worship of Pan—this ability to follow their own personal spiritual path, to create their own religion, is a demonstration of the meta-myth.
Gay spirituality manifests the new religion. Being gay, potentially, offers a talent for achieving a contemporary enlightenment.
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Spirituality is the set of meaningful ideas, stories, favorite quotes, Bible verses, saints, prayers, practices that any one of us ends up choosing for him or herself because these are what have shown up as meaningful along our spiritual paths.
I commented above that there's no such thing as "everybody spirituality," in the sense of being the one path that everybody has to follow or the one set of myths or doctrines everybody is supposed to agree with—what fundamentalists of every stripe think their spirituality is. We all have different content in our lives, so what we find meaningful is different for every person. But there is another way in which there is an "everybody spirituality" and that's in the image of God as the vast network of mind we're all part of. "Everybody spirituality" is realizing your own limited, self-concerned, self-obsessed ego is an illusion. You are part of the bigger being that is everybody. Each of us is Everyman in the sense of the medieval European mystery plays. Each of us is everybody.
It's everybody spirituality which calls for each of us, as Everyman, to select and take responsibility for our own spiritual development and our own spiritual path so that we make our lives and the lives of those around us happier, richer and more conscious. It's ironic that the theme of oneness and unity in what I'm proposing is gay spirituality naturally moves to the conclusion we're all one and differences between people (especially about sexual feelings) shouldn't be emphasized. So, in fact, this "everybody spirituality" is a gay spirituality.
The goal of any spirituality is to experience heaven now. That, I've come to believe, is the most important insight into the nature of religion and spirituality that a "gay perspective" on consciousness helps to discover.
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Mahayana Buddhist tradition offers an appealing and instructive myth that I think helps inform gay consciousness. Though, of course, two thousand years ago when the Indian sages came up with this story of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, they were not thinking about modern homosexuality.
This myth was part of a reform of Buddhism, by then nearly five hundred years old, from an almost exclusively monastic practice of meditation for a few to a popular religion for all that encouraged compassion for other beings. Avalokiteshvara, then, was a character of myth, not history. His world saving acts are a metaphor about consciousness; he lives in the timeless eternity of myth and meaning (like Hamlet or King Arthur). He is portrayed as a beautiful and beloved young Indian man, often shown bare chested.
An image of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, stylized to look like a modern gay man, appears on the cover of this book. This story is not about a gay god, but it does offer a lovely image for gay people to include in their pantheon because it contains an insight both about transcending gender roles and about experiencing heaven now.
When I first discovered this story in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the idea that he was portrayed as beautiful and lovable resonated with my gay experience. I saw my fellow gay men as beautiful and lovable. That seemed one of the contributions we made to the world. Back in the 1970s, when I was a gay hippie in San Francisco, I embroidered the image of a peacock on the back of my blue jean jacket to celebrate my own intention to be beautiful and lovable and to live among beautiful and lovable men. The peacock, also featured on the cover of this book, is an appropriate image for gay consciousness and for our resonance with the myth of the Bodhisattva.
The story goes that Avalokiteshvara had worked through lifetime after lifetime as a monk to achieve nirvana (that is, the end of karmically-driven rebirth). As he was entering his last meditation from which he would transition into nirvana, he heard a groan go up all around him. He came out of his trance and asked: "What is this groan?"
All nature spoke up to answer: "O Avalokiteshvara, life is hard and full of suffering; your beauty and loveliness have given us a reason to want to live. We are happy for you that you are about to achieve your goal of lifetimes beyond number, but we are sad to see you go. It is for ourselves that we groan."
So in a burst of generosity and compassion, the lovable young saint exclaimed: "Well, then, I won't go. I will remain behind in the cycles of reincarnation until all sentient beings have entered nirvana. Indeed, since it is better that one suffer than that all suffer, I vow to take on myself the suffering of all beings. Let them go on to nirvana and let me stay behind to live their karmic destinies in their place."
In orthodox readings of the myth, Avalokiteshvara has remained behind to help ease suffering as this or that particular religious leader—the Dalai Lama of Tibet for one. But in other, less institutionally self-serving, interpretations of the story, at that moment all sentient beings did enter nirvana. And Avalokiteshvara remained behind to live their incarnations for them. Thus each and every one of us is Avalokiteshvara living out his vow. We are not separate individuals, we are really that One Being. Hence, compassion for others isn't just about being nice; it's about recognizing the reality that that other person really is you. The neighbor Jesus says to love as yourself is yourself.
This notion of the deep oneness of all of us is also a central tenet of mystical Christianity. It's the basis of Jesus's description of the Last Judgment when he concludes the criterion for salvation is not whether you obeyed the Law but whether you treated other people with compassion and awareness of our common unity with the mystical Christ. "Behold, what you do to the least of these, that you do to me," Jesus said.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19th century Jesuit priest and religious poet (and, now we understand, homosexual), expressed this underlying teaching of Christianity in the poem "Kingfishers catch fire." Notice that the "just man" in the first line quoted below means the person who is "just," that is, law-abiding, fair and honest; it also means the person who is "just man," that is, Everyman. Just being human makes us incarnations of the mystical Christ.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
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It is said there are Three Wonders of the Bodhisattva. The first is that he is androgynous, simultaneously both male and female, transcending the polarity of gender. That's why he is such a sweet and lovable fellow: he blends the best of masculinity and the best of femininity.
The second wonder is that he sees there is no difference between nirvana and the life of suffering and rebirth in time, no difference between eternity and temporality, no difference between heaven and earth. This is why he could renounce his own nirvana and embrace all human experience. This life is nirvana; this is heaven on earth.
And the third wonder is that the first two wonders are the same!
That's why this is such a nice myth for gay people to entertain. It says we're really all One, all reflections of one another, that the distinction between male and female is illusory and needs to be transcended and that transcending gender is part and parcel with experiencing heaven now.
Avalokiteshvara is portrayed as the androgynous young being, beloved by everybody who knows him. That is very much like the ideal so many gay people find themselves looking for as a lover (and as a sense of themselves). And in the way that we gay people find the world a reflection of ourselves, so this myth says it really is. When we love another man or another woman, seeing their beauty and consciousness as like ours in homosexual attraction, that being we're loving is the being that is ourself. No duality, no polarization.
Mahayana Buddhists are urged to repeat the Bodhisattva's Vows daily to remind themselves of their deepest identity and to set the style for their experience of the day. In slightly altered, modernized language, the formula goes:
However countless the sentient beings are, I vow to save them.
However inexhaustible the resistance to experience, I vow to relinquish it.
However many the doors of incarnation, I vow to enter them all.
However incomparable the highest perspective, I vow to attain it.
Notice the double entendre in the "however." As an adverb modifying an adjective of quantity, it's about unlimited number. But put the "the" in front of the adjective and "however" modifies the subject. Now it's about unconditional quality. "However the countless beings are" means to be without judgment of them. A bodhisattva vows to save—to become—everybody, however they are.
These four vows correlate with four attitudes: compassion, lovingkindness, joy in the joy of others and equanimity. These aren't necessarily "gay virtues," but maybe they should be. Understanding them thus certainly transforms how you think about homosexuality.
There is a fascinating and provocative, if unorthodox, implication for homosexuality in the Tibetan mythology of reincarnation. According to popular belief, after death souls wait in the bardo for another incarnation. In this disembodied state, they float around, waiting for something to happen, looking for something to interest them. Frequently they become sexually attracted to the sight of human couples in intercourse. (If you could be invisibly present anywhere, wouldn't you—males especially—go looking for sex?)
If a particular soul happens to be too close, too attentive and too personally involved when a sperm and ovum unite, that soul will be pulled into incarnation as the offspring of that sexual union. That is how souls get reincarnated—at least in popular imagination.
A homosexual soul, however, floating in the bardo state, could watch lots of acts of homosexual intercourse without ever being drawn into incarnation. In fact, it seems like it would never get pulled into incarnation at all. Homosexual souls must come back only because they choose to, perhaps because they become bored and shift their consciousness to compassion for all the suffering they observe.
Taking this mythology with that all-important grain of salt, of course, doesn't this imply that gay people come back into reincarnation intentionally (like we have children, out of choice), not accidentally? We come back out of compassion—as bodhisattvas.
The mantra/chant associated with Avalokiteshvara is the familiar Buddhist phrase Om mani padme hum, "the jewel is in the lotus." The lotus is sacred in India because, as a water lily that grows up from the bottom of the pond with its roots in the muck and mud to produce a beautiful flower on the surface in the sunlight, it symbolizes the human spirit, rooted in matter and biology, growing up into the light of spirit and consciousness. Because of the traditional derogation of homosexuality as sin and perversity, this is an especially appropriate symbol for our transforming our image of ourselves into spiritual jewels. (It too appears on the cover right at the figure's genitals.)
This myth is just a story, of course. But it is one all us gay men and lesbians can take to heart. It's about the blending of genders that seems so natural to us and about the harmony and self-reflexiveness in nature that is so resonant of our experience of sexual attraction.
We might say gay spirituality is about reminding each other to wake up and realize we're bodhisattvas.
Indeed, we might even go to the extreme and suggest—at least for purposes of discussion—that what we experience as homosexual attraction to another person is an experience of recognizing the bodhisattva in that other. Sexual attraction for us then can be conceived of as a kind of mystical realization of our true identity and of the real nature of God and the Universe.
Why we added the brackets...
What influences our experience of the world as gay men or lesbians is not so much an inherent homosexual identity as the effects of having experiences that flow out of being sexually and emotionally attracted to members of our own sex.
The world simply looks different to people like us than it does to those for whom the difference between the sexes matters enormously; we don't have that experience. We don't see the world as intensively polarized the way heterosexual people do, because our sexual drives fill our consciousness with attractions and emotional feelings for those who are like us, not those who are unlike us.
Especially for gay men, homosexuality is in the eyes. Men seek to gaze at sexually attractive beauty. The way to tell if you're gay is to pay attention to which bodies in the external world you pay attention to. (One of the perennial methods of the spiritual traditions has been paying attention to paying attention, that is, observing yourself from a perspective over and above yourself, transcending ego.)
Gay men live their lives in their eyes seeking out attractive male bodies to gaze upon, searching the world around them for other gay men, looking at other men. Straight men, of course, spend their lives in their eyes seeking for women's bodies to relish looking at. At the very simplest, independent of names, labels or political identities, men know they are homosexual if they observe themselves looking at other men and hoping to see other men's bodies shirtless or alluringly posed rather than women and women's bodies.
Whatever the source of this difference—genes, congenital influences, hormones, upbringing, indoctrination—the experience of being sexual is altered profoundly by the object of attraction being same sexed rather than oppositely sexed.
Sexuality is an all-pervasive force in consciousness. Recognizing that this is so is the legacy of the world-transforming psychological sophistication that has developed out of the work of the psychoanalysts. There doesn't have to be such a thing as "homosexuality" for sexuality that focuses on same-sex objects to dramatically change how the world is perceived. The "homo" is in the experience of consciousness—sameness, not difference, is the attraction.
It's sexuality that informs our experience and shapes the world we pay attention to. If that sexuality is focused on oppositely sexed people, the world appears full of polarities and interacting dualities, like yin and yang. If that sexuality is focused on same sexed people, the world appears full of unity and sameness and reflection of one's own beauty or at least of the beauty one hopes to possess for oneself.
As Peter Grahame, the photographer and wonderful Photoshop artist who created the cover for this book, and I discussed the design we realized that this distinction between essence and experience is critical for understanding what we mean by being gay. We added the brackets around the prefix [homo] to distinguish between the label "homosexuality" which many people find pejorative, maybe even offensive, and the experience of same sex sexuality which most "gay people" find alluring and irresistible.
Homosexuality is a technical, scientific-sounding term. It is sterile for that reason, but it is also free of all the political and cultural overtones of gay, queer, LGBTQ, etc. In its technical use, it is also gender-inclusive. It's specifically about sexuality. It signifies simply same-sex attraction and connection, not "lifestyle" or culture, big-city ghetto neighborhood or membership in a national organization.
It's the experience of [homo]sexuality that generates "gay
perspective." And that reveals a whole different—and
contributing—way of seeing the world.
Introduction
The lesbian and gay rights movement is popularly portrayed as an extremist faction of the Sexual Revolution. It is that, of course, but it's also far more than just that. The recognition of homosexuality as a psychological phenomenon, the rise of openly gay cultures, and the emergence of a distinctive gay consciousness in the last hundred years prompt fresh questions about the purpose of human life, the function of sex in consciousness, the role of authority in society, the meaning of religion and mythology, and even the nature of God.
We have to ask whether an even larger truth about life and God emerges from the personal experience of us actual homosexuals because of our uniquely gay perspective.
Uniquely Gay Perspective?
Many people, gay and straight, prefer to emphasize how much gay people are like other people. Don't we want to seem as normal and non-threatening as possible?
Of course, but we're not normal and non-threatening, but not because of us. Even with all the progress toward acceptance of gay people as just another facet of humanity, traditional culture still heaps opprobrium upon us and makes our civil rights a political pawn, especially in the name of religion. That gay people live positive and productive lives, that we are wonderful people and have important contributions to make to the development of human consciousness shows us very positively "abnormal" and what're threatened are the assumptions and prejudices of traditional culture and religion—especially about sexuality and male gender dominance.
As David Nimmons shows with statistics, hard facts, and anecdotal evidence in his remarkable book The Soul Beneath the Skin (a great companion to this present book), modern gay men have produced one of the most consistently non-violent associations of males that has ever existed. For all the problems in the gay world, we're remarkably generous, cooperative, supportive, friendly, harmonious, and peaceful. And what problems do exist—and they are legion, especially in the area of sexual relations—they are almost all products of erroneous ideas about what homosexuality is and who gay men are. Nimmons—who also created a New York-based movement of gay friendliness called Manifest Love to address these problems—argues convincingly that, for our own sake and for that of the larger society struggling to cope with the pressures and strife of modern life, the truth about our common gay virtue needs proclaiming because it's helpful to everybody.
If some other voluntary organization of males, Nimmons writes, demonstrated the virtual absence of public violence, high levels of service and volunteerism, novel forms of caretaking with strangers and friends and uncommon amity across gender lines that modern gay men display, those unusual males would be lauded and lionized and held up as models for coping with modernization. But because the truth about our lives is distorted, misrepresented, and tarred with the brush of gender role nonconformity and wanton sexuality, our common goodness fails to be recognized as just such a model.
Our liberation from gender roles and our embrace of the inherent goodness of sexuality make us different from other human beings—and worth paying attention to. Besides, somebody needs to identify and prize alternative views of human life and the nature of the universe because the current views aren't making this world into heaven on earth. Perhaps we have special insights and special contributions that can help. It doesn't make us superior—or straight people inferior—to proclaim our place in the World Soul. And we must do this because no one else is going to do it for us.
Indeed, advances in biotechnology may soon make it possible for parents to test for and eliminate gay traits in their offspring. Science may make it possible to delete genetic tendencies toward homosexuality either by aborting future gay children or by "correcting" these tendencies through gene manipulation. If it's true—as so many of us know—that being gay is a blessing, a source of creativity, and a contribution to the evolution of humankind, then we need to argue why homosexuality should not be eliminated from the gene pool. We need to understand why our homosexual viewpoint is something to be protected and nurtured. And we need to tell future generations of homosexuals—which there will be in the near term, at least—how to value their experience positively and productively.
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Beyond its place in the Sexual Revolution, the development of lesbian and gay consciousness is also a manifestation of that dramatic change in culture and consciousness loosely (and sometimes ridiculously) referred to as "New Age" or "new paradigm." This change has been wrought by modernization, increasing psychological sophistication, expanding ecological awareness, the liberation of scientific thinking from the constraints of religious dogma, the ongoing expansion of the human population, and the mingling of cultures and religions world-wide.
The misconception and misrepresentation of gay consciousness as mere sexual libertarianism is partly just error born of unfamiliarity and ignorance. But it is reinforced by the peculiar anti-sexual obsession of American Christianity and by the political strategy of conservatives who know "other people's" sexual behavior is a hot button issue with their constituents and contributors—and also, ironically, by the defensive protestations of gay activists and the prosex celebrations of gay culture that inadvertently stir up the wrong voters with that same hot button.
The political goal of the gay movement is certainly to stop the victimization of lesbians and gay men with appeals to simple justice, fair play and compassion. The movement works to address practical problems that homosexuals face in contemporary society, like holding a job, keeping health insurance, living in intimate relationship, merging—or separating—jointly owned property, being there for one another in health and in sickness, and protecting financial legacies. But there are implications more far-reaching than political gains and legal rights.
In some ways, our opponents understand the consequences of our movement better than we do, and therefore become adamant in their objections to what seems so obviously right to us. Religion is often the justification for these objections. Religious conservatives understand that the recognition of homosexual rights compromises the ability of the guardians of orthodoxy to make and enforce rules about morality. It also weakens their claim to a divine mandate handed down through ancient scriptures. If they give in to modern arguments about homosexuality, they may have to give in on many more fronts.
The Churches have lost a lot in the last few centuries. They've been proved wrong about the structure of the solar system, the shape of the planet, the course of evolution of life on Earth, the origins of disease and mental illness, the existence of witches and the causes of "supernatural" phenomena. Admitting that the Old Testament condemnations of homosexual activity are just primitive cultural taboos would further erode the Churches' power and authority. Acknowledging that the anti-homosexual stance that has been so long a mainstay of morality is inconsistent with the principles of love of neighbor and respect for other human beings that contemporary liberal democratic societies take for granted would just show how out of step with modern thinking they've become.
The fundamental issue is nothing less than the origin of truth. Does truth come from revelations by God in the distant past as they were recorded and approved by Temple/Church officials? Or does it come from the observation of present reality and scientific experimentation? This was the problem Galileo posed when he announced what he'd seen through his telescope. The liberation of gay voices—part of what we might more generally call psychological sophistication—adds personal experience to the modes of knowing. Is the truth about homosexuality to be found in the Bible or the declarations of Vatican officials or in the personal experience of actual homosexual persons?
Transformation
Within the various religious institutions, attitudes toward homosexuality, same-sex marriage—and also ordination of women, another gender role issue—have become the dividing line between progressive and traditional Churches. Our issues are at the heart of the modernization of religion—sometimes, actually, without having anything to do with most of us as individuals. It's about modernization itself; we're just the symbols.
Today we can discern a transformation in the very nature of religious truth. Exposure to the varieties of religion around the world—combined with a commitment to the fundamental proposition that all human beings are created equal—forces modern thinkers to abandon the traditional belief that one culture and one religion alone is right and God-ordained. Modernization and globalization compel us to think from broader perspectives. The study of world religions shows that religious doctrines are more like the metaphors of poetry than the laws of physics. Moreover, it's clear those metaphors emerged from cultural conditioning, politics, historical happenstance, and imagination, not from divinely-revealed absolute truth.
We are witnesses to the birth of a new religious consciousness. This new consciousness offers enlightenment and meaning to individuals, even as it poses tremendous challenges to institutions. The gay rights movement is part of this transformation—a reason the movement meets with such violent opposition from traditional religious institutions.
Religion is in dire need of transformation. The model of God and the world we embrace is supposed to give us a sense of meaning and purpose in life and a clear motivation to love one another and to work in harmony. But the world is in chaos and, in great part, because of religious conflicts. Because traditional religion opposes gay rights and the recognition of gay people's human dignity, modern gay men and lesbians should be especially motivated to bring about this transformation. And 2000 years later, this transformation is just the next step in the realization of Jesus's wisdom. The cause of suffering—what we need to be saved from—is not humans' failure to obey dualistic rules about cleanliness and taboos about pleasure, but our failure to love and respect one another and one another's differences.