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Also on this website:
Toby
Johnson's books:
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of
Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe
SECRET
MATTER,
updated, revised & expanded eidtion from Lethe Press
with Afterword by Mark Jordan
Read Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of
Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Books on Gay Spirituality:
Articles
and Excerpts:
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
Why gay people should NOT Marry
Wedding Cake Liberation
Gay Marriage in Texas
What's ironic
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
The
cause of homosexuality
What is homosexuality?
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
Joseph Campbell's description of
Avalokiteshvara
You're
Not A Wave
Meditation Practice
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection,
The Nature of Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay Spiritual Functions
The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.
"The Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the Cross &
the
Dark Night of the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.
Eckhart's Eye
Let Me Tell You a Secret
Religious Articulations of the
Secret
The Collective Unconscious
Driving as Spiritual Practice
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
Gay
retirement and the "freelance monastery"
Seeing with Different Eyes
What
are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?
The
mystical
experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding Your Tiger Face
How Gay
Souls Get Reincarnated
About Alien Abduction
In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
About
Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Guy Mannheimer
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Gay theologian and psychologist Daniel
Helminiak has a wonderful little book called What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality.
It's been a major bestseller in the gay genre for years now. People,
especially gay people, are really interested in this question.
Helminiak explains how the references inthe Bible that
are applied to homosexuality really refer to something different from
what we know as modern gay consciousness.
John Boswell's classic Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
treats this question in an even more scholarly fashion (placing the
Bible in the context of the rise of classical civilization).
They both show that the Biblical objections to
homosexuality come out purity codes and ritual taboos, not real
morality. The objection to homosexual activity among the ancient
Hebrews was that it was accepted -- even made sacred -- among the
Canaanite peoples they lived around.
The references in the New Testament in the Epistles are
mostly mistranslations or mispresentations.
The reason answer to the question "what does the Bible
say about homosexuality" is "It doesn't matter."
Homosexuality as we know it today, and understand it as
a psychological orientation based in neurological dynamics, wasn't
understood by the ancients at all.
The condemnations in the Bible are no more valid than
the assertions the Earth is flat and that our planet is at the center
of the solar system.
We know better.
Many commandments in the Bible are disregarded--even by
conservatives--because they are no longer applicable to modern life.
The evolution of consciousness has moved on.
The injunction against a man’s cutting his hair (Numbers
6:5) is an obvious example; everybody understands that was about a
cultural style, not about morality. The same is true of the command
against loaning money at interest (Leviticus 25:36); this ancient
prohibition conflicts with our whole modern financial system, so we
ignore it. Jesus unequivocally forbid divorce (Matthew 5:32), but most
non-Catholic Christians disregard this commandment because it’s
inconsistent with today’s marital lifestyles.
Modern gay-sensitive Scripture scholarship, like that in
Daniel Helminiak’s perennial gay bestseller, What the Bible Really Says
about Homosexuality and John Boswell’s classic Christianity, Social
Tolerance and Homosexuality, shows the commandments against homosexual
sex are also not as unequivocal as they might seem. They too reflected
cultural styles, some of which are clearly outdated--like the verses
that call for the stoning of homosexuals that are patently inconsistent
with the spirit of religion and the modern concept of human rights.
Christians ought to rejoice that modern scholarship
shows that the sexist and bigoted language of the Scriptures is
actually a case of mistranslation, and the early Christians weren’t as
unkind in their thought as we’ve been led to believe. Why did a
religion of love and forgiveness need lists of sinners about whom to
have judgmental thoughts? Jesus never gave such lists. The only people
Jesus ever spoke against were the Scribes and Pharisees—the Temple
officials and conservative religious leaders. And why is a religion of
love and forgiveness still keeping lists of sinners? (Perhaps because
it’s still dominated by Scribes and Pharisees!)
In any case, what difference does it make what people
thought thousands of years ago? Morality has to be about how people
live today, about how they can avoid causing each other pain and
suffering. The Bible doesn’t say anything about oil spills, air
pollution, or wasting electricity. But these are moral issues today.
The violation of human and civil rights is a pressing moral issue that
earlier cultures wouldn’t have understood. These are new ideas.
Jesus's teaching is in direct opposition to
the old Law of the Bible. A "new Law" I give you, he said, that you
should love one another.
That's all that counts: love one another, treat other people the way
you want to be treated, respect each other, don't make other people
wrong, don't condemn something you don't know anything about. (Don't
ask heterosexuals what they think about homsoexuality; they don't know.
You have to ask homosexuals who understand what homosexuality is.)
Certainly the biblical distaste for homosexuality includes hygienic
qualms about anal intercourse. The ancients, especially desert nomads,
had no way to get anything truly clean. Body fluids were a major issue.
Hence the biblical concern, as well, with menstrual blood.
Of course, the main objection to homosexual behavior was
that a man was willingly assuming the role of a woman. That, after all,
is the specific language of the command: You shall not have sex with a
man as you would with a woman. That was a violation of sexual role
identity and the masculine power structure.
The commandment against homosexual intercourse may
have derived from a perfectly humane rule that prisoners of war not be
homosexually raped. There’s a long tradition of victors in battle
celebrating their male prowess by fucking vanquished soldiers to
disgrace and demoralize them. The behavior continues to this very day.
Of course this is not gay sexuality. This is male dominance behavior,
and it ought to be forbidden. The fact that it isn’t specifically
condemned elsewhere in the Bible suggests that’s the meaning of the one
apparently explicit prohibition against anal fucking.
Such male dominance behavior is also what the story
of Sodom and Gomorrah was about. If there was actually a sex act
involved at all, it would have been forcible rape and humiliation of
the angelic visitors by the otherwise “straight” men of Sodom. The
story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about consensual homosexual
lovemaking or even recreational sexplay, but that’s how the story gets
interpreted out of context.
Male-dominated moral teaching is rife with
homophobia. A basic purpose is to prevent men from behaving like women.
The male virtues are bravado, courage, belligerence, righteousness,
stoicism, unwavering conviction, and paternalistic responsibility. In
practice, these mean suppressing feelings, insisting one’s beliefs and
opinions are right when faced with opposition and proving it by force
or violence, and being selfish for one’s own offspring. Homosexuality
threatens male domination by prizing virtues that are womanly rather
than manly: compassion, kindness, sensitivity, gentleness,
egalitarianism, generosity, non-possessiveness, sophistication,
cooperation, and sensuality.
Today we can understand that commandment in Leviticus
against sex with a man as with a woman to mean something we’d agree
with: Homosexual men should not have sex with other men the way
heterosexual men--at least in traditional societies like that of the
biblical Hebrews—had sex with their women. Men should treat other men
as equals--as subjects--and express affection with no ulterior purpose,
no goal but love and pleasure itself. The Bible wouldn’t have bothered
to say it, but the same is true for women. Lesbians should treat other
lesbians as subjects, not replicating what happens to women in male
dominant societies.
We gay men and lesbians should respect one another
and never commit against each other the sins straight society accepts
as inevitable consequences of gender-polarized human nature: battering,
violence, sex-murder, rape, pimping, routine meanness, scorn and
derision for one’s partner, and general disrespect and abuse of the
opposite sex. This is one of the moral tenets of the gay liberation
movement. It is a sign of the religious dimension of gay consciousness
and gay community.
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