After visiting this page, please take a look at Lethe Press/White Crane Books.
This is the publisher Toby Johnson now works with. We have a wonderful selection of titles.
|
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 PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Articles and Excerpts: The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate What Jesus Said About Gay Rights
"It's Always About You"
The Joseph Campbell Connection,
"The Evolution of Gay Identity" "St. John of the
Cross & Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"
The Techniques Of The World Saviors Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
|
JESUS SAID HOMOSEXUALS
ARE BORN THAT WAY!
There's an ongoing joke
about Jesus's ideas on homosexuality: A pamphlet is titled "What
Jesus Said About Homosexuality" and you open it and it's blank, page
after page, blank.
So
you have to wonder: if Jesus was God, as Catholics
believe, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, consubstantial with the
Father, and so gifted at least in some way with Divine
Omniscience, so
He'd know there would one day be a terrible problem in Christianity and
culture over homosexuality, gay rights, and same-sex marriage, why
didn't He say anything specific. Why didn't He say that He was abolishing all the rules in
the Old Testament EXCEPT the rule against homosexual intercourse? Why didn't He distinguish between His forgiving the woman
brought to him in adultery ("Let him who is without sin cast the first
stone") and His wanting to continue to hold homosexuality against
people? Why didn't He say anything about how homosexual marriage
would defile the sanctity of the relationship of man and woman? Why didn't He say anything? Did He just keep forgetting to mention it? The closest thing He DID say is very instructive. In speaking about "protecting the sanctity of marriage"
Jesus said:
Curiously, if you look in the glossary of the Bible I just
quoted from, it defines "eunuch" as "chamberlain, official." If you
depended on that for a dictionary, you'd have a hard time ever
understanding what Jesus was talking about. You'd think the choice was
between getting married and being a politician. So what were eunuchs? Eunuchs were men who didn't have sex with women and/or
couldn't reproduce--who were therefore considered safe to be around
women in the harem. Since they had no children, they had
no vested interest in leaving a fortune to the next generation so they
could be employed in government and civil service because they had no
reason to be crooked or seek advantage for their own sons. (Of course, not all men who
don't or can't reproduce were necessarily thought of as eunuchs, though
in that culture at that time and situation in history, most men were
married and did reproduce. Having children was a way of serving God by
increasing God's people in a world in which human beings were scarce.
The point here is that when Jesus talked about eunuchs, he was
certainly including men who didn't fit that norm. He himself didn't.) Eunuchs were sometimes men who'd been castrated in order to
serve in these functions. That's the "eunuchs who were made eunuchs by
men." Eunuchs were also men who just didn't look very masculine,
who weren't interested in marrying or having sex with women, who were
"sissies." Eunuchs included men who were obviously what we'd today call
homosexual. Those--clearly--were what Jesus referred to as "eunuchs who
were born that way from their mother's womb." SO JESUS SAID HOMOSEXUALS ARE BORN THAT WAY! The other class of eunuchs are those who "make themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." The Catholic Church has
used that quotation to justify requiring celibacy and non-sexuality of
its priests. But eunuch means a man who can't reproduce, not a man who
isn't sexual. Indeed some men were castrated in the old days
specifically so they would stay young and pretty and could be
sexual. Alexander the Great's lover Bagoas (The
Persian Boy) is a prime example. So eunuchs are men who choose the Kingdom of Heaven
over marrying and raising a family. Eunuchs are men who choose
to live in the present--where the Kingdom of Heaven is to be found. Many modern gay men would fit that definition of eunuch. What is homosexuality
in metaphysical terms?
About the Same-Sex Marriage
debate:
The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Question Shame on the American People (be sure to look at the maps on this page of Slave States vs. Free and Bush vs. Kerry) ----- There's much more discussion of this theme at: Would Jesus Discriminate? -----
|
Toby Johnson, PhD is author of eight books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, three gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality. In addition to the novels featured elsewhere in this web site, Johnson is author of IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD and THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET (Revised edition): AN APPRECIATION OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL.
Johnson's Lammy Award winning book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness was published in 2000.
His newest book is GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe.
