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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,
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
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 Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
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
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
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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Ironic,
isn't it?
What's ironic about the
right-wing fight against Gay Marriage is that it works in favor of
creating a positive vision of gay life, and it shows the "Christians"
to be very unchristian.
In the 1980s, when AIDS was devastating the gay male population in
American's big cities, the right-wing emphasized how prodigiously
promiscuous some gay men had been: they quoted figures showing that
homosexuals had thousands of sexual partners in their lives. They gave
the public reason to be judgmental and resentful of gay men who seemed
to be getting so much sex. They said AIDS was a punishment for
promiscuity.
In the early 2000s, the
right-wing is attacking gay people
for wanting to be monogamous!
What's really happening is that the public--and especially gay
teenagers (for whom this is important, life-shaping information)--are
seeing that gay people are happy, long-term, successful couples who
found love and happiness.
The gay people who are politely asking for the benefits and recognition
of their relationships as parallel to straight people's marriages
appear sweet, well-meaning, harmless. Some are attractive and sexy;
many are middle-aged and dumpy.
The people who look deranged and narrow-minded and mean-spirited are
the "Christians" who proclaim themselves offended by gay marriage.
(If you're offended by somebody's else harmless behavior, in a
democracy you're supposed to turn your attention--change the
channel--and look elsewhere. If you're offended, it's YOUR problem.)
Why would people go out of their way to oppose somebody else's
happiness?
Can you imagine Jesus doing that? Or Buddha? Or Thomas Jefferson?
The behavior of the right-wing Christians simply shows they don't
understand the basic teachings of Jesus. They apparently were more
interested in reading the rules in Leviticus, saying who to hate and
who to stone, than in reading the Sermon on the Mount or Jesus's
revelation that the "New Commandment" is to love other people,
recognizing them as other manifestations of your own self.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice's sake, for they
shall be filled."
That saying of Jesus seems to refer to gay people's struggle for
acceptance and understanding.
What's ironic is that if they just shut up and let gay marriage be
accepted quietly, a small of gay couples who really needed the legal
and health benefits would take advantage of the opportunity, and the
whole issue would disappear from the public's attention. But because
the right-wing has chosen this as THE wedge issue--which they identify
as "morality" itself--they keep forcing the quite gay couples in the
suburbs to come forth and declare themselves. And the public gets to
see that for many homosexuals gay life means settling down into a
stable couple just like straight life.
The more the right-wing tries to demonize us by showing we want to get
married the more normal WE look!
What else is ironic
You know what else is ironic in this battle of the
right-wing to turn American democracy into a Christian theocracy is
their great reverence for these stone engraved monuments of the Ten
Commandments that are scattered around the country on government
property.
In the first place, those monuments were created and given to the
states as a movie promotion for Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten
Commandments. They are hardly sacred monuments or historical treasures;
they were an advertising gimmick for Hollywood.
Besides--and more important--the first of the Ten Commandments forbids
the making of graven images! Not only are these monuments a potential
violation of separation of church and state in a modern liberal
democratic society, they are self-contradictory. Even God
didn't want graven monuments to his commandments!
And the last commandment of the Ten forbids covetuousness. What else is
covetuousness except the aim of advertising? Advertising is designed to
make people want things they don't have and other people do. That's
coveting.
The basis of American business these days is advertising, encouraging
people to covet the goods big business is offering them in a
seldom-fulfilled promise to make them happy.
If devout Christians really want to honor the Ten Commandments
shouldn't they change something about their own lives, rather
than try to foul up gay people's lives?
Shouldn't Christians be picketing against advertising? And about graven
images, for that matter! What could be more Judeo-Christian than
an iconoclastic purge of religious images in the name of spiritual
purity--and obedience to the First Commandment?
More Irony
The priest pedophilia scandals of the last few years clearly show that
there's something about priesthood and religoius indoctrination that
makes adult men incapable of leading mature sex lives.
The scandals are about the error of popular religion in dealing with
sex.
But the irony is that it was the priests' homosexuality that was
blamed, not their priesthood.
That it was priesthood that was the problem and not homosexuality is
demonstrated by the large (but generally invisible) proportion of
priestly sexual misbehavior that was heterosexual. Nearly half the
victims in the victim organizations are women. It was NOT the priests'
homosexuality that got these women abused.
Read more:
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
Why gay people should NOT Marry
Wedding Cake Liberation
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 Lammy-nominated book GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was published by Alyson in 2003.
Toby Johnson and Kip Dollar have been partners for over 21 years. They
are fine examples of successful relationship for both gay and straight
couples.
Read more about Toby & Kip
Toby Johnson and Kip Dollar have joined the Coalition of gay community
activists and gay and straight concerned citizens to stop the Gay
Marriage Amendment in Texas. (The official site of the campaign
is NoNonsenseInNovember.com)
Texans, please go to the polls and vote
AGAINST the Defense of Marriage Amendment in November. There's nothing
else on the ballot. You have very little motivation to bother to vote.
But PLEASE do. It's not just gay people's rights you're protecting,
it's your own and the future's.
This amendment doesn't change anything about the laws
in Texas (gay marriage is not legal!). But what it does is to establish
the precedent of writing Biblical laws into American law.
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