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Also on this website:
Toby
Johnson's books:
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the
Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams
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 edtion from Lethe Press
with Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into
Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story
About ordering
Books on Gay Spirituality:
Articles
and Excerpts:
Read
Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The
Dimensional Structure of
Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San
Francisco"
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality
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
is Gay Spirituality?
My three messages
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
Interview on the Nature of
Homosexuality
What the Bible Says about
Homosexuality
Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Waves
of Gay Liberation Activity
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
Easton Mountain Retreat Center
Andrew Harvey &
Spiritual Activism
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
Joseph Campbell's description of
Avalokiteshvara
You're
Not A Wave
What is Enlightenment?
Emptiness & Religious Ideas
Experiencing experiencing experiencing
Going into the Light
Meditations for a Funeral
Meditation Practice
The way to get to heaven
Advice to Travelers to India
& Nepal
Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva
John Boswell was Immanuel Kant
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection
Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy
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 Sinfulness of
Homosexuality
Proposal
for a study of gay nondualism
Priestly Sexuality
"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
Meditation
Historicity
as Myth
Pilgrimage
Next
Step in Evolution
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
The Life is in the Blood
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
More
about Gay Mental Health
Psych
Tech Training
The
Rainbow Flag
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement
About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"
About
Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Guy Mannheimer
About Dennis Paddie
About Sterling Houston
About Michael Stevens
Our friend Tom Nash
Second March on
Washington
|
Book Review
 This
83 page little book is presented as a anecdote recounting the story of
the author having coffee at a small cafe with a Christian minister (of
undetermined sect). Because the author reports that he is working on a
book about same sex partnership and the Church, the conversation turns
to gay relationships and the contentious religious and political debate
about same sex marriage.
I liked the setup. The
story really isn't a story in the sense that it follows no real plot.
It's just a conversation, though it does end in a satisfying resolution
as the two men agree that honesty and compassion are necessary
characteristics to bring to this debate and that both "sides" of the
contention should pray for one another with sincerity.
D.a. argues not for the
validity of homosexuality per se or for the acquiescence of the
Churches to gay rights demands for marriage equality. He prefers to
disagree less with conservative Christianity and so makes the case for
homosexuality and homosexual partnership in the reality of fallen
nature based in the Biblical revelation of original sin and fallibility
as the human condition. That is, whether it is right or wrong or God's
intention or not, the reality is that some people are homosexual. He
explains Kinsey's categorizations to the Pastor as a structured way to
understand human sexual behavior.
The Pastor presents the
case of a gay parishioner of his who has recently come out to him,
quite conflicted about his homosexuality and his commitment to Church
and Biblical teaching. This pastoral context gives the minister a
personal reason for wanting to understand the gay plight. In some
sense, therefore, he is set up as a willing foil for the arguments in
favor of accepting gay partnerships in the Church (though certainly
not, gay marriage, they both agree, since there is no Biblical basis
for such a thing).
D.a. helps the Pastor
understand that the Bible really says very little about homosexuality
and much more about the rules for heterosexual marriage, that Jesus
didn't specifically teach against homosexuality, though he did teach
VERY specifically about the rules for divorce and remarriage. Divorce
and remarriage is not the ideal for human relationship in just the same
way homosexuality is not the ideal -- but both are the reality.
In the conversation over
coffee, the Pastor acknowledges he has had to deal with accepting
remarriage by divorced people in his congregation and understands that
the Church just can't be too stiff-necked and hard-hearted about the
realities of the human condition. Jesus says divorce and remarriage are
simply not allowed--except in the case of the other spouse being guilty
of unfaithfulness. This last proviso about the adulterous spouse does
indeed appear in the Gospel of Matthew (19:9); in fact, though, in Mark
(10:11-12) and in Luke (16:18) Jesus doesn't offer the out. And in all
three cases, Jesus attributes the historical tradition of divorce among
the Jews, going back to the Law of Moses, as due to the
hard-heartedness of the people, not the legitimacy of divorce. (And
neither D.a. nor the Pastor acknowledge that the verses in Matthew they
are preferring are followed by Jesus's strange teachings about
"eunuchs" which is certainly how certain homosexuals would have been
seen in those days: some are born that way, some are made that way by
men, and some make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven--and this last seems to be praised. It's the Catholic Church's
explanation for the rule of celibacy for priests and religious.)
But it's not fair to
refute one Biblical passage by bringing up others. It's the nature of
quoting the Bible that there are always more quotes you can find that
offer other teachings. The Bible isn't a single text composed with a
consistent message.
Citing the problem of
divorce and remarriage in the conservative Christian congregation does
help the Pastor understand how human feelings and the realities of life
have to be taken into consideration. It wouldn't be right to expel a
woman from the congregation because her husband divorced her and out of
loneliness she developed a better relationship with another man. (In a
curious twist, the Pastor has been faced with the situation in which
the bad spouse had been guilty of battering his wife, but not of
adultery; Jesus hadn't given that as a justification for terminating
the marriage, so maybe she was an adulteress by remarrying, after all.)
D.a. also--very
insightfully, I think--notes that one of God's first declarations in
the Book of Genesis is that it not good for man to be alone, that is,
human beings were created to be pair-bonders. And if a person happens
to be a 5 or 6 on the Kinsey scale, then that pair-bonding would have
to be with a person of their same-sex, and that would fulfill God's
intention that they not be alone--especially if they don't want to be.
He also cites the passages
in the Bible that call for stoning people who work on the Sabbath;
there's a specific story about a man who was put to death for gathering
wood on the day of rest. (What if his family had been cold and there
was no wood for the fire? Talk about being hard-hearted!) Today we do
not enforce such a draconian punishment for seems to us like a minor
infraction of having to work on a Sunday to keep one's job.
The Pastor never entirely
relents, but he does come to understand that the gay issue is much more
complicated than popular wisdom seems to think: "Thou shalt not 'sleep
a woman's sleep' with another man" is not the most important--or easily
understandable--commandment in the Bible.
D.a. helps the Pastor
understand that issues of immortality, like alcoholism, substance abuse
and sexual promiscuity are human problems, not specifically gay
problems and it just isn't fair to be understanding of straight
people's temptations and struggles while being stiff-necked and
hard-hearted about homosexuals' bouts and blaming them for all the
problems of human life.
Indeed, the general
argument throughout the book is that gay people should be treated with
respect and compassion just the way straight people are. The argument
in based in simple fairness.
D.a. offers a salient
critique of ex-gay conversion therapy (again based in Kinsey) and
refutes ex-gay guru Joseph Nicholosi's treatment modality of repairing
puberty on the simple grounds that adults simply cannot go through
puberty a second time: what gets wired-in in brain development during
puberty stays wired-in.
There's a sweet and
supportive interaction between the Pastor and the narrator that
facilitates the arguments for acceptance of gay partnerships within
even conservative Christian church congregations. By not championing
the most "liberal" interpretations of the Bible and popular morality
and not demanding marriage equality and the acceptance of homosexuality
as an equally valid life-choice, D.a. makes a solid argument for
conservatives to accept the reality of homosexuality as part of the
human condition that calls for a compassionate and honest Christian
response.
This easy-to-read and
understand little book really can serve as an educational tool for
Christian congregations struggling to adapt to modern realities. The
coffee conversation context offers a really good model for how Churches
could deal with this issue. Instead of turning it into a dogmatic
battle--with heresy trials and excommunications--people could just talk
to one another politely and seek to be kind.
This book would certainly
be helpful for a gay person coming out to conservative Fundamentalist
parents. It starts on "their side" and stays on their side, while
offering a conservative, gay-accepting religious attitude.
D.a. Thompson is a
Seattle-based writer, speaker and musician, working to expand horizons
out of Christian true devotion and belief in Jesus. He's a good
proponent for gay people in conservative Churches.
Link to D.a. Thompson's site
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