Varieties of Gay Spiritualities

Table of Contents Search Site 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 Shame on the American People  The cause of homosexuality "It's Always About You" The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara You're Not A Wave Curious Bodies What Toby Johnson Believes The Joseph Campbell Connection,     "The Evolution of Gay Identity" "St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul." Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.  Eckhart's Eye   Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil   Adam and Steve Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery" Seeing with Different Eyes  The mystical experience   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 YourTiger Face How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta. The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the  "Statement of Spirituality"

Links to Other Gay Spirituality Sites on the Web Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series Seek Out Spirits True (extracted from GAY SPIRITUALITY) For all that there are crooks and disturbed characters among the homosexual population, the experience of most of us most of the time is that we can trust other gay men. Their spirits are true. We share something in common. We are motivated by the world’s oppression to offer one another the best parts of ourselves and to inspire our brothers to offer us the same in return. We can be friends. What we want from one another is love and friendship and shelter from the storm of the straight world. We seek--and we create--community. The movement, loosely called Gay Spirituality, is concerned with finding kindred spirits. Gay spirituality shows up in a variety of different expressions. Many of these base their legitimacy in historical precedent. Modern studies in comparative religion show that in the past people we would now call gay were sometimes considered sacred. From the galli, the cross-dressing, sometimes self-emasculated priests of Cybele and Attis in ancient Rome and Phrygia; the nadlehee, the cross-dressing, homosexually-acting medicine men of the Navajos of the American Southwest; and the winktes of the Lakota Sioux to the cultured and refined and liturgically-bedecked clerics of Anglican and Catholic communions around the world, gender variant men have always played central roles in religion.   Themes in Gay Spirituality: Circle Makers Circle-making is concerned with creating community, bringing like-minded people together to unite common intentions and get things done. The building of community and a sense of connectedness and loyalty to other gay people is the heart of gay liberation and gay identity development. The Circle Maker themes are: 1) Radical Faerie consciousness, 2) gay therapy and self-help/personal transformation programs, 3) gay wild man gatherings, 4) bear identification, 5) pilgrimage and adventure-seeking, 6) 12-step programs and 7) Native American berdache tradition. Ecstatic Revelers Intense emotional and physical exercises can bring ecstatic experience. That quest for ecstasy represents another theme in gay spirituality. The Ecstatic Reveler themes are: 1) Tantric sex, 2) enlightened masturbation and 3) leather spirituality. Supernatural Seekers Mainstream religion is the most common outlet for the spiritual impulses of gay people. American Christianity and popular religion in general have an underlying mystical layer. Indeed, mysticism is at the core of the religious urge. Because of AIDS, gay people have discovered another access to the mystical and supernatural in familiarity with death and the experience of grieving. The Supernatural Seeker themes are: 1) gay church membership and religious practice and 2) AIDS-based spiritualities and interest in healing and miracles. Transcending All the Themes Of Gay Spirituality Beyond all the specific practices that can be identified with trends in modern gay culture as a manifestation of spirituality, there is the gay personality itself. Gay men glow. There is a sweetness and light that surrounds us--not all, not always, and it is perhaps visible more in youth than in age. But there is something in the aura of gay men that identifies us to one another and that makes straight people like us as individuals, even when, paradoxically, they do not like homosexuals in general. There is a beauty and sweetness and compassionateness that go with gay identity. This is a generalization and many gay men do not fit this image. Nonetheless, independent of the behavior of all actual gay men, there is a cultural stereotype, even among straight people, of the gay man as a loving and unexpected saint. White Crane Journal links to Other Gay Spirituality Sites on the Web Here's an enormous list of links. It's exemplary of the richness and variety of the Gay Spirituality Movement. Stuart Norman has an article poste on the web called: A New Spirituality for Gays Leaderless Spirituality There is a mythological story about the wisdom of leaderless spirituality. In the Arthurian legends, it is told that after the Holy Grail appeared to the Knights of the Round Table and then mysteriously disappeared, the knights vowed to go in quest of the Grail. They agreed that each should begin his quest in the place in the forest that was darkest and most lost, and each should choose his own way and none should follow in the path of another. Walking The World’s Weird Wall For some people, homosexuality is a genuine spiritual vocation, you might say, a religion in itself. But it has no set doctrine, explanation of God or the Divine Plan. The author of this essay believes the insights and observations he’s gleaned about “God” and the nature of religion flow from his homosexual orientation. This is so if only because by being a gay man and so a religious renegade, he’s been able to allow himself to think outside the box of traditional doctrine. What matters is not having the right ideas, but being a loving person. How we behave is what counts, not what we believe. (In this, the orthodox Protestants with their notion of salvation by faith alone have it exactly backwards.) White Crane Journal links to Other Gay Spirituality Sites on the Web Here's an enormous list of links. It's exemplary of the richness and variety of the Gay Spirituality Movement.

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.