Review: Over Coffee by D.a. Thompson

Contact Us


Table of Contents


Search Site

  Home

Google listing of all pages on this website


Site Map


Toby Johnson's Facebook page


Toby Johnson's YouTube channel


Toby Johnson on Wikipedia


Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page



Secure site at

https://tobyjohnson.com

Also on this website:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III

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, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil

TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams




CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers

THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell

IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey

Unpublished manuscripts

About ordering

Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series

  Articles and Excerpts:

Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness

Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"

About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996

The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate

A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality

Why gay people should NOT Marry

The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage

Toby and Kip Get Married

Wedding Cake Liberation

Gay Marriage in Texas

What's ironic

Shame on the American People

The "highest form of love"

Gay Consciousness

Why homosexuality is a sin

The cause of homosexuality

The origins of homophobia

Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness

What is homosexuality?

What is Gay Spirituality?

My three messages

What Jesus said about Gay Rights

Queering religion

Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men

Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?

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

The Gay Succession

Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?

The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter

Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium

Easton Mountain Retreat Center

Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism

The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey

The upsidedown book on MSNBC

Enlightenment

"It's Always About You"

The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara

Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara

Gay Spirituality

Curious Bodies

What Toby Johnson Believes

The Joseph Campbell Connection

The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)

Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The Two Loves

The Nature of Religion

What's true about Religion

Being Gay is a Blessing

Drawing Long Straws

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

Having a Church to Leave

Harold Cole on Beauty

Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption

Not lashed to the prayer-post

Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality

Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process

Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)

Redeem Orlando

Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar

Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson

Mystical Vision

"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

No Stealing

Next Step in Evolution

The New Myth

The Moulting of the Holy Ghost

Gaia is a Bodhisattva

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016

The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)

You're On Your Own

Superheroes

Seeing Differently

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

Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom

What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?

The Vision

The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside

A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity 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

Karellen was a homosexual

The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance

Intersections with the movie When We Rise

More about Gay Mental Health

Psych Tech Training

Toby at the California Institute

The Rainbow Flag

Ideas for gay mythic stories

People

Kip and Toby, Activists

Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.

Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement

About Hay and The New Myth

About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"

About Michael Talbot, gay mystic

About Fr. Bernard Lynch

About Richard Baltzell

About Guy Mannheimer

About David Weyrauch

About Dennis Paddie

About Ask the Fire

About Arthur Evans

About Christopher Larkin

About Mark Thompson

About Sterling Houston

About Michael Stevens

The Alamo Business Council

Our friend Tom Nash

Second March on Washington

The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"

Book Reviews

Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:

Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe

Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman








Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated








Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE

The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here

Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams

Two Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here

Finding Your Own True Myth:

The Myth of the Great Secret III









In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld












The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.

Review of

Over Coffee: 

A conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith

by D.a. Thompson

Reviewed by Toby Johnson

Available at amazon in a newer edition:
Over Coffee: A Conversation for Gay Partnership and Conservative Faith
 

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.

Dave 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.