MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

What is the Importance of Being Gay?

On Friday, November 28, 2003, I began a series of posts on The Soulful Blogger that I consider to be my most significant contribution to the spiritual dialogue around homosexuality. I called this series T.I.O.B.G., and made the bold claim to be articulating a true metaphysics, mythology, or cosmology in which the proper understanding of homosexuality, nature, and God could be found. I haven't been posting in this series lately (this is the first post, and this is the most recent post), and I want to briefly explain why.

Review of "Father Joe"

Andrew Sullivan reviews a new spiritual memoir by Tony Hendra in this piece (registration required) for The New York Times. Here's a short excerpt: Father Joe elaborates to Tony: ''Sex is a wonderful gift, a physical way to express the most powerful force in all existence -- love. Sex is a brilliant idea of God's, I think. Almost like a sacrament.''

''Sex is a sacrament?''

''D-d-don't tell the Abbot!''

''There's no sin in having sex?''

''Yes yes yes. There can be. But sex is a sin less often than we're led to believe. It's all a question of context. If you have sex to hurt or exploit another, or to take pleasure only for me, me, me, and not return as much or more to your lover . . . then it becomes sinful. . . . They've made sexual sins the worst sins of the lot, haven't they? Because sex is so powerful, people are fearful of it! We must take the fear out of sex as well.''

Sullivan concludes his review with this advice: "If you are a Catholic who feels, as I have, more estranged from his faith than ever; if you are simply a person longing to live a deeper, more meaningful life; then I beg you to read this book..."

Update: For more, see this commentary at GetReligion.

A Marriage Ceremony

We are now almost 2 weeks into legal same-sex marriages in Massachusetts. Watching the news reports and reading descriptions of the events brought me back to the few weeks when Multnomah County, here in Oregon, was also issuing licences to same-sex couples. During that time I was honored to perform 55 of those marriages. It was a deeply personal and very moving experience for me.

One of the marriages I officiated at was on the weekend following the rush of marriages when the county started issuing licences. Rather than the short 15 minutes services I had been performing one after the other, this service was a wonderful oppotunity to develop a full service and truly experience the joy that had brought 2 women, Kristin and Samantha, together to share their lives.

Here is the ceremony that I performed:

Gayness and the Rainbow of Consciousness

Worldviews of homosexuality evolve through a series of stages or waves of consciousness, each transcending and including the previous stage of wave into a more adequate and more truthful understanding or apprehension. It is impossible to understand homosexuality without a deep understanding of the principles of evolution in self, culture, and nature.

Here's a rough draft that describes how I believe gayness in men is apprehended, perceived, and/or acted out by religious or philosophical worldviews. This post is inspired by an entry in Ken Wilber's journal, One Taste. This particular piece is written in a first-person ("I") perspective. I will use the colors of the Spiral Dynamics rainbow as a guide...

This post continues at The Soulful Blogger...

Andrew Sullivan notes: Gay Muslims Under Siege

A very interesting post today on AndrewSullivan.com:

It's grim, of course. Radical Islamism hates only Jews more than homosexuals. And the mullahs best even John Derbyshire in their bigotry:

Dr Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of North America, says "homosexuality is a moral disease, a sin, a corruption… No person is born homosexual, just as nobody is born a thief, a liar or a murderer. People acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and education." Sheikh Sharkhawy, a cleric at the prestigious London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park, compares homosexuality to a "cancer tumour." He argues "we must burn all gays to prevent paedophilia and the spread of AIDS," and says gay people "have no hope of a spiritual life." The Muslim Educational Trust hands out educational material to Muslim teachers – intended for children! – advocating the death penalty for gay people, and advising Muslim pupils to stay away from gay classmates and teachers.

What staggers me is how silent the gay establishment is about these obscenities. If a religious right figure had said them, there would be hell to pay. But the multi-culti left still has a stranglehold on official gay discourse and won't condemn Islamist bigotry. Why not? These mullahs are fanning the flames of anti-gay violence with literally incendiary rhetoric. Burn gays? Yep, that's what the cleric said.

I agree with Sullivan on this one, although I'm not sure if the radical Islamic militants get nearly a free pass because they're Islamic or because many of these anti-gay comments aren't made by US Muslims and/or aren't reported by the US press. I imagine that ignorance is also a factor. It's hard to condemn something if you don't hear about it.

I don't want to discount the influence of misplaced multicultural "sensitivity" as a factor in the gay establishment's silence regarding anti-gay defamation by Muslims. I did a quick search on "Muslim" on GLAAD's web site, and was disappointed to see no criticism of anti-gay Muslims among the 11 hits returned. A typical story was one with a predictable multi-cultural sensitivity: "GLAAD: Survey Finds LGBT Muslims Were Scared & Harrassed After 9/11."

I've been following religion news closely since last November, and only once came across a report in the mainstream press concerning anti-gay bigotry by an Islamic cleric (an Australian cleric was accused of calling for the beheading of gays in a prayer service with over a thousand attendees), and I promptly condemned it on my weblog. I don't recall the Australian Islamic cleric's remarks being condemned by any of the gay press that I came across (or by Sullivan or other bloggers, for that matter). Like I said, it's hard to condemn something if you don't hear about it.

These particular comments by Dr Muzammil Siddiqi, Sheikh Sharkhawy, and the Muslim Educational Trust are despicable, and I join Sullivan in repudiating anti-gay bigotry in all its forms.

Hospitality and queer folk

Interesting interview with liberal Lutheran theologian Martin Marty in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently. He mentions that hospitality is a way to bridge the chasm between factions and groups that are at odds with one another. It’s different from tolerance, which often is a sort of “lowest common denominator” civility.

Unfortunately, Marty is typical of theologians who are generally progressive, but have had little to say about the situation of gay people in the church. Specifically, he failed to connect the dots and explore organized Christendom’s rampant lack of hospitality towards queer folk. (For the most recent example, check out this article. There is plenty of irony in the church’s lack of welcome; unlike the church, Christ identified inhospitality, not same-sex desire, as the sin of Sodom (Matthew 11:20-24).

What I don't know, I don't know

Today, a friend forwarded me a link to a blog by a young man (early 20s) who describes himself as a Christian who says he's "turning away from homosexuality and toward God."

My friend (who's straight) said, "Although he has some good, thoughtful points, the man doth seem to protest too much. Hopefully he'll continue to learn to love who and what he is."

Starting a new practice (Vipassana)

Yesterday, I finished reading a book called The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation As Taught by S. N. Goenka. And I'm planning to start beginner's meditation classes next week at SIMS. It's humbling to think of myself as a "beginner," but in all honesty I must say that I am.

The point of gay theology

Blogger and third-year seminary student Tony Hoshaw sums up the point of a gay theology...

Compassion Meditation of the Day

In some spiritual traditions, there is a meditation practice where you call to mind individuals who you despise or find unworthy of compassion... and dwell with those images, opening your heart to an awareness of the presence of Spirit among those souls.

Well, here are two links that may be useful in such a meditation practice: here and here (read the comments box). These are links to posts on two conservative Christian blogs, posts in which a Christian posted a funny picture of two gay men getting married, and then invited their (mostly Christian) readership to caption. The result includes some of the most mean-spirited and despicable comments I've ever read by so-called Christians. When one Christian reader took his brothers and sisters to task for failing in compassion, he was roundly rebuked. Apparently, these "two old geezers" deserved mockery, because they "presented themselves in public." Now that's compassion!

Here's the suggested compassion meditation: If you are a Christian who finds the gay men getting married as unworthy of compassion, meditate on the photo. If you are a gay man (like myself) who finds the mockery and mean-spiritedness of the conservative Christians contemptable, meditate on the comments.

Thanks to World Wide Rant for the links.