Or so says the Broward County library system.
The inaugural Gay and Lesbian History Month, organized by the Broward County library system, is this month featuring a series of cultural and historic programs and films that highlight gay and lesbian issues.
Continue reading "October is gay history month, didn't you know" »
Note from Joe Perez: Inspired that a quality treatment of gay spirituality could have been published as early as 1980, I am excited to republish the following piece on Gay Spirituality & Culture. This is not only a piece of historical interest, but also a compelling vision for spirituality that is still valid today.
Background to the article:
By Kendra Crossen Burroughs, 20 September 2005
Around early 1980, someone had put an ad in the New Age Journal to the effect that he would award his entire collection of back issues of that magazine to anyone who could explain why the New Age Journal would not publish anything on gay spirituality. I was not sure what the term “gay spirituality” referred to, but I was curious to find out, so I wrote to this person. He sent me some material, and I decided to write an article and try to get it published.
Since gay spirituality was a men’s movement and I am a woman, I asked a gay male friend to do the article with me. Bruce Hoffman was an English professor and, like me, a follower of Avatar Meher Baba. In the article, I combined the material I had gathered on the gay spirituality movement with Bruce’s comments in a taped conversation that I had with him.
The New Age Journal turned the article down, but the Yoga Journal accepted it, as they had a column suitable for such op-ed pieces. The editor told me that many yoga teachers were gay men and would be interested in the article.
The article includes a circular diagram representing a cycle of incarnations, showing a series of six male incarnations on the left side of the “clock” and six female incarnations on the right side. I can’t recall where this came from; it could be that Meher Baba had imparted some such idea to someone and then Bruce thought of expressing it in this particular diagram. It suggests that just as the reincarnating individual was about to enter or leave an incarnation of the opposite sex, there would be a gay or lesbian incarnation. Several readers misunderstood this as "female souls in male bodies" or "male souls in female bodies," which was not at all what we'd intended; the soul has no gender, as far as we were concerned. It was more a matter of "impressions" (sanskaras in Sanskrit) deposited on the mental body in prior lifetimes.
After the article was published, we got many responses from men who were eager to know more about gay spirituality. I am pleased to see this little bit of “history” republished, and I dedicate it to my late dear friend and coauthor, Bruce Hoffman.
On Gay Spirituality
By Kendra Crossen and Bruce Hoffman
[originally published: Yoga Journal, July-August 1980]
This August, hundreds of men are expected to convene in the Colorado mountains for the second annual “Spiritual Gathering for Radical Fairies." The first such gathering was held last summer at a desert ashram in Arizona. Proudly affirming their identity with the magical little people of legend, the fairies proclaimed a new spiritual movement that looks to the "gay vision" for a conscious force capable of healing society as well as helping individuals realize their human potential.
The 1979 conference was the first dramatic expression of a growing impatience with the frequent failure of New Age groups, as well as traditional institutions, to address themselves meaningfully to the gay community. A participant in the conference summed up the problem this way:
"Bioenergetics says that gay people have marked blocks in the pelvic area. Macrobiotics say we are too yin. Kundalini says we are stuck in the lower chakras. Gurdjieff said we can't do the Work. Religion labels us sinners. The law calls us criminals. Psychiatrists still call us sick (despite recent changes in 'classification'). This all leaves me with one question: What New Age?" And his conclusion: "It's no New Age for us. Our support doesn't come from New Agers. They haven't liberated themselves from patriarchal, authoritarian structures--they've merely created new ones."
The Gay Vision
In response, the advocates of gay spirituality have decided that integration into a world dominated by "male heterosexism" is not an adequate measure of freedom. These men have come to see the gay community as a people who have their own distinct culture and share a "multidimensional" quality, a special "gay window" through which they view the world. Repudiating the notion that gays are "just like everyone else,” they seek a deepening of gay consciousness in the belief that gay people, as a unique manifestation of the Universal Spirit, can make a vital contribution to human unfoldment.
The idea of a prophetic mission latent in the gay experience is not new one. In the nineteenth century, for example, Edward Carpenter saw the role of what he called the intermediate sex as guiding the world toward "the life of the heart," in which the values of personal affection and friendship would replace monetary, legal, and social obligations as the dominant force in human relationships. Present-day spokesmen express a similar view, finding in the gay ideal a model of spiritual love. Don Kilfhefner, in discussing the need to reexamine "hetero-male assumptions" about spirituality, notes that in the Bhagavad Gita the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna has “a qualitative nature just like that of gay lovers." Though perhaps startling at first glance, this observation is understandable in light of Larry Fine's statement that gay people "tend to relate to each other as whole individuals, with an equality rarely found in a heterosexual relationships."
Harry Hay calls this "subject-to-subject" consciousness in contrast to "subject-to-object” relationships, which he links to opportunism, competitiveness, and the pursuit of self-advantage. Subject-subject consciousness, which fits into neither the "male" nor the "female" category, is felt to be the chief gay contribution to the New Age vision. A countercultural corrective that restores balance to society, it points the way to liberation from rigid definitions of self and to the possibility of a free interplay of love from soul to soul, regardless of sex.
As we understand it, gay spirituality proposes a merging of this spiritual vision with social/political awareness as a means of transforming human consciousness. This approach cannot be regarded merely as a petulant response to the exclusiveness of certain “straight" organizations, nor as an ad hoc philosophy thrown together to meet the needs of a few extremists; it is rather the latest culmination of a movement that has gradually evolved over a long period.
Nevertheless, while recognizing that homosexual as well as heterosexual impulses are inherent forces in the process of spiritual development, we question the validity of a spirituality that stresses sexual identity. To best appreciate the contributions and limitations of sexual identity in achieving spiritual growth, it is vital to understand the dynamics behind the spiritual journey.
The Spiritual Journey
Any approach to spiritual growth is essentially an attempt to answer the questions “Who am I?”; “What am I doing here?”; “Where am I going?”; and “How do I get there?” In the view presented here, these questions are seen to arise simultaneously with the origin of the universe itself.
<P>Sources as ancient as the Vedas and as recent as God Speaks by Meher Baba assert that the universe came into existence in order for the Divine to play hide-and-seek with Its own creation. The soul's consciousness advances slowly and painfully through the process that we know as evolution, and it is not until the human form is reached that the soul is capable of asking, "Who am I?" But human consciousness is so burdened with the multitude of impressions picked up in the course of evolution that it takes millions of human lifetimes for the soul to suspect that it is something more than the particular form in which it happens to find itself.
Through millions of incarnations, one is exposed to the entire range of human experience--as female and male, rich and poor, black and white, powerful and weak, healthy and sick, and so on, until the individual reaches the point, of involution: the conscious return to the one Self from which we all originated unconsciously. Every spiritual aspirant is on this journey of involution, which basically entails the elimination of impressions that cause the soul to identify with being limited.
Continue reading "On Gay Spirituality by Kendra Crossen Burroughs and Bruce Hoffman" »
Ricky Hurt sent this along by e-mail...
December 21- Day 3 --
We will light a blue candle to affirm Integrity. This principle stresses the value of looking within to search for meaning and purpose in our lives, recognizing our responsibilities and duties, honesty and accountability. Gay and lesbian parents, teachers, and mentors are especially honored today. This is a day for "coming out" to others.
1917-In Russia, many laws were nullified including one forbidding sex between men. Seventeen years later Article 121 would re-criminalize it, carrying a sentence up to five years "deprivation of freedom."
1969-Jim Owles and Marty Robinson broke from the Gay Liberation Front to form the Gay Activists Alliance because they believed GLF was too focused on causes unrelated to gay liberation.
1973-A bulletin was issued by a federal judge stating that a person's sexual orientation may not be sole cause for termination of Federal employment in the U.S.
1988-The Chicago City Council voted 28-17 to approve a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
1990-An MTV poll reported that 92% of America's teenagers say it would make no difference to them if their favorite rock star came out as gay or lesbian.
Today's GAY(glbt) birthday bio,... Michael Tilson Thomas, 1944, first gay conductor to achieve such prominence without masking or hiding his sexuality.
In an Advocate interview, Stephen Mitchell argues that the Epic of Gilgamesh (full text) presents the world's first same-sex union. Mitchell gives good reasons for believing that the tale of love and friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is a homoerotic, sexual one.
Here's a clip:
Gilgamesh is widely regarded as the oldest piece of literature on earth, written before the Bible, before the Iliad—even before Queer as Folk. In the introduction to his new translation, Mitchell presents the argument that the ancient epic contains not only one of the first recorded friendships in literature but also the first gay marriage.
Those who dismiss Mitchell’s claim as sensational should consider his prolific, acclaimed career: His work has been hailed by critics and scholars, with Harold Bloom, Robert Coles, and Elaine Pagels all praising his new English version of Gilgamesh. Most recently, Malcom Jones of Newsweek wrote, “This book proves that in the right hands, no great story ever grows stale.”
Mitchell claims that the sexual nature of the relationship between Enkidu and Gilgamesh is made explicit in "Tablet XII," a separate poem not always included with traditional translations. However, I don't know what he's talking about. At least in this translation of this tablet, there are no gay sex scenes (just references to Enkidu kissing a girl, striking a woman, and fighting with his son):
SOULFULLY GAY
By Joe Perez
In 1964, a Village Voice editorial criticized Andy Warhol’s filmmaking as “films shot without film, films shot out of focus, films focusing on Taylor Mead’s ass for two hours, etc.” There was, in fact, no two-hour film of Taylor Mead’s ass.
So Warhol promptly created one. A 70-minute film entitled “Taylor Mead’s Ass” followed the stinging editorial. In the film, Mead pretends to remove items from his anal sphincter including vacuum cleaner accessories, a mannequin’s torso, and a picture of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara from “Gone with the Wind.”
The making of “Taylor Mead’s Ass” fits with Warhol’s habit of embracing the very terms of invective his critics used against him. In a similar vein, Warhol’s “Rorschach” series of paintings in 1984 were a reply to a New York Review of Books article, which compared Warhol’s work to a “Rorschach blot.”
Such bravura moments reveal Warhol’s distinctive style of camp as a kind of psychological jump-start, a way of setting sparks flying and snapping people back to attention. So claims University of Maryland teacher Kelly M. Cresap in the new book, Pop Trickster Fool, Warhol Performs Naivete (University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Gender studies teacher and religion blogger Hugo Schwyzer provides a comforting perspective on the election from history in "Lessons from history, reasons to hope?" Here's a short clip:
As one of my local heroes, California state senator and lesbian activist Sheila James Kuehl points out, "no group has ever fought for civil rights in this country without eventually attaining them." The struggle is hard. There will be setbacks. But all is by no means lost, and we must have some intelligent and thoughtful perspective on just how far we've come.
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