MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Ride the Kosmic Wave to Colin's Blog...

By Joe Perez

One of my favorite new (to me) queer spiritual blogs is Spirit Under Transsexual Cover, a blog by a surfer of Kosmic waves. According to Colin's Zaadz profile, he's a 36 year-old Gemini who lives in Portland, Oregon. A Truth seeker, spiritual explorer, and radically full being. He considers himself a transman (genetically XX with a deeeper resonsnace with the male side of the gender spectrum). Here's more from his profile:

I am currently exploring Buddhism (mainly Soto Zen, but Theravada and Tibetan, too), Vedanta and Yoga, as well as developmental and integral psychology. I see my future including an offering of myself and my experience as a psychotherapist and writer; graduate school is on the horizon. My life has been profoundly influenced by many things: living as a queer person in America, the writings and talks by Ken Wilber and Ram Dass, kirtan with Krishna Das and fluffy kittens. My spirit is fed by spreading love. I see each person as a unique flower, whether that flower is in full bloom or is wilting from the illusion of separation and all the related suffering.

Recent posts by the transman include an embedded musical post (by the artist Creed), quotes from the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist sacred text on "The Chief Purpose of Being Incarnate", a great image post called "The Mirror of 2", a take on musician Bjork, a post on his suspicion of plastics, and insights from a holotropic breathwork seminar.

The longest reflection is "Integral Living: A Practical Guide to Remembering Joy and Resting in Equanimity," a notable contribution on the integration of depth psychology with Buddhist spiritual practice. But it's really not as heavy as that description sounds. Check it out for the insights into community, practical tips on forging a life that makes sense, and just for fun.

It's hard enough to be real and bring your light shining out in the real world. In some respects, it's even harder in the virtual world, where there is a great possibility to recoil in fear, shyness, and concern for privacy. Because he shares his light with others so that others can enjoy his special gifts, come what may, in my book that makes Colin one of our bright shining lights.

Groundbreaking Conference Gathers Transgender Christian Advocates

I got this press release over a Methodist LGBT (CALLED OUT, umcornet@yahoo.com) list I'm on, and I wanted to pass it on.  As a queer man who doen't identify as trans, I still feel very strongly about addressing trans issues as part of a queer agenda, and I'm often frustrated at how trans issues get left on the sidelines.  Our trans siblings are far too often overlooked not just by society, but by us.  While mainstream, secular LGBT rights orgs are starting to address this egregious oversight, conferences like this one are great first steps towards addressing similar oversights by many queers of faith, spiritual queers, and their related organizations:

Groundbreaking conference gathers transgender Christian advocates
By Robert Marus
Published January 23, 2007
Associated Baptist Press

BERKELEY, Calif. (ABP) -- In an event organizers billed as the first
of its kind, about 40 transgender Christian leaders and their allies
joined counterparts from other faiths for a "Transgender Religious
Summit" Jan. 19-21 in California.

Sponsors said the meeting, hosted by the Pacific School of Religion in
Berkeley, was the second conference for the transgender religious
community -- and the first to be held at a Christian seminary. The
interdenominational school has students from multiple Christian
traditions and formal relationships with the United Church of Christ,
the United Methodist Church and the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ).

While many moderate and progressive Christian denominations and other
religious groups have been engaged for decades in the debate over
homosexuality, transgender issues still remain on the edge of
Christian discourse. Most evangelical and conservative Christians
consider acceptance of transgender people to be outside orthodox and
traditional beliefs.

"Transgender" is a broad identity term, encompassing people who dress
and live as a different gender than the one assigned to them at birth,
those who have undergone partial or complete transformations to adopt
the physical attributes of a gender different than their genetic
gender, or people born with multiple or ambiguous sex organs.

Conference organizers said they aim to educate their faith communities
about special issues facing the transgender faithful.

"Transgender people of faith have a valuable perspective on our
national obsession with gender. They have struggled with the
unreasonable demands for conformity inherent in our collective life
yet have been able to discover a place of personal integrity," said
Erin Swenson, a transgender Presbyterian minister who spoke at the
conference, according to a press release from organizers. "They have
come to understand the balance between divine creation and the ongoing
responsibility that each of us has for our own self-creation."

The seminary's Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies in Religion and the
National Center for Transgender Equality co-sponsored the conference.
The press release noted that, even in liberal congregations and
denominations, issues related to transgender people can be quite
foreign to the church and ministers.

Attendees discussed ways to educate fellow believers about transgender
issues as well as the need for more worship and theological resources
inclusive of transgender believers.

Richard Lindsay, a spokesman for the conference, said the event was a
starting point. "The transgender religious community is a community
that's really in formation and that's really growing in its
understanding of itself," he said Jan. 23. "This is a movement that's
really coalescing at this point, so there will be more of these.

Gender-blind bathrooms: a short-sighted solution?

By Joe Perez

Today I learned about the Genderblind.org website for a group that promotes gender-neutral college dorm policies (thanks for the tip, Hugo). Students at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, aspire to change the way the nation's college dorms separate facilities by gender. From their website:

The National Student Genderblind Campaign is a student-initiated, grass-roots organization working to achieve gender-neutral collegiate policies. By engaging students from colleges and universities across the nation, the National Student Genderblind Campaign strives to serve as a comprehensive source of information for those who wish to implement gender-neutral policy of their own.

As a matter of principle, I must say that I prefer gender awareness to gender blindness. Walking through life with one's eyes closed to gender similarities and differences is not a policy I can advocate, as a rule. Nor do I hold "neutrality" as a moral ideal, except as pertains to formal equality of all individuals before the law; "neutrality" when applied to matters of culture tend to be hopelessly romantic ideals usually offered with good intentions but resulting in poor policies with unanticipated negative consequences for everyone concerned.

Whosoever Will

Though I'm a practicing Buddhist these days, I was raised in the Baptist church, in a very traditionally religious family. To this day, my parents have a bible verse in the outgoing message on their answering machine. The one thing I remember about that part of my upbringing was the music. The church was the first place I opened my mouth and sang. And years later, when I reached a point of alienation, realizing that I would never fit into or be accepted into that world as who I was, the music still got to me at times. Even now, I own a couple of CDs from that genre of music. Still, for me, it is mostly music about the past.

So, when I saw an article about Transcendence, the nation's first all-transgender gospel choir, I had to stop and read it.

"God said, 'whosoever,' " [Bobbi Jeah Baker] said. "That means transgender people."

Transcendence Gospel Choir follows in the footsteps of gay and lesbian choirs around the country, which -- for 25 years -- have been using music to gain acceptance and visibility, express pride and offer hope to the hopeless. In just three years, the transgender choir has grown from a ragtag assemblage unsure of how to use their voices into a gospel powerhouse with fans and concerts and a walloping sound.

"If any message of any song I sing helps someone get out of their inner locked-up cage, that's what I'm for," Baker said, "because it took me a while to get free."

Last year, after the group recorded its first CD, "Whosoever Believes," Zwazzi Sowo, a fellow member of City of Refuge, bought nearly a dozen copies to give as gifts to family members -- straight and gay alike. When Sowo's brother died, she brought a CD to his grieving widow, a religious African Methodist. The music will heal your heart, said Sowo, never explaining the "trans" part of "transcendence." Her conservative sister-in-law learned every song on the CD and later asked Sowo to thank the singers from her church. Sowo had to smile.

"For them to take a stance and just to claim who they are in song is so powerful," Sowo said. "When you're hurt or marginalized, a lot of times what you do is shrink and try not to be seen so you don't hurt so much. But their music is about expansion and stepping into it. It's about growth. ... It's here to heal the world."

Sometimes I stand amazed at how much the world has changed just in my lifetime, and at the degree of courage people find within themselves to simply be who they are.

Bobbi Jean Baker, a former crack addict who completed a 23-year sentence for robbery and second-degree murder in 2000, said that after joining the choir, "I went from being a nobody to being a somebody."

On the CD, Baker is the soloist on the song "I Almost Let Go," which she sees as a personal anthem.

"I felt like I just couldn't take life anymore," the lyrics go. "But God held me close/so I wouldn't let go."

"Transcendence opened my eyes to a whole new gamut of life," Baker said. "I saw people, and some looked just like me. They had similar experiences, and they were living as to who they are."

Becoming more spiritual helped Baker, who has nine brothers and six sisters, reconnect with her family. Most of her siblings bought the CD. Her oldest sister refused to speak to her after her gender transition, but recently, they started talking, and she invited Baker to her daughter's wedding.

"I'm going," Baker said, "as who I am."

I think there's another CD I need to add to my collection.

Two-spirits present challenge for Navajo AIDS educators

An article in the Salt Lake Tribune explains that the fluidity of gender rules in Native American cultures presents challenges for HIV/AIDS and public health education. Here's a clip:

American Indians are flexible about letting people choose gender roles -- social roles rather than biological identity -- not always based on their sexual identity, Thomas said.

"The Western perspective is a binary gender class," [Wesley] Thomas [a Navajo who is co-editor of the book, Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality] said. "You're either a man or a woman. It's so inflexible; it's static. Native Americans have more flexibility."

In this world of movable gender lines, the label "gay" for men who have sex with men doesn't always fit. If a man has sex with a male who presents himself to the world as a female, he may not call himself gay.

Author Vanessa Sheridan promotes book on transgender Christian spirituality

A short news item notes that Vanessa Sheridan, transgender author and 2002 Lambda Literary Award finalist, is currently promoting a new book she co-authored on transgender Christian spirituality. She recently appeared for a discussion on the topic in Minneapolis.