There appears to be a growing spiritual awareness within the gay movement. If so, what influences might that have on American culture? The gay movement has been perceived to run counter to prevailing religious beliefs and is therefore rejected by most religious denominations. Thus Gay people rejected religion in favor of political analyses, mostly on the left. Now that is changing as gay people searching for stronger roots and values. Certainly, there are alternative new age cultural trends operating within the gay community and some of these have been originated and promoted by gay people. If the gay movement is a part of a new, more humane culture germinating in the cracks of the declining western civilization. then gays can be leaders in a spiritual renewal for all humanity. Yet a special position for gays in this rebirth would only be a return to the ancient cultural traditions that homosexual people have played in the development of most human societies. What were those roles?

With increasing documentation, gay historians and anthropologists are chronicling the lives of gay people within our culture and in other cultures of the past and present. There is a growing body of work demonstrating other cultural attitudes toward homosexuality and how gayness was integrated into those cultures. It appears that only late western culture since the eleventh century has been strongly homophobic. The ancient Greeks, founders of our way of thought, glorified homosexuality, although it had to fit a conventional, patriarchal social behavior. Neither did early Christianity condemn homosexual love, as is commonly but erroneously believed. Jesus spoke of the “Rache”, a derogatory Hebrew term for homosexuals, admonishing his followers not to condemn them.

But before we examine other cultural roles of homosexual people, first we must be aware that there has never been, to the best of our knowledge, a gay community with its cultural beliefs and roles as exists today. The modern gay community is only a very recent social phenomenon born out of the tremendous demographic changes brought about by World War II. In that period of social upheaval gays found the opportunity to meet others like themselves and gained a new awareness of what they were. The ensuing political movement brought gays together as a people and allowed them to examine their lives, establish a sense of identity and gay businesses and services. Thus the modern gay person is a recent cultural role unlike any other in history. Gays have created themselves as a new ethnic group, a people who are products of our culture, although living on the fringes of it.

However, the gay community does not have a single vision of who and what they are. Gays are trying to redefine themselves to discover common values. Yet a left or right wing political analysis is not sufficient to offer an answer to the question of the gay role in our society. For too long have ideological considerations for human rights and power been based in the obsolete economic political philosophies. All points of view exist within the gay community and gays are fragmented over these ideas and ideals. They cannot speak with one voice; perhaps they should not. There are those with radical separatist views who would set gays apart as a new breed within our culture, then there are the assimilationists who wish us to be like everyone else, holding middle-class values and behaviors, the only difference being same-sex behavior. There needs to be respect for diversity in values and lifestyles.

Then what of these other cultural roles homosexuals have played? In most ancient and “primitive” tribal cultures boys and girls who had homosexual inclinations as children were singled out to be taught the arts of the shaman, visionary, priest(ess) and healer. Or they were followers of the Goddess, the Cinaedi, organized into groups of worshipers, similar to monks, who led religious ceremonies. They were revered as chosen ones by the gods, as was the Native American berdache, because their special ability to integrate the masculine and feminine polarities of the self gave them powers of insight and spiritual wisdom. Gays were integrated into the cultures in respected roles. Yet today we live in the only culture to reject the role of the shaman and validity of myth as a carrier of wisdom and knowledge. We are poorer and less whole because of it. Western culture is unbalanced in favor of a male dominated, rationalistic and reductionist philosophy. We tend to accept only scientific and technical truth, the factual and objective, or conversely the irrational, doctrinaire and bigoted religious traditions, and we ignore or malign the spiritual and unpredictable realms of life. So could there be something deeper within the patriarchal, western culture responsible for the treatment gay people have suffered from the hands of cultural authorities - the church and state? It could be the fear of and suppression of sexuality and the feminine consciousness and their connection with the spiritual realm that threatens patriarchal power. Perhaps this is the basis for homophobia. Because many gays do not know their heritage, they also suffer our cultural malaise and the consequences of oppression.

If there is anything relevant to our culture, the gay movement represents an attempt at profound cultural change, as does the “New Age” movement, although rightly much maligned for its specious spirituality, as part of a spiritual seeking for current problems. It represents more than political change. The gay movement is about human dignity, individual rights and values, the discovery of new potentials for the self, the freedom to control our bodies and most of all about love. These are the higher values that might offer gays the vision they need. The answer must lie in a rediscovery of their spiritual dimension. Fortunately, that is occurring within the gay community, following conventional and radical lines. There are gay religious organizations within or coexisting with many established religious denominations. Quakers teach the acceptance of gay people. The Unitarian Universalist Church recently recognized gay marriages. Or there is the mostly gay Metropolitan Community Church, established by Rev. Troy Perry in Los Angeles in 1969, having congregations in most large cities. It has a Christian foundation, although congregations vary in interpreting doctrine from almost fundamentalist-traditional to humanist-radical. But the radical exploration of spirituality had its beginnings in the Radical Faery movement which grew out of the 1960s hippy subculture.

Fairy was a derogative term for an effeminate gay man, but adopted by some gay men and respelled and redefined as “A magical being, delicate, yet possessed of powers uncommon to men.”, it is a rallying concept for a return to their roots as shamans. Thus the Faeries are a network of gay people who are interested in living a lifestyle devoted to brotherhood, individual rights and freedom, respect for the Earth, worship of Goddess, pagan rituals of self-transformation, androgyny, natural healing and being loving and respecting of all people. They follow no doctrine or dogma. Perhaps they are an embodiment of spiritual seekers. Faeries come from all socioeconomic classes, although they may want to return to the simple, rural life on the land and cooperative communities. They are exploring their potential to be a new type of being in our society, exploring new ways of relating with each other, and are examples of who and what gay people can be.

In an interview, Radical Faery Don Kilhefner, Director for Programs at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center and founder of Treeroots, a gay organization dedicated to reclaiming the spirit vision, said that gays needed “gay soul-making.” “For the sixties and seventies there was a real need for the gay warrior. For the eighties and nineties, it’s the gay shaman.” It is time to change the strategy of the gay movement from political to spiritual activism.

Because gay people have been a persecuted minority living on the fringes of our culture they are able to see outside the cultural blinders worn by the majority. This insight is a valuable tool needed if we are to survive and create a new, humane society rising out of the ruins of our current, bankrupt and possibly dying culture. Gay people can be cultural transformers for the new age and create an integrated role for themselves in harmony with everyone.

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_____, “I Am the Leatherfaerie Shaman”, in Leatherfolk, ed.by Mark Thompson, Alyson Publications, Boston, 1991.

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