A NEW SPIRITUALITY FOR GAYS

© 1984 by Stuart Norman


Written as a draft introduction to a projected book that never materialized.


        There appears to be a growing spiritual awareness within the gay movement. If so, what influences might that have on American culture as a whole? The gay movement has been perceived to run counter to prevailing religious beliefs and 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 are searching for stronger roots and values. Certainly there are 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 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 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 was homosexuality an important issue for the ancient Romans. Nor 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 establish 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 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 them to be like everyone else, holding middle-class values, the only difference being their same-sex orientation. There needs to be respect for diversity in values and lifestyles.
        But what of these other cultural roles? In most ancient cultures or in “primitive", tribal ones, those who showed homosexual inclinations as children, both boys and girls, were singled out to be taught the arts of the shaman, priest(ess), visionary, witch doctor and healer. They were revered as chosen ones by the gods, as was the American Indian berdache, because their special ability to integrate the masculine and feminine polarities of the self gave them their powers of insight and spiritual wisdom. Gays were integrated into the culture in respected roles. Yet today we live in the only culture to reject the role of the shaman and the validity of myth as a cultural 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, and we ignore or malign the spiritual and unpredictable human realms of life. So could there be something deeper within 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. 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. 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, 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 along 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 “Gay Church", the Metropolitan Community Church, established by the Reverend Troy Perry in Los Angeles in 1969, having congregations in most large cities. It has a Christian approach, although congregations vary in interpreting doctrine from fundamentalist-traditional to humanist-radical. However, the truly radical exploration of spirituality had its beginnings in the Faery Movement which grew out of the 1960s hippy philosophies.
        Fairy was a derogatory term for an effeminate gay man, but adopted by gays, 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 figures, pagan rituals of self-transformation, androgyny, natural healing, and being loving to all people. They follow no doctrine or dogma. Perhaps they are an embodiment of “New Age” people. Faeries come from all social and economic classes, although many wish to return to the simple life on the land and rural cooperative communities. They are exploring their potential to be a new type of being in our society, exploring new ways of relating to each other, and are examples of who and what gay people can be.

        In a recent interview, radical faerie 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. The insight is a valuable one needed if we are to survive and create a new, humane society rising out of the ruins of our current, bankrupt and dying culture. Gay people can be cultural transformers for the new age, and create an integrated role for themselves in harmony with everyone.



REFERENCES
Boswell, J., Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980.

Clark, J.M., The Native American Berdache; RFD, Vol. 11, No. 1; Bakersville, NC, 1984.

D’Emilio, J., Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1983.

Grahn, J., Another Mother Tongue; Beacon Press, Boston, 1984.

Green, F., and Kilhefner, D., Buried Treasure: Bringing the Gay Spirit to Light; Lesbian and Gay Academic Union Newsletter, Vo1.6, No. 4, Los Angeles, 1984.

Norman, S., Spiritual Politics: The Politics of the Individual; RFD , Vol. 10, No. 1, Bakersville, NC, 1983.

Wilber, K., Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution; Shambhala, Boulder, CO, 1982.

Contents Spiritual Politics Sodomize for Freedom