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Also on this website:

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Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness

GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe

SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil

TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams




CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers

THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell

IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey

Unpublished manuscripts

About ordering

Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series

  Articles and Excerpts:

Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness

Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"

About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996

The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate

A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality

Why gay people should NOT Marry

The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage

Toby and Kip Get Married

Wedding Cake Liberation

Gay Marriage in Texas

What's ironic

Shame on the American People

The "highest form of love"

Gay Consciousness

Why homosexuality is a sin

The cause of homosexuality

The origins of homophobia

Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness

What is homosexuality?

What is Gay Spirituality?

My three messages

What Jesus said about Gay Rights

Queering religion

Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men

Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?

The purpose of homosexuality

Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality

What the Bible Says about Homosexuality

Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men

Varieties of Gay Spirituality

Waves of Gay Liberation Activity

The Gay Succession

Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?

The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter

Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium

Easton Mountain Retreat Center

Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism

The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey

The upsidedown book on MSNBC

Enlightenment

"It's Always About You"

The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara

Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara

Gay Spirituality

Curious Bodies

What Toby Johnson Believes

The Joseph Campbell Connection

The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)

Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The Two Loves

The Nature of Religion

What's true about Religion

Being Gay is a Blessing

Drawing Long Straws

Freedom of Religion

The Gay Agenda

Gay Saintliness

Gay Spiritual Functions

The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.

The Sinfulness of Homosexuality

Proposal for a study of gay nondualism

Priestly Sexuality

Having a Church to Leave

Harold Cole on Beauty

Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption

Not lashed to the prayer-post

Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality

Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process

Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)

Redeem Orlando

Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar

Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson

Mystical Vision

"The Evolution of Gay Identity"

"St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul."

Avalokiteshvara at the Baths

 Eckhart's Eye

Let Me Tell You a Secret

Religious Articulations of the Secret

The Collective Unconscious

Driving as Spiritual Practice

Meditation

Historicity as Myth

Pilgrimage

No Stealing

Next Step in Evolution

The New Myth

The Moulting of the Holy Ghost

Gaia is a Bodhisattva

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016

The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)

You're On Your Own

Superheroes

Seeing Differently

Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil

Allah Hu: "God is present here"

 
Adam and Steve

The Life is in the Blood

Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"

Seeing with Different Eyes

Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom

What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?

The Vision

The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside

A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity in Riverside

The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis

The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby

Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara

Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection

Part 4: A Course in Miracles

The Secret of the Clear Light

Understanding the Clear Light

Mobius Strip

Finding Your Tiger Face

How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated

About Alien Abduction

In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke

Karellen was a homosexual

The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance

Intersections with the movie When We Rise

More about Gay Mental Health

Psych Tech Training

Toby at the California Institute

The Rainbow Flag

Ideas for gay mythic stories

People

Kip and Toby, Activists

Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.

Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement

About Hay and The New Myth

About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"

About Michael Talbot, gay mystic

About Fr. Bernard Lynch

About Richard Baltzell

About Guy Mannheimer

About David Weyrauch

About Dennis Paddie

About Ask the Fire

About Arthur Evans

About Christopher Larkin

About Mark Thompson

About Sterling Houston

About Michael Stevens

The Alamo Business Council

Our friend Tom Nash

Second March on Washington

The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"

Book Reviews

Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:

Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe

Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman








Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated








Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE

The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here

Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams

Two Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here

Finding Your Own True Myth:

The Myth of the Great Secret III









In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld












The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.

The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal,  that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights,  that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness

        --The Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776)

The answer to the "Gay Marriage Debate" lies in traditional Roman Catholic doctrine and old-time conservative political ideology.

The Catholic Church teaches that the "ministers" or "celebrants" of the sacrament of Matrimony are the two people who are marrying one another, not the priest. The priest is present simply to witness the marriage (and because it is a legal contract to record it) and to offer the community's blessing on the new life the pair has chosen to share together.

The Church doesn't perform the sacrament: the couple does.

And the way sacraments work is that they work if the people performing them believe they work. In the condemnation of the early Church heresy of Donatism, theologians held that the moral state of the priest didn't matter (and neither does the priest's approval or opinion of the marriage). The validity of the sacrament is in the belief of the receiver.

Remember in catechism class the nuns taught that if somebody is dying you should baptize them (whether you have any business doing so or not) and you should hear their confession if they want to confess to you (cause in their delirium they might think you're a priest). If people believe they are receiving a valid sacrament, then they are.

I would argue that gay couples who adminster the sacrament of Matrimony to one another do--by virtue of their intention to commit themselves before God. After all, the "validity" of the sacrament is up to God, not the Church officials.

It's the state, not the sacramental system or God, that is determined by legal rules. BUT the very basis of conservative political ideology is that the state should stay out of the private lives of individuals. Things like God, religion, sacraments--and personal relationships--are none of the government's business.

And they are correct about that.

The government's role is to witness and record the contract. And that's all. Certainly not to tell individuals who they can and can't marry.

So, ironically, according to Catholic teaching and Conservative (Republican???) political theory, gay couples who want to enter into a contractual relationship and concelebrated sacramental union can and do.

And the answer to the question "what does the Bible say about homosexuality?" lies in orthodox Protestant theology.

Central to the Protestant Reformation was the idea of "private interpretation of Scripture," i.e. it wasn't the officials of the Roman Catholic Church who should declare what the Bible says, but rather the Holy Spirit working in the souls of the faithful.

So what the Bible says and means is what it says and means to me, and to you, that is, what it means to the individual reader.

Fundamentalist preachers and TV evangelists have no more authority than the R.C. Church in this regard. They have no business telling other people what the Bible says; they can only say what it says to them. The rest of us are on our own also. When we read the Bible, what we get from it is what comes forth from our interior inspiration.

What the Bible says to homosexuals is what homosexuals get from reading the Bible. We naturally see that the taboos and primitive rules and primitive interpretations of biblical times have little meaning for modern, psychologically-sophisticated, rationally-minded, 21st century high-tech culture. And so what the Bible really says about homosexuality is what we, with enlightened minds and good hearts, understand. And that ought necessarily be gay-positive.

Besides, Jesus's advice was to abandon all those old and numerous commandments of the books of the Law. A new Commandment I give you, he said, Love One Another.

Do to others what you'd want done to you. Treat other people as though they were you yourself.

Isn't that simple?

Using Jesus's criteria, how could anyone deny another person love, affection, and sexual fulfillment? Why would anybody think a five thousand year old law for desert dwelling nomads should be used to deny human rights to people in today's world?

Click here for information about Toby Johnson's books

See also: Shame on the American People for the November 2004 & (in California, Florida & Arkansas 2008) election
What Jesus said about the cause of homosexuality
What Jesus said about Gay Rights

The value of the gay marriage debate is that it demonstrates to young homosexuals that true love and stable relationship awaits them, not the isolation and loneliness that popular belief used to hold out as the inevitable future for homosexuals. How wonderful for such youth struggling to understand and cope with their burgeoning sexual orientation to find role models in the lesbian and gay couples who are coming forth to proclaim their commitment to one another and petition that their de facto legal and economic issues be accommodated in the law.

And the prejudice, meanness, and narrow-mindedness of the opposition to acknowledging the reality of gay relationships demonstrates to gay people at least--and maybe also to a sizable segment of psychologically- sophisticated non-gay moderns--that so-called conservative thinking and old time religion fail to encourage loving attitudes, harmonious behavior, and spiritual enlightenment.

This should remind the gay population how important it is that they lead exemplary lives of kindness, generosity, good citizenship, and integrity. Since people whom today we'd likely call by the inexact term "gay" have throughout time been the artists, cultural leaders, and spiritual guides on the "cutting edge" of human evolution, it's a good thing for contemporary homosexuals to be impelled to demonstrate and promote compassionate attitudes toward all racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities.

The struggle for same sex marriage is not about besmirching traditional arrangements but really about creating that "kinder and gentler society" the first George Bush had supposedly called for. It's about urging the majority of Americans to be compassionate instead of prejudiced, and kind and generous instead of petty and selfish.