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Toby Johnson's books: 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 PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Articles and Excerpts: The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate What Jesus said about Gay
Rights Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium "It's Always About You" The Joseph Campbell Connection, "The Evolution of Gay Identity" "St. John of the Cross & Religious Articulations of the
Secret Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil Allah
Hu: "God is present here" The mystical experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis The Techniques Of The World Saviors Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
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In
explaining how courtly love developed into modern romance, Joseph
Campbell delighted in proclaiming that in the Middle Ages the highest
form of love was adultery. Marital love was participation in societal, familial concerns. But forbidden love was participation in a mystery of the soul. This was passion that risked burning at the stake and eternal damnation for the sake of the beloved. Even to the present day, homosexuals have been frequently faced with this same dilemma. To be true to themselves and their deepest personal needs and feelings, they have had to accept eternal damnation as proof of their love and their integrity. In Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell argued that homosexual unions were different from heterosexual precisely because they were chosen out of love and emotional connection (“soul mates”). Though his research has been questioned by even pro-gay scholars, he contended that faith communities used liturgies, like the Office for Same-Sex Unions under the patronage of the holy martyrs (and lovers) Saints Serge and Bacchus, to recognize “gay marriage,” actually before the Church began to notarize straight marriages. Because heterosexual unions were usually arranged, they were obvious to family and society. But because homosexual unions were chosen intimately and invisibly, they needed to be proclaimed. Thus these liturgies Boswell believed he had discovered signified that the lovers were “united not in the bond of birth but in spiritual faith and love.” Read what Toby Johnson thinks is "The simple answer to the issue of gay marriage" Toby Johnson, PhD is author of eight books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, three gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality. In addition to the novels featured elsewhere in this web site, Johnson is author of IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD and THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET (Revised edition): AN APPRECIATION OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL. Johnson's Lammy Award winning book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness was published in 2000. His Lammy-nominated book GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was published by Alyson in 2003.
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