My Friend, Michael Stevens

Toby has three new books out: an updated, revised and expanded edition of his classic soft sci fi romance novel
SECRET MATTER -- with its quirky and mystical spin on what it means to be gay. Click on the title for info.
An historical novel, written in collaboration with historian/anthropologist Walter L. Williams,
set in the Old West TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life With the Navajo. And a collection of gay positive stories
contributed by more than 30 writers titled CHARMED LIVES.

Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Also on this website: Toby Johnson's books: TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams 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: updated, revised & expanded edtion from Lethe Press with Afterword by Mark Jordan GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING. CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series   Articles and Excerpts: Read Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate Why gay people should NOT Marry Wedding Cake Liberation Gay Marriage in Texas What's ironic Shame on the American People The "highest form of love"  The cause of homosexuality What is homosexuality? What Jesus said about Gay Rights The purpose of homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Varieties of Gay Spirituality Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium "It's Always About You" The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A Wave Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva Curious Bodies What Toby Johnson Believes The Joseph Campbell Connection Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy The Nature of Religion Being Gay is a Blessing Freedom of Religion The Gay Agenda Gay Saintliness Gay Spiritual Functions The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.  "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 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 What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel? 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 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 The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance The Rainbow Flag Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta. About Michael Talbot, gay mystic About Guy Mannheimer About Dennis Paddie About Sterling Houston The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the  "Statement of Spirituality"   Book Reviews Be Done on Earth by Howard E. Cook Pay Me What I'm Worth by Souldancer The Way Out by Christopher L  Nutter The Gay Disciple by John Henson Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry

Michael Steves & Patrick Kerr and San Antonio’s Gay Community in the early 1980s San Antonio’s gay and lesbian community has experienced a series of waves of organizational activity over the decades. Each of these has been influenced or characterized by a venture in publishing a community newsletter, newspaper or magazine. (Now that venture is showing up in the 2000s as the Internet webpage QSanAntonioNews.) One such wave of organizing activity—that still reverberates today—happened in the early 1980s. (I had just moved back to San Antonio, my hometown, after a decade in San Francisco and was most pleased to discover a vital gay community alliance here and threw myself into the project with gusto.) The originator of the San Antonio Gay Alliance (SAGA) and its associated media venture, The Calendar, was a former UTSA professor named Michael Stevens. Michael was one of those gay men whose personal struggles to claim his identity resulted in a great good and great change for the whole city. Stevens was a Political Science instructor at the University of Texas here. He’d moved to San Antonio from his hometown Philadelphia with his wife Bernadette to take the job at UTSA. He and Bernadette were a modern sophisticated “liberated” couple; both strong individuals with strong interests in politics and community organizing and a commitment to honesty and openness. After a couple of years, as Michael began to discover within himself his homosexual identity, he and his wife split up amicably and maturely. And Michael and Bernadette were quite open with their friends and academic peers about the reason for their breakup. But when Michael applied for tenure at UTSA, he was turned down—apparently because of his newly formed and very public openly gay identity. With the end of his job as a college teacher and the end of his marriage, Stevens started a whole new life. He moved to a house in the gay neighborhood off San Pedro and developed a relationship with a former student and fellow activist Patrick Kerr. And Stevens vowed he’d use his political organizing skills to serve his new personal identity. Michael pulled together San Antonio gay business people (like Hap Veltman of The Country and The Bonham Exchange, Lollie Johnson of Faces, attorney David Mitchell, music entrepreneur Rudy Gonzalez and his partner John Mitchell, lesbian bar-owner Julee French and her partner realtor Barbara Havard) and previous gay activists (like Jim Eggling and Gene Leggett) to form the San Antonio Gay Alliance. And he and Patrick started publishing The Calendar, a little booklet-style gay bar rag with announcement s of SAGA activisties and local gay community events. (I joined up as Michael’s protégé and SAGA secretary and manager of the very primitive computer database because I had a then cutting-edge Apple II Plus! Kip and I met, by the way, during that time partly because of my role in SAGA—but that’s another story.) That was a rich but tumultuous time in San Antonio. Several of the organizations that survive today in one form or another were founded during that period: the Alamo Business Council, Alamo Human Rights Committee, the Alamo City Men’s Chorale, Esperanza, Gay Fiesta and PrideFest, and, of course, the San Antonio AIDS Foundation. AIDS devastated the SAGA Board, taking such devoted activists as Dana DiCastro, Max Gillaspy, Dub Daugherty, Veltman, the two Mitchells—and both Michael Stevens and Patrick Kerr. As I write this short recollection of Gay San Antonio of some 25 years ago, I am looking at an old and yellowed print-out of the SAGA mailing list. There are just too many names to mention (and I apologize for egregious omissions). So many of the people on that list are gone. But many of us  are still around. And San Antonio is still benefiting from that wave of organizing activity. We owe Michael Stevens a debt of gratitude. For all that he lived a truncated life, he changed the world for us San Antonians. Among those "still around" is our good friend Tom Nash. I've made up a page for him elsewhere on this site.

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.