Table of Contents
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Also on this website:
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
SECRET
MATTER: updated, revised & expanded edtion from Lethe Press
with Afterword by Mark Jordan
Read Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of
Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"
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:
Articles
and Excerpts:
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
Experiencing experiencing experiencing
Going into the Light
Meditations for a Funeral
Meditation Practice
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
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
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
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
About
Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Guy Mannheimer
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The Rainbow Flag
Toby Johnson has a certain affinity to the image
of the rainbow flag because --coincidentally?!?--the first year the
original versions of the flag appeared in San Francisco for Gay Day
1978, flying over the entrance to United Nations Plaza from Market
Street, Johnson had volunteered to be a parade monitor.
He happened to be stationed right at the turn-off point from Market
where the parade entered United Nations Plaza. So he was standing just
at the spot where the marchers turned and could see the huge flags for
the first time. There were lots of oohs and ahhs. Wonderful moment!
It was very dramatic. The original flags, created by hand by artist
Gilbert Baker, were huge and far more multicolored than the rainbow
flags are today. The hung from two very tall flag poles on opposite
sides of the plaza so the marchers walked between them. They were made
of parachute silk and so fluttered and rippled in the breeze.
Here's a wonderful example of how the rainbow
flag has been incorporated into gay cultural mythology/iconography:
In Judeo-Christian iconography, the rainbow
refers to God's promise to Noah not to destroy the world by flood ever
again. It's a sign therefore of transformation and of salvation. As a
symbol for gay consciousness, it reminds us that we must be "saviors of
the world" -- and in the issue of overpopulation (a different kind of
flood--a flood of human flesh) we surely on the side of reason and good
sense. There are enough people. Somebody should be eschewing
reproduction for the sake of the whole planet--and in order to free
oneself to focus on consciousness change, not just blind biological
imperative. For human beings in the 21st Century, the cutting edge of
evolution is happening at the level of consciousness. Gay people
participate in the evolution of consciousness through art, idea,
vision, beauty, compassion, prophecy. We must be way-showers for a
world that seems to be getting lost.
An excerpt from Toby Johnson's Gay
Perspective:
Obviously,
though, there are more gay people now than ever before; that is, there
are more people who are openly homosexual and who participate in
gay-identified culture. That may or may not mean there are more
homosexuals. But perhaps there really are. On a superficial level this
is what everybody can see: 50 years ago nobody heard much about
homosexuality; now it is everywhere.
There isn’t a great deal else the collective planetary mind can do
about population except give rise to human beings whose desires and
predilections cause them to live in ways that don’t result in progeny.
Perhaps the appearance of modern homosexuality and gay identity is
dramatic evidence that the Earth wants fewer people. At any rate, an
increase in the number of gay people living full, contributing lives is
a better solution to overpopulation than a devastating catastrophe.
It is telling that in the Bible story of Noah and the Flood, the
rainbow is given by Yahweh as the sign He will never again bring about
such a catastrophe. Now the rainbow flag has become the political and
cultural symbol of gay community. Aren’t we the manifestation today of
that divine promise made in mythical time? There won’t have to be a
world-wide catastrophe because we are the alternative solution.
Our homosexuality allows us to think these thoughts. They may be
frivolous thoughts, but that’s only because heterosexuals can’t even
begin to think them. They are so beyond the pale. The heterosexuals’
God gives the command to go forth and multiply. We can imagine God
might have other priorities.
We don’t have to recruit. No need for those toaster oven prizes. Nature
keeps producing new members for our tribe. Even if all of us were
killed off in a terrible fit of homophobic rage, in the next generation
there would be just as many homosexuals as there were before.
What we need to communicate to the world is not that people should be
homosexual and cultivate the styles of gay culture (though that’s not a
bad suggestion), but that people should be responsive to their deepest
psychological needs, to what brings them bliss.
We don’t need to tell people to be gay. We need to help them speak the
truth to themselves. Hearing this truth allows them to respond to the
subtle messages Gaia communicates. After all, it is precisely through
sex that Gaia/God communicates. Through our physical bodies Gaia makes
itself known. That is what Gaia is: the collective bodies of all living
beings on Earth.
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