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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,
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Articles
and Excerpts:
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
Why gay people should NOT Marry
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
The
cause of homosexuality
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
You're
Not A Wave
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection,
The Nature of Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay Spiritual Functions
"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
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 YourTiger 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
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The
Wedding Cake Liberation Front
In honor of all the
lesbian and gay couples who may NOT be able to serve wedding cake to
celebrate their relationships if the proposed Anti-Same-Sex Marriage
Amendment passes in a statewide referendum in November, the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas and the
HAPPY Foundation Gay Archives of San Antonio served Wedding Cake to an
audience of nearly 100 in a ceremony at the Joan Grona Gallery in the
Blue Star Arts Complex on June 16, 2005.
“The wedding cake has become the chosen method
of protest against the Marriage Amendment in Texas. Never has battle
tasted so good, or a wedding cake been so fierce.” declared Gene Elder,
Executive Director of the HAPPY Foundation and the artist behind the
Cake Liberation Front.
Heath Riddles, Development Director of LGRL, spoke to the audience
about
the legislative battle, now turned public political battle, to stop the
Texas Constitution from being amended to exclude committed lesbian and
gay couples from legal recognition.
 Following
the political speech, native
San Antonians and former Austinites, Kip Dollar and Toby Johnson served
wedding cake to those in attendance, and Trinity University Professor
Harry Haines lead a singing of his satirical “Breeders Anthem: Regulate
Our Copulation” (sung to Ode to Joy).
Said Toby Johnson, author of several books on
homosexuality and religion, “We’re changing public opinion whether we
win or lose in the political fight. All the public attention to gay
marriage reaches gay youth who are just figuring out their sexual
orientation. It shows them that they can expect to find serious
relationship and true love in their future. That’s good news that
counters the negative propaganda about the loneliness and promiscuity
of gay life.”
Partners for 21 years, Dollar and Johnson were asked to cut the cake in
recognition of their history of encouraging longterm gay relationships.
“What could be more ‘conservative’ than
individual human rights, long term committed relationship, separation
of Church and State, and non-interference in private lives by
government? But current so-called conservatives have capitalized on the
public’s confused and conflicted attitudes about sexuality to grab
power and push their imperialistic agenda—by scapegoating gay people,”
said Johnson.
“All Americans should be concerned for their
own rights,” added Dollar. “Our families love us and honor our
relationship. Why should the government meddle with private lives?”
In an event organized by LGRL in 1991, Dollar and Johnson, along with
lesbian couple Danalynn Recer and Pamela Voekel. applied for marriage
licenses in Travis County. They were reluctantly refused the legal
recognition of their relationships by County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir who
used the event as an occasion to make a public declaration of support
for legislation then being sponsored in the Texas Legislature by Rep.
Debra Danburg, D-Houston, to delete references to gender in the state’s
marriage laws.
Two years later in 1993, Dollar and Johnson again went before Ms.
DeBeauvoir. On that day she happily issued them a Declaration of
Domestic Partnership in Travis County in what was, at that time, a
major political victory. Dollar and Johnson were the first male couple
registered as Domestic Partners in the state of Texas. Though benefits
to County employees registered as domestic partners were later denied
in an anti-gay referendum called by the Religious Right, thus
undermining the purpose of the registry, the registration itself was
not revoked.
As part of the June 16 ceremony, Dollar and Johnson presented copies of
pertinent documents and newspaper clippings to Elder, for inclusion in
the LGBT Archives of the recently incorporated Happy Foundation.
In the 1990s Dollar and Johnson were operating Liberty Books, Austin’s
Lesbian and Gay community bookstore. Dollar, a banker by profession
when the two met in San Antonio, was business manager of their joint
operations over the years; he is a skilled graphic artist. Johnson, a
student of famed comparative religion scholar Joseph Campbell and a
psychotherapist by training, is author of eight books on gay
consciousness and contemporary spirituality. He was formerly Editor of
White Crane Journal of Gay Men’s Spirituality. Johnson’s most recent
book is titled Gay
Perspective: What Our Homosexuality Tells Us About the Nature of God
and the Universe.
After Liberty Books, Dollar and Johnson
went on to operate Bed and Breakfasts in the Rocky Mountains and then
in the Texas Hill County. They returned to San Antonio in 2003. Dollar
and Johnson are interviewed in several segments on "Same-Sex Marriage -
Who Cares!?" a 26 part web-cast radio show exploring a variety of
issues regarding same-sex marriage. The interviews can be accessed on
the web at: http://www.moosemeals.com/souldancer.htm.
Satirist, performer, playwright, and Trinity University professor Harry
W. Haynes composed the comedic “Breeders Anthem” for the three-act play
titled Miss Scarlet and Her Imaginary Friend, co-written by Haines and
Tacoma performance artist A. Susan Owen. The show which was
successfully debuted this past spring in San Francisco will be
performed in San Antonio in October with Owen and Haines in the title
roles.
“I had a solid Sunday School attendance record
for about sixteen years,” says Haines. “It was there that I developed a
certain flare for re-writing the hymnal.”
See The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage
Debate
See Why Gay People Should NOT Get Married
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