What is a "Gay Perspective"?

Toby Johnson summarizes his ideas about the particular perspective on life which being gay is likely to accord.



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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 - The Myth of the Great Secret III

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


Gay Spirituality

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


Gay Perspective


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


Secret Matter


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


Getting Life

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


The Fourth Quill

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




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



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


Myth of the Great Secret


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


In Search of God


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


Finding God

FINDING GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: The Journey Expanded




Unpublished manuscripts


About ordering


Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series


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  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"


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Gay Consciousness


Why homosexuality is a sin


The cause of homosexuality


The origins of homophobia


Advice to Future Gay Historians


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


Queer men, myths and Reincarnation


Was I (or you) at Stonewall?


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


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Enlightenment


"It's Always About You"



The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara


Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara


The Nature of Suffering and The Four Quills


You're Not A Wave



Joseph Campbell Talks about Aging



Toby's Experience of Zen



What is Enlightenment?



What is reincarnation?


What happens at Death?


How many lifetimes in an ego?



Emptiness & Religious Ideas



Experiencing experiencing experiencing



Going into the Light



Meditations for a Funeral



Meditation Practice



The way to get to heaven



Buddha's father was right



What Anatman means



Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal



The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika



A Funny Story: The Rug Salesmen of Istanbul



Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva



John Boswell was Immanuel Kant



Cutting edge realization



The Myth of the Wanderer



Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss



World Navel



What the Vows Really Mean



Manifesting from the Subtle Realms



The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse


The est Training and Personal Intention



Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven



Drawing a Long Straw: Ketamine at the Mann Ranch


Alan Watts & Multiple Solipsism


How I Learned Chakra Meditation


Je ne Regrette Rien



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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


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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


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Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption


Not lashed to the prayer-post


Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality


The Monastic Schedule: a whimsy


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



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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


Sex with God


Merging Religion and Sex


Revolution Through Consciousness Change: GSV 2019


God as Metaphor


More Metaphors for God


A non-personal metaphor God


Jesus and the Wedding Feast


Tonglen in the Radisson Varanasi


The Closet of Horrors


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The Hero's Journey


The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016


The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)


You're On Your Own


Superheroes


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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?


A Different Take on Leathersex


Seeing Pornography Differently


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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


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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


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The Secret of the Clear Light


Understanding the Clear Light


Mobius Strip


Finding Your Tiger Face


How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated


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Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part presentation on YouTube


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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


My first Peace March


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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


Our friend Cliff Douglas


Second March on Washington


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


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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


Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth A. Burr


Extinguishing the Light by B. Alan Bourgeois


Over Coffee: A conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson


Dark Knowledge by Kenneth Low


Janet Planet by Eleanor Lerman


The Kairos by Paul E. Hartman


Wrestling with Jesus by D.K.Maylor


Kali Rising by Rudolph Ballentine


The Missing Myth by Gilles Herrada


The Secret of the Second Coming by Howard E. Cook


The Scar Letters: A Novel by Richard Alther


The Future is Queer by Labonte & Schimel


Missing Mary by Charlene Spretnak


Gay Spirituality 101 by Joe Perez


Cut Hand: A Nineteeth Century Love Story on the American Frontier by Mark Wildyr


Radiomen by Eleanor Lerman


Nights at Rizzoli by Felice Picano


The Key to Unlocking the Closet Door by Chelsea Griffo


The Door of the Heart by Diana Finfrock Farrar


Occam’s Razor by David Duncan


Grace and Demion by Mel White


Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond L. Rigoglioso


The Dimensional Stucture of Consciousness by Samuel Avery


The Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love by Perry Brass


Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication by Tim Clausen


War Between Materialism and Spiritual by Jean-Michel Bitar


The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


The Invitation to Love by Darren Pierre


Brain, Consciousness, and God: A Lonerganian Integration by Daniel A Helminiak


A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides by Andrew Harvey


Can Christians Be Saved? by Stephenson & Rhodes


The Lost Secrets of the Ancient Mystery Schools by Stephenson & Rhodes


Keys to Spiritual Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises by Adrian Ravarour


In Walt We Trust by John Marsh


Solomon's Tantric Song by Rollan McCleary


A Special Illumination by Rollan McCleary


Aelred's Sin by Lawrence Scott


Fruit Basket by Payam Ghassemlou


Internal Landscapes by John Ollom


Princes & Pumpkins by David Hatfield Sparks


Yes by Brad Boney


Blood of the Goddess by William Schindler


Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom by Jeffrey Kripal


Evolving Dharma by Jay Michaelson


Jesus in Salome's Lot by Brett W. Gillette


The Man Who Loved Birds by Fenton Johnson


The Vatican Murders by Lucien Gregoire


"Sex Camp" by Brian McNaught


Out & About with Brewer & Berg
Episode One: Searching for a New Mythology


The Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimmons


Out on Holy Ground by Donald Boisvert


The Revotutionary Psychology of Gay-Centeredness by Mitch Walker


Out There by Perry Brass


The Crucifixion of Hyacinth by Geoff Puterbaugh


The Silence of Sodom by Mark D Jordan


It's Never About What It's About by Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja


ReCreations, edited by Catherine Lake


Gospel: A Novel by WIlton Barnhard


Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey by Fenton Johnson


Dating the Greek Gods by Brad Gooch


Telling Truths in Church by Mark D. Jordan


The Substance of God by Perry Brass


The Tomcat Chronicles by Jack Nichols


10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives by Joe Kort


Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same Sex Love by Will Roscoe


The Third Appearance by Walter Starcke


The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann


Surviving and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis by Bev Hall


Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods by Ronald Long

An Interview with Ron Long


Queering Creole Spiritual Traditons by Randy Conner & David Sparks

An Interview with Randy Conner


Pain, Sex and Time by Gerald Heard


Sex and the Sacred by Daniel Helminiak


Blessing Same-Sex Unions by Mark Jordan


Rising Up by Joe Perez


Soulfully Gay by Joe Perez


That Undeniable Longing by Mark Tedesco


Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman


Wisdom for the Soul by Larry Chang


MM4M a DVD by Bruce Grether


Double Cross by David Ranan


The Transcended Christian by Daniel Helminiak


Jesus in Love by Kittredge Cherry


In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson


The Starry Dynamo by Sven Davisson


Life in Paradox by Fr Paul Murray


Spirituality for Our Global Community by Daniel Helminiak


Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society by Robert A. Minor


Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences by Glen O'Brien


Queering Christ by Robert Goss


Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage


The Flesh of the Word by Richard A Rosato


Catland by David Garrett Izzo


Tantra for Gay Men by Bruce Anderson


Yoga & the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main


Simple Grace by Malcolm Boyd


Seventy Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza


What Does "Queer" Mean Anyway? by Chris Bartlett


Critique of Patriarchal Reasoning by Arthur Evans


Gift of the Soul by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen


Legend of the Raibow Warriors by Steven McFadden


The Liar's Prayer by Gregory Flood


Lovely are the Messengers by Daniel Plasman


The Human Core of Spirituality by Daniel Helminiak


3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke


Religion and the Human Sciences by Daniel Helminiak


Only the Good Parts by Daniel Curzon


Four Short Reviews of Books with a Message


Life Interrupted by Michael Parise


Confessions of a Murdered Pope by Lucien Gregoire


The Stargazer's Embassy by Eleanor Lerman


Conscious Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny


Footprints Through the Desert by Joshua Kauffman


True Religion by J.L. Weinberg


The Mediterranean Universe by John Newmeyer


Everything is God by Jay Michaelson


Reflection by Dennis Merritt


Everywhere Home by Fenton Johnson


Hard Lesson by James Gaston


God vs Gay? by Jay Michaelson


The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path by Jay Michaelson


Roxie & Fred by Richard Alther


Not the Son He Expected by Tim Clausen


The 9 Realities of Stardust by Bruce P. Grether


The Afterlife Revolution by Anne & Whitley Strieber


AIDS Shaman: Queer Spirit Awakening by Shokti Lovestar


Facing the Truth of Your Life by Merle Yost


The Super Natural by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J Kripal


Secret Body by Jeffrey J Kripal


In Hitler's House by Jonathan Lane


Walking on Glory by Edward Swift


The Paradox of Porn by Don Shewey


Is Heaven for Real? by Lucien Gregoire


In Search of Lost Lives by Michael Goddart


Queer Magic by Tomas Prower


God in Your Body by Jay Michaelson


Science Whispering Spirit by Gary Preuss


Friends of Dorothy by Dee Michel


New by Whitley Strieber


Developing Supersensible Perception by Shelli Renee Joye

Sage Sapien by Johnson Chong


Tarot of the Future by Arthur Rosengarten


Brothers Across Time by Brad Boney


Impresario of Castro Street by Marc Huestis


Deathless by Andrew Ramer


The Pagan Heart of the West, Vol 1 by Randy P. Conner


Practical Tantra by William Schindler


The Flip by Jeffrey J. Kripal


A New World by Whitley Strieber


Bernhard & LightWing by Damien Rowse


The Mountains of Paris by David Oates


Trust Truth by Trudie Barreras


How to be an Excellent Human Being by Bill Meacham


The Deviant's War by Eric Cervini


What Is the Grass by Mark Doty


Sex with God by Suzanne DeWitt Hall


The Sum of All the Pieces by Paul Bradford


All the Time in the World by J. Lee Graham


Scissors, Paper, Rock by Fenton Johnson




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




Gay
Perspective cover
Gay Perspective

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


Gay Perspective audiobook
Gay Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Matthew Whitfield. Click here







Gay
Spirituality cover
Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness



gay-spirituality-audiobook
Gay Spirituality   is now available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here








charmed lives
Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman







secret matter
Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated







Getting Life
Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance





Getting
Life in Perspective audiobook
Getting Life in Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click here 






The Fourth Quill

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE




johnson-the-fourth-quill-audiobook
The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here






Two
Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams




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






Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III
Finding Your Own True Myth: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell

The Myth of the Great Secret III








In
Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld






Finding God
Finding God In The Sexual Underworld: The Journey Expanded

2020 Revised Version










The Myth of the Great Secret II

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

This was the second edition of this book.




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Toby Johnson's titles are available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.


Gay Perspective



3 sources of Gay Perspective

1) We are outsiders. We see with critical distance.

    We are taught and/or discover as youth how to distance ourselves from other people. We learn to keep secrets. We learn to second-guess other people. We learn to be suspect of what they say is true (because it isn’t true for us)

We understood things differently from the other boys & girls—especially about gender-role behavior in play and sports (We sometimes got in trouble for not behaving appropriately—“throwing the ball like a girl.”)

    We were more artistic or talented. Many of us were teachers’ pets—not so much because we were competitive and wanted to win, but because we were sensitive and wanted to be loved and thought well of by our teachers. We were “best little boys in the world.”

    We often felt we had a secret. And sometimes explained this to ourselves as magical or as religious. We may have had a special relationship with God, since only God could be allowed to know the truth—and this was something all deeply involved with God and the meaning of life.

We learned to think of ourselves as special – not necessarily better, just different, but different for reasons of deep personal significance.

We were different from our parents and families. Even those of us who understood what “gay” was and understood that it was sexual orientation, and even those who felt accepted as gay, still we were going to be different from the role models offered to us. We had no role models.

Perhaps we had to figure out how we fit into the big picture, by forcing open the big picture, to make it yet bigger to include us.

Perhaps we saw that religion was wrong about important things. And if they were wrong about things that could be seen, how could we think they were right about the things that couldn’t be seen.






2) We tend to embody both masculine and feminine viewpoints and characteristics.

We can empathize with both men and women. We tend to see beyond the gender role constraints.

We’re often less inhibited.

See how straight men are so constrained by their masculinity. The joke is about walking like you’ve got a broomstick up your ass. Straight men have to protect themselves even from their own self-perceptions. And they can never let their guard down.

We are often fascinated by gender role transgression. It’s fun and funny to dress up – maybe especially because it is taboo and the others can’t do it.

We’re more comfortable in our bodies. We’re more emotional. More in touch with feelings (perhaps after having gone through a crisis of depression and denial of feelings). We cry more easily at movies.

We’re less likely to worry about looking masculine, as looking sexually attractive. We worry less about that other men think of us as manly and more about whether they’re sexually attracted to us.

We’re likely to be less violent, and less likely to connect into competition and impersonal loyalty (like to a sports team).

There’s a simplicity and innocence to gay consciousness. Our sexual feelings for our own bodies and our sexual feelings for others’ bodies are the same. Sex and affection are more playful and less serious because they aren’t about procreation and family.

We don’t go through a stage of reorienting our affectional and emotional feelings from our same sex friends to members of the opposite sex which straight boys have to do, whom they don’t understand and find attractive but incomprehensible.

We don’t experience the inner conflict that straight men must between their sexual perceptions of their own bodies – which is essentially homosexual—and their public identity as heterosexual.

Because gay people blend gender, you might say we’re liberated from gender. We don’t have to be men or be women. We’re just ourselves.






3) We don’t experience the world as polarized.

This is a major point and very subtle.

Because we’re not attracted across the sexual divide of male and female, we don’t have to see the world as divided between warring and competing factions.

We’re not caught in the battle of the sexes.

Of course, not all homosexuals are so liberated. And the us against them of homophobia and the obsessive polarization between homosexuality and heterosexuality creates a dualistic view.

But note that male and female are exclusive categories. Gay and straight are not. The dualities we DO experience are like left and right, voluntary and autonomic, objective and subjective. These are binaries, but they’re not in conflict. They’re like the inside and the outside of a cup. They are not at odds.

This third aspect of gay consciousness—non-duality—encompasses the first two aspects: outsideredness and genderlessness. Genderlessness is outsiderness is perspective.

This sort of nonduality is the goal of many of the mystical traditions. In overcoming the duality of male and female, we potentially overcome the duality of good and evil and of God and the world.

Instead of seeing the world as the ever changing, ever-balancing, ever fluid interplay of the polarities of masculinity and femininity, creativity and receptivity, we can perceive the world as unity.

St Paul says there is a mystical parallel between the relationship of male and female and of God and the Church (i.e. God and the world). These dualities relate as complements.

We see the world as God sees the world, as a reflection of self in eternity and stillness.

Our vision of God then isn’t as an Other, but as the deepest Self. This is a whole different way of seeing life and existence. This is a different kind of God.

This vision sees the gray, not the black and white. So we aren’t so caught up in contradiction. We can think both literally and figuratively at the same time. We can see that it’s possible to be right and wrong at the same time. I.e., we can rise above right and wrong and understand both sides from a higher perspective.
 

Implications of nonpolarization:

Our humor is subtle and is about seeming contradiction.
Camp humor toys with irony and duality.
We make fun of people who take things too seriously.

Especially, we make fun of “straight values” and the male dominance imperatives of: male domination and control, competition, hierarchy, scarcity, polarity, and the existence of good and evil.

We can see through and beyond these assumptions that everybody else makes.

I want to argue here that being gay is more basic than sex.

I don’t mean  to generalize from a single example, but the single example of Ginger the transsexual at BAGL (in 1976) reveals how changing sex doesn’t change sexual orientation. Ginger was an archetype of this phenomenon. He went from being a homosexual male to being a homosexual female. Homosexuality—i.e, seeing the world in a less polarized way and being attracted to the unity of the Self –is more basic than sexual attraction.

This seeing the Self in self and others is what Harry Hay called Subject-subject consciousness. We can readily identify with other men. We can empathize with their feelings, because they’re similar to our own.

Straight men have a harder time. “You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em” they say about women.

Conventional straight male thinking says: I’m right and you’re wrong. Nonpolarity thinking transforms that: “We’re both right and we’re both wrong from different perspectives. We don’t have to quarrel. You can do your thing; I can do mine.

Both/And instead of Either/or. Here was one of the lessons of est and all of New Age consciousness.

To use one of those old est expressions: “making other people wrong” is how polarization creates animosity and justifies enmity and misunderstanding.
George Bush and the War on Terror in thbe early 2000s was an example of how this goes wrong – “You’re either with me or you’re my enemy.” Bad parallel structure and bad politics.

Belief in God is like that as well. From a nonpolarized perspective you can believe in God AND see that God is a metaphor.




The Four Ways Our Homosexuality Tells Us Things

1) The very existence of homosexuality demonstrates that nature isn’t polarized

Sex isn’t exclusively about reproduction. There are important aspects of sex that are about consciousness and spiritual/mystical vision.

Pleasure is a good thing, a part of the universe.

The world isn’t about efficiency.

Bruce Bagemihl tells us about homosexuality among the animals. He hypothesizes “Survival of the fittest isn’t Earth’s primary house rule—rather, survival of the flamboyant and exuberant. It is numerousness and diversity that guide evolution.”

Bagemihl proposes that sexual variance is a necessary implication of diversity and mutation. Homosexuality is part of the fabric of the universe because if it weren’t the exuberance and flamboyance that drive evolution wouldn’t be possible. “The equation of life turns on both prodigious fecundity and fruitless prodigality.” (He uses the example of the multitude of baby turtles or the multitude of sperm cells in a male ejaculation.)


2) Our actual experience as gay shows us things about life.

We experience being different. We tend to be childless—though not necessarily. And so less concerned about an investment in the next generation. We don’t seek to achieve immortality through offspring. (This is the point of the celibate priesthood in Roman Catholicism.)

We can be morally driven in a different way because we don’t have responsibilities to the next generation: we can say NO for instance to a job in the atomic bomb plant that a straight man with a family can’t. We can rock the boat in a way he can’t.

Our lives prove that coupling is not just about building a nest for family. That love is about companionship. People need somebody to talk to in order to fully experience their experience. The beauty of a sunset, for instance.

We can see that love and sex are separable and not at odds. We don’t have to divorce if our partner has outside sex. We are freed from adultery, because our sex isn’t genetically significant.
(This isn’t a justification for hurting one’s partner by “infidelity” but it is offering a different meaning for “fidelity” and “monogamy.”)
We live more in our bodies and more in the present.

3) Dealing with the current circumstances of gay life teaches us practical lessons about contemporary problems.

Dealing with same-sex marriage, for instance, has forced us all to think more deeply and incisively about what marriage and coupling is.

We don’t take things for granted the same way the masses do.

One of the current issues, of course, has been AIDS.

    a) call to compassion
    b) recognize the existence of a disease in the third world.
    c) disease is caused by microorganisms not taboo violations
    d) health care provision needs improvement
    e) research has been done into the immune system (something drug companies had not been motivated to do)
    f) an acute sense of mortality
    g) it’s ok to die – “live fast, die young”

Our experience tells us you can’t trust the media to report the truth because they don’t tell the truth about OUR issues.

You can’t trust the police or the government.

The fact of gay liberation shows things are changing. Life now is different from life in the 1950s!!

Sexual liberation relieves an enormous burden of neurosis. Openly gay, proud and self-affirming people live better, less neurotic lives.


4) We know things by gay intuition.
   
        Gay taste and sensitivity to style. Artistic talent
    A common tendency to like movies and remember certain lines: “I’m ready for my close-up now, Mr. DeMille.” “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be bumpy night.”

    Growing up we train ourselves to be “intuitive” as a defense mechanism. And because we blend gender, we’re more likely to accept “feminine intuition” in our male self-image.

    Gaydar is the prime example.

    Gaydar demonstrates two things:
Homosexuality is so basic it alters our physical appearance. I.e., it’s not a “choice
        People give off vibes.


Read: Toby Johnson's article about  Common Experiences
Unique to Gay Men

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Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine 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, four 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 and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness. 

Johnson's book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His  GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They remain in print.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual qualities of gay male consciousness.

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