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Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Google listing of all pages on this website Site Map Toby Johnson's Facebook page Toby Johnson's YouTube channel Toby Johnson on Wikipedia Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page  Secure site at https://tobyjohnson.com  Also on this website: As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases. Toby Johnson's books: Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc. FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III 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, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil  TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams  CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series
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
Gay ConsciousnessQ&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness What Jesus said about Gay Rights Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"? Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Waves of Gay Liberation Activity Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian? The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
Enlightenment
Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A WaveJoseph Campbell Talks about Aging What is Enlightenment? What is reincarnation? 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 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 Gay
Spirituality
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 Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods: An Exploration into the Religious Significance of Male Homosexuality in World Perspective by Ronald Long Routledge trade paperback, 198 pages, $16.99 July 2004 978-1560231523 Available from Amazon.com -- new and used -- paperback. Also available for Kindle Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods: An Exploration into the Religious Significance of Male Homosexuality in World Perspective (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)   This
review of the first edition appeared in White Crane Journal #63 Winter
2004/05
Ron Long is a teacher of religion at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He’s an active member of the Steering Committee of the Gay Men’s Issues in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion. In Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods: An Exploration into the Religious Significance of Male Homosexuality in World Perspective, he’s written an interesting and readable book that surveys variations in the way religion has treated homosexuality through the years. He deals with a rich (though, he acknowledges, intentionally not exhaustive) variety of traditions: primitive Papua New Guinean, ancient Taoist Chinese, Classical Greek, Islamic Sufi, Biblical era Hebrew, Early Christian, Native American, Buddhist, down to modern gay political and cultural movements, including antidiscrimination laws, gays in the military, and gay marriage. The book is full of delightful tid-bits about homosexual behaviors throughout human history. Some of these discussions are familiar, like Plato’s report of Aristophanes’ story of the original androgynes or the exegesis of the Bible passages about male to male intercourse. But some are relatively new to the discussion, like the Sufi spiritual practice of gazing at the beauty of young men to see God and the Buddhist quest for loss of self-consciousness in sexual ecstasy as an experience of emptiness and mutual co-arising. The interesting and curious aspect of the analysis is its concern with the mechanics of male-male sex. Long says, “Simply put, the thesis of this book is that religious evaluations of homosexual love and sex depend upon the way male ‘bottoming’ is construed—as does the resistance to male homosexuality in the contemporary period.” He argues that “the revolutionary importance of the contemporary gay rights movement lies in its—by no means clearly articulated as yet—revolutionary idea of gender, that male sexual receptivity is part of the repertoire of a normal, adult, fully masculine male.” The rather lyrical and touching conclusion of the book is that what homosexuality challenges is the notion that sex is about penetrating other bodies, doing something to someone else who has been rendered passive, that is, that it’s a kind of war. The male homosexual movement by insisting on the masculinity of the penetrated party, the bottom, Long says, is a movement for the spiritual liberation of all men. Getting over the fear of homosexuality and passivity would allow all men to discover they can be lovers as well as soldiers. Indeed, that they can stop seeing sex as war and war as sexy. Long has interesting takes on some of the familiar history. He offers insights and explanations that are sometimes surprisingly new and particularly incisive. You’ll be glad you read this book. It will expand your understanding of things you’ve heard before. The book is clearly written for an audience unfamiliar with these gay religious issues, i.e., the author’s students at Hunter College. What that means is that it seems to appear totally out of context and relatively unaware of the gay spirituality movement or the conventions of gay cultural conversation: Long uses the word “homophile,” for instance, as though it were a serviceable synonym for homosexual, rather than a slightly antiquated term that now defines an era in early gay organizing. “Homophile,” the term embraced by the pre-gay liberation activists of the Mattachine Society days, is not quite as out-of-date as that embraced by the mid-19th century Europeans, “Uranians,” but it comes across glaring every time. This seeming unawareness of the contemporary movement shows up in the absence of any recognition of gay religion outside the academy (by which I mean the “university environment,” but maybe also the American Academy of Religion made up of university professors). There’s no acknowledgement of Mark Thompson or Christian de la Huerta (or Toby Johnson, for that matter), no reference to Harry Hay or Joseph Kramer or the Radical Faeries, not even Troy Perry and the MCC. I have to admit I was disappointed to see that a “synthesis” of gay spirituality and religion wouldn’t even recognize what I think of—and write about—as the “gay men’s spirituality movement.” College professors talking to college professors without ever observing the real world! I think that examining the ideas about the nature and transformation of religion implied by gay spirituality is much more interesting and fruitful than rehashing all that stuff about the Bible. (Aren’t we done with that yet? It’s time to stop caring what those desert nomads were spooked by five thousand years ago.) By coincidence (?), just as I was finishing the book, there was a convention of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio. I was invited by Mark Jordan to attend a reception for the gay caucus. I learned that the night before Ron Long and another member of the caucus had been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion of gay marriage AND had been ambushed by the Fundamentalists on the other side. Long had presented a well-reasoned and Biblically-based discussion regarding gay marriage. But it wasn’t a roundtable of honored equals; the gay speakers been invited in order to be excoriated, condemned, told they were going to hell, and made fools of by the other side. So while I want to complain that Ron Long’s book doesn’t recognize my and my peers’ contributions to his discussion of the meaning of gay spirituality, I want also to honor him and his peers in the Academy of Religion. These men are doing difficult work; they are contending with powerful forces and people who really do think those desert nomads’ opinions matter and should be enforced by law on the rest of us; these gay religion professors are putting themselves, literally, in harms’ way for the sake of protecting all us homosexuals from misguided religion. Ron Long and his fellow professors are truly saints. There’s much to learn in this book. The discussion about tops and bottoms alone is worth the reading. I wonder if the book might bring the word “homophile” back into use. Reviewed by Toby Johnson, author of Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness, The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell and other novels and books |
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.
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 