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Toby Johnson's books:

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

FINDING GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: The Journey Expanded

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

Unpublished manuscripts

About ordering

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

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"

Gay Consciousness

Why homosexuality is a sin

The cause of homosexuality

The origins of homophobia

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

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

Enlightenment

"It's Always About You"

The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara

Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara

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

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

Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption

Not lashed to the prayer-post

Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality

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

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

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016

The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)

You're On Your Own

Superheroes

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?

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

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

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

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

Second March on Washington

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

Book Reviews

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

Gay Perspective

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

Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman








Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated








Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE

The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here

Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams

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

Finding Your Own True Myth:

The Myth of the Great Secret III









In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld












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

This was the second edition of this book.

Gay Saintliness

How could I possibly ever reconcile [my attraction to other boys] with some grand, altruistic life purpose?

This question, I believe, lies at the heart of the gay vocation in the world, and of gay spirituality and sanctity more specifically. It summons us to consider how and why we do what we do, and the reason that our vocation so often lies in areas of beauty, creativity, and service.

Much has been written about the fertile manifestations of our marginality. I will put forth a radical proposition, though it is historically impervious to proof. I venture to say that a significant, if not a predominant, number of male saints have been homosexual, that they have struggled with the meaning of same-sex desire in their lives, most often for the person of Christ, that some succumbed to their sexual urges, while others chose quite consciously to sublimate their needs in works of heroic Christian virtue and fortitude.

And, furthermore, that such needs and desires, as evil, sinful, or condemnable as they were thought to be by the saints themselves or by any number of "godly" others, have been the core, fundamental forces for good, motivating, sustaining, nourishing, and inspiring these great works.

So writes Donald Boisvert in his marvelous book Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints (

Here's the review of Boisvert's book I wrote for White Crane Journal #64


    Upon first look, Donald Boisvert's new book Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints seems of interest primarily to Roman Catholics.  The Introduction is about the place of the saints in Catholic religious education, and the chapters that follow are about various saints that influenced Boisvert's own psychological and religious development. Certainly others raised Catholic will resonate with this book (I certainly did). But the discussion in the book goes far beyond parochial Catholicism, and so the main thrust of this review must be to recommend this book to non-Catholics (and ex-Catholics who'd resist anything even vaguely related positively to the religion they left behind).

    Boisvert is a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal. He was in the seminary as a young man with the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, then went on to earn a doctorate in religious studies as a layman. His previous book was Out on Holy Ground: Meditations on Gay Men's Spirituality (The Pilgrim Press, 2000, reviewed in WCJ #48). He was a participant in the 2003 Gay Spirituality Summit at Garrison Institute.

    The reverence of the saints in Catholic devotion is, to non-Catholics, one of the strangest things about the religion. In many ways, it's been one of the most regressive aspects, focusing on superstitions, contrived (and often unbelievable) histories, and bizarre manifestations of zeal (including all manner of martyrdoms—some self-brought-on—and outrageous forms of human torture). Understood in the light of comparative religions, on the other hand, the reverence of the saints demonstrates the true universality—indeed, the polytheism—of Catholicity, for many of the saints represent the importing of local deities, heroes, tribal legends and myths into Christianity as the religion spread beyond being simply a sect of Judaism. In this sense, the veneration of the saints shows Catholicism as a much broader and more inclusive religion than the Bible-based versions of Christianity that have resisted change since the text was canonized at Nicaea by the Emperor Constantine. In many ways, Catholicism is more like Hinduism than it is like Christian Protestantism. While the saints, of course, aren't incorporated into the Bible, their stories get at least as much importance in popular Catholic devotion as the words of sacred writ.

    The stories of the saints are teaching mechanisms by which particular virtues, talents, life-situations, and manifestations of zeal are personalized. The various traits and powers of God as healer, miracle-worker, and wish-granter are personified in the stories of flesh and blood human beings.  Especially for children learning Christian doctrine, the saints are symbols and demonstrations of theological propositions and religious concepts much easier to understand and identify with than the abstractions they represent. They are role models of the good Christian life.

    Donald Boisvert describes with reverence, but also with poignancy and appropriate humor, how as a boy he created an altar and shrine to his favorites, lighting candles before their statues as part of childhood play. The themes in these saints' lives went on then to shape his religious and personal maturation—just as they were supposed to.

    The book devotes chapters to some of these favorites: Michael the Archangel, Sebastian and Tarcisius, John the Baptist, Joseph, Paul and Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Dominic Savio, and more. Except for Michael the Archangel (the Christianization of Mars, the Roman god of war), Bosivert's saints were actual people. In each presentation, he explains not only the history or mythos of the characters, but also the spiritual and religious meaning and the life model presented. But then he goes way beyond what orthodox Catholicism would understand—and this is the exciting richness of this book—and gives what he calls the "gay reading" of the stories.

    Central to all manifestations of so-called gay spirituality is honesty and frankness about the sexual and erotic dimensions of life. And that's exactly what Boisvert gives us with his "gay readings": a personal–and sometimes surprisingly "frank"—analysis of this secret layer of the stories of his favorite saints.

    In the way that the saints represent a history of Christianity beyond the foundations in the time of Jesus, Boisvert's analyses present the sexual layers of the religion that are generally never acknowledged. The prime example is his discussion of the various ways Jesus—and Jesus's body—has been depicted in art. God Incarnate is shown as a beautiful man with, sometimes, a "hot body," even (or especially) when naked under torture. The “honesty and frankness" are remarkable. This discussion of Christianity gives gay men a reason to reconsider the richness of the religion that seems so often inimical to our concerns. (The illustration of this hunky Jesus appears on the front of Michael Kelly's The Erotic Contemplative, another important Catholic book in the gay spirituality genre about sexuality and spirit. Here's a page on Q-Spirit about Michael Kelley.)

    But the most important argument of the book is Donald Boisvert's recognition that the drive to "sanctity" is an essential part of “male desire" (hence their linking in the subtitle) and of the social activism of the gay political and cultural movement.  Over and over again, gay politics is about "saving the world," not just getting one's own—and one's family's—needs met by government. Gay lives are so frequently focused on beauty, creativity, and service. Boisvert beautifully captures the gay compulsion to be the best little boy, the best social contributor, the most successful lover, and especially the most honest person one can be. It is the drive for sanctity and integrity that impels us to come out and be openly and idealistically gay.

    I recommend this book to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I want to especially recommend it to those of you who are annoyed with or estranged from Catholic upbringing. I promise you, you'll be surprised and pleased and even possibly inspired and spiritually justified by Donald Boisvert's blending of religion and eroticism. He tells truths about our human psyches that most religionists don't acknowledge. For that reason alone, this book adds a new dimension to gay spirituality.