Gay Spirituality: Roots and Branches
by Mickey Weems
The gay community was not always welcomed by religious denominations. Nevertheless, we in the L, G, B, T and Q have a sacred dimension to us: the acceptance of ourselves may include an understanding of a cosmos that also accepts our orientation and gender expression.
But first, some definitions before we talk about LGBTQ spirituality then and now. Spirituality is an intimate relationship with the divine. It is related to, but not identical with, religion, which is the codification of that intimate relationship.
Historical Roots
Human societies often construct a two-gendered universe. The masculine principle of the cosmos is contrasted with the feminine principle. In general, masculine is active, strong, hard, aggressive, warlike, public, and the penetrator. Feminine is passive, weak, soft, congenial, peaceful, private (or home-bound), and the penetrated. These principles tend to be cosmologized, that is, part of the basic structure of the cosmos.
Those who do not fit into the masculine/feminine dichotomy were usually treated as anomalies, often ridiculed, sometimes revered and sometimes condemned. Many societies had spiritual systems in which same-sex and gender-variant orientation were not considered moral defects. However, societies that were regulated by a literate, male-dominated elite with religions that demand strict enforcement of the dichotomy (such as Christianity and Islam) tended to frame same-sex romance, homoeroticism and gender variation as sinful perversions. Tolerance of such identities and behaviors was seen to undermine the very basis of humanity’s relationship with the divine and could lead to massive natural disasters as the result of Heaven’s punishment.
Nevertheless, when certain respected individuals of various faiths experienced an intimate relationship with the divine, the language used would undermine the strict dichotomy of formalized religions. Medieval Muslim Sufis would speak of the love of God in homoerotic terms. Thirteenth-century English anchoress Julian of Norwich would describe Jesus as Mother. In the sixteenth century, San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross) would write “Noche Oscura” (Spanish: “Dark Night”) in which he describes his soul as a woman who seeks out her lover in secret. The eighteenth century Hindu saint Ramakrishna would cross-dress as a youth and go into ecstasy with his foot in the crotches of young men as an adult. In the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries, Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nat Hanh would declare the “God is a Lesbian” because there are no differences that are not subverted when experiencing the divine, and American Zen master Robert Aitken would teach that “you can’t find enlightenment in the closet.”
Post-Stonewall Lesbian Spirituality
After the Stonewall Riots and the start of Gay Liberation, spiritual expression within the LGBTQ community came forth in multiple forms. For the lesbian community, there were movements to recognize the feminine as sufficient unto itself as a cosmic principle, so that a woman is automatically invested with an intimate connection with the cosmos simply by being a woman. Goddess-centered communities arose to codify the intimate divine feminine, but many goddess-centered women resist codification past a certain point in order for each woman to establish the intimate connection on her own.
Women and the Land
After Stonewall, there was also a strong bond felt between women and nature, particularly with the physical environment of the Earth. This can still be seen in the reverence that women at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival have with the Land, the grounds on which the festival takes place. It is this same bond that led to the Women’s Land Movement and the formation of women’s rural communities in the USA and Canada.
Radical Faeries
Among gay men, there have been organizations that base intimacy with Heaven on homoerotic and romantic love between men, such as the Radical Faeries, created in 1979 by Harry Hay, John Burnside, Don Kilhefner and Mitch Walker. “I wish to honor the archetype of gay-centeredness in men,” Walker said.
Like lesbian spiritual movements, the Radical Faeries feel a strong connection with the environment, and hold many of their functions outdoors. Since its inception, the Radical Faeries have spread around the world and have opened up to all orientations and sex/gender configurations.
The Radical Faeries also hold to the basic principle of inner revelation, borrowing traditions from various cultures, but holding no strict codification of their spiritual principles. Walker explains further:
Not only is the Faerie movement a significant part of contemporary gay life, but it is a uniquely influential one. It is the first indigenous spiritual tradition created and sustained by the gay male community in modern times. By “indigenous” I mean gay-centered and gay-engendered, in contrast to the various gay synagogues, churches, covens etc. In the latter groups, gayness is incidental or additional to the tradition espoused, while in the former it is central and causal. Radical Faeries celebrate and explore the Gay Spirit, which is itself the source of spiritual existence, wisdom and initiation.
The Circuit and Transcendental Solidarity
Post-Stonewall gay men began to congregate in dance clubs during the early 1970s. In these spaces, new technologies for light, sound and music production led to the disco, venues for dancing in which the environment was conducive for sensuous presentation of self, recreational drugs and trancelike communal dancing that could go on for the better part of a weekend. In his novel, Dancer From the Dance, Andrew Holleran describes the scene:
Some of the dancers are on drugs and enter the discotheque with the radiant faces of the Magi coming to adore the Christ Child; others, who are not, enter with a bored expression, as if this is the last thing they want to do tonight. In half an hour they are indistinguishable, sweat-stained, ecstatic, lost.
This marked the beginning of the Circuit, a spiritual-sensual folkway for gay men that came forth from clubs in Manhattan such as the Saint and Paradise Garage. The AIDS crisis, however, shut down many of the clubs, and the scene came to a standstill. But the community rallied (with help from leather and lesbian communities), and events arose across the USA and Canada that raised money for the sick, and further advanced technologies for intensely sensuous, rhythm and drug-driven altered states that generated transcendent solidarity among the participants. It also inspired some critics of the Circuit to label it a cult based on a drug-induced illusion of spirituality.
Among the participants in the Circuit, one particular group claims to have spiritual experiences. It is the flaggers, people who wave bright-colored squares of soft fabric around their bodies. Flaggers tend to think of themselves as a tribe within the Circuit community. Construction of flags (usually made of silk or a similar fabric, one edge weighted with tiny metal pellets) and teaching the art of flagging is passed from flagger to flagger.
Spirituality and LGBTQ Religious Organizations
Movements based on LGBTQ people’s spiritual insights have been codified into religious congregations, such as the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC, initially multi-denominational Christian), Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (Jewish), and the Susan B. Anthony Coven (Dianic Wiccan). Some mainstream denominations have become more inclusive and Gay-friendly. Documentaries such as Trembling Before G-d (on gay Orthodox Jews) and A Jihad for Love (gay Muslims) have explored LGBTQ spirituality and identity within religious communities, and different organizations for LGBTQ believers, such as Dignity (Roman Catholic), Integrity (Episcopal) and Al Fatiha (Muslim) have been organized to help gay believers.
Other communities have incorporated those with same-sex and gender-variant orientations into their cosmologies, with spirits that switched sexes, combined genders, and made same-sex love. Vodou in Haiti and the French Caribbean/New Orleans recognizes Lwa-Gods that protect LGBTQ people, such as Erzulie Dantor for Lesbians and Erzulie Freda for gay men. Chinese Daoism, with a gendered cosmology that treats the feminine as essential to cosmic order and co-equal with the masculine, contains in its pantheon the Rabbit God, Patron of LGBTQ people. Yoruba-based New World African religions such as Cuban Santería and Brazilian Candomblé allow each individual to manifest the Orixá-Gods, whose genders need not match that of the person manifesting them. Like Vodou (there are Vodou congregations of LGBTQ people in Port-au-Prince), these religions also have Divine Protectors for LGBTQ people. Native American/Hawaiian/Siberian/Indonesian peoples recognize people with same-sex and gender-variant orientations as having valid identities, and may even hold them in esteem.
Shrines
An important facet of gay spirituality is shrines and memorials that have sprung up in the post-Stonewall world. Tombs of icons such as Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Michel Foucault are common sites of pilgrimage, as is the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, the Gay Liberation Monument in front of it, the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the Homomonument in Amsterdam, the town of Eresos on the Isle of Lesbos.
We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!
If you have any acquaintances (or family members) that have a problem with your identity on spiritual grounds, just tell them an important Buddhist monk from Vietnam said that God is a lesbian. If nothing else, you can create a sense of befuddlement in the deep waters of their biases, thus allowing the lotus of understanding to blossom forth. Or you can tell them a medieval woman named Julian said Jesus was our Mother.
Come to think of it, both God-as-Lesbian and Jesus-as-Mother sound pretty close to a Haitian Goddess. Maybe Thich and Julian have been twittering each other on the spiritual plane, and are Facebook friends in Heaven with Erzulie Dantor!
And, speaking of spirituality, send your love and whatever aid you can to Haiti.
