Category Archives: Ancestors

The Harvey Milk Memorial

I’ve been on the road, as I mentioned, attending the Lammys, visiting the ONE Archives and now back in New York City for the Cockettes celebration of the donation of the Martin Worman Archives to the NY Public Library. Whew!

Sf_city_hall But no…I have not forgotten the one event I was UNABLE to attend personally: The dedication of the Harvey Milk Memorial bust at San Francisco City Hall on May 22. We had two intrepid reporters in attendance on our behalf, Andrew Ramer and Lee Mentley (two more intrepid people I dare say don’t exist!) I will try to relate their reportage here. Andrew wrote about 5,000+ words about it. Lee and I spoke about it at the Cockette’s performance in in New York at the Theater for the New City on Monday. Let’s start with that.

Lee was almost at a loss for words about the event, he said. But the thing that struck him most deeply was the effect it had on the young people  who were in attendance. "For most of these kids, they didn’t really have a clue. Who the heck is Harvey Milk? They weren’t even born yet! But by the time the event was over, you could see a real change in their eyes. They were crying, some of them. They had a whole new sense of themselves, their history, the place in which they were standing even."Harvey_bust

History has a way of doing that. Huh? Our children need their roots, their history, just like everyone else.

Andrew’s moving account of the proceedings, in his own words, is not meant to be a full account of the day. We don’t usually post such long pieces on the blog. But this is worth the time and space. In case you don’t make it all the way to the end of this moving piece, please give an extra bit of thanks to Rink, who graciously gave us permission to use his wonderful photos to illustrate this post, this story, this historic event…:

Jacob_2  You may remember the biblical story of the patriarch Jacob, who dreamed about angels going up and down a ladder or stairway to heaven. Connecting matter and spirit was to me the theme of the ceremony, which took place at the foot of the great staircase in the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall, a stately Beaux Arts edifice built after the destruction of its equally ornate predecessor in the 1906 earthquake.

Before walking over to City Hall, I had dinner with my very good friend Andréa Guerra, a photographer and artist who’s done a series of watercolors and collages of Jacob’s ladder. We were eating at Red Jade on Church Street, our favorite Chinese restaurant. Two men were sitting at the table behind her, both longhaired and bearded, about my age or a bit older, wearing not quite matching green shirts and kilts. I wondered if they were dressed up because they too were going to the ceremony. We got to City Hall at around six, mounted the front stairs with others, slowly passed through the security line, and made our way into the Rotunda, after being handed a program guide, brochure, and postcard for the event. I noticed with pleasure the White Crane logo on the back of the program guide. Was my behavior petty and tribal? Yes, but it isn’t every day that I attend a memorial celebration for a fellow Gay Jew, and I was proud to be there on behalf of White Crane, who supported the project and were cosponsors of the ceremony.

A very large rainbow flag hung over the entrance to the Rotunda, pulled to one side, making the vast formal space look rather like an Edwardian drawing room on acid. As we entered the Rotunda, Andréa pulled out one of her two digital cameras, I pulled out my little spiral notebook and clear plastic fountain pen, and we began to move through the crowd. Six or seven rows of folding chairs were set up in a semi-circle at the base of the monumental stairs leading up to the chamber of the Board of Supervisors. Two very large screens up on the mezzanine, on either side of the stairs, were showing photos of Harvey. Panning the room I saw the two men in green, one’s nose ring catching the light. To the right of the Rotunda, in the North Light Court, an even larger screen flashed the White Crane logo. Ramer_milk_memorial_wci_logo_3 I sat down in one of the empty chairs arranged in rows in front of the screen to watch the rest of the black-and-white pictures of Harvey and see all the sponsors’ logos when they came up again.

What a different era those pictures revealed. Men in tee shirts and jeans, slim, no gym bodies that I could detect, young and hopeful in that wonderful time after Stonewall and before AIDS, when it seemed that everything good was coming our way. Pictures of Harvey at different times in his life, laughing, smiling, marching, in one of Robert Lentz’s icons, on a postage stamp, and my favorite – Harvey as a little boy with very big ears sitting on top of a horse. Those ears were tuned, it seemed to me, to the very pulse of the world around him. Sad and strange that this would have been his 78th birthday. Several times my eyes welled up with tears, not just from the pictures of his coffin lying in the same Rotunda, of candles, shattered glass, but also from looking at him smiling. Smile iconic, and now duplicated in the bust of him to be dedicated later. His smile reaching out and embracing, just as much as his ears were transceivers taking in. I believe in the immortality of the soul. I do not believe in predestination. I do believe that all souls choose to come here. But we queers have so few heroes, and for him to have been gunned down in his prime, in what has sometimes felt to me our prime. Oy!

The people in those pictures were very different too from most of the people in the room, although some of them were probably the same people. Formal wear, jackets and ties had replaced tee shirts and jeans, although there were a few people dressed that way and Harvey’s jackets and ties were part of his official life as a city politician. Wandering through the crowd I saw almost no leather, some drag, including Jack Davis, local artist and Radical Faerie, in a wedding gown and veil whose whiteness matched his beard. The feeling in the crowed space was festive. And yet here and there I saw a face that carried pain, and I wondered – Is that a friend of Harvey’s, someone for whom this birthday party is also a night of deep loss and continuing grief?

Servers wandered through the crowd carrying small white plates of finger food that I was too nervous to eat. What was I supposed to be doing? I told White Crane co-editor Bo Young that I would go, and write about the evening for the White Crane blog. But I don’t go online very often and have only seen one blog ever, my friend Patanjali’s cooking blog, yet there I was with a small spiral notebook and fountain pen. As I moved through the room I kept distracting myself from the task at hand by this thought – In a state where same-sex marriage has been recently declared kosher, is my husband, as yet unmet, about to cross my path? (He didn’t.)

Andréa and I wandered back and forth from the Light Court to the Rotunda, she taking pictures and me making notes. I rather liked the twisty rainbow-colored balloons that were hanging from archways around the Rotunda. To me they resembled gigantic octopuses, tentacles reaching out and making connections. In the Light Court there were similar creations on top of columns of balloons, which Jeff, an old friend from the Gay Spirit Visions Conference, pointed out to me were not the sea creatures on sticks they appeared to me but balloon palm trees. Even though palm trees are not native to this area they have been planted all over the city, a city in which so many of us come from stock that is native to other regions.

John_burnside_90_2 In the midst of jackets and ties a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence wandered through the crowd. John  Burnside, life-partner of Harry Hay, was seated in the Rotunda in elegant black, a bright red flower on top of his hat. I ran into friends from my synagogue, including one who had been a friend of Harvey’s, who told me a few stories about him. She wasn’t out yet the first time they met and she went up to him and said, “If you were straight I’d go out with you.” She also shared these words of his, as we stood at the base of the monumental staircase leading up to his not yet unveiled bust: “Those stairs belong to us like they belong to all people.”

So much has changed since Harvey Milk said those words. We know that those stairs are everyone’s, at least here in San Francisco. We live our lives because people like Harvey had the courage to come out and act on our behalf, I thought, as I moved back to the Light Court, stopping to look at the technology that made the evening possible. Two laptops on a table at the side of the stairs seemed to be running the slideshow. A CD player was giving us music. All together there were 8 monitors and wired devices that I cannot name or identify, that did not exist when Harvey was alive. I wondered what he would have thought of them, and imagined that he might have envied the increased capacity for communication they would have allowed him.

The ceremony began around 7 when MCs writer Jewelle Gomez and local activist Cecilia Chung introduced Mayor Newsom. A long line of politicians joined him at the bottom of the stairs, all men in suits till Carole Migden joined them. Later I found out that the mayor was scheduled to speak first and the other politicians weren’t supposed to come up till after a group of Harvey’s friends had come down the stairs and spoken to the gathering. Our cute straight raspy-voiced mayor, who has demonstrated his ability to be our ally, spoke about Harvey and his legacy. He and the other politicians, including Tom Ammiano and Mark Leno, reminded us that we all stand of the shoulders of other people, that our struggle is linked to that of other people, and spoke about Gus Van Sant’s film about Harvey that will be out soon, starring Sean Penn. The screenwriter was in the audience, I believe. Carole Migden said this of Harvey: “He was a warrior. He wasn’t mainstream.” Jose Cisneros moved me when he said, “We’re in Harvey Milk’s house. That bust at the top of the stairs won’t let anyone forget that.” And Gerardo Sandoval told us about Harvey’s having been an inspiration to him and other Mexican-Americans, another reminder that our work is not isolated, that having friends and allies, and being friends and allies, is part of our spiritual and political work.

For me, and I think for others in the hall, the dedication really began when the politicians stopped speaking and Connie Champagne, local performer and songwriter, sang “Over the Rainbow.” Yes, it’s a cliché, weighed down by allusions, and yet it still called out to me. Standing in the crowd I felt elation and sorrow wash through my chest. I couldn’t have imagined anything like this happening when I came out in 1973, way across the bay in Berkeley – the dedication of a memorial to the first openly Gay person erected in a seat of government anywhere in this country.

Tears welled up as a group of Harvey’s friends came down the stairs. Anne Kronenberg spoke as their representative. She’d worked as an aide for Harvey and told us that the city used to literally roll a red carpet down those long stairs to the front doors of the building for visiting dignitaries, and Harvey loved to prance up and down those stairs, pretending he was one of those dignitaries. Tears followed by laughter, imagining him doing that.

Two performers sang a song written for the occasion, “Give Them Hope,” inspired by and with words taken from Milk’s speech of the same name. (The sound system wasn’t quite adequate and I missed several parts of the evening, including most of a recording played later, in which Harvey repeated some of the talk and in which he discussed his fears of being killed, and what he wanted to be done if that happened.)

I want to mention the Bob Ross Foundation, major sponsors of the memorial, and the team of artists who created it, Eugene Daub, Rob Firmin, and Jonah Hendrickson. And I have to mention the wonderful pairing of the co-chairs of the Memorial Committee, Joey Cain and Dan Nicoletta, who worked for Harvey and whose photo inspired the bust of him. Dan wore an elegant jacket and tie whose formality held one end of the spectrum, while Joey wore a black hat over his flowing hair, a bright red shirt with black polka dots, a light-colored bow tie, and multicolored pants that stood out in the crowded dun-colored space. Cain told a moving story about one of the people involved in the project. Charlotte Coleman owned a number of lesbian and Gay bars in the 1960s and 70s. Right after Harvey’s death she started a fund for some sort of memorial, but forgot about it during the AIDS crisis and only remembered it after reading about the project in one of the local Gay papers. When she tried to track down the money she discovered that the state had seized the account as being unclaimed. After doing all the work necessary to reclaim it, Ms. Coleman had $5000 to contribute, an inspiration to those of us who move slowly and doubt the results of our well-intended deeds.

I was also moved by the words of Harvey’s nephew Stuart Milk, who spoke of belonging to both of Harvey’s families, his LGBT family and his birth family, and who bore to my eyes a strong physical resemblance to Harvey. A teenager when his uncle was assassinated, he told us that he came out to Harvey at his grandfather’s funeral and recalled his uncle’s advice to accept himself, something that many of us still struggle to do. The mayor presented a plaque to him declaring May 22 Harvey Milk Day, or at least I think that’s what he said. Again, the sound quality wasn’t very good.

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang next, looking dashing in their tuxedoes, followed by a procession of diverse community members, who also came down those long marble stairs. The event concluded with the descent of a group of nine young people ranging in age from ten to eighteen, representing different youth groups in the city. Several were from the Gay Straight Alliance Network, one was from Larkin Street Youth Services, and a ten-year-old attends the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. After coming down the stairs, to the applause of those of us assembled, the representatives of our queer future marched back up to the landing in front of the chamber of the Board of Supervisors. I watched from below on those two huge video screens as a fanfare played and they slowly struggled to pull off the long blue fabric that covered the statue. It was so like an unveiling at a Jewish cemetery, which usually takes place a year after someone’s death, when a gravestone is ritually uncovered. So heartbreaking and yet so necessary a part of the process of grief, loss, and also gratitude, however long delayed the ceremony turns out to be. 

The fabric reminded me of the blue stripes on a tallis, a Jewish prayer shawl, flowing like water in the hands of those nine young people. Filled with sorrow and joy I turned in the opposite direction and read on the high Rotunda wall these words engraved into the stone, written in the archaic style I remember from my childhood, that would have been familiar to Harvey too, in Roman letters where U and V are the same:

SAN FRANCISCO

O GLORIOVS CITY OF OVR

HEARTS THAT HAST BEEN

TRIED AND NOT FOVND

WANTING GO THOV WITH

LIKE SPIRITS TO MAKE

THE FUTVRE THINE

Surely those words were meant to be a reminder of the catastrophic quake of 1906 and its rebuilding afterwards, but I read them as a testament to the murder of Milk and Mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978, and then the beginning of the AIDS nightmare that started three years later. San Francisco has been a model to the rest of the world, and that night I felt the energy of this city’s genius pulsing in that vast domed space where not so many years ago nearly 4000 same-sex couples were wed, and where, hopefully beginning this June, such marriages will be performed again. To make the future ours. 

After the unveiling, was I the only one who choked on words as we all stood and sang Happy Birthday to Harvey? I doubt it. Although I never met him, his life touched mine in a profound way, and I knew that I was standing there, pen and red-covered pad in hand, because of all the ways in which that Gay Jewish man’s life work made my own life and work possible.

Andréa and I joined the throng gathered at the foot of the stairs, slowly ascending them to view the newly unveiled statue. Those stairs – there are many of them. Eight from the floor of the Rotunda to the first landing. Twenty-eight more to the second landing. Then six more steps till we arrived at the landing where the memorial stood, beside a supporting column to the right of the entrance to the Board of Supervisors’ chamber.

The statue. A bust of Harvey that seems a tad larger than life. The bust, perhaps a tad higher than Harvey was tall, smiling, tie blowing in the wind, shirt lapels not as long and pointy as in Dan Nicoletta’s photograph. People were going up to the statue, standing beside it, throwing their arms around it, laughing, smiling, as several photographers took pictures of them. The Milk Memorial is the 13th such statue in the building, designed to fit into the elegant Beaux Arts structure. Almost all of the other statutes are of former mayors, an engineer, a major general. But I somehow doubt that people were throwing their arms around their statues when they were dedicated, as almost everyone was doing with Harvey’s. As if the statue were Harvey himself, his warmth even all these years later, his warmth and sincerity, inviting a familiarity that may also come from his Gayness, Gay in both senses of the world. It didn’t look as if people were hugging a monument, but rather that they were embracing one of us, a friend.

Wandering out into the cold night I continued to feel warm inside, sad inside, grateful, moved that I had been there, and torn apart by the violence of this world and the struggle we go through to make it a better place. When I got home I took off my black jeans, gray shirt, blue and black checked jacket with a blue and white rhinestone flower pin on its lapel, given to me by White Crane co-editor Dan Vera. I got into my chilly bed, sad and energized by the evening, beginning to assemble these words beneath my bald pate.

Co-chair Joey Cain was kind enough to speak with me by phone the next morning. He told he that the Joey_cain reason he got involved was: “I never agreed with Harvey when he was alive. I was an advocate of overthrowing the system, not joining it. Harvey and I had very vocal arguments on Castro Street. But over time I realized that we have to do all of it, including change the system.” He went on to say that, “For me our work was about the queer community being recognized in a governmental building. Equal to going into the Library of Congress and seeing Walt Whitman’s name on the ceiling, I want Harvey in San Francisco City Hall for people 100 years from now, this Gay person who was important. More than for Harvey, I did it for the people.” His words echoed Harvey’s words, now preserved in stone.

Joey told me that the artists envisioned a contemplative monument that would be a source of pilgrimage in the city, and he too spoke of the importance of the stairs, to Harvey and to the evening. They planned the ceremony so that all the participants would come down those stairs and go up them, up to the mezzanine where Harvey’s bust was to be unveiled. He reminded me that the event took place fifty yards from where Harvey was shot, and told me another anecdote, that Harvey used to say, “When Gay people go to City Hall, don’t take the elevator, take the steps, so that everyone knows we’re there.” 

The next morning I walked my Gay self back to City Hall. I wanted to be in that space by daylight and see the memorial without all the crowds. There was no evidence that anything had gone on the night before. No rainbow palms, no rainbow flag. The crowds were gone but the Rotunda wasn’t empty. I’d forgotten that the small circular space at the top of the stairs is the site of numerous weddings. I slowly mounted the stairs and got the top as a wedding was in progress. I watched the next wedding from beginning to end, and stayed to watch one more, with other couples lined up below waiting their turn. Of course, as it isn’t June yet, and I’m still not convinced that the Supreme Court’s decision will become a reality, all of the couples marrying were straight. Some wore formal garb, some casual, all said their vows beneath the frozen gave and frozen smile of a Gay man who none of them seemed to notice. Nor did the black-robed woman who stood facing Harvey, who in less than five minutes was binding those couples together according to the laws of the state of California.

Slinking along the side of the landing, not wanting to intrude, I took time to look at the monument as I hadn’t done the night before, when I didn’t want to linger and be photographed. In the filtered light of day the stone pedestal, of mottled chocolate marble, was glowing soft and warm. I’d read that the designers were not originally in favor of the site but came around to it and grew to appreciate its rightness. I stood for a while staring up into Harvey Milk’s eyes, a bit higher than my own. Who was this man, I wondered, whose kind face reminded me of my Uncle Manny, a Queens New York dentist I adored as a child? Would Harvey and I have liked each other? Seen eye to eye in life, two Gay Jewish men from adjacent generations, both of us from Long Island?  I’ll never know. But in our different ways the two of us stood there while a wedding went on behind me, as I read the words on the memorial and copied them in my little pad. 

                                                                HARVEY BERNARD MILK

MAY 22, 1933

NOVEMBER 27, 1978

                                                       SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISOR

       JANUARY 9 – NOVEMBER  27, 1978

                                                          I ASK FOR THE MOVEMENT

  TO CONTINUE.

        BECAUSE MY ELECTION GAVE

         YOUNG PEOPLE OUT THERE HOPE.

     YOU GOTTA GIVE ‘EM HOPE.

    HOPE SPEECH 1978

        GIFT OF THE BOB ROSS FOUNDATION

       AND DONORS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

So sad, so strange. A strong vital face staring at me. So absent, the man. So present and enduring his tribute in metal and stone, till the next great quake rumbles beneath us.

The early thirty-something photographer for one of the weddings came up to the statue and with a chuckle asked the older gentleman who came with him, “Who was that? The inventor of powdered milk?” The gentleman looked at me and stumbled to explain. I took over, telling him about the ceremony the night before, about how Harvey was assassinated not fifty yards from where we were standing. Did what I was saying register? I don’t think so. He was there on other business and returned to it. And I turned back to the memorial.

Beneath the bust are three bas-reliefs that give voice to some of what the bust itself doesn’t say. On the left-hand side, taken from another photograph, we see Harvey in tee shirt, left fist raised, a lei around his neck, balloons behind him, (were they rainbow colored?) sitting on top of a car. The words on this relief read, “Gay Freedom Day.” On the right, also from a photograph, we see Harvey in uniform beneath these words, “US Naval Officer 1955.” But it’s the relief in front that will tell visitors a bit more about the man and his place in our community. “Candlelight March November 27, 1978.” Ten people move across the relief from right to left, all carrying candles. A woman alone, a man alone, then two women with their arms around each other, two men holding hands, another woman alone, another man, and then what looks like a mother and her child bringing up the end of the march. These are not the words I would have put on a monument. Mine would have read, “Gay Jewish Supervisor.” My memorial would not have been stone but something luminous, perhaps a tall glass pillar with an image of Supervisor Milk on it, wearing a pink triangle arm band. Instead I stood before a subtle and beautiful monument that fits into the building with more natural elegance than any of the others I could find, and I went to visit all of them.

Mayor_newsom Directly across the Rotunda, on the far side of the mezzanine, beneath a row of flags, I saw Mayor Newsom smiling and laughing with what looked like a visiting family as cameras flashed. Was he thinking about the preceding night? Was he looking at the children in the family and wondering if any of them were queer, as I was? Did he walk them all around the mezzanine to see Harvey’s memorial? And did he tell them about the amazing birthday party for a dead man he’d attended the night before? I hope so.

On Saturday afternoon I caught up with Dan Nicoletta, the other co-chair of the memorial, who like Joey Cain was kind enough to answer my questions by phone. I wanted to know where and when he’d taken the picture of Harvey that was used to create the bust of him. He told me that he’d taken it in front of Harvey’s camera store, circa 1977. When I commented on his elegant outfit he said, “I knew I would have some competition in the fashion department so I chose something smart but subtle.”

I wondered how the evening was for him, if beneath the joy there was sorrow. His answer: “Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet. I felt very even that night. Welled up at times but did not experience highs and lows. I was very happy with evening and complete with the project.” Then, being not just an elegant dresser but also my Great Aunt Mina’s idea of a perfect gentleman, he offered his thanks to White Crane for showing up and participating in the project. Another lovely tribal moment of pleasure.

I was curious what it was like for him as an artist to see his two-dimensional image of a living three-dimensional friend turned back into three bronze dimensions. At first he talked about the photo itself. “There’s elan in that moment, tie blowing in the wind. Time frozen. Harvey’s smile.” He told me that sculptors usually avoid open-mouthed smiles in bronze because they’re hard to do, but the team wanted to show Harvey’s smile. When I asked Dan what it was like for him to see a bust crafted from his own work he added, “It was really such a great honor metaphysically and physically. The sort of honor every artist longs for. A very high coolness factor.” Reminding him of White Crane’s mission to be a voice for Gay wisdom and culture, I asked him for a comment. He echoed Joey Cain’s words: “The one thing we hoped for as a committee is that the memorial becomes a place of pilgrimage, not just to Harvey Milk’s legacy but to the LGBT movement. A visiting spot for everyone coming to this city, to give them a sense of awe at the political process and their ability to participate in it. That’s what Harvey wanted and that was the goal of our work.” 

Dan also told me that creating the memorial was an incredible exercise in community building, and all of that can be felt when you stand facing it. “Harvey’s reputation has ebbed and flowed over the years,” he said, and when the project was initiated in 2004 there was a low ebb of interest in his memory. That year there were 15 people at the candlelight march, 14 of them elected officials, and the group was fag based crossing Castro Street. But, he added, “Stalwart people were determined to do it, and we did.” Bust

75 inches high, weighing more than 200 pounds, of bronze and marble, at the top of all those stairs, a smiling man stares out into the vast Rotunda. I believe in the immortality of the soul. I don’t know, in a vast multi-dimensional universe, if Harvey was at the ceremony. Who can say what other adventures the dead are engaged in, what other things they have to explore, what other places? But when/if same-sex couples gather again on that landing at the top of the stairs, I hope that they will remember to thank Supervisor Harvey Milk for the work he did to pave the way toward their marriage being legal. 

Carole Migden reminded us that, “We won the right to marry. Not that Harvey ever would.” Or, would he have changed his mind if he had lived longer? Would he have been involved in getting same-sex marriages legalized sooner? And one day, in the midst of his active life, would he have met a man so compellingly right that eventually he would have gotten down on one knee to do something old fashioned? Would they have had invitations printed up, and would Harvey have walked up those cold marble stairs, perhaps as the governor of the state of California or the president of the United States, his hand warm in the hand of another man? And when they stood before a judge, in the city Harvey called Home, in the presence of family and friends, when he said, “I do” and had those sweet words echoed back to him – would a fellow Gay Jew with a pad and fountain pen have been standing in the corner, watching, making notes, thinking about Jacob’s ladder and how these two had just ascended it together, embodied angels? This fantasy of mine is what murder robbed him of, robbed us all of, the rest of his story, however he would have lived it out. And this is what we must do in his absence, not just make pilgrimage to the shrine, but make of our lives… Oh, you know this. Enough. Go and do.

Harvey_paradesized11 Bust_2

James Brougton’s This Is It

This lovely film from 1971 has been called James Broughton’s "creation myth."  It’s an absolute delight.  It runs at about 9 minutes and with the sitar background becomes a bit trancelike in parts.  The title "This Is It" comes from a poem of James Broughton’s that I had the good fortune to come across years ago while in Port Angeles.  It was printed on a little handcard and I remember thinking, Wow.  Who is this guy James Broughton.  A woman’s voice recites the poem at the 3 minute mark.  Fits beautifully with this film.

Enjoy!

On the Occasion of the Pope Coming to Town

Many interesting things come over our transom…this from the esteemed John J. McNeill, on the arrival of Joseph "God’s Rottweiller" Ratzinger (wasn’t this guy on Cheers?) on our shores (traveling under his nom de power "Pope Benedict XVI"):

Toward a Theology of Fallibility

Ratzinger_2When Pope Benedict comes to Ground Zero in New York City he will be greeted byMychaljudgepieta_2 a giant banner with a painting of Michael Judge, the Gay Franciscan priest, whose life is recorded in the documentary, Saint of 9/11. That banner signifies the ambiguous state of many Gay, Lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics toward the Pope. We share the respect and love of the Catholic community for the Vicar of Christ and wish him well. At the same time we are profoundly aware of how wrong he is in his understanding and judgment on Gayness as “intrinsic disorder”. We are deeply conscious that we cannot accept and live out his teaching on homosexuality without destroying our mental and spiritual health. What is bad psychology has to be bad theology. We find ourselves in the same position as children of a homophobic parent, who, while still loving their parent, must separate off and take distance from that parent’s homophobia, if they are to live happy and healthy lives.

We Roman Catholic Gays have found it necessary to undergo the same maturing process in our spiritual lives that Jesus asked his disciples to undergo at the last supper. “I shall ask the Father and he will send you another Paraclete to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.” (John 14: 16-17) Jesus stressed the point that it was necessary that he should go away in order for the Spirit to come. “Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this. Still, I am telling you the truth; it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go. I will send him to you….However, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth.” (John 16: 6-13)

Why could the Spirit of Truth only come after Jesus’ death? Because as long as Jesus remained alive and present, his disciples had their center of authority outside themselves and were not totally responsible for their actions. They were striving to meet the expectations of a provident leader. They had not yet become fully creative and responsible adults. But after Jesus’ death, his Spirit became what Paul saw as the source of the “Glorious Freedom of the Children of God”. “The proof that you are sons and daughters is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba’, Father; and it is this that makes you a son or daughter, you are not a slave anymore’. Pagans were not free but slaves in relation to their gods because they related to their gods in a spirit of fear. John tells us “Perfect love cast out all fear. It is equally true that perfect fear casts out all love.” Christians are free because their God is a God of love who had adopted them into his family. “All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons or daughters of God, for what you have received was not the spirit of slavery, to bring you back into fear, you have received the Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out Abba, Father.” (Rom. 8:14-17)

With the death of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the apostles received a challenge as well as an opportunity to mature. As Paul expressed it, “…until we all reach unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect human, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.” (Eph. 4:13). The apostles had to give up the security of a provident leader; they had to begin to find out what God wanted from them from within themselves and their own experience.

In like manner, in our spiritual life, we Roman Catholic Gay people must pass from a passive, dependent role to an active, creative one. For our survival we have a special need to become mature, self-motivated, autonomous people, no longer dependent on outside homophobic sources for a sense of our identity and well-being. We must not let our enemies outside ourselves define us; we must let the Spirit of love that dwells within our hearts define us. As the Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel expressed it: “Our God dwells within us and the only way we can become one with that God is to become one with our authentic self”.

It is this understanding of the role of the indwelling Holy Spirit that gives me great consolation during these times when the Catholic Church reacts to its Gay members in ignorance and even downright hostility. We Gays should be grateful to God for creating a humanly fallible Church. We are intensely aware that if our parents had been infallible we could never have matured and become autonomous and responsible adults. God blessed us with finite and fallible parents. It was precisely when and where our parents proved fallible that we were challenged to take distance from their authority, make our own choices and be fully responsible for them.

In a similar way, as Gay Roman Catholics we are dependent on the human fallibility of religious authorities in order to develop an adult freedom of conscience. I believe that we are witnessing the coming into being of what I call the Church of the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. After forty years of ministry with Lesbian and Gay persons, as both priest and psychotherapist, I am convinced that a unique spirituality, special and vibrant, is springing up in the Christian Gay community. It is spirituality totally compatible with a life of Gay sexual love and intimacy. As scripture says “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. (Mark 12:18) Gays are leading the way to form a spiritual community based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s special presence in the Gay Christian community and the unique graces which are enabling Lesbians and Gays to build a mature, autonomous spiritual life are not just gifts meant for the Gay Christian community alone. When God pours out special blessings on one segment of the community, those blessings are meant to flow out and be shared by the human community at large.

Brendan_faye The Church of the Holy Spirit will be a Church in which all are equal, no hierarchy, no clergy as a separate caste, no domination of men over women. Leadership in the Church of the Holy Spirit will be based on careful listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying through the people of God. A recent event makes me believe that God is working overtime to bring about the transformation of the Catholic Church into the Church of the Holy Spirit. President Lech Kaczynski of Poland in a March 17 televised speech to the nation, echoing the Vatican position, warned that the adoption of the European Lisbon Treaty would compel Poland to recognize same-sex marriages, which he linked to the end of “moral order”. To make his point the president used footage of the 2003 wedding of Brendan Fay and Tom Moulton in Canada. As a result of that speech a media frenzy moved Brendan and Tom out of obscurity and they became world famous. Brendan and Tom are devout Gay Roman Catholics who see their marriage as a sacred bond blessed by God. The Holy Spirit is ultimately in charge of the Church and will transform it so that it becomes one with the realm of God. We who are Gay and Catholic pray daily that the hierarchy will hear what the Spirit is saying through the people of God and cooperate with the Spirit’s transformation of the Church.

John J. McNeill John J. McNeill, author of The Church and The Homosexual, Taking A Chance on God, Freedom, Glorious Freedom, and Both Feet Planted Firmly in Midair. The Reverend McNeill can be reached at jjmcneill@aol.com

What kind of Gay man are you…?

Because we publish both this blog and the "hard copy" magazine, White Crane, we get on a lot of press lists for various publicists in the entertainment, publishing, recording and fashion business. The sheer stereotypical nature of the kinds of press releases we receive is stunning, really. The only metric that seems to make any difference whatsoever to whoever is sending out the press releases is that they see the word "gay" somewhere in the search, and their feeble little minds automatically assume "fashion" "sex" "consumers" "vacuous dance music" and the most superficial kind of idea of "beauty" imaginable. In fact, using any variation of the term "imagination" in the same sentence is a stretch. Actually having looked at a copy of the magazine, or exploring our website to determine something of what our interests might be seems to be too much to ask.

Fellow_travelers_book_coverThis morning was a perfect example of the stark dichotomy of choices with which we are presented virtually every day. In yesterday’s mail we received the first run of Mark Thompson’s newest book, a beautiful book of his own photography. More on this in a moment.

[Full disclosure: White Crane Institute helped with the production of this book, and we have been sponsoring a touring exhibit of some of the photography in the book, providing it to LGBT communities around the country.]

We were also in receipt of a press release…the second one, now…about some pretty boy cranking out monotonous "dance music" (I love to dance, but what passes for ‘dance music’ these days is, quite simply pathetic.) Shirt open to his six pack, sexuality ambiguously alluded (I’m not big on "sexual allusion" myself…Rosie O’Donnell "alluded" to Tom Cruise for years…and that’s just too weird for words).

Anyway, silly me, I decided to give it a listen, since the publicist (a little more full disclosure here…yours truly was a publicist in the music industry, and a band manager at one point, no less…so I have a soft spot in my heart — not my head, though — for music publicists, and artist trying to break into the biz) had gone to the trouble to send a MP3 file.

The lyrics say it all: Hey…you remember when / I read your mind? / Thoughts of you run through my George  head / and make me want to touch myself / The odds are so right / I know you know I’m the special one…Let’s make love like / we’re strangers…

Like strangers. Wow. Great. With HIV/AIDS making a comeback like it’s a viral Taliban, I hope they use a condom. What a great musical message to put out to young Gay men…a population that is seeing a significant uptick in sero-conversion, we should note. What really burns my admittedly senior citizen ass is the marketing of this cookie-cutter pretty boy, all pumped and smooth like every other cookie-cutter pretty boy, draped in female flesh (used like skin props) and expecting that just because this fellow is (debatably) a) young and b) attractive, that every red-blooded Gay man is going to run right out and buy his drivel music because he has digital abs. Let’s be clear here: his voice is unremarkable. The music is indistinguishable from any other cut on just about any other current "dance music" disc. There is nothing about this–and I use the term very loosely here–"singer" that recommends him other than his shaved body. If you like that sort of thing.

Look at the photos accompanying this post…one is the cover of Mark’s book, Fellow Travelers: Guides & Tribes [Fluxion Editions, 2008] and "the Stranger" with the models who are so weak from hunger they have to lean on him for support. Tell me…which huddle would you want to be in? You want to "make love like we’re strangers," like this bimbo (I really think "bimbo" ought to be the male version and "bimba" the female) suggests? So OK…maybe you don’t want to get all muddy…but those are definitely not "strangers" in that picture. You might actually connect with someone…your own self, for instance… your own history as a queer, like Mark Thompson is documenting in his beautiful book Fellow Travelers?

I hesitated to even talk about the singer, who shall remain anonymous here. Why give shallow exploitative product placement any kind of publicity at all? But the contrast between this dreck, and Mark Thompson’s new book was so dramatic to me, I thought they ought to be thrown into contrast. Mark’s Fellow Travelers book is available in limited edition at http://www.markthompsongayspirit.com/

The empty nutrition of the mess of potage with the six-pack is available…anywhere. In a word: feh.

Arthur C. Clarke: The Visionary I Knew

By Toby Johnson

ArthurcclarkeMarch 18, 2008, at the age of 90, renowned writer and futurologist Arthur C. Clarke passed away. His death made national news in America—of course. His name, arguably, has been one of the most Arthurcclarkequoterecognizable in the world, if only as creator (with Stanley Kubrick) of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was a leader in consciousness evolution, an expert on space science, and author of over a hundred books.

What won’t be mentioned in most of the news stories, though, is that he was Gay. Of course, that’s using the term inaccurately. He wasn’t a Gay man like the post-Stonewall generation in the U.S., but he was certainly one of us.

Speaking personally, let me report that Clarke had a tremendous influence on me as a young man. I read all his books, emulated his writing style, and even to some extent adopted his post-religious “spiritual” vision of human consciousness. So in the late 1990s, when I learned my friend Kerry O’Quinn, a Gay Austinite and also a science fiction writer, told me he’d met Clarke and carried on a correspondence with him, I jumped at the opportunity to be introduced by mail. I corresponded with Clarke for several years. I wrote about his post-religious spirituality in a couple of my books and cleared my acknowledgement of his sexual identity with him. So I have no qualms Arthurcclarkestarbabyabout my including him in the pantheon of homosexual seers.

An ex-patriate Englishman, Clarke lived most of his adult life as what English society might call a “confirmed bachelor” in an intentional, extended family in the Theravada Buddhist land of Sri Lanka (in fable, the mystical island of Serendip where good fortune and lucky coincidence reign). Though married for a time as a young man, Clarke offered a marvelous example of the contributing, participating life, lived free of the conventions of marriage and childrearing.

He demurred about coming out publicly as Gay, he wrote, because he felt this fact would be used to discredit his ideas. He was 61 at the time of Stonewall, already past the sexual prime in which it’s meaningful to identify oneself as Gay. And, indeed, in 1997, a British tabloid, The Sunday Mirror, ran a story accusing him of having moved to Sri Lanka in order to buy sex from underaged boys, something he found offensive and the accusation distressing. He thought the accusation was really aimed at Prince Charles who was scheduled to knight him—as Sir Arthur—that same year. (At the same time as Sir Elton John, by the way.)

Arthurcclarkechildhoodsend_2He had a cute quip about not being Gay: "At my age now,” he said, “I’m just a little bit cheerful." He wrote that he was quite fascinated with the role homosexuals have played down through time as revolutionary thinkers. (In our correspondence, he expressed great interest in C.A. Tripp’s book about Abraham Lincoln as Gay.) He kept a private collection of writing which is not to be published until 50 years after his death. I’d wager the world is going to receive the open acknowledgement of his homosexuality and of his theory about gay consciousness as revolutionary come 2058.

Science fiction is one of the ways in which the mythmaking function of human  consciousness appears today. 2001, with its final psychedelic imagery and apotheosis of astronaut David Bowman into the Star Child, described human consciousness transcending individuality and merging into some sort of greater consciousness, all explained in scientific sounding terms.

In his renowned novel, Childhood’s End, as scientific prophet, Clarke described a planetary progression to a collective mind (in the novel called “the Overmind”) that is foreshadowed by “psychic powers”: telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, and memory of collective, cosmic events. In that sense, one might say he hypothesized such paranormal powers, long elements of religion and mysticism, to be forerunners and hints at humankind’s future evolution.

Even in the 1950s, when Childhood’s End appeared, he called himself an “agnostic Buddhist,” so he probably didn’t believe in a personal afterlife. Still we might imagine that in his dying, Sir Arthur experienced rising into the Overmind.

In his modern/futuristic way, he has surely been a visionary and “Enlightened Being,” a scientifically-minded prophet who had foreseen, and helped bring about, the modern transformation of consciousness. He was surely an incarnation of the archetype of the homosexual seer.

Writer and multiple Lambda Literary Award-winner Toby Johnson was the second publisher of White Crane Journal.  He lives in San Antonio, Texas and reviews books for White Crane magazine.