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Reviews, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Review of God in Your Body

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Rvu_michaelsonGod in Your Body:
Kabbalah, Mindfulness
and Embodied Spiritual Practice
by Jay Michaelson
Jewish Lights Publishing $18.89
Soft cover. 247 pages.

Review by Perry Brass

“Religion belongs in bed as well as in the sanctuary, and bodywork belongs in temples as well as on yoga mats,” says Jay Michaelson in God in Your Body, his bright, and at times insightful and delicious book about returning the real body to Jewish and spiritual practice. Michaelson defines Kabbalah as “receiving the Divine light within.” This is done through a tradition of esoteric knowledge put together in the early Middle Ages, through meditational practices, through Hassidic joyfulness, through the “interventions” of the brachim, blessings that make us mindful of every act of eating, drinking, washing, peeing, crapping, sleeping, and even making love. Michaelson, in short, has assembled a quite encyclopedic book centered around the physical eternal body, the thing we have until there is no longer an “us,” and how mindfulness of this body opens us up to the Soul; although Judaism, he is quick to point out, has no yoga practices, no Tai Chi, little physicalization of spiritual expression beyond, say, bending the knees at prayer, circumcision, or the use of the mikva, the ritual bath that marks many transitions from unclean to clean, regular to sanctified. But to make us aware that God is with us in all of our physical selves, he has chapters on, of course, eating (So, what would Jews be without essen?), breathing, walking, sex, exercising, dancing, fasting, washing, sickness, and a beautiful benediction at the end on the full life cycle, and “Just Being.”

Strangely enough, much of Michaelson’s approach to Judaism follows techniques actors use in “method acting,” that is, that on-stage (which is a ritual in itself) emotions do not precede physical activities, they follow them: emotions, in fact, block an activity, so instead, they need to be released by it. Thus, true mindfulness in the physical act of eating releases many feelings about the reality of food that you won’t have simply by reminding yourself before you eat to think about what’s on the table. He tells us over and over in the book, “Fake it till you make it”: doing an activity, opening yourself up to the physical moment, surrendering to it, will enable real feelings and light to come into it, whether this is intense, ecstatic prayer, relieving yourself of sexual hang ups, or simple mindfulness in any form. This also follows the orthadox idea that performing a “mitzvah,” a holy act, must be done whether you want to or not. It is not done out of convenience,and its very inconvenience makes you mindful of God’s place in it.

This is a good book, which sometimes gets lost in the clutter. Michaelson is erudite, but often sounds like he’s talking to incoming college freshmen, especially when he’s being a “liberal” college counselor still fairly coy about sex, and this reviewer found the chapter on sex to be his least successful. He says, “Our culture provides a toxic soil for nurturing healthy, spiritual sexuality …guilt, judgment, shame, and the rest are what most of us have been taught the longest”; but then he sets up a paradigm of “sacred sexuality,” which seems fairly puerile, with generic admonishments to “transcend the self…let go.” “Bring the attention to the body, and let the body wake you up.” “Don’t check your theology at the bedroom door. Leave the ego on the floor with your clothes and see Who emerges” — this seems like the theological version of “Boy, was I drunk last night!” instead of being aware of what is going on, in all of its manifestations, “dirty” and otherwise, and allowing yourself to be changed by it. (However, for many young, orthodox Jews, even generic liberation talk about sex may be revolutionary; and we must grant the author that.)

He does make a point that sexuality divided Judaism from early Christianity, and its exuberant heterosexuality might have offended “Christists” who negated straight lustiness as being a temptation. Sexuality glorifies the union of opposites, the dynamism of creative energies, whereas celibacy has almost no place in the Jewish canon. Orthodox yeshivas condemn masturbation, but not from a real Jewish tradition of condemning it; and the shame coming from this becomes irreparable. Shame becomes “nothing less than a plague.” Sexual shame, Michaelson writes, “shuts down…our connection with the Divine.”

God in the Your Body embodies mindfulness within the body; and this is wonderful. In our age of unmindfulness, of vapid entertainment instead of real exploration, of non-communication with others and ourselves, mindfulness in any form, especially mindfulness leading to compassion, is needed urgently. Some non-Jews may have a difficult time with this book because it is so grounded in Judaism — in fact, he takes it for granted that you have some familiarity with the Hebrew alphabet — but the basic message of this often witty and delightful book is that God is everywhere, including your body, so why leave it to find Him? “Imagine that the truth is really true; that you are God walking on God…God loving God.”

Certainly doing this everyday would keep us kind.

Perry Brass has published 13 books. His latest, Carnal Sacraments, An Historical Novel of the Future, from Belhue Press, should be out soon. He can be reached via www.perrybrass.com

Reviews, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Review of The Secret

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Rvu_thesecret The Secret
Producers Rhonda Byrne, Paul Harrington.
Director Drew Harriot.
Prime Time Productions, 2006

"Homophobia from Religious Liberals"

Review by
Rev. Vilius Rudra Dundzila, Ph.D., D.Min.

Two liberal religious denominations are showing a movie that blames homophobia on Gay people. The Unity School of Christianity and Religious Science are both hosting screenings of the movie The Secret. In the opening segments, it demonstrates how the bad thoughts of Gays attract homophobic attacks. The scenes depict a nameless Gay man who experiences assaults at work and on his way home. The movie claims the problems will go away when Gays focus on good thoughts instead. The Gay man is next seen with a happy smile at work and flirting with someone on his way home.

I found it painful to watch the exaggerated Gay-bashing scenario and listen to the simplistic solution. Homophobia is a dangerous and very real problem: GLBTs are attacked and killed in our own country. They are executed in Iraq by the puppet government that the USA installed. For GLB people, our own internalized homophobia is a serious problem, but it does not cause homophobes to enact hate crimes on us. Attackers cause hate crimes, not the victims.

The “Secret” of the movie is that “bad” thoughts attract the bad, and vice versa. The movie teaches a few spiritual practices that develop “good” thinking, such as gratitude, prayer, visualization, etc. It emphasizes the power of positive thinking. According to the movie, good thoughts will lead to wealth (specifically, becoming part of the wealthiest 5% that controls 80% of the world’s resources), fancy cars, a rewarding career, a multi-million dollar house, a fabulous relationship (no GLBT couples were depicted), etc.

Moreover, poverty and disease would go away if the poor and the sick had good thoughts. The movie praises social injustice and economic exploitation. I would expect such capitalistic ideology at a Republican convention, but not at a liberal church. As it turns out, the movie is based on book The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles and Judith L. Powell. Moreover, many of the people featured in the movie are highly successful entrepreneurs or investors (the movie is a montage of interviews with about 20 individuals, interwoven with dramatizations). The materialistic and narcissistic message of the movie serves to belittle its superficial spiritual teaching. It makes no mention of loving one’s neighbor or enacting justice: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick, etc.

In terms of disease, the movie provides two examples of the power of healing. One is a woman who cured herself of breast cancer by good thoughts alone, without radiation or chemo-therapy. The second is Morris Goodwin who miraculously recovered from an airplane crash. The implication is clear: if she could do it, everyone can. This miasmic view of disease victimizes patients for their illnesses. It was and still is used to blame Gay men for AIDS. Positive thinking is one factor in a holistic mind-body-spirit approach to health, but it is not the sole factor. In my own case, I have been living well with HIV for 22 years now: by the grace of God, by the power of positive thinking, and by the medical miracle of HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment).

Unity and Religious Science are two churches that have been very friendly to the GLB community (I am not sure how well they relate to Transgendered people): they ordain Gays, bless same-sex unions, and have very large Gay followings. Unfortunately, their current preaching perpetuates “bad thinking” not only against the GLBT community, but also against the sick and the poor.

Bo Young, Reviews, WC71 - Bohemian Splendor

WC71 – Review of Gay L.A.

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Rvu_gayla Gay L.A.
A History of Sexual Outlaws,
Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians

By Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons
Basic Books (Perseus Books Group) 2006
ISBN -13978-0-465-02288-5
431 pages, $27.50

Reviewed by Bo Young

If you stopped the average, well-read gay man on …say, Castro Street or Eighth Avenue Chelsea or even Santa Monica Boulevard (can you find “well-read” gay men on any of those streets?) and asked them where the modern Gay liberation movement got its start, it’s a safe bet the majority of responses would be something about Stonewall and New York City. Such is the power of publicity (and urban density, according to Gay L.A. authors, Faderman and Timmons). Because, in a fair appraisal of the developments of what might be called GLBT history, Los Angeles would necessarily play a major, if not the starring role. By any measure of “apples and oranges” Los Angeles and its cultural contributions to GLBT Liberation was ahead of the curve and ahead of New York City.
This, of course, sticks in the craw of a lot of city chauvinists. But facts are facts. If you trace modern Gay liberation back to the Harry Hay and Rudy Gernreich and their circle that became the Mattachine Society, you will find yourself in the sunny climes of Southern California. And if you want to talk about “riots” that resulted in gay people organizing, we’re not in Greenwich Village, 1969, anymore, Toto, we’re on Cahuenga Boulevard in Los Angeles; and 1967 is a full two years earlier.

When the religious fundies started their goose-stepping, church-state, church-state, church-state march across the country from Dade County, it was the political savvy of Southern California that made them break their stride, at least for the time being. It was not, for example, as legend and hagio-documentary would have it, Harvey Milk single-handedly standing up to Anita Bryant. In fact, as this reviewer remembers the story (and I was, in fact, the Assistant State Press Secretary to the great Sally Fiske on the No On 6 campaign in So-Cal) the job was to keep Harvey away from microphones, so as to allow John Briggs to hoist himself by his own language petard.
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, the co-authors of Gay L.A., have written an entertaining and fascinating history of, yes, GLBT people in Los Angeles — Gay people, lesbians, two spirits, drag queens, wayward sailors and closeted leading actors, and other assorted sexual outlaws, as the subtitle promises. In a most, for Los Angeles, unusual self-effacing way, the collective march-of-time stories make a serious argument for Los Angeles’ honored place in the history of Gay people in America.

If the time line the authors relate is necessarily limited in its depth — and it is — it is also nothing short of dazzling in its breadth. In fairness, much like getting around L.A. by highway, there is a good deal of ground to cover, and having personally lived through a number of the stories related regarding the halcyon disco days (your humble reviewer was doorman at the Cabaret/After Dark disco in S.F.) and bathhouse bacchanalia of the late 70s (every Monday, said reviewer took Sheldon Andelson’s 8709 receipts to the gay-owned bank he and others started in   L.A.) and the political and medical dramas of the early 80s (and slept with his share of the main characters…which he will most certainly not review here) this writer can personally attest to there being a good deal more to tell. But again, in fairness, probably any one of the chapters in the book could be expanded into a stand-alone book. And probably will.

Given this, the range of stories — from pre-publicist times of indigenous Chumash Two Spirit culture, (when the name of the place was translated as “the smoke” because of the environmental peculiarities of the geography), to the modern political action and multicultural influences of this smoggy Hollywood dream citym — makes the book laudable. The writing partnership of Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons offers a tasty combination of women’s stories — I suspect in her voice — as well as the men’s — in his. Rising above male/female binaries, they have made an equally concerted effort to tell the multicultural rainbow of stories, all without the feeling of forced PC-ness, feeling more like what political correctness really is meant to be: the whole story with respect to all the players. It is heartwarming to see the names of Gayle Wilson, Sally Fiske, Roberta Bennett, Diane Abbit and Valerie Terrigno brought to the worthy fore, to say nothing of better known names like Jean O’Leary, Ivy Bottini, Colt handsome Steve Schulte and Mixner with the name Scott appended to it. These were people and stories I knew personally and they are well-honored and well-served here.

Despite my own personal history there, I was…and I think most readers will find themselves…surprised, really, at the not merely important role Los Angeles has had in GLBT history, but the very central, truly groundbreaking force and fertile ground it has been. This is a much needed addition to and clarification of the national history of our struggle that should sit proudly on any bookshelf right next to David Carter’s Stonewall.

This is just an excerpt from this issue of White Crane.   We are a reader-supported journal and need you to subscribe to keep this conversation going.  So to read more from this wonderful issue SUBSCRIBE to White Crane. Thanks!

Reviews, Toby Johnson, WC71 - Bohemian Splendor

WC71 – Review of Be Done On Earth

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Rvu_howardcook1

Be Done On Earth

By Howard E. Cook
PublishAmerica, pb,
185 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Toby Johnson

A stranger appears in your life. He’s attractive, but even more, he’s charismatic, sexually alluring, but aloof. Everybody who meets him falls in love with him. And he’s mysterious, suddenly disappearing and then popping back up again in the most unexpected places and times, but always with coincidental (almost magical) significance. And he’s got a message for you—and for the world. And he wants you to spread it. He gives you a manuscript, and then he disappears again, leaving you with a mission.

This is certainly a familiar theme in mythological writing. From Richard Bach’s Messiah or Myles Connolly’s very Catholic Mr. Blue to the gospel stories themselves about Jesus, one of the ways “revealed” or spiritual insight is traditionally presented is as “the book within the book.” There’s a story about meeting the charismatic message giver, and within that story is the story or teaching he gives.

This happens in real life. It’s not just a theme in literature or mythology. It’s an actual experience people have. In my own life, my nicknamesake and first collaborator Toby Marotta entered my life in an almost magical way, invited me to help him edit his masterpiece Harvard doctoral dissertation into a publishable book, and then, leaving me with a copy to rewrite (and a message about the meaning of the gay rights movement), he disappeared with his exotic Parsi lover to search for crystals in India.

I just made it sound more magical and mysterious than it really was: Marotta’s partner was a geology professor from India who imported minerals as a sideline business to teaching. This was just a business trip and I was left with just a copyediting job. But it was the start of my own writing career — and of my own understanding of gay consciousness.

So when Howard Cook relates the tale of his meeting the elusive, charismatic Bradford Lightfoot Dare in the strangest of places over a period of many years, I was ready to believe the story on several levels from the mythic to the mundane. Cook’s story of Brad Dare is quite intriguing. He first shows up in a Trappist monastery, then as a nude model for life-drawing classes in Washington, DC. He’s a dance partner to debutantes and a most eligible bachelor in the nation’s capital. Next he’s a Jesuit seminarian studying Teilhard de Chardin, and a little later, he appears unexpectedly as a housemate in a hippie household in Greenwich Village in the apartment previously occupied by the New York Queen of the Gypies — with writer Norman Mailer indirectly making the reintroduction. Then he becomes a gay porn star in San Francisco and a character in the development of West Coast New Age thought along with Ken Kesey and Alan Watts.

Especially because the tale begins in the 1950s, I couldn’t help being reminded of Fred Demara, “The Great Imposter,” (played by Tony Curtis in the movie) who beguiled the American public in those days with his story of living many identities, including Trappist monk. But Bradford Dare comes across in Cook’s telling not as a daring adventurer (though look at his name!) thumbing his nose at convention and legalities, but as a dedicated and driven seeker of transcendent truths, though no less rebel.

Dare shows up again in Cook’s life many years later, after Cook has successfully marketed a couple of books. He’s been studying and thinking and making notes all these years, and now asks Howard Cook’s assistance in articulating and promulgating the wisdom and enlightened insight he’s gained.

And that’s the book within the book: Bradford Lightfoot Dare’s proposal for how to modernize Christianity and recreate the Church. Partly tongue-in-cheek and partly with multi-layered symbolism, Dare calls his message the first encyclical of Pope John the Beloved.

Blending modern-day physics and cosmology, a little Teilhard and a little Matthew Fox, comparative religion, some Joseph Campbell, intelligent New Age thought, progressed Christianity, American political idealism, evolutionary theory, postmodernism, (and here and there what seem like loose associations), Pope John the Beloved calls for a new Church of the Second Coming—also referred to (iconoclastically) as the Church of Kingdom Come – COKC (try pronouncing the acronym).

It’s a sex-positive religion based in an evolutionary model of human nature with an openly gay priesthood (with a somewhat progressed understanding of the role of homosexual consciousness in evolution). Some of the tenets of COKC are intentionally controversial (like the proposal that genetic science will soon allow humans to reproduce in the lab, avoiding all the dangers of unregulated breeding, and taking advantage of the opportunity to improve human nature at the molecular level). But the suggestions for an updated religious model come across as heartfelt and genuine.

I’ve tended to focus on the frame of the story rather than the content. Brad Dare would probably prefer I was writing about his ideas rather than Cook’s presentation. But I will leave readers to study Dare’s “encyclical” on their own: it’s a little overwhelming to summarize in a few paragraphs in a book review. I think men in the gay spirituality movement will recognize many of the themes (like the question “Was Jesus gay?”). But some of the ideas are fresh and come from unexpected directions (like the “final anthropic principle” in quantum cosmology). And, at any rate, it’s not so much the conclusions that will draw readers into the book as the process. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not, the debate is interesting and the argumentation thought-provoking.

For me, as reviewer, the most thought-provoking was the question whether Brad Dare is an alter-ego and literary device of Howard Cook’s multi-faceted mind or a “real” person. In a way, it doesn’t make any difference.

I must say I was disappointed at the end of the book that the framing story is not recapitulated. I wanted to know what happened to Brad Dare. All we get at the end is that he is working on a follow-up about the Church of the Gay Salvation.

Be Done on Earth is a neat example of an ancient literary and mythical dynamic by which wisdom is personified in a charismatic person who inspires those caught in his magic spell to discover their own insights and to surpass him. I was pleased to suspend disbelief and enjoyed the book — just as 30 years ago at the start of my writing career I was willing to suspend disbelief and let my friend and fellow Toby be an inspiration and watershed in my own life.

I wonder if there’s something “inherently gay” in finding inspiration in a charismatic person instead of an authoritarian institution or revealed text. I think that might be one of the subjects in Pope John the Beloved’s second encyclical.

This is just an excerpt from this issue of White Crane.   We are a reader-supported journal and need you to subscribe to keep this conversation going.  So to read more from this wonderful issue SUBSCRIBE to White Crane. Thanks!

Reviews, Toby Johnson, WC71 - Bohemian Splendor

WC71 – Review of Rising Up

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Rvu_perezrisingup Rising Up:
Reflections on Gay Culture, Politics, and Spirit

By Joe Perez
Lulu Publication, pb, 248 pp,  $15.75
Also available from Lulu.com as an e-book for $6.25.

Reviewed by Toby Johnson

Joe Perez moderates the Gay Spirituality and Culture blog on the Internet. With blogging having become a major force in American media and politics, Perez’s blog constitutes a major gay presence in the new electronic/virtual media world. The blog hosts columns by a variety of writers (occasionally including this reviewer) as well as linking to Perez’s own extensive writing at joe-perez.com.

Perez’s book, Rising Up, demonstrates another facet of his creativity within this virtual world. For the book is a hybrid of traditional writing/publishing and the new Internet-inspired style of blogging. It is a compilation of columns and postings Perez has written for the blogosphere, and then edited and rearranged for book publication. This is a new kind of writing and a new phenomenon in the book world.

There are several levels, therefore, at which to review this book: first, simply the phenomenon of a blog-based book, second, the “personalistic” style of writing occasioned by blogging, and third, the content.

The first level is easy: this is probably the wave of the future. The nature of posting on the Internet is that it’s fleeting and ephemeral. Electronic media demonstrates one of those Buddhist insights into existence: everything is transitory, existing like a bubble or a dream. Brilliant writers post brilliant, incisive commentaries on the web. But these exist only as electronic signals flashing round the world at light speed and getting lost in the torrent of such signals, then disappearing into the past. It’s a natural impulse of serious writers, thinkers, and commentators to want to preserve their best writing and to organize their insights to make them more accessible. And it’s an appropriate writer’s discipline to edit and rewrite one’s material. So the blog turned literature is a logical outgrowth of this computer phenomenon. Joe Perez really is riding the crest of the wave.

The second level of critique is much more complex. Blogging is almost necessarily reactive and interlinked. Blogging is a kind diary-keeping, without the confidentiality. Bloggers write in response to other blogs and postings on the web. In the electronic blog, the hyperlink is easy to create and easy for the reader to follow. In print, it doesn’t work that way. So, for instance, where traditional academic text would have a footnote, Perez’s blog text has a bracketed reference to a URL like [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR200505-1601232]. Of course, that’s actually very easy to follow on the computer—easier than to a footnoted book you’d have to got to a library to find — but it is awfully inelegant in print. What’s more, the reactive style means the reader is only hearing one side of a debate. To Perez’s credit, he generally introduces and explains the text he is commenting on. This, indeed, is what a reader would expect from a serious and academically trained writer. Joe Perez is a Harvard graduate and done masters level work at the University of Chicago.

Blogging also tends to be sequential and timely. News comes out in bits and pieces and commentators are always dealing with it in the fleeting present. Thus their commentaries can lack perspective. Again to Perez’s credit, he has organized the book by themes and not by dates. His insights then come across as thoughtful and logically interconnected, not just reactive. But this is the major problem with this style of writing. Above I referred to this as personalistic. By that I mean that the reactive quality of blogging results in lots of first person pronouns and consequent subjectivity. Joe’s personality is very present.

The third level of critique is of content. Rising Up covers a lot of territory; as the subtitle indicates, the book is about culture, politics, and spirit, ranging from “Responding to religious traditionalists,” “Fighting HIV/AIDS,” “Looking at popular culture,” to “Elevating business and society,” “Connecting sex and soul,” and “Exploring spiritual alternatives.” (These are six exemplary chapter titles out of twelve.)

Joe Perez is a student of modern psycho-spirit culture theoretician Ken Wilbur. Wilbur’s ideas and models of experience and spiritual growth pervade Perez’s writing. Wilbur uses a lot of acronyms for his wide-ranging concepts (AQAL, for instance, for “All Quadrants, All Levels” meaning “comprehensive” and “flexible.”) Perez follows suit and uses the acronym STEAM for the processes of psychological and spiritual growth. Students of Wilbur’s will find Perez’s discussions very appropriate application to gay consciousness; non-Wilbur fans may find them confusing. The concept of “rising up” through the stages of personal growth unites all the various discussions including the nature of gay consciousness itself.

The book, like Internet surfing, doesn’t have to read from front to back. It’s filled with interesting and provocative comments, most of which stand alone. I thought the section on HIV/AIDS perhaps the most heartfelt. Joe Perez deserves to be read.

This is just an excerpt from this issue of White Crane.   We are a reader-supported journal and need you to subscribe to keep this conversation going.  So to read more from this wonderful issue SUBSCRIBE to White Crane. Thanks!

Reviews

White Crane #70 – Tom Spanbauer’s Now Is The Hour

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Rvu_spanbauer Now Is the Hour
By Tom Spanbauer
Houghton Mifflin, 480 p.
ISBN: 0618584218, $26

Reviewed by Kathleen Dobie

Anyone who writes an autobiographical novel must have a healthy narcissism. Fortunately, in the case of Tom Spanbauer’s Now Is the Hour, that self-love translates into a lyrical, absorbing, and very entertaining coming-of-age tale with a teenage protagonist you can’t help but love yourself.

That narrator, 17-year-old Rigby John Klusener, starts and ends his story on the road as he makes his exodus from the narrow confines of his home near Pocatello, Idaho, for the wider opportunities of San Francisco. In-between is the wonderfully told and richly realized chronicle of a boy consciously and inexorably establishing his own parameters for his relationships with his family, his friends, his lovers, and himself.

The book shares a title with a traditional hymn. Early on, Rigby John says of it, “There’s something about that song. How it’s sad, but at the same time it makes you feel good inside.” Rigby John’s own story is bit like his assessment of the song: There’s a lot to make you sad, but getting to know him makes you feel good.

The rituals, benedictions, confines, freedoms, and the music of the Catholic church are deeply embedded in Rigby John’s life. Church music serves as a bridge between Rigby John and his mother as he sits beside her while she plays hymns, and, occasionally and poignantly, “Chapel of Love.” The church also serves as a platform for rebellion when Rigby John and his sister cruise the local drive-in when their parents think they’re at St. Francis De Sales Club meetings. Rigby John feels the power of “Jesus eyes” during critical moments of his life and finds more than a few opportunities to say, "I loved God so much right then."

Rigby John forms significant friendships during consecutive pivotal summers. Two hired hands his father has him supervise offer Rigby John his first experience of adult friendship along with the opportunity to set standards of his own, in deliberate and direct opposition to those his father espouses. During the hours stolen from De Sales Club meetings, Rigby John embarks on a key friendship with Billie Cody, schoolmate and soul mate. Billie and Rigby John’s relationship is circumscribed by their time and place and yet transcends them — as all important friendships do. They smoke together, they laugh together, they fart and cry in each other’s presence, they neck, they talk, they look at and into each other, they explore the boundaries of their respective worlds and dip their toes into worlds outside their own. And throughout Rigby John’s story runs George Serano, a.k.a. Injun George and Georgy Girl. Rigby John’s first actual meeting with George is filled with drama and trauma and insight, and those themes carry through their working together, being friends — and enemies — to each other, teaching and learning from each other, and hating and loving each other.

Rigby John’s story is universal in feel if not in the particulars, although a great many of the particulars are universally familiar, especially to those of use who were teenagers in the middle decades of the last century: cruising to the popular hang-out spot; trying your utmost to avoid any discussion of sexual issues with your parents — and the humiliating embarrassment of failing; risking your first attempts at physical and emotional intimacy; opening yourself to ideas different from those you’ve been raised to believe are the only valid precepts; battling the fear that you’ll end up being just like your parents. That Rigby John also uncovers the truth of his own sexuality is simply another leg in his journey of self-discovery.

Spanbauer conveys these often pedestrian, yet transformational events, through evocative text that is immediate and witty and as refreshing as an impromptu stop for ice cream on a sweltering summer day. You’re right there in the truck when Rigby John and Billie go on a helpless laughing jag together on their first meeting. You relate completely when Rigby John’s arms turn into helpless blocks of Cheddar during times of emotional confusion. Your stomach knots with the pent-up, unspoken, and barely acknowledged tension that finally erupts into violence against George in the hayfield.

And though the story is told from Rigby John’s point of view, the people in his life are fully fleshed out, independent individuals.

From the first sentence Rigby John’s musings invite you into his world, his life, his soul. And you’re held there securely and comfortably for a long while after you finish the last sentence.

Kathleen Dobie is a writer and activist in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Reviews

White Crane #70 – Vanita’s Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India & the West

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Rvu_vanitaLove’s Rite:
Same-Sex Marriage in India & the West
By Ruth Vanita
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 1403970386288  Hardcover, $6

Reviewed by Amara Das Wilhelm

Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West is an exciting new book by University of Montana professor Ruth Vanita.  No longer simply a debated concept, same-sex marriage is fast becoming a reality in Hinduism today—both in India and the West.  Hundreds of gay and lesbian Hindu couples are literally “tying the knot” in wedding ceremonies both public and private, with family approval or not, and increasingly with the blessings of officiating Hindu priests.  In her latest book to date, Vanita examines this phenomenon from a religious, social and more importantly, human perspective.

While most Hindus remain opposed to same-sex unions and have not thought about the topic very deeply or on a personal level, this is changing.  For instance, when a Shaiva priest from India was asked to perform a wedding for two women in 2002, he hesitated at first but then agreed.  Vanita: “He told me that when the women requested him to officiate at their wedding he thought about it and, though he realized that other priests in his lineage might disagree with him, he concluded, on the basis of Hindu scriptures, that, ‘marriage is a union of spirits, and the spirit is not male or female.’”

Srinivasa Raghavachariar, a well known Sanskrit scholar and Hindu priest of the major Vaishnava temple in Srirangam, India, deliberated upon the same issue and came up with a similar response: “Same-sex lovers must have been cross-sex lovers in a former life.  The sex may change but the soul remains the same in subsequent incarnations, hence the power of love impels these souls to seek one another.”

Swami Bodhananda Saraswati, a Vedanta master who took sannyasa initiation from Swami Chinmayananda and is the founder of the Sambodh Foundation with branches worldwide, had this to say on the subject of same-sex marriage: “There is no official position in Hinduism.  From a spiritual or even ethical standpoint, we don’t find anything wrong in it.  We don’t look at the body or the memories; we always look at everyone as spirit…Different priests may or may not perform same-sex weddings—it is their individual choice because there is no one position or one head of Hinduism.  I am not opposed to relationships or unions—people’s karma brings them together.”

Ruth Vanita also quotes Swami B.V. Tripurari, a sannyasi in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition:  “My opinion regarding gay and lesbian devotees is that they should be honored in terms of their devotion and spiritual progress.  They should cultivate spiritual life from either a celibate status, or in something analogous to a heterosexual monogamous situation…Although my Guru Maharaja (Srila Prabhupada) frowned on homosexuality in general, he was also very practical, flexible, and compassionate.  One of his earliest disciples was a gay man who once related how he had ultimately discussed his sexual orientation with Srila Prabhupada.  He said that at that point Srila Prabhupada said, ‘Then just find a nice boy, stay with him and practice Krishna consciousness’…I believe that Hinduism originally held a much more broadminded view on sexuality than many of its expressions do today.”

Of course, not all opinions are so favorable and open-minded.  Swami Pragyanand of Avahan Akhara, for instance, had this to say for a reporter from the Hinduism Today newspaper:  “Gay marriages do not fit with our culture and heritage.  All those people who are raising demand for approving such marriages in India are doing so under the influence of the West…we do not even discuss it.”  The diverse nature of Hinduism allows adherents to agree or disagree on this controversial issue.  Quite often, members of the same organization or temple will have varying opinions.  This is an advantage for gay Hindus who can then “vote with their feet” by avoiding priests with negative attitudes, such as the one above, and seeking out those with more compassionate and inclusive viewpoints.

Love’s Rite presents a refreshing array of new and encouraging material that will help this emerging debate along.  It is well written and thorough, covering all areas of discussion, but at the same time quite easy to read.  Divided into ten chapters, Love’s Rite explores such interesting questions as—How is marriage defined, now and in the past?  Who defines it?  What are the differences between marriage in India and the Euro-American West?  Is the spirit gendered?  What are the differences between marriage and friendship?  Who is qualified for child rearing?  What happens to couples when they are forcibly separated or pressured into unwanted marriages?  All of these questions are thoroughly addressed in Vanita’s new book.

The personal dimension of Love’s Rite is enormously moving.  In particular, Vanita examines the recent phenomena of joint suicides in India committed by (mostly) female couples encountering violent opposition to their relationships.  In the following example, a poverty-stricken lesbian couple on the verge of suicide bequeaths their last few rupees to the local Krishna Deity: “Among the items Lalitha and Mallika left behind was a greeting card showing a man and a woman kissing in silhouette against a sunset.  This card was not new; someone else had already used it.  Mallika had pasted a piece of paper over the sender’s name and written her own name on the paper.  Inside was her message to Lalitha, giving her ‘a thousand kisses in public.’  Lalitha’s note also stated, ‘The Rs. 25 placed in the diary is to be given as offering to Guruvayoorappan.’  Guruvayoorappan refers to the icon of Krishna in the temple at Guruvayoor, a famous temple town and pilgrimage site very close to the girls’ hometown, Trichur.”

Another incident occurred at a yoga center in Tamil Nadu: “Sumathi, 26, and Geetalakshmi, 27, had been living at a Yoga Centre in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, for three years.  Since they were somewhat beyond the conventional age for marriage, and were living away from their parents, it appears that their religious way of life allowed them to remain respectably single.  But the people at the Yoga Centre found out about their intimate relationship, and threw them out.  They had to part and return to their parental homes.  Unable to bear separation, they decided to commit suicide.  In a letter to their guru at the Centre, they wrote, ‘We did a mistake because of which you threw us out…We cannot survive in this society.  That is why we arrived at this decision.  Please forgive us.’”

Not all of the relationships end so tragically, though, especially when they gain the support of their families and local villages.  Vanita notes that in India, custom and community support far outweigh any legal validity—in fact, unlike the West, Indian law does not require marriage licenses, whether for the couple or officiating Hindu priest, and the majority of marriages conducted in India are not directly registered with the state.  The importance of family and community support in India cannot be underestimated and is something that is slowly increasing:  “More intriguing than parents who oppose same-sex marriage are those who come around to supporting it.  Newspaper reports represent several parents participating in their daughter’s weddings.  In some cases, the weddings appear to have been elaborate affairs, attended by many guests.  In none of these cases was any gay rights movement or organization involved.  The arguments that convinced these parents were not, then, those that might have been put forward by gay rights advocates.  The family members quoted in the newspaper reports represent themselves as wanting to make their daughters happy, and becoming convinced that they would be happy only if they married one another.”

Love’s Rite offers several examples of same-sex Hindu marriages performed in both India and the West, along with heartwarming photos of the happy couples and their weddings.  Some of the ceremonies are private while others are lavish celebrations attended by many relatives and friends.  Most of the weddings make use of traditional Hindu rites such as invoking fire as a witness, exchanging garlands and vows, chanting sacred mantras, tying garments together, taking seven steps around the fire, and so on.  In 2001, a Hindu priest of the Srivaishnava lineage conducted a commitment ceremony for a Hindu lesbian couple in Sydney, Australia.  He mentioned that in the Ramayana, a partnership ceremony between Lord Rama and Sugriva is described whereby Hanuman lights a fire and the two friends exchange vows, circle the fire together, etc.—very similar to a Vedic marriage ceremony.  The priest was of the opinion that such a ceremony was appropriate for gay couples.  Other Hindu priests model their same-sex weddings after more traditional Hindu gandharva or vivaha types.

The book contains many nice summaries of Hindu tradition and philosophy, especially in regard to ancient textbooks and their many gender-bending narrations involving Hindu deities.  In Chapter Five, the reader is treated to not one but three renditions of the story of Maharaja Bhagiratha’s miraculous conception by two females—a Bengali edition of the Padma Purana and two separate versions of the Krittivasa Ramayana.  In Chapter Eight, there is an interesting examination of same-sex love between females as recorded in Rekhti, Indo-Muslim literature from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Using these and other textual references such as Kama Sutra and the Puranas, Vanita demonstrates how same-sex love and unions are by no means anything new to the Indian subcontinent.

In Chapter Seven, Love’s Rite explores the modern-day marriage arrangements in India of gay men and lesbians to opposite-sex partners.  Vanita writes:  “It is well known that in India and other supposedly traditional societies, large numbers of people live as apparently traditional heterosexuals, while secretly engaging in homosexual liaisons or leading lives of quiet desperation.  That the same is true in the West is less often acknowledged because many people assume that the openly gay community is synonymous with the entire gay population.  In fact, this is very far from being the case.” My one critique of this section is that Vanita fails to provide any scriptural evidence supporting or contradicting this modern day practice.  For instance, the Hindu concept of svadharma, or living according to one’s own nature and duty (as mentioned in Bhagavad Gita), seems to disagree with it, and verses forbidding the marriage of homosexual men to women can be found in Hindu texts such as Narada-smriti.  The story of goddess Bahucara, who curses her husband for dishonestly marrying her (he refuses her love and goes to other men instead), also comes to mind.  Nevertheless, Vanita recognizes the embedded tradition as highly questionable:  “While demonstrating that same-sex desire has existed in the past and still does exist within traditional families, I do not mean to suggest it flourishes there.  Among the gay Indians I know who have entered heterosexual marriage without telling their spouses, almost all have been plagued by fear, guilt, shame or regret…The few exceptions are those where both spouses are bisexual, or one is heterosexual and the other gay or bisexual, but they reach a mutual agreement not to be monogamous.  I do not have the data to examine the relative happiness of MOCs [marriages of convenience].”

Undoubtedly, this book will greatly assist anyone wishing to better understand the difficult and complicated topic of same-sex marriage from a Hindu perspective.  For most, the question will not be solved until one day, at some point in time, a dearly beloved friend or relative faces this issue in the most personal of ways.  This is exemplified by a soul-searching swami in the book’s final chapter:  “A couple of years ago, an eastern European devotee named Damodara hanged himself in a Vaishnava ashram in the US, after an Indian ashram had cancelled his trip to India when they found out he was gay.  Gaudiya Vaishnava monk Bhakti Tirtha Swami, wrote a soul-searching letter: ‘Recently, I have been making so much more effort in trying to open up my heart to be more available in understanding and serving all Vaishnavas…After hearing of Damodara’s suicide…I must say that I have seen the light…’” Another swami, Bodhananda Saraswati, reveals a similar mood: “We have to face this issue now…I’m sure spiritual persons will have no objection when two people come together.  But it is a social stigma…So what is required is a debate in society.  I have not debated it enough.  I have to do that.  I have a lot of people confiding in me, ‘I am very worried.  I am gay.  What should I do now?’”

In the beginning of her book, Ruth Vanita quotes San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who, while presiding over that city’s civil disobedience against California’s discriminatory marriage laws in 2004, said: “Put a human face on it.  Let’s not talk about it in theory.  Give me a story.  Give me lives.”  In this light, I offer many thanks and pranams to Ruth Vanita for doing just that—she addresses the important debate of same-sex marriage in her new book, Love’s Rite, from a perspective that is not only scholarly but deeply personal.

Amara Das Wilhelm is a Gaudiya Vaishnava monk and author of the book, Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex.

Jesse Monteagudo, Reviews

White Crane #70 – Behind the Mask of the Mattachine

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Rvu_searsBehind the Mask of the Mattachine:
The Hal Call Chronicles and the
Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation
By James T. Sears
Haworth Press; 540 pp; $34.95

Reviewed by Jesse Monteagudo

History – and the lesbian and gay community for which they did so much – ignore and neglect the pre-Stonewall, “homophile” activists. Even today many histories of the gay movement begin with the Stonewall Riots of 1969, tossing aside decades of ground-breaking political, educational and social work. With the exception of the iconic Harry Hay, and a few activists who continued their work and wrote their memoirs in the post-Stonewall years (Jack Nichols, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon), gay leaders of the 1950s and 1960’s are unknown by today’s generation. Posterity has been singularly unfair to Harold Leland Call (1917-2000). Most of us remember Hall Call, if at all, as part of a conservative clique who in 1953 “stole” the Mattachine Foundation from Hay and other leftist idealists. Later, and after driving out his competition in the newly-named Mattachine Society, Call ruined its image by making it a “front” for his commercial enterprises, including an “adult” book store and movie house – the CineMattachine.

The truth, of course, is more complex. It remained for historian James T. Sears to remove the mask of the Mattachine and reveal the real Hal Call, both man and activist.  Based on extensive interviews with Call, his allies and enemies, Behind the Mask of the Mattachine is a tribute to gay America’s first activist generations. In fact, Dr. Sears goes back in time past Call and Company; back to the early part of the 20th Century and courageous trailblazers like Henry Gerber and Manual boyFrank. He then takes Call from his Missouri boyhood to World War II, Colorado journalism and then to San Francisco (1953) in time to confront Hay for leadership of Mattachine. If this book does not show Hay the way that he is accustomed to it is because Dr. Sears has given his opponents, almost for the first time, the right to give their side of the story.

In Behind the Mask of the Mattachine we read about the power plays, bitch fights and ego trips that consumed and eventually destroyed the Mattachine Society. We also learn about the very human men (and a few women) who dared to publicly advocate the rights of homosexuals at a time when most of their fellows were hiding in their closets. At the center of it all was Hal Call. A most contradictory man, Call was both a political conservative and a sexual libertine who hosted orgies in his apartment when most Mattachines (including Hay) were virtually asexual. Call realized, long before they did, that sex was the common factor that brought all gay men together; and it was sex that made us a community.

Behind the Mask of the Mattachine combines two of my favorite topics, politics and sex, as seen through the life of a most extraordinary man and of the Society that he eventually controlled. Dr. Sears reveals Call in all of his complexity; with his faults and failures along with his skills and successes. Thanks to Dr. Sears’ painstaking research, skillful writing and insightful analysis, gay San Francisco in the 1950’s – the Age of Hal Call – comes vividly to life.  Today’s generation of activists can learn much from Call and his contemporaries, from both their achievements and their failures.

Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance author, activist and frequent contributor to White Crane.  He lives in South Florida with his life partner.   Drop him a note at jessemonteagudo@aol.com

Jesse Monteagudo, Reviews

White Crane #70 – Williams’ & Johnson’s Two Spirits

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RvuwilliamstobyTwo Spirits: 
A Story of Life With the Navajo
by Walter L. Williams & Toby Johnson
Lethe Press; 332 p $18.

Reviewed by Jesse Monteagudo

Two Spirits is a collaboration between two of our leading gay cultural figures.  Walter L. Williams is a historian and anthropologist who is best known as the author of The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture.  Toby Johnson is the former editor of White Crane and author of various books of gay spirituality, history and culture. In Two Spirits the ideas that Professor Williams expounded in his earlier book are used in a fictional adventure that is as exciting as it is instructive.

In 1864 the U.S. Army under General James Carleton and Colonel Kit Carson decimated the Navajo nation (the Diné in its own language) and forced it to leave its ancestral home to settle in the Bosque Redondo reservation, where it barely survived in what was essentially a concentration camp. Only after Carleton was found guilty of corruption and removed from his post were the proud Diné allowed to return to their homeland, where they survive and flourish till this day.  Many of the Diné were gender-variant nadleehí, “two spirit” men and women who, as in other Native tribes, reached positions of great leadership and respect.

So much for history.  In Two Spirit these facts form the basis of a great historical novel. In 1867, the young Virginian Will Lee is sent to Fort Sumner in the Bosque Redondo reservation, where he is to serve as the government’s Indian Agent.  Though the unscrupulous General Carleton and his associates do their best to keep him in the dark, Will soon realizes that the people whose interests he is supposed to represent are being exploited by his own government forces.  Will becomes friendly with the down but not out Diné, particularly with Hasbaá, a young spiritual healer and gender-bending nadleehí.  This forbidden love between the “hairy face” Will Lee and the “two spirit” Hasbaá leads Will to question the values that he grew up with.  Together, Will and  Hasbaá set out to help free the Diné and allow them to return to their ancient home.

Two Spirits tells an exciting tale, about a way of life that is sadly no longer with us.  Though the Navajo/Diné nation has survived and prospered, like other Native nations it has given up many of its old ways, including the time-honored nadleehí.  Even so, those of us who are GLBT in the early 21st century can learn much from the experiences of the fictional Will and Hasbaá in the mid-19th century.  Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo is the well-deserved recipient of a development grant awarded by the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation.  Williams and Johnson have given us a book that is both entertaining and inspiring.  As if that was not enough, Two Spirits features a well-written “Commentary” by Wesley K. Thomas, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies & International Studies at Indiana University and himself a gay Navajo.

Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance author, activist and frequent contributor to White Crane.  He lives in South Florida with his life partner.  Write him a note at jessemonteagudo@aol.com

Reviews, Toby Johnson

White Crane #70 – Daniel Helminiak’s Sex and the Sacred

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Rvu_helminiak Sex and the Sacred:
Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth
By Daniel Helminiak
Harrington Park Press, 235 pages, pb,  $16.

Reviewed by Toby Johnson

In engaging, easy-to-read prose, Daniel Helminiak addresses the central work of religion and spirituality today: to tease out the rich meaning and significance behind the myths and doctrines that have come down to us in the great traditions without getting trapped in literalism and superstition, that is, to rearticulate religion so it makes sense—and makes sense especially to and about—us lesbians and gay men who have been so influential in creating religion and yet who have been so victimized by it.

In this collection of essays spanning his career as theologian, Scripture scholar, psychologist, and gay spiritual apologist, Helminiak shows how true Christianity is not inimical to modern LGBTQ consciousness and indeed that spirituality—and gay spirituality in particular—transcends any and all specific religions.
Central to Helminiak’s thinking, expressed through some six books, is that spirituality is common to all human beings, including, of course, gay human beings, and that it is not necessarily linked with religion or belief in God. Indeed, the link is the reverse of what’s usually thought: it is spirituality that comes first—“the infinite longings of the human heart”—then come God and belief as natural outworkings and projections of that hunger.

Spirituality is a human psychological enterprise. And every person deals with these issues whether they identify them as religious or not. And because these issues are psychological, they necessarily include sexuality and they call out for sexuality to be understood with respect and not condemnation. For spirit comes out of the human heart and seeks to satisfy the hunger of the heart, not down from God or Church officials demanding repression of the heart for the sake of order and societal authority. Helminiak observes that this distinction between spirituality and religion (and God) may be his most important contribution.

The book consists of some fifteen essays that address various issues of importance to gay people: from coming out and achieving self-acceptance, the longing of the heart for infinity, and sexual ethics to the real lesson of Jesus’s example, the Church, the Bible, gay marriage, and even the effects in the human spirit of the terrorist war. The chapters are independent of one another, but read consistently as a more and more comprehensive presentation of what religion could and should be.

Daniel Helminiak is a precise and thorough-going thinker. Some of the arguments in the book may seem obscure and tortured. You can tell Helminiak doesn’t want to just cut through the Gordian Knot of Christian doctrine, but respectfully and intelligently to untie it strand by strand. Still the book is readable and entertaining, filled with interesting tidbits of Biblical and Church history that change how everything should be understood. His analysis, for instance, of the Council of Nicaea places the “divinity of Jesus” in historical context; what that idea meant to the creators of the Christian religion is much more subtle than the common Christian myth.

Perhaps most interesting and relevant are his discussions of real life issues: the spiritual lessons of AIDS, for instance, and appropriate gay sexual ethics. Even if you’re not especially concerned about Church history, these topics hit home—and with such positive and caring attitude.

Daniel’s right, I think, that his well thought out and thorough-going distinction between spirituality and religion is a major contribution. And this particular volume of his presents these arguments sensibly and very readably.
The essays on heaven as everlasting orgasm and on the homosexual modeling of relations within the Blessed Trinity are delightfully provocative and downright queerly brilliant.

Toby Johnson is former publisher and current contributing editor  to White Crane.  His newest book, Two Spirits, is reviewed in this issue.