Gay Gangs?

Greetings all,

Last night’s HISPANIC PANIC! reading at Nowhere was a delightful success, with contributors Karen Jaime, Charles Rice-González, Maegan “La Mamita Mala” Ortiz and yours truly sharing poems and stories about desire and LGBT/feminist life in contemporary New York City. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it, even though the weather was crappy! Next month’s reading is GENDER PANIC! and will feature writers whose lives and work reflect gender variance and beyond. More on that soon…

…my interview with Fordham University professor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé on his book Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails is up on Advocate.com. It covers this revolutionary book, which examines the complicated relationship between Latino street culture and fine art in 1980s New York City, through the relationship between Juanito Xtravaganza and pop art icon Keith Haring. Please put your three cents in and leave a comment…

You can see that here: http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid70292.asp

News reports on violent gay gangs on the East Coast have surfaced over the past decade, and this phenomenon has drawn all kinds of passionate and uproarious criticism from the LGBT community. Many claim that these accusations are biased and false and that this “violent epidemic” doesn’t exist. News reports and even the homosexuality-obsessed Bill O’Reilly of Fox TV (yes him) claim that these outbreaks of “gay” gang violence are being perpetuated by lesbians of color (O’Reilly later admitted that his story was overstated). Never having heard of this, I scoured the web for information and found interviews and newscasts posted on YouTube® concerning this “crisis”, some of which I’m including at the end of this post.

Back in 2005, seven African-American lesbians attacked a man in New York City, who they say, spouted off nasty homophobic comments at them, after he “came on” to one of them and was rebuffed. The altercation culminated with them whipping him with belts and stabbing him on the corner of 4th Street and 6^th Avenue. They were charged with “gang assault and possession of a lethal weapon” and four are serving jail sentences. I remember when this story broke and agreed that they had gone too far in their retaliation, but that “gang assault” was a questionable accusation, since it was never established that they were indeed part of a gang. Can the police and media just invent gang status when it’s convenient?

Au contraire, there have been attacks carried out over the past few years by women who claim to be members of gangs, particularly the lesbian GTO (Gays Taking Over) gang in Memphis, Tennessee, and the DTO (Dykes Taking Over) sect based in Philadelphia. GTO and DTO gang members are reported to be attacking girls on streets and are even accused of “sodomizing” young female students in school bathrooms with sex toys. But no arrest records exist alongside these startling rumors and reports, according to Rashad Robinson of GLAAD, in his television interview with O’Reilly (URL below). Robinson claims that this “uprising” of queer violence is sensationalized news fodder. The bulk of the incidents I uncovered were school-related disputes and names of victims rarely surfaced. The reporting is murky, at best.

In another interview I found, imprisoned elder GTO members claim that their “gang” was formed by non-violent black lesbians seeking common ground. They add that the younger generation of GTO members have disgraced their tradition of sisterhood and are indeed violent. Deputy Beverly Cobb of the Shelby County Gang Unit is also interviewed in the same segment and her warning cries to parents are loaded with zany tones of homophobia, even sexophobia. The dramatizations are engineered to scare people and are more fitting for an afterschool television special than news coverage. So while some people doubt the existence of these gangs and their crimes, others are saying they’re very real. Fox News (I know) crime analyst Rod Wheeler claims that there are over 150 such gangs in the DC area alone and that some even pack “pink pistols” to terrorize people with. In the words of the same report, “Members are preying on your daughters.”

Racism and homophobia combined are powerful propaganda agents, especially when network ratings depend on sensationalized stories. What sheltered conservatives don’t understand—or maybe they do—is that this type of sensationalism fosters “copycat” outbreaks of similar behavior. Their paranoid efforts to warn others might be exacerbating whatever real violence does exist. Gangs in America have traditionally formed in order to make money under the umbrella of an economy and society that does not favor them. Bootlegging, drugs, gambling—the black market keeps them afloat and at each other’s necks. Gang experts say that while boy gangs focus on making money, girl gangs focus on power.

So if lesbians of color are banding together and lashing out at the world, “something” is driving them to that brink. And I suspect that that “something” is homophobia—homophobia in the community, church, home, schools—in the media. Homophobia piled on top of the horrors of adolescence and the sting of poverty demoralizes. And demoralization fosters violence; it even pits like people against each other. But the media is not concerned with such things. It’s as if they’re secretly entertained by it, behind a “mask” of concern for potential non-queer victims.

I see two things happening. The first is that there are indeed gay gangs (or self-identified bands of queer peers) that exist on the East Coast, predominantly black lesbians—they’ve been reported from Memphis to Boston. Some members even commit crimes, beat other kids up, etc, but these “gangs” are in no way the queer equivalents of Crips, Bloods or Latin Kings. I mentioned earlier that racism and homophobia combined make for nasty propaganda. Well, let’s throw sexism in the mix, too. These women have had it. Adolescents join groups to express common interests, whether they’re marching band, football teams or a street gang. It’s foolish to say that these gay gangs don’t exist when the gangs are saying ‘here we are’.

The second thing is that the reporting of these scattered crimes preys on people’s racist and homophobic insecurities. The juicy sound bytes are laced with racism, sexism, homophobia and sexophobia and perk people’s ears to garner high ratings. Gays and lesbians aren’t supposed to do violent things. We’re supposed to be marching for something or hiding somewhere dark or drunk in a dive bar. A boy in Maryland is beaten down by lesbians from a rival gang and all of a sudden there’s an epidemic to worry about? American history and popular culture are riddled with gang imagery.

Whether it was the hoodlums of New York’s Five Points, the Chicago mob or the LA Bloods, gangs have existed amongst the disadvantaged since our nation’s birth. And although there are gay gangs operating on the East Coast, the media shouldn’t unfairly depict them as the wardens of apocalypse. It will be interesting to see if this phenomenon grows or fades away, but if you want to talk about a widespread epidemic of violence that has actually killed nice kids, let’s talk about college hazing. Please.

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More on this:

http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/index.php?s=gay+gangs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXxZdZxp_Lg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP6Px08KQSA

Homophobia and Planet Earth

Greetings…

For those of you who will be in New York City on Wednesday, January 28th, I’ll be hosting a reading at Nowhere in the East Village called HISPANIC PANIC!, which will feature four NYC-area Latino/a feminist/LGBT writers, bloggers and activists. Reading begins at 8pm sharp, 21+ only. Nowhere is located at 322 E 14th St (btwn 1st/2nd). Come see and hear four up-and-coming writers, both male and female, discuss their contemporary queer, New York City Latino existences via poetry and fiction.

Moving right along…

Let’s bring human rights for all Earthlings to the front of the line in our hopeful new times…

I know that the world isn’t a fair place. I’m lucky to be able to love the man I love, with little interference from the world around me. Others in the USA are rallying for marriage rights, in an attempt to attain overall equality; we should consider ourselves lucky. The Religious Right (Wrong) and other narrow-minded organizations say things about queer-folk that none of us wants to hear, but still we press on, we go to work, we pay taxes like everyone else. It’s as much their constitutional right to call us “sodomite abominations” as it is mine to call them “hateful, fear-driven morons”. Homophobia is a severe and global epidemic—it was in the USA that Matthew Shepard was beaten, tied to a fencepost and left to die, for the world to mourn. I’m by no means claiming that things are jolly here in the USA, where I live. I know that many queers in America do not experience the tolerance and freedom that I take for granted in New York City. But relativity needs to be taken into consideration.

In as many as 80 or more countries around the globe, homosexuality is a severely punishable criminal offense. Long prison terms are the standard. In 9 nations, it is welcomed by the death penalty, often heralded by intense corporal punishment, torture. There are places in the world where our queer brothers and sisters are increasingly becoming the abusive and mortal targets of intense government-sanctioned homophobia, of vicious nationalist hatred. Just a couple of weeks ago, nine Senegalese men were imprisoned for eight years, just for being gay. The United Nations has condemned this act. Africa has erupted as a hotbed of virulent homophobia in recent years, as conservative religious teachings have strangled many developing nations there. One of the men arrested in Senegal was an AIDS activist who distributed condoms and lubricant to gay men, in an attempt to curb HIV transmission. It was through his humanitarian work—and during a high-profile AIDS conference no less—that he was arrested and jailed, along with the others.

Outside of Senegal, African gays and lesbians endure all kinds of harassment and abuse. It was reported in 2001 that two lesbian women in Somalia were stoned to death for “unnatural behavior”. The Somali Qaran newspaper later denied this, yet the initial report detailed the cheering of crowds on the street after the verdict was announced. Considering that Somali women have been stoned to death for getting raped, the lesbian report falls within the boundaries of possibility. The governments and leaders of Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are also feverishly anti-gay. Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has referred to queers as “worse than pigs and dogs” and Namibian president Sam Nujoma encouraged the people of his country to round up gays and lesbians for detainment and deportment. An alarming number of South African lesbians are known to have been beaten, raped and killed and West African gay men are often refused health care, increasing the transmission of AIDS in their communities. Hate crimes against gays and lesbians, such as the strangulation of a female LGBT Sierra Leone activist in 2004, often go unpunished.

As more liberal, post-Enlightenment versions of Christianity question the subject of homosexuality in sectors of the Western world, more literalist conservative strains of Christianity are proliferating in countries such as Nigeria, where homosexual behavior can land you in jail for fourteen years. The stigma of AIDS, on a continent where most HIV is transmitted heterosexually, adds to the unfair burden. Senegal is a predominantly Muslim country and homosexuality is illegal there, period. An interview with a gay Senegalese man I found online described how homophobia has always existed in Senegal, but that the increasing predominance of Islam (Senegal is 95% Muslim) has intensified the hatred of gays— to the point where he lives “with fear in the pit of my stomach”, since being jailed for three months, for performing “unnatural acts”.

Religious leaders in Ethiopia consider being gay the “pinnacle of immorality” and are pushing for a nationwide “ban” on gays. Ethiopia is reported to be over 60% Christian, so this trend of widespread homophobia is not Islam’s burden alone. Religion seems to be the general culprit here, regardless of its flavor. According to the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), the governments of Mauritania and Pakistan dole out prison terms and even execution for homosexuality. The governments of Afghanistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and Iraq mandate death, sometimes preceded by torture. These are the harshest sentences in the world for being queer. “Honor killings” also exist in many of these countries, where “valiant” men kill suspected or known gays, which are seen as acts of heroism. It was in Iran, in 2005, that two teen boys were hanged for allegedly being homosexual.

George Bush Jr. raved about toppling Saddam Hussein and bringing “democracy” to Iraq, but he never mentioned the death squads that have multiplied there since the occupation. Their goal is to wipe out every “sodomite” in the land. Many Iraqi gays and lesbians claim that Iraq is more dangerous for them now than when Hussein was in power. Their genocide has been encouraged by influential clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr; Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued an alarming fatwa encouraging the slaughter of queers in the “worst, most severe way possible.” (And this is a man who Bush praised as a “leading moderate”.) The Ayatollah then retracted the fatwa for the killing of gay men, but not for lesbians. Um, okay? Safe houses have sprung up (reminiscent of the American Underground Railroad) that transport endangered gay Iraqis to safer havens, where they can apply for citizenship elsehwere. Info and donations: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com

Trends of political-correctness in the West have numbed people into silence on international, intercultural matters as such. It’s true that our lives are weighed down with our own everyday challenges. Some would even say it isn’t fair to superimpose Western values (and countercultural ones at that) on people who live elsewhere. As someone who is sensitive to language, culture and race, I agree with that. But cruelty is cruelty. I don’t hate Islam—I’m in fact dazzled by the many cultures and histories of the regions where Islam was born and went on to flourish. But guess what? It hates me, plain and simple. The Judaic Old Testament condemns homosexuality (abomination) and the Bible spews all kinds of rhetoric that is justified by hateful people to oppress us. These words of hate couldn’t be clearer. These scriptures will never be amended to view us as equals; our suppression is stitched into their very words. Even the current Pope’s recent criticism of queer and transsexual people encourages hate crimes that hurt and kill people.

Good news does exist, however, and it’s unraveling in the Western Hemisphere. The most hopeful developments are happening in Latin America, which is still shackled by machismo-fueled homophobia. Fidel Castro’s niece, Mariela Castro, recently presided over a government-supported campaign and rally against homophobia; it’s been documented as the largest public gathering of queer people in Cuba’s history. Anti-homophobia posters recently surfaced in the subways of Mexico City and many atrribute this new trend of tolerance to the awareness that civil unions for same-sex couples stir. The president of Brazil recently declared that the opposing of homosexuality makes one “sick” and the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, promised to fight homphobia in his country after Ecuadorian-born José Osvaldo Sucuzhañay was “gay-bashed” to death in Brooklyn, New York. Sucuzhañay, who was perceived as a gay man by his killers (yet wasn’t), was returned to his homeland for burial. Homophobia hurts and kills other innocent people, too.

So what can we do? We can inform the youth of the world of exactly what is happening. We need to assure people that although these religious texts are an important aspect of their history and culture (as Catholicism is for me), they are not 100% foolproof and were written a long time ago. They were written by men, and men make mistakes, period. These texts, these “standards of truth”, need to be questioned, as well as respected, for those who wish to respect them. They have been used over the millennia to justify barbarous acts against innocent people, as they are being used against queers around the world at this very moment. I look forward to seeing the strain put on LGBT people in the USA lessen in the Obama years and how this trend will hopefully ripple out into the world.

Support organizations that put political pressure on governments that unfairly imprison queer folks, such as Iraqi LGBT UK, Gays without Borders and ILGA. If any of you out there live in any of the nations discussed, I/we would love to hear your feedback, as I know that people the world over find ways in which to love the person they wish to, even if it means they might be killed for it. People in places not covered, such as South Asia, the Pacific Islands, The Far East, Eurasia and Eastern Europe—we’d love to hear from you too!

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Alchemy and the Artist Archetype

Hello all!

Look for my interview with Fordham University professor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé next week on Advocate.com. We get into the nuts and bolts of his revolutionary book, Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails (Palgrave-MacMillan 2007). Anyone with the slightest interest in the New York City 1980s gay art underworld and Latino street culture will enjoy this well-crafted and fascinating read.

So I was throwing ideas around for this post a few days ago and was inspired by the idea of alchemy, which some discard as a false and failed “science’, yet which others, usually artists, hold in a much higher, symbolic regard.

A popular online dictionary defines “alchemy” as ‘a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and concerned principally with turning baser metals into gold and finding the universal solvent and elixir of life.’

Transmutation: This is the primary motive of “alchemy” and the notion of forging something valuable, out of something ordinary, is a poignant analogy for the transformative life of the artist. Many queers experience this shift, and as we all know, many don’t. I know plenty of ordinary “gays” and fascinating hetero-folk, so I like to include the interesting hetero folk under the “queer” umbrella and exclude the fascist, exclusive gays.

Alchemy as the patron science of the artist…

We grow up as other kids; we go to the same schools, are taught by the same teachers, access the same entertainment media and are raised by the same parents. But once we decide to shed that uneasy skin of convention and grow into our own, something much more unusual occurs than adulthood and maturity. I believe that part of the artist’s “alchemical” advantage is the acknowledging and exploring of the half of the psyche that is not in accordance with genitalia; male painters knowing how to portray women, writers having to write through the eyes of the opposite gender, musicians keen to the limitations and ranges of female and male voices. When we decide as men, to explore our female aspects (and vice-versa for women), a fuller internal dimension, not common across the general populace, is spun into motion. Poisonous lead turns into shimmering gold.

This “dimension” is a never-ending source for ideas, as well. This doesn’t mean that we force ourselves to sexually explore things we’re not comfortable with, but we at least allow our hearts to try and feel the things we don’t ordinarily notice, or were told not to feel, when growing up. The alchemical approach brings us into contact with much more rare types of people, as well.

Now, I’m no scientist, therapist or psychology student. But as a reflective esoteric and keen observer of life, I often see truths come to life as differing shapes combining, as discordant and unsynchronized songs merging to find an agreeable meter and key. There is an alchemical magic to life, if you choose to see it. I see it every day.

To further the mischievous use of analogy, let us refer to the non-queer/artist life approach as “chemical”, in the sphere of ordinary life, the material world. Men and women (both gay and straight) meet, pheromones do their work, they fall in love, perhaps have and nurse children, grow old together, travel, maybe divorce, eventually die, etc. Our non-queer brothers and sisters often rush to assume the roles of parent archetypes, as their parents did with their own. Most adopt father/husband and mother/wife archetypes without thinking twice, sometimes at too young an age. Simple things make them happy; watching television, barbecues, visiting with family and neighbors, going shopping, malls.

The artistic/alchemical journey is more complex than that: Most people are happy just experiencing life, but we need to reinterpret it. The archetypes that we apply range from renegade outlaws to elder teachers to young lovers. Are teacher and artist and lover archetypes just as necessary as family roles or are they just more exciting? Do we, as queer and artistic people, strive for the same roles as non-queers, or do we wipe the chalkboard clean here as well and rewrite the rules?

I’ve surrounded myself with artists since I learned to write my name and there’s something completely iconoclastic about this journey. I felt it as a child. There are no guarantees that your art will feed you and nurture your financial existence. It is for the health and enjoyment of the soul (which is why other souls respond), that artists create. Some even make money doing it. How many of us barely scrape by just to have the time to do what we love? Many, I would guess.

We encounter other archetypes, such as Tricksters and Lovers, as we experience life, as we move from scene to scene of our cinematic journeys. It’s revealing to look back at the people we’ve spent intimate time with, especially lovers, and try to match them to an archetype, such as Singer, Mischief or Leader. It’s also fascinating to see how we ourselves grow, moving from one role to the next as we learn about ourselves through others. I’ve fallen for Deceivers, Lovers, Doubles, Teachers and Dancers, and have probably been those things to others as well. It can be shocking to look back and see where the “alchemical” path (reinvention) throws us in life. It’s an endless sea of both garbage and treasure.

Writer Mark Thompson points out in his White Crane article “Archetype of the Double” that the most significant “gay” archetype is the Double, the reflection, that person through which we can see all of our own accomplishments and desires, fears; Narcissus and his reflection, the Doppelganger. I see a lot of truth in this, especially in youth. There’s a level of comfort and ease built into confronting the Double. Thompson also mentions that “the Double is one of the most thwarted archetypes in modern Western society, having been perverted from the enabling of loving comradeship to purposes of competition, envy, and war.” If this is the case, then maybe our most important life work as artists is to reverse this unfortunate imbalance.

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Oh, and have a great weekend!

Charlie Vazquez

Regarding that Nasty Pope Benny XVI…

Two-thousand and nine has been a remarkable year for me, already. Today marks the second time I’ve had an article appear in (newspaper) print. This latest article appears in the Chelsea Clinton News and is about my spending Christmas at a homeless queer youth shelter, as a volunteer (see previous post). Jerry Portman, editor of New York Press, will also be running the same piece on their website (www.nypress.com) at around the same time (Thursday, January 8th). January also sees the publication of an interview I conducted with Fordham University professor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, regarding his latest book, Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007). Advocate.com will be publishing this revealing and fascinating interview with one of America’s most groundbreaking gay Latino scholars.

Last week I expressed my bittersweet feelings on gay marriage as a queer political priority. I mentioned that seeking marriage visibility from institutions that encouraged individuals to tie us up and set us on fire was insulting to me. Pope Benedict XVI’s recent and scalding remarks against queer and transgendered folks surfaced just as I was revamping an old, unpublished ‘essay’ on the relationship between queer sexuality and religion. Most of my suspicions were confirmed, thanks to at least half a dozen books ranging in subject from Native American sexuality to (drum roll) the Catholic Church itself. The church has always been a haven for queer men. Everyone knows it. Even the Pope knows this. So why such nasty words and no hope for reform? Do you know anything about your priests at all, Benny? And who made the Sistine Chapel one of the eternal wonders of the Italian Renaissance? Great timing, Benny, now cover your nuts!

The eroticizing of divinity conjures taboo-laden fears and superstitions that intimidate the common man, and most monotheistic religious doctrine mandates that sex is lowly and primal, something intended only for reproductive purposes; a swamp of stink, rot and sin. Despite their exalting of sex to enlightening Tantric potential, the ancient Hindus viewed this physiologically: The sexual chakra is low along the spinal axis, while the seventh/crown chakra is the highest and connects one to cosmic consciousness. The ascent of the Kundalini coil perfectly illustrates this upward movement to higher ideals. In the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sex is regarded with varying misogynistic degrees of superstition, hygienic caution, prudery and contempt—an abomination that has conflicted countless numbers of people worldwide with a fevered, irrational and hypocritical hostility toward nature’s most pleasurable act.

It is in the raw and earthy traditions of the pantheistic past that sexuality and religion continue to coexist. Consorting sexually with the gods is hardly unusual in Santería, Vodou and Espiritismo, for example. These composite, multicultural spiritualities do not shield spirituality from sexuality. In fact, Eleguá, Changó and Ochún can be very sexually-charged “gods/orishas” and those taken under their possession often act out their desires during tambor rituals—in writhing, fevered and primal dance. The pulsing of batá drums during these rituals helps the mediums (horses) to go into trances and conjure the spirits that “mount” them; others thrust their hips back and forth. Many Espiritsmo mediums compare spiritual possession to being sexually penetrated. Sex is alive in Santería (often referred to as “that faggot religion” in Cuba), as in many other pantheistic religions worldwide (see: Creole Religions of the Caribbean, by Fernandez Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert, NYU Press, 2003).

Major religion’s fixation on ‘morality’ (not to mention misogyny and homophobia) has marched the world into a spiritual turmoil, as the disintegration of pagan traditions by monotheism tilted the ancient and better-balanced spiritual energies toward the male end of the spectrum and away from the female. Catholics, to their credit, continue to exalt the Virgin, but there is no such equivalent in Islam and Judaism. A reduction—and in some cases, elimination—of sacred female elements has created a world fearful and suspicious of feminine, healing sensuality. The sexual, fertile Goddesses of animist, pagan traditions, were subverted by Jews, burned at the stake by Christians and veiled and sequestered by Muslims. Misogyny is institutionalized, violence is championed and sex is reviled, but always desired. Homosexuality is shunned with passionate contempt, as it is considered the sinful counterpoint of devotion, cleanliness and piety, the very antithesis of the life cycle. All of this, of course, is an ironic plot-twist in the scripting of religion’s formation.

Judeo-Christian theologians claim that this demonizing of sexuality (and especially homosexuality) began as a Judaic resistance against homosexual temple rites, as performed by—among others—Assyrians and Egyptians. It’s been suggested that the banning of same-sex rites in ancient temples grew into negative attitudes toward homosexuality in general (the Torah considers homosexuality an “abomination”). Mankind’s natural fusion of sexuality and religion is ancient and buried under institutionalized homophobia, which proliferated with the elevation of Christianity to religion of the Roman Empire in the 4^th century A.D. and the creation of Islam, during the 7^th century. Despite all of this, queers are still drawn to priesthoods the world over. Possessed by the eternal and oftentimes homoerotic charge of sexual/life energy, priests the world over lead congregations in prayer, meditate before altars, give advice to the weary and heal the ill—from the Vatican to Voudou ounfos.

Many people claim to be religious and accepting of queers. But religious reform will likely never happen from within the religions themselves, in Mecca or the Vatican. Religious texts are considered perfect (even though we know the Bible has been reworked by certain English kings, etc). These ancient and often anonymously-authored texts (fairy tales), combined with feverish zealotry, are the engines behind some of the Western world’s most unfortunate acts against humanity. The Pope can never wash his hands clean of the church’s blood by smearing queers. Nice try, Benny.

One of the reasons these “books” condemn homosexuality is because homosexuality was (and still is) an organically essential aspect of religious ritual, an inevitable by-product of all-male societies, where man-on-man sexuality abounds in the absence of women, as it does in militaries, locker rooms and prisons. Even the revered Saint Augustine, one of the Catholic Church’s most celebrated figures, was an alleged man-lover (and noted woman-lover)before he renounced carnal romance to devote his life to God. Attempts to uproot gay men from the Roman Catholic Church will always fail miserably. The modern-day priest is descended of an earthier and more sexual ancestral archetypal shaman; removing queerness from spiritual aspiration is impossible. The pagan history of queer shamans and folk-healing was absorbed by the Roman Catholic Church and has bestowed today’s priest with the role of “temple whore”. I’ve seen enough medieval Spanish vestments and papal jewelry to state this with no spite or hatred of this historical fact; the sanctity of homosexual expression and healing in ancient churches lives on to this day. Evangelical Christians ought to remember that Jesus Christ was no Casanova either; the little we know of him resides in the realm of the compassionate, charitable, supernatural and miraculous: not your average man (that is, from someone who doesn’t buy the Immaculate Conception story).

A significant thrust behind Europe’s medieval witch craze was the propaganda that priests and doctors inflicted upon traditional folk healers—the doctors wanting to take over for medical reasons, the priests for spiritual purposes. Yet what folk healers had long been practicing were olden traditions begun by herbalists, sorceresses, earthy mystics and shamans—the realm of the occult, the odd, the queer. Europe’s pre-Christian landscape was dotted with regional versions of what’s commonly referred to as “The Old Religion” and these isolated, pagan (country) religions practiced everything from ceremonial cross-dressing to orgiastic fertility rites to the impersonating of animal-gods; a web of Celtic, Greek, Roman and Norse religions infused with transvestism, divination, animism, astrology, alchemy and Hermeticism (see: Sexual Personae, by Camille Paglia, Yale Nota Bene, 1990).

The Mediterranean region where Christianity was born, for example, saw the rise of many great civilizations, such as the Egyptian, Assyrian and Greek, where homosexual priesthoods were all too common. Fertility rites encouraged queer sex in ancient temple traditions, since semen was considered a powerful substance by ancient male priesthoods (same-sex female rites have their own unique traditions as well, exalting menstrual fluids and blood shed during birth. See: Another Mother Tongue, by Judy Grahn, Beacon Press, 1984). Assyrian priests cross-dressed to conjure the Mother Goddess during rites to Ishtar and others were blessed and “collected sperm” from other men in the temple. Egyptian pharaohs used to reenact Amun’s “creation of the universe” tale, which featured Amun drinking his own semen. They would stand inside a wooden statue dedicated to him—complete with an erect penis, with a hole at the tip—through which they would ejaculate and then drink their own semen.

Shamans from Siberia to the Amazon were (and hopefully still are) sexually ambiguous. Ancient Japanese Shinto medicine men were encouraged to have sex with other men to ‘sharpen their awareness’ and even the ancient Chinese fused homosexuality with religion, as did the priesthoods of ancient Yucatan and Sumerian societies. Most Native American tribes considered the “non-breeders” of their communities to be of the “third sex” and these individuals commonly functioned as medicine men, visionaries, caretakers and even sex partners and nurses in battle (see: The Spirit and the Flesh, by Walter L. Williams, Beacon Press 1986). Some Buddhist monks—beginning in 9^th-century Japan—were so openly homosexual that they shocked visiting Westerners. We should all know by now why there are so many queers in religious service worldwide: there always have been.

As long as there is the demand for men who consult, meditate, pray, study and reflect, queer men will join priesthoods, alongside non-queers. Queer energy is different and non-queers seek it, as they have for thousands of years. Good people still listen to us, as they did when they knew us as “special beings”, no matter what their religious teachings dictate. When the androgynous Puerto Rican celebrity, tarot card-throwing “seer” Walter Mercado appears on the television at my local Dominican restaurant in Brooklyn, every man, woman and child puts their utensil down and gives him their undivided and mesmerized attention. If that’s not proof of our essential and ancient power, I don’t know what is. As for the Pope, he should feel fortunate to have more than a few of us in his ranks.

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My Christmas at an LGBT Homeless Youth Shelter

I’ll start off by wishing you a great 2009! Most of us won’t miss 2008, I know.

A variation of this updated post will be running on the New York Press website (www.nypress.com) and in print via the Chelsea Clinton News, at around the same time, beginning Thursday, January 8th. A different piece I pitched out to the world, to Advocate.com, will be running next week, on their website. I will detail that more in the next post. Make sure to subscribe to this blog via email if you like it, as I’ll be posting once a week and promise not to tangle your hair (beneath the Blogroll on the right, very easy).

Here you go:

I’m not a stranger to dire circumstances. In fact, I consider my life lucky and charmed, since there was always someone I knew confronting more severe challenges, such as my recently-departed father, who struggled with chronic drug-addiction for most of his life. My second boyfriend, an HIV+ artist and drug addict, hung himself. I saw a man get stabbed in Times Square when I was nine, have been shot at by a pistol-wielding meth addict in Portland, Oregon, and have seen a man plummet to his death from a bridge. I suppose that my neutral perspective on such tragedies stems from my having grown up in the disinvested Bronx neighborhoods of the bleak 1970s and desperate 1980s. Still, I’m an optimist.

My friend Mona Rae Mason of the Transgender Project (a New York City-based transgender study conducted by National Development and Research Institutes) volunteered me this past fall to help with the serving of a traditional Christmas dinner at Sylvia’s Place. Sylvia’s Place is a street-level recreation room-turned-LGBT homeless youth shelter on West 36th Street, beneath the Metropolitan Community Church, which serves the LGBT Christian community. I didn’t blink an eye and agreed to help. Other friends also volunteered and even my mother applauded the humanitarian gesture, accepting my absence on Christmas night for such a touching cause.

As I ascended the subway stairs onto Herald Square, I was transported to the magical Christmases of my childhood. I remembered how my family stood in impossibly long lines at Macy’s, so that my sister and I could have our pictures taken with Santa Claus (as hysterically recanted from the perspective of an elf by David Sedaris, in Holidays on Ice). Passing Macy’s, I saw the futuristic lights of Times Square glowing and flashing, further up 7th Avenue. Thirty-fourth Street was quiet and The Empire State Building was lit with blue, red and green lights, like a giant toy.

There were a few youngsters outside when I arrived at the shelter. One stylish girl wished me Merry Christmas, as I opened the heavy metal door and made my way in. I was riveted. There were about twenty-five youths in the scantily furnished room. Most were African American, some Latino. Some were lost in deep contemplation, others despaired. A couple argued with each other. I noticed a few kids sleeping on the floor, on yoga mats. Others were crashed on a countertop. A few had donated laptops and kept busy playing games and writing emails. One girl braided the hair of a young Latina who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. Another jubilant boy danced on rollerblades. More than a few of the youngsters broke out into fevered, improvised dance, skipping from Beyoncé to hardcore rap. It was reminiscent of the raw tribal energy captured in Jennie Livingston’s now-classic 1990 ballroom culture documentary, Paris is Burning.

There was a noticeable chasm dividing the mostly distanced youngsters (who were never rude, but had mastered neutrality) from the “tribal elders”. The dozen-plus elders in attendance included the aforementioned Mona Mason of the Transgender Project, an NYPD Community Affairs liaison (who drove in from Pennsylvania) and Nancy Lamar of Crossdressers International. The East of Eden restaurant donated food and my partner, John Williams, coordinated the majority of the cooking with his brother. The rest of us washed dishes, served food and mingled with the more receptive youths. The social ice was shattered when drag queen comedienne Hedda Lettuce arrived in her trademark green and blond wig, her funny charisma warming the room over instantly.

It was hard not to wonder about the circumstances that had forced these kids to seek shelter there. Each had his or her own story. Most had been expelled from their homes for being queer or ran away due to abuse. They have to sign in by ten every night and the single-room shelter has a forty-person capacity. They’re provided with donated, used clothes, a washer/dryer setup, canned/dry foods, and company. With few work options in the present economy, many are forced to hustle. I spoke to several of them about their dreams and aspirations. Three boys were organizing an open mike talent show. Another serpentine boy and a dreadlocked girl named Star were natural, agile dancers. Others expressed interest in social work, fashion design, and makeup and hair artistry.

Homophobia, the most tragic of our many American traditions, is fueled by religious dogma and ill-educated hysteria. It inspires violence against gentle people. It devalues those who have individuated spiritual compositions; those who do not comply with either extreme of the antiquated, anal-retentive, masculine/feminine polarity model. Queer people are different from the norm and it is estimated that there are thousands of similar homeless queer youngsters living on the streets of New York City alone. What was once revered as a shamanistic class of individuals, in societies the world over, has been stripped of its spiritual value and condemned by the very institutions that the LGBT community is seeking marriage visibility from. The current and bigoted pope recently said that relations beyond the heterosexual ‘norm’ are “the destruction of God’s work”. It’s obvious that the pope hasn’t read Father Donald Cozzens’ book The Changing Face of the Priesthood, published in 2000. Cozzens, a psychologist and Catholic seminary president, suggests that up to 50% of the Catholic priests he’d encountered had homosexual orientations. Other estimates range from 10%-60%.

As gay marriage dominates LGBT politics, more pressing issues get kicked into the ditch. I agree that same-sex couples should have the right to marry, period. I know many such couples who married when they could and applauded them. But seeking acceptance from religious institutions that tortured us and burned us at the stake is horrifying to me. As a queer person, it’s even insulting. Churches and fevered religious leaders are the sources of the fear and hatred that lands beautiful kids, such as the kids at Sylvia’s Place, onto the streets of New York City and elsewhere, just for being gay, transgendered or lesbian.

Many LGBT folk have become so impassioned by bourgeois equality values that they’ve turned their backs on the needy in their own “community”. An annual pride parade, activists, public services, DVD stores, websites and bars do not comprise a community. AIDS claimed untold numbers of mentors, teachers, artists and role models, and current generations need to assume these roles. Sure some mentors exist, but more are needed. The fight for queer equality, which is broader than “gay equality”, needs to redefine itself, if the LGBT “community” expects to change the way in which it’s perceived by others. Gay marriage only represents the ‘L’ and ‘G’ of LGBT. Gay, privileged exclusivity isn’t enough, as many of us don’t care about Queer as Folk or Britney Spears—such as those amazing kids who inspired me this past Christmas. They can always use money donations, clothes, bottled water, dry/canned foods, and oh yeah, mentors.

Homeless Youth Services
c/o MCCNY
446 W. 36th St.
New York, NY 10018

http://www.homelessyouthservices.org/

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