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XVI’s recent and scalding remarks against queer and transgendered folks surfaced just as I was revamping an old, unpublished ‘essay’ on the relationship between queer sexuality and religion.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 4th century A.D. and the creation of Islam, during the 7th 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 9th-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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good one, love. whew!
fabulous article except for the comment about St.Augustine. He was heterosexual sex addict, unfortunately. If one must be a sex addict, a truly horrible addiction, better to be Queer, don’t you think? But Augustine? Afraid no. He had woman after woman after woman.
Hey thanks for commenting Silver…
Yes it is known that Augustine had several sexual liaisons with women, but there is a one “special” male friend he had, who I remember dying quite you, that leads many to speculate that there may have been a relationship stronger than friendship. I’m going through my notes…and will be back…
“for I felt that his soul and mine were one soul in two bodies and therefore life was to me horrible, because I hated to live as half of a life; and therefore perhaps I feared to die, lest he should wholly die whom I had loved so greatly.”
Perhaps man-lover was too strong a word, but this, from his Confessions, (which I’ve read twice) is telling of something rather passionate, don’t you think?
Wow, wonderful entry. Radical from a Judeo-Christian point of view, but take one step away and it’s pretty clear.
You say so much in this passage from the role of queers in the world to the relationship between humankind and the natural world. I’m tingling. Thanks for referring me to this entry. Hugs.