SONGS OF PURITANIA ON A GAY THEME

The following poetry influenced by the ongoing gays and religion debate, reflects my experience over the last decade in relation to especially America. Amid that nation’s culture wars one can and will hear just the sort of things echoed in the verse – I am not inventing. (There is more about the background to this poem in the prose feature following it and its not unimportant notes). It’s not suggested all Americans or Christians think this way, but those that do remain influential, and aggressively so now they feel more embattled. (The names of the voices recall a 1969 film about sex experiment).

[THIS POEM HAS NEVER BEEN RECORDED BY ME FOR YOUTUBE OR ANYWHERE.  I AM NOT THE PERSON SOME HAVE SEEN DUE APPARENTLY IT SEEMS TO SOME HACKING   NOV 20th 2020]

ALTERNATIVE WASTELANDS PRELUDE

O O O O it’s that American rag
It’s so inelegant, so unintelligent [1]
Here a sin, there a sin, everywhere a bit of sin
Original or otherwise, talk it till you make a din
Sounding off like cymbals and a tinkling of brass [2]

O O O O it’s that American rag
It’s so inelegant so unintelligent….
And full of belief in a very special covenant,
It makes for good fortune and also what doesn’t
Like we was Abram’s sons when you know that we wusn’t.[3]

O O O O it’s that Athenian rag
It’s so elegant, so intelligent….
When the men were handsome and the youths looked pretty
They fell for one another, for philosophy and art
And if you didn’t know it, that’s how culture got a start.

BOB

Stop that jazz…!
It’s time to start and listen hard to me now
Are you man enough for what I’m gonna say?
‘Cos it’s lust and what’s unnatural is the kind of stuff you do
Paul said it’s all degrading, you know that must be true [4]
He knew so many things and he always got ‘em right
Like women being covered up and keeping mouths shut tight. [5]
And Paul was all a man’s man, so he wouldn’t tell a lie
He says hell’s ready waiting for your kind when you die;
But if you’re not a reprobate, deliverance is sure
God and Exodus can help you find the way to perfect cure.
Only doctors, shrinks and cynics – and they are simply liars –
Would tell you there’s no way to be healed of your desires.

CAROL

Just as God wants us with guns to protect us
So we need laws against gays to correct us
But people who don’t accept six day creation
Can’t see that gay means plague and destruction.
My child is at risk and even my nation
From lies and legalized toleration
Of what they should know – it’s really no mystery –
Left Greece, Rome and everywhere nothing but history.[6]
On Sodom fire rained and also Gomorrah,
I’m praying real hard, but allow paranoia.
It was Hitler and gays brought the ruin of days,
There’s a stock market crash, it’s the curse on pink cash,
There are problems with mortgage, it’s all the gay marriage,
There’s been a tsunami due to gays in the army
Our climate is changing, but fags keep parading.
If you fear a tornado, stop their pride and bravado.
Homophobia’s holy, it keeps a roof on the home…
There’s nothing more sure or more certain than that
If you haven’t read Paul, there’s the TV and Pat.[7]
But if you still care for a heavenly crown
Prayer warriors arise, strike the gay evil down!

ALICE

Don’t say you’re born gay, for gay equals sin
My own fourth husband could not let you in
To our house, his walk is too close with the Lord;
And though I’m anti-abortion I give you my word
If our son turned out queer we’d wish him unborn
And throw him outside like best clothes when torn.
Gay is nothing at all but an evil that’s chosen
Not a mind, not an outlook, not an orientation.
What gays have and they are is a sinful lifestyle
True Christians would shun it by more than a mile,
Gay love and desire have no function or meaning
Such could not define you, they’ve nothing redeeming.

Don’t give me those lies about Hebrew and Bible
David and Jonathan “married”, it’s nothing but libel. [8]
The King James may refer to a “covenant” made
But speaking the truth, calling a spade a spade
Is what the Bible’s about; that pair had an agreement
It wasn’t love, that’s sick, it was really quite different.
And “raca” never meant pervert, the KJ says “fool”,
If Christ helped gays like that he’d be Satan’s own tool.
Remember the Lord was a proper man’s man
Not some pale and limp hippy outside of God’s plan
Eunuch means castrate not someone who’s different [9]
(Why it’s said some are born it, I’ll think in a minute).

TED

Let’s get it clear, you’re an abomination, [10]
That’s the bible’s very own proclamation;
But we’ll help you to struggle and right to the end,
I can’t quite accept you, but you are my good friend.

I don’t have dealings with fornicators
Or for that matter adulterers and masturbators
And you’re not a whit better than any of them
So don’t give us gays are God’s gentlemen.

Don’t press me too far to state who you are
It’s not like I’m talking to some movie star,
If there’s no bible term defines “homo” just right
Then I’ll use one instead – the word’s “sodomite”.

I’ll love you for Jesus, that’s to say if I can
As it’s hard, since you are an odd kind of man,
And I don’t care for singles in church anyway, really,
But pay us your tithes and we’ll treat you sincerely,
Though I pray you meet a fine girl and right early
She could cure you for good or at any rate nearly.

For the rest remain silent, be inactive as death
That alone pleases God who has given you breath.
Whatever’s outside of straight marriage is wrong
Don’t imagine gay “marriage” could ever belong.

I fancy you knew there was Adam and Eve –
Plain as day no room intended for Steve.
Eden’s model is law, a solid foundation
God can’t understand the word variation.

You can talk of revision [11] and argue the toss,
I’m not standing down from the old rugged cross
And plain truth of the Word. Say I’m a bully you may
But resistance will give God more glory today.

You can make me a martyr, to prison I’ll go
But declaring gay sin will help the faith grow.
Meanwhile we need to support propaganda
In havens of light like Cameroon, Uganda.
They aim to imprison and execute gays.
Being nearer to heaven and holier ways.

I don’t say I agree with Balboa [12] who threw
Gays to wild dogs, as I’m sure that he knew
We must love gays for God; but if people will sin
They are bound to accept what fate they fall in.

It’s not quite the same with youth suicide
But there’s no cause to blame us we do not provide
Counsel to those naturally young and unstable
When declaring the truth the best we are able.

Any choices gays make are entirely their own
There was never a right to make protest and moan
It was hard to find places of work or of dwelling
Those defying God’s laws must find they’re compelling.

It was right to reject them so they’d leave us in peace
Migrating to ghettoes where sin would increase.
Like Calvin we strive for God’s kingdom on earth
Let sinners go live where they build for God’s wrath.

Our concern is not with exception and difference,
What isn’t of family makes unhappy nonsense.
A person alone is soon led astray;
If people talked less there’d be more time to pray.

WISDOM

And for what is your prayer when belief has supposed
That justice and sense can be freely opposed?
The fact is, believers, your straight mind’s too small
You speak for a God you scarce know at all
And cite from a Bible swung and hit like a bat
With your mind so pedantic you render it flat,
No poetry left or ambiguous sense
So literally real it can finish quite dense,
Not to say often monstrous and merely unjust.
You’re unable to grasp that the same God you trust
Is both Logos and Wisdom, two sexes in one, [13]
Whose bride is two genders when history is done.[14]
Christ was male in his body but female in soul
In short he was gay to incarnate whole; [15]
That way he could speak for more persons and life
And offer examples to silence mere strife.
It’s the reason Christ sent homophobia to hell [16]
And blessed the centurion and made his boy well [17].
But science can’t tell you, it will not reveal
The spiritual laws esoterics conceal
Why some are born gay and others are straight [18]
Knowledge needs wisdom, the full truth must wait.

It’s not prejudice only, not tradition or history
Obscure truth, but mindsets closed to all mystery.
Of such you know nothing for shouting too loud
And insisting your customs stand hetero proud
With translations distorted to fit your poor vision
Which everywhere make for hate and division.
The facts can be proved beyond reasonable doubt [19]
But truth is precisely what you would cast out;
And though of Christ’s nature the matter is proved
You need to repent so your hearts can be moved.
Having too long delivered all gays to perdition
Your churches are left torn apart in confusion
So that enemies choose the terms of revision.
God is refusing your prayers, first learn toleration;
Aquarius comes, know the times and the seasons [20]
What’s gay is of God,[21] try to discover the reasons.

(Copyright Rollan McCleary, 2013.
The text of this poem has been added to a new edition of Puer Poems, See: amzn.to/11i5hkI )

NOTES

[1] The words echo T.S.Eliot’s “OOOO, That Shakespearean rag/ O so elegant, O so intelligent” in The Wasteland, but here the Wasteland is the one of confused American Puritan values.
[2] I Cor 13:1 If one speaks the truth without love “I am become as sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal” (KJ) though a modern version is: “I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (NRSV).
[3] The issue of homosexuality in American Christianity is often confused with controversial notions that America is a second Israel in special covenant with God, hence at special risk of divine judgement for even tolerating gays.
[4] Rom 1:24. To whatever and to whoever Paul precisely refers, and scholars dispute, it is thought he regards same sex behaviour as degrading. It is most likely his subject is Rome’s recreational bisexuality but his assessment of this and other sexual behaviour is coloured by not just moral but social values of his time that not even conservative Christians would accept if they understood them. Especially passive homosexuality was used as social humiliation. Thus masters had a right to use their male slaves sexually.
[5] 1 Tim 2:9, 1 Cor 13:44. Though much quoted on the silence of women, in fairness to the apostle he may not have meant much more than that in a typically gender segregated church women would not interrupt services shouting over to their husbands for explanations.
[6] William Lecky was the historian and eccentric tutor of Oscar Wilde who popularized a theory that homosexuality was the downfall of Rome and civilisation. Gays are only ever a minority and the fall of Rome was due to over extension of both wars and the system of slavery.
[7] Pat Robertson of The 700 Club, notorious for attributing hurricanes and disasters to toleration of gays in especially Florida.
[8] The word used for the covenant, b’rith, between David and Jonathan can be used for marriage in the bible. The pair were obviously what today would be thought bisexuals. Saul’s tirade against Jonathan (1 Sam 20:30) makes clear he thinks his son is a pervert bringing “shame” on the family for the love shared with David. On David’s bisexuality see my The Great Circle: Asia, David and God Consciousness.
[9] It is often said the Bible has no word for “homosexual”. In modern terms it doesn’t, but the nearest would be Christ’s word “eunuch” (Heb. Saris) in Matt 19:12. By his time the word no longer automatically designated castrate or even celibate, but could be anyone out of the family way. Raghnild Schanke, a Norwegian theologian, is one of those who have demonstrated the gay associations in ancient literature. The eunuch is the outsider and his outsider consciousness is something all believers “not of this world” somewhat need to be Christian to be at all. That’s one and surely a major way of understanding a difficult text.
[10 Many things are “abomination” (toevah) in the Bible, even proud eyes, but the primary meaning is ritual impurity and the prime reference in the Leviticus ban on male to male relations is to the ritual impurity of pagan sacred prostitution.
[11] Gay theology is deemed a branch of “revisionist” theology of which feminist theology is the main branch today.
[12] Balboa – Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475-1519), a conquistador and notorious persecutor of Amerindian gays.
[13] Christ is referred to and represents the male as Logos (Word) and female as the Wisdom (Sophia).
[14] The fact that the Church as “Bride of Christ” is comprised of both sexes undermines and even denies the idea a marriage/union can only be between a man and a woman. Some medieval churches used to bless unions of brethren. What’s controversial about modern marriage equality movements, religiously anyway, is that it is based more on secularist demands for equality rather than rights accorded to difference as such. (It can also involve children adopted or acquired by IVF and notions of family beyond unions). St Aelred of Riveaulx considered Christ as though married to John the Beloved.
[15] The formula “a female soul in a male body” derives from earliest gay lib claims in nineteenth century Germany, but drawn as it first was from Jewish kabbalistic mysticism it has real meaning at a spiritual/”occult” level. It has importance for understanding Jesus’ identity and incarnation. Though my reasons and proofs are original, speculation on a gay Jesus is not original. It has even been espoused by Christian Jews like Bishop Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Ostreicher though neither they nor I, like some radicals, propose Jesus was other than celibate. Jesus cannot like the fallen angels cross orders to be involved with either female or male intimately, but that does not automatically imply as some maintain, that the imperatives of an exceptional role means the sole behavioural model for gays is lifelong celibacy on the basis Christians imitate Christ.
[16] Matt 5:21,22. The section of the Sermon on the Mount dealing with anger as a source of murder. It is never properly translated. The Peshitta version of the Eastern Churches realizes that Aramaic “Racah,(“thou fool”, KJ)’ is an insult like “faggot” or, “effeminate pervert”. Jesus opposes any rage of the homophobic, racist, anti-social kind against outsiders, here summarized and symbolized by the effeminate, which easily leads from exclusion to violence even the murder that damns. Since ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel to this day have practiced violence and attempted murder against gays, given a teaching that makes sex behaviour a capital offence (Lev 18:22) and which would thus sanctify rage and prejudice, Jesus’ attitude is tacitly undoing the law. The ruling looks originally to have been directed against Semitic sacred male prostitution with its cross dressing ( to lie “as with a woman”). It had never been consistently or literally applied and was perhaps symbolic law, since it’s clear from Deut 23:17 that Israel did not execute even its male prostitutes (Deut 23:17). The old law did however foster enduring prejudices in a society where fertility was a leading ideal with the result homosexuality in Israel works or looks more like bisexuality.
[17] Matt 8:5-13, Luk 7:1-10. Pais means boy or servant and the word frequent associations with “homosexuality” of the more aesthetic or “pederastic” kind. If the gospel’s boy was only a servant the master was unusually attached to him and centurions often had male lovers.
[18] The esoteric rather than biological factors behind homosexuality, which have a lot implications for spirituality and art and are a matter of soul before body, are considered in especially my Temple Mysteries and Spiritual Efficiency Chapter 10.
[19] Jesus’ “homosexuality” is suggested by the bible itself, especially notions contained in John’s gospel and then backed up by the eloquent birth data (see Testament of the Magi ) whose data people in and out of religion and publishing have never even wished to consider. Speculation about an essentially  gay Jesus is not new; it has even been espoused by Jewish Christians like Bishop  Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Oestreicher.
[20] Whether or not the coming or just dawning age of Aquarius is the apocalyptic Utopia of the Millennium itself, Aquarius is much associated with difference, the alternative, the utopian and the gay. It’s ruling planet is the gay associated planet Uranus. This age will accept homosexuality and more people are being born gay and feeling gay as it approaches whereas conservative Christians perceive only decadence of a declining era in the phenomenon.
[21] Meaning gay is not a result of the Fall, wholly contra naturam or an intrinsic imperfection. This is not to say all expressions of homosexuality are godly. One would say that a lot of, for example, S&M wasn’t, but then heterosexuals also practice it, it’s not gay specific.

GAY SPIRITUALITY, AMERICAN LIFE AND RELIGION

Having emerged from the heavy project of The Hell Passage Inferno Cantos (May Blog) and wanting a lighter theme, I originally imagined this poem as an ironic footnote or second part to a more high style (Miltonic?!) account of creation and the nature of God. The latter are themes I see as misunderstood or lost today amid secondary arguments, not least around gay issues. This aspect of the culture wars is getting resolved (if and when at all) by “rational”, political and PC standards rather than any religiously informed ones. My poetic aim was to give more reason to maintain, in harmony with the conclusion of Puritania with its “what’s gay is of God”, where the connection with gay consciousness is.

I may yet write the intended philosophical poem independently or as a separate Part One. Whether I do or not, I believe the key to resolving current gay issues – at least in religious terms, which is where the problem is most keenly felt – lies with certain theological, philosophical and even esoteric understandings hard to get any of the main parties to the debate to consider. And ironically, some so-called revisionist theologies may even impede rather than facilitate umderstanding, including by popularizing the false claim Jesus did not recognize or make reference to anything remotely like “homosexuality” as we understand it.

Gay Spirituality, which I once studied in depth and have written on and been published on in A Special Illumination, (2004), remains a chiefly American phenomenon. Its Christian branch is inevitably at variance with its nation’s widespread if embattled conservative Christian constituency which is not simply conservative but often strangely ungenerous and aggressive with it – I have sometimes experienced the full force of this myself for merely expressing a simple view. It can be very unpleasant, and as a non American I wonder how people stand it on a regular basis. In and out of religion America is full of the walking wounded, victims of the aggression of the opinionated.

To understand the American setting one needs to realize the extent to which much of its Christianity is godchild of the very political, rather overbearing, legalistic and vindictive Calvin, one of the meanest figures in the history of Protestantism. But amid its numerous variations, Calvin and Calvinism are still about the nearest that American Protestantism approximates to a historic/creedal Christianity. (Modern Episcopalianism, by contrast, is more like Unitarianism or American Transcendentalism than historic Christianity or British Anglicanism). It follows that marginalized persons, like gays when rejected by conservative churches, often have nowhere to go save the virtual neo-gnosticism or spiritual atheism of the religious rest of America as popularized by the likes of Bishop Spong.

QUEER INTERVENTIONS UPON RELIGION
Though even most Christians are unaware of it (and would take still more exception to gays if they were aware!), the image of God is getting seriously distorted or ignored in the branch of revisionist theology inspired by the atheist philosopher, Foucault, and called queer rather than gay.

Gay theology has usually tried to find some answers in the Bible and spiritual experience of the gay self, which it considers, as I do myself, in broadly essentialist terms. The now more academically trendy queer theology, which owes more to bisexual and radical feminist theory, has no real connection with historic Christianity. It locates spiritual answers in a neo-polytheism (Christ is Krishna or Kwan Yin, your favourite gay saint or just God as Sex) or else a morally indifferent neo-atheism. Swinging, experimental sexual identities are OK by its materialist “body theologies”. Works like Marcella Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology and The Queer God are notorious instances. A bisexual, Reid was a radical materialist who nevertheless used to enter the British Museum to revere an image of the Egyptian Cat goddess, Bast, although she was a minister of the gay MCC church. It’s an organization some feel has been unfairly, but I think not too unreasonably, described as more about humanism than religion in journalist Jeff Chu’s recent, Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America?

Despite my poem’s radical nature, even as a gay theologian I am not in total, uncritical agreement with the (mainly secularist) aims of the marriage equality lobby and the kind of often queer theory or just plain odd Christianity that supports it – sometimes insultingly in the style of the Rev Marcus Ramshaw who recently caused scandal in Britain’s House of Lords by calling the Archbishop of Canterbury “a wanker” for his traditional view of marriage.

As indicated in the notes, I can’t even regard the lobby as something wholly by or for gays, but embracing various people and aims including some who just want to be trendy. (Gay civil unions might have sufficed for the time being while church and society adjust). And I am even somewhat concerned that Christians are going to be bullied out of expressing honest convictions which, if they can express them decently, they should be allowed no matter how much one disagrees with them. Gays don’t have the right do become society’s censors merely because they feel offended which is something we all have to be sometimes. Warning signals for democracy are given by for example the way in Britain, and despite promises to protect dissent, amendments to the proposed gay marriage law such as would protect chaplains who dared to disagree with same sex marriage from being refused rights to minister in hospitals, have been swept away. This sort of thing may please secularists, but it’s not pro-gay legislation that comes with my gay blessing. Discrimination by any other name…

There is moreover something disquieting in the degree of obsession with gay rights by some Christians, whether for or against it, when even the most basic rights of Christians in Asia and Africa go insufficiently defended and scarcely mentioned. I have written on this Blog about “The Hell Hole of Laos” (Oct 2012) and one thinks of the case of Christians imprisoned in Iran where even after severe beatings they can be denied rights to medical care under international law because Muslim nurses decide Christians as being “unclean” infidels shouldn’t be touched. Let protesting gay organizations pressure such as gay sympathetic, Iranian born Reza Aslan to protest this – I doubt they or he would bother too much. Yet where Islam prevails strictly, non-Muslims regularly obtain dhimmi status with curtailed rights favouring further purely local discriminations to which a blind eye is turned. The West, from ignorance or fear insufficiently absorbs this though it’s the true dynamic of many controversies around minorities from Egypt to Pakistan).

Anyway, apart from gay bashing and even murder in especially Russia, most gays in the West suffer relative pinpricks in comparison with what Christians are suffering in much of the world – the Vatican recently reported up to 100,000 per year are being killed for their faith.

Everyone will interpret my poem differently – no one agrees about poems! – but I regard it as partly a warning in the face of the damage conservative attitudes can do not just to persons but to Christian religion and understanding of God at this point in time. Mismanagement of the gay question has already alienated many people from the churches. It has wrecked and divided churches over issues like the role of Christian doctors and adoption agencies, and it alienates the churches themselves from God. And God cannot be expected to answer prayers for everything from the moral health of society to maintenance of the rights of believers amid secularist/gay attacks upon those rights, when the terrible backlog of centuries of abuse and then modern youth suicide and depression, is swept under the carpet, dismissed and ignored only to be followed up by new, hollow and largely defensive talk about loving gays really….

Which I know from direct experience they often don’t. One still gets insulted or more commonly met with just walls of silence for merely being associated with gay issues and expressing opinions. As only one example, America’s Christian Post is a useful source of religious news, but a place where if you try to express a positive gay theological opinion you may have your head bitten off. One discussion moderator who knew nothing about me, earlier this year insulted me so severely, accusing me of a low lifestyle, pride against God, no hope of redemption from hell fire short of severe repentance, that I complained to the management which has never answered. St Paul speaks of imperfect believers who devour one another (Gal 5:15). That’s how things too often are among America’s Religious Right! (Granted Paul is often called in as support of OT laws that without him might be ignored. I believe to the extent the apostle referred to “homosexuality” as we understand it he was wrong and even disapproved, but this point is beyond present scope though see p.336 of my Temple Mysteries and Spiritual Efficiency) for some insights.

Those Christians dwelling in this toxic atmosphere, not least gay ones in the firing line, may not finish much better examples of Christianity themselves. I have long found it hard to deal with most of them. Truth to tell, despite being published in religion and having a doctorate in religion, during the last decade since my A Special Illumination on gay theologies and spiritualities was published, scarcely one American theologian or religion writer or journal, gay or straight, conservative or liberal has acknowledged, written about or replied to me in relation to my work despite (or just possibly because he’s the only divine cited in The Da Vinci Code!?) Canon Martyn Percy declaring on publication I had probably written the best work on gay theology.(I should mention that by chance just today before launching this feature the mentioned Jeff Chu has done so).

One suffers this no go situation at the same time as synods, committees, even archbishops ramble on complaining a wider theological debate and greater factual knowledge about homosexuality and gays is needed. It is, but do they really want to be informed? There is something false at the core here…it would hard to say how much. Indeed if one observes just what some people of supposed faith are actually listening to, one could well declare with Baudelaire in Au Lecteur, “It’s the devil holds the strings that make us dance”. A single relevant example can suffice.

I have mentioned the Bast revering queer theologian Althaus-Reid. If you go to The Queer God on Amazon you will see that The Expository Times, (one of the “Christian” outlets which has never had dealings with the present writer), praised her treatment of the Trinity in that book. But if you read it, you will discover that God is defined (and it is apparent Reid never believed in the biblical God) following profane principles mischievously derived from the Marquis de Sade? God will acquire such names and functions as “God the Orgy”, “God the Whore” and “God the Sodomite” amid suggesting it would be a good idea if the Queer community dethroned God and took the place of the Trinity recognizing the Antichrist as a viable principle. Clearly this was a person who had no communication problems where church, publishing, media and academe were concerned – she was appointed Professor of Contextual Theology at Edinburgh University. But then for much modern Christianity, truth scarcely matters and “C’est le Diable qui tient les ficelles qui nous remuent”

GAY SPIRITUALITY AND A GREAT GATSBY SYNDROME
The poem opens with jazz and I did have The Great Gatsby film in mind. Heady Twenties jazz and dance have affinities for the more recent world of gay disco music and dance. But the Gatsby film entails certain ironies for Australia (“In a Flap over the Great Subsidy”, The Australian 22.5.13). Undeniably the theme at source is American, a novel by an American (if one wouldn’t say an Irish American transposing aspects of the Celtic dream upon an America innocent of it). But the film was directed by an Australian. It was shot in Australia. It was hugely subsidized by the Australian government. Two of its leading stars are Australian. However, it is premiered almost last in the western world in Australia. Leonardo Di Caprio who plays Gatsby has declined to attend it, and in America the film is promoted as an “American” film.

There’s something symbolic here about the way a parochial America imagines it either owns or simply is this whole world!

Accordingly, Australia and Australians don’t count for much. And they absolutely don’t count where gay theology and spirituality are concerned. They belong to America so much and their guardians are so busy guarding the territory one either does not exist, unless perhaps as a threat. The Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley which has run gay theology courses doesn’t mention me and others, and won’t be in touch, though in my case they could well have used my material in useful summary of masses of material they cover. It’s this total lack of cooperation and support helped insure that when I was freer for such things I never got to follow up the study of theologies with the badly needed post-doctoral research into gay ethics. Today I hardly study or follow gay issues further. I have even half forgotten the subject, wasting years of study though hopefully writing meanwhile on other subjects of meaning and relevance and even re-discovering poetry after a very long absence (25 years). There’s nothing and no one to be helped, advised or worked with. The communication block is almost total.

The fact remains however there always was and still needs to be more examination of what gayness (not a migratory queerness) is, and hence what lifestyles and standards might best apply to it. Should gays be defined by straight standards, by marriage, should they be parents etc? Most gay don’t seem to want to be either married or parents and there are Christians and others who don’t want to be railroaded by law into having to counsel them intimately for sex and marriage just because true “acceptance” demands it). Why are some (most) gays fixed in their nature while others move about or supposedly “cure”? Though I don’t think gay marriage adequately defined is any bad thing, the big questions should have been more worked at first, not simply swept away in the rush to “equality” which can function as a new form of intolerance or at least word for the questionable American concern with “belonging” or “acceptance” at all costs. A lot of the value of gays for society has been precisely their non-conformity rather than their conformity, their role at the margins.

RETURN AND EVOLUTION OF THE GAY REPRESSED
It is this outsider status and outlook which I believed Christ pointed to in his parables and intended followers should have when he refers to being “eunuchs for the kingdom”. And it is only if one knows the data for Christ’s birth read in the most modern fashion and working for Christ issues  to this day  (see http://amzn.to/12eP5S8) that one can tell just how identified he was in this way. Impossibly we even find asteroids Saris (Eunuch) and Born closely conjunct what is called the “ruler” of his chart, in short highlighted. It is when theologians and others learn the humility, honesty and openness to look at the alternative evidence for an alternative subject instead of dismissing it as impossible and irrelevant, that we might begin to resolve more of the gay issue in religion for which it has so many surprises.

Christianity itself could be considered a form of gay theology but one which you don’t need to be gay to partake in any more than you need to be gay to appreciate the work of, say, Michelangelo – who, however, you will better understand if you can acknowledge that he was gay.

I don’t at all accept the theories of Michel Foucault that feed queer theology. I even believe he was the blind leading the post-modern blind, but I would agree with his emphasis on the return of the repressed. The gay subject is the return of the repressed. So too is poetry the lack of which in charismatic religion is one of the causes of its weakness which no amount of success with numbers can hide. Religion itself – consider the biblical prophets – depends upon the insights which poetry contains with its invention and/or renewal of images, symbols, dreams, and transcendence which haunt the mind.

Acceptance needn’t be uncritical but the churches must stop fearing change as it applies to society’s acceptance of homosexuality. It is, or can be an opportunity if they can learn how to work with it and don’t wait so long to change they finish in a world so dominated by bossy PC ideas they won’t be able to express religious opinions on homosexuality or anything much at all.