Tag: Coming Out Spiritually

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Coming Out Spiritually, by Phillip Hoyle

I started revealing my gay self in a religious context subtly when I suggested in a church course on sexuality that we might want to think of bi-sexuality as the conceptual norm for our inquiry. That would make good use of Dr. Kinsey’s scale arising from his 1950s research into American male sexuality and would give us as a group a more flexible way to read the books we were going to consider. I had structured the group on a seminar model providing a small library of books from which each participant could select to use as a source in our discussions. To me it seemed like I was opening the closet door just a crack. It made sense in the church where I worked, a broad church in that it gathered conservatives, moderates, and liberals together for worship, study, and service, a congregation that historically hired moderates and liberals for their ministerial staff. We talked together for those weeks trying to understand ourselves, our kids, our society. We kept the peace as we did so. My wife participated in the study.

A few years later I wrote for our church’s publisher an adult study piece that included varying spiritual perspectives. I made sure there was a gay presence in that manuscript as well as many other points of view and experience. In another congregation I wrote a discussion guide for an adult group studying the book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott (HarperCollins, 1994). While there I also edited a study paper on homosexuality prepared by a group in our regional church. Throughout my years of ministry I thankfully accepted homosexual musicians into our choir lofts and worked with several gay and lesbian organists. Thirty years into my career, when finally I attended the annual meeting of the Association of Disciples Musicians, my wife feared our marriage might be over. Whatever I believed I was doing, she seemed sure I was coming out.

Eventually our marriage did come apart, and soon after that sad experience and while in good standing in our denomination I left active ministry having dedicated many creative years to the work of our local churches. I was going to live an openly gay life and chose to do so as a lay person rather than clergy. I assumed I’d find a nice liberal congregation somewhere near my home on Capitol Hill in Denver and started attending services—church shopping as it were—something I’d observed many lay persons do. While searching for an apartment, I had walked the neighborhood and noted what churches were there. I decided to look away from the denomination rather than within it.

One Sunday I walked down to the First Baptist Church with its beautiful brick Georgian building featuring sturdy brown granite pillars on the façade and a very tall spire on top. I liked their location right across from the State Capitol building and near my home. There I found a worn out building in which gathered a nice group of worn out people who seemed to be tolerating their rather average rock band that asked them to sing songs they barely knew. I watched and listened to everything and decided not to return mainly because they were in an interim period between Senior Ministers. I’d suffered too many interim ministers during my career and couldn’t see how suffering theirs would promote my spirituality.

I went to St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral with its soaring rock towers and magnificent stained glass windows, a virtual symbol of a life of prayer. There I was rather thrilled with the organ and choir music but seriously put off by the sin and redemption language of the liturgy, ideas I had long ago set aside. Furthermore, in my move to Denver, I had got rid of most of my fancier clothes and realized I really did not want to fit into a dress-up social group. I knew it was not what I was looking for, besides I just didn’t have the kind of ritual liturgical need to which Episcopalians and many gay men respond in such churches.

The next Sunday I decided to visit the mostly-gay Metropolitan Community Church. I knew the history of that movement and realized that while it might be too conservative for me, it offered an open social environment. I was pleased with the organ music, entertained by the presence of a couple of drag queens in the choir, responsive to the tone and style of the sermon, and even received communion at the altar. I loved the enthusiastic singing of the congregation (couldn’t say the same for the choir even though I tried hard not to be a musical snob) and I especially liked being surrounded by gays, lesbians, transgendered persons and, I assumed, a bunch of bi-sexual folk. Knowing I was way over-loaded with needs and experiences related to my many recent changes, I decided to attend that nice group for a few weeks wondering if it might be for years. Week after week I smiled, laughed, felt sad, shed tears, and eventually found a kind of spiritual equilibrium that was helpful as I began living more deeply into my life as a gay man, a massage student, a friend of new gay and straight acquaintances, an artist, and a writer. When within a few months I quit crying in church and then began to be irked by the language of the little bit of liturgy they used there, I realized I had more things to deal with in my spiritual coming out. Long had I been displeased by the language of most churches and with doctrinal constructs that pervaded the worship, even that of the Disciples of Christ with whom I had worked. I hated the exclusionary aspects of words that were used, innocently and thoughtlessly too often. I realized my relationship with the church had now become more receiver than giver, and I didn’t like what I was receiving. Still the sermons sparkled, but the song texts, anthem lyrics, and weekly-repeated words of the communion service were becoming onerous to me. I had failed to become an official member of the congregation—it seemed somehow too soon—and realized I needed to look further into the church community to see what I could find.

I began attending the First Unitarian Church and found one of their preachers really communicated to me as she spoke from a liberal, open, Christian point of view and seemed herself to be working on the same kinds of spiritual and theological themes and experiences as was I. The rest of what was happening around me in that congregation I found neutral and uninspiring. Even in that most liberal atmosphere I stumbled over language, like when the choir sang an anthem of Anglican origin (one of my musical favorites) that ended with a very Trinitarian blessing, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.” Etc. The words had been rewritten but they were still Trinitarian in their form and actually in their meaning. I knew choir directors and singers were rarely theologians, but to hear barely de-Trinitized words in a Unitarian service? It seemed too corny to me. Since I couldn’t attend weekly due to a part-time job, I missed quite a few weeks in a row. When I returned on an Easter Sunday (of course, it was not really Easter at a Unitarian church) I found that their sparkling preacher had left and a nice but bland interim minister was now in place for several months. I didn’t relate to anything said in that service and chose not to return. Certainly I was not going to be spiritually nurtured there.

Now I know that others cannot make one spiritual. The ultimate responsibility for spirituality is located in the experience and imagination of the individual—you see ultimately I’m very Western, very American. I saw clearly that my own sense of spirituality, quality, and meaning was going to have a tough time being met within any church group. Of course, I was not un-used to that having been who and whatever I always have been. I thought about this a lot and within a year or so realized that my new spiritual congregation was made up of a group of friends with whom I drank coffee and occasionally went out and of my group of massage clients whose aches and pains—and often confessions—I dealt with as I rubbed into their skin oils, lotions, and love. The focus of my spirituality changed due to my participation in my new major community made up mostly of gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual people.

© Denver, 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Coming Out Spiritually by Lewis

I was born into a central Kansas Methodist family. My father, though a regular church-goer, did not make a show of his faith. My mother, who also attended church every Sunday, made daily devotions a part of her routine. She read from a Methodist publication called The Upper Room and another daily devotional guide put out by the Unity Church in Kansas City. I believe it was titled, The Daily Word. As the only child of my father and the only child of my mother at home, naturally I made the weekly trek to Trinity United Methodist in Hutchinson, KS, every Sunday with my parents.

Having a spiritual nature, I took to religion rather easily. I also sight-read well, so it wasn’t more than nine or ten years before my mother had me reading The Upper Room aloud to her as she prepared breakfast. By the time I was in the 9th grade, I was convinced that I wanted to be a preacher when I grew up. I even gave the religious opening to an assembly at my junior high school and at one of the other junior highs. I’m sure I had flashes of being the next Rev. Billy Graham or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
However, with the onset of puberty, my aspirations began to change. My religiosity seemed to diminish in inverse proportion to my testosterone levels. By the time I was a senior, I had stopped attending church altogether. I suspect that peer influence had something to do with that, as well.
Once away to college, the worldly influences multiplied faster than my living costs. It was at the University of Kansas that I met my first atheists. Worse than that, I had a roommate who was a Unitarian Universalist–from San Francisco, naturally. I took an intense dislike to him. He loved progressive jazz, Gerry Mulligan, in particular. I thought the music was subversive. Worse, Michael [Blasberg] would pace the room saying, doo-wap-a-doo, bee-bop-a-dupe-a-dupe-a-doo-wah, while lifting his eyebrows and scrunching up his face. Oh, yes, on top of all this, the little twerp’s hobby was making scale-model drawings of Third Reich Luftwaffe aircraft, complete with the pilot’s insignias and number of kills.
After graduation and moving to Michigan, when I felt a need to find a church, I naturally began where I was most familiar–the Methodist Church a block from where I was living. I showed up there on a Sunday morning when the Grand Dragon of the Michigan Ku Klux Klan was scheduled to speak at the Dearborn Civic Center that same afternoon. I was pleased that the minister announced to the congregation that, during the coffee hour following the service, a sign-up sheet would be available for those who wished to express their displeasure that their city was providing a forum for hate speech. When the service was over, I went over to the table for the express purpose of signing the petition. I noticed that no one else seemed interested, either in the petition or in me.
So, I continued on my own spiritual odyssey. It’s almost worthy of a Twilight Zone episode that I should then turn to searching for a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Detroit. After all, the only UU person I had ever known was also one of the most obnoxious. Perhaps it was Michael’s principled opposition to the Viet Nam War–a position I arrived at later than he–that planted a tiny seed in my soul that later resulted in my spiritual blooming.
Unitarian Universalism is not a true religion. It does not tell people what they must believe about God or anything else. It does make demands upon how its members treat each other and asks that they commit to a life-long search for the truth, wherever that search may lead. We welcome people of all religious backgrounds as just one more aspect of the boundless diversity of the human race. And we put our money and elbow grease where our mouth is.
For me, all this was like coming home spiritually. But there have been hiccups. Once a firm atheist, I have recently come to believe that there are mysteries in the world beyond my present understanding. One such mystery I shared with this very group. It had to do with Kleenex. 
Actually, I found it harder to come out as an atheist than gay. Most polls indicate that more Americans would vote for a gay person for high office than an atheist. Furthermore, I’m sure they wouldn’t want their son or daughter to marry one. You see, most atheists are Commie, pinko, liberals, who run around with gay people and child molesters–not the priests but the other child molesters.

© 1 July 2013



About
the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Coming Out Spiritually by Betsy

Contemplating today’s topic I realize that before I can write anything about the subject I must be clear about what is meant by “coming out.” In the context of sexual orientation it means first that I acknowledge and accept that I am homosexual and that I am willing and able to openly declare that I am gay. Stated another way: “coming out” means revealing a truth about myself. Of course, if I do indeed accept my homosexuality, it naturally follows that I will not spend my life in the closet and I have no problem with declaring my sexual orientation to the rest of the world.

I am examining the phrase “coming out” because it is usually used in the context of sexual orientation. So when applied to spirituality I find there is a problem. That is that in the case of sexual orientation I am applying the phrase to the way I AM, who I am. In the case of spirituality I am referring to what I believe or do not believe, regardless of who I am. “I AM what I believe?” This statement does not ring true for me. What I believe is something I do, not who I am, and what I do or think can change from one day to the next. Furthermore, if coming out means revealing the truth about myself, then coming out spiritually is impossible because spirituality is based on faith, not known facts.

Enough semantic gymnastics. For the sake of today’s topic coming out spiritually means that I acknowledge that I have certain beliefs about the nature of the universe and the nature of life and death and I am willing and able to make these beliefs known to others.

In this way the two comings out (sexual orientation and spirituality) are similar. Also similar is the fact that coming out in both cases ends with the declaration as mentioned above to others and ends there. That is, I have no need or desire to try to persuade others of my sexual way of life or my spiritual beliefs.

I consider my sexual orientation and lifestyle to be a personal matter as do I regard my spiritual beliefs. Another similarity. What is different about the two comings out is that my sexual orientation has stayed the same throughout my life; of course, that’s who I A M and that’s not going to change. On the other hand my spiritual beliefs are ever-changing. Furthermore I am constantly asking questions, observing, hopefully learning and developing beliefs around my spirituality; ie, changing my ideas about the nature of the universe and where I fit into it. Whatever ideas evolve in my head are beliefs though, not facts. You could argue that my sexual orientation, acknowledgement and acceptance and revelation thereof, has everything to do with my spirit. Used in this broader context then, I believe, revealing anything about myself IS coming out spiritually.

Okay, then, here it is: what I happen to believe today. My spiritual coming out.

There is more to me than a brain and a body and that once that body dies my spirit, essence, Being will go on. In what form I do not know. That spirit, essence, Being is within me now and always as long as I exist in this form. The key word here is WITHIN. The power of the Universe is within all of us not out there somewhere making rules and orchestrating our existence.

Coming out spiritually means that I have abandoned the religious teachings and traditions with which I was raised. I have departed from those beliefs. It means that I accept that I have no answers to the usual questions about the nature of life and death. In other words I have no beliefs about such matters except as described above. I have not taken any leap of faith. The only thing I really know for sure at this moment is that I DON’T Know. And when I really think about it I come to the conclusion that I don’t need to know.

Historically and still today however it appears that most people do need to know or more truthfully stated: it appears to me that most people do need to believe in something. History has shown that many people, especially collectively not only need to believe, but need others to believe as they do, and are often distrustful of those who have a different belief system. Of course, now I am talking about power and politics and that is another subject for many future discussions and story telling writing topics.

July 1, 2013

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Coming Out Spiritually by Michael King

As I reflect on this topic it seems to mirror in many ways the slow and meandering journey of discovering the gay part of me and eventually becoming a gay activist.

I didn’t understand the differences between religious, spiritual, etc. I now have my own definitions however prefer to avoid the various terms. People state that they are non-denominational, new age, protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and the list goes on.

I’ve not felt comfortable with any of those labels. Faiths, creeds and rituals may be a part of being religious but I don’t think of them as being spiritual. There are, I am sure, those who are very much in touch spiritually and still participate in religious practices.

My family seldom attended church or even mentioned anything religious and fortunately left the whole arena fairly free of doctrines, duties, biblical teachings, fear, or guilt. I was grown and away from home by the time I encountered a vague concept of the term spiritual.

I did have an experience, the first of many, that has affected my perspective that I will call spiritual. I had the same name as my grandfather. I have since change my name. The family was present and I stood back by the door when he took his last breath. I was 15 and as far as I know no one else saw what I did. I was very calm and detatched. I had a sense that everything was OK. He and I seemed to have an understanding. I was an observer, and at the same time as I heard the death rattle, a shiny golden orb jumped from his head, wavered, and then quickly departed through the wall behind and to the side of the bed. I had the assurance that some kind of future followed this life.

I tried to identify with many belief systems over the years but couldn’t accept any until after the transforming experience I had when I made the decision to divorce my first wife and remove the children from their mother’s influence. I clearly stated to her, “I don’t give a shit about you or about myself. I’m going to do what is best for the children!” An experience of being in the future in the presence of what I have called a being of light and pure love followed. I’ll not go into further detail but my life changed forever.

I looked for information about my vision as that is what I think it was. I read and studied, attended lectures and workshops, read the Bible from cover to cover and most if not all the writings that were not included in the versions most often accepted. I explored eastern teachings, metaphysical writings and any other potential source hoping to find a better understanding of my experience.

I’ve since forgotten most of what all I studied because I didn’t find the answers I was looking for until one day after we moved to Denver. I was on my way to a bookstore to purchase some books that might have some answers when a voice directed me to buy a particular book. I recognized the voice but that’s another story.

I will say that I not only got the answers to the questions but I also received an expanded perspective far beyond anything I might have imagined. Experientially I am gaining in an understanding and have progressed in some levels of maturity.

When did I come out? That is probably the part that is most humorous. Every time I had an insight or learned something that I thought was profound I tried to share it with those around me. Mistake!!! No one was interested. Everyone has found what they want or have a prescribed approach they plan to take to get their answers. I came out so many times and was ignored just like when I came out gay. Everyone already knew it and some told me they were waiting for me to figure it out.

Among the blessings I have are the love I have from my family and close friends and some that aren’t so close, my rich inner life and the many insights, visions and personal revelations that have formed my present self. I have great appreciation for these blessings.

So long as there is consciousness, expanded awarenesses and new expressions of a spiritual nature can continue to enrichen our lives. I don’t think that coming out spiritually will ever stop.

July 1, 2013

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Coming Out Spiritually by Pat Gourley

“If you are too busy to sit in meditation
 for twenty minutes a day
 then you need to sit in meditation
 for an hour every day.”

Paraphrased Buddhist Wisdom

I am not sure that my spiritual coming out over the years has not really been more of a shedding of things rather than the cultivation of any particular tradition or significant growth and development on my part. If I try to put it on a life trajectory I guess maybe as my queer and political identities blossomed my religious/spiritual side seems to have waned significantly over the decades, with the exception perhaps of a resurgence in the last 20 years of my often helterskelter Buddhist practice and an ever evolving atheist ethos.

I am aware that it is trendy these days in certain circles to say, “No I am not religious but I am spiritual.” The spiritual part of that is often for many defined in very vague terms involving some sort of unity with the whole Universe. One person though who has thought through this “one with the Universe” thing is my current favorite atheist Lawrence M. Krauss:

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way to get them into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.” Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing.

The root motivation for all religious or spiritual seeking seems to me to be very succinctly summed up in the following phrase, which I am quoting from Stephen Batchelor’s great work Buddhism Without Beliefs; “Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?”

The Catholic Church teaches that one reaches the age of reason at seven and then real sinning becomes possible, a rather rigid view of child development. My spiritual journey from this age of seven until about age seventeen was certainly laid out for me, no thought required, just a lot of something called Faith. The indoctrination in the Catholic religion though started in my Irish family much earlier than age seven of course. My adolescent discovery that sex with another man could be simply divine and that much of what the establishment had taught me about how the world worked in general needed to be seriously called into question. This was in large part thanks to a wonderful rogue Holy Cross nun and resulted in a rather rapid jettisoning of my early Catholic upbringing and beliefs.

Much of the 1970’s where spent in the proverbial lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and then lots more sex with no particular spiritual bent. I did hook up with the local chapter of Dignity, a group of mostly Catholic gay men, who I think in hindsight were desperately trying to square being queer with being a good Catholic. Not sure that all worked out so well for most of them. I attended more to cruise than anything else really.

In the late 1970’s I entered my “pagan/earth mother” phase and this was fueled by contact with many feminists and the Radical Fairies many of whom also shared this spiritual worldview. I was influenced by the writings of a wonderful witch named Starhawk. One of my dearest possessions from those years is the first stained glass piece my loving companion David made for me, a beautiful and very colorful pentagram.

The eighties were probably my least ‘spiritual’ in any fashion with delusion setting in that Goddess worship may not have been all it was cracked up to be. The struggles with mortality were also coming home in a big way as many started dying from AIDS. Nothing like a lot of death around you to force the question “What should I do”? Chanting, however fervently, to the Goddess didn’t seem to help much.

In the early nineties and up to the present I guess my “spiritual trip” can best be defined as Buddhist. A ten-year stint with the Kwan Um School of Zen and work with great teachers cemented my practice or at least I learned how to better sit still and be quiet.

In pondering coming out spiritually I think it must be an ongoing process, as most coming out is, and I am drawn back to the Stephen Bachelor’s injunction I quoted earlier and that is “What should I do?” This question presented itself in rather stark fashion this past Friday on my walk back from the gym.

Around 11:00 in the morning walking down Logan Street heading south toward 13th I was approaching a favorite panhandling corner. I noticed a body lying on the sidewalk, unusual placement for those with signs and in pursuit of the very hard work that is surviving as homeless in our big cities today. I could already see a couple folks stepping over the prone figure or walking around and no detectable movement. On approaching I saw it was a man and he could have been any street fellow, way over dressed for the weather but layers are important when you are on the street 24/7, and desperately in need of a shower. He was strategically sprawled in the shade of the only tree on that corner. I quickly started trying to process what was going on and whether or not I needed to try and intervene here. I did not have my phone with me.

I stepped around him as several others had already done and I kept walking. I continued walking across the street and down the block looking back and thinking, “What should I have done”. That is a really totally bogus and useless question, and not what Batchelor asked, his question was “What should I do?” On my next look back I saw two guys with leaf blowers work their loud obnoxious machines right around him and this disturbingly seemed to elicit nothing from the prone body.

What I should do then became obvious and I walked back to where he was. I saw more clearly then that he had his arm curled under his head, a good sign, not a pose for someone in extremis. I then tapped the bottom of his foot with my shoe and said in a loud voice: “Hey man, are you alright?” To my great relief he immediately responded partially sitting up and trying to focus on who was disturbing what was obviously a nap in the shade, a break from being on a very hot, exposed corner asking passing motorists for change. His crumpled and very poorly lettered sign stating ‘anything helps’ and invoking God to bless whomever was serving as a makeshift pillow on the concrete. Our society has substituted the time honored Buddhist begging bowl with a begging sign.

I then said that he should think about moving before someone stepped on him. This seemed to register a bit and then he responded that he would as soon as he finished his hamburger. I then noticed, what quite frankly looked like garbage, on a small cardboard container with some sort of scraps, salvaged from the garbage perhaps and showing the wear and tear of being in the 90 degree heat. This had been strategically placed on the sidewalk right under where his chin had been on the pavement. Right wing conservative ranting’s aside I was sure he was not finishing up a serving of crab legs purchase with food stamps. And a lecture on food poisoning would have been way too middle class and certainly of little benefit.

Satisfied we were not in any sorts of 911-territory I said again “Don’t get stepped on,” and headed home, once more convinced the question should always be “What should I do?”

June 2013
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About the Author

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Coming Out Spiritually by Merlyn

I have never come out spiritually, I look inside of myself, It’s the only place I have ever found the spiritual answers that are so important.

I was born into a family that faithfully attended The United Brotherhood Church in Beach Park, Michigan. Everything we did was a sin so we had to be saved over and over again with tent revival meetings, church camps and temperance meetings.

On Sunday mornings we would all show up at the church, stand up with a Jesus loves me look on our faces and sing the songs, drink the blood and eat the body of Christ, leave the church and start sinning again.

I realized there wasn’t any point in living in fear of going to hell and feeling guilty all the time.

When I was around 10 years old I stopped believing in organized religion, the Bible, God and Jesus. I refused to go to church after I turned eleven. I don’t think I have been in a church more than 20 times on a Sunday morning in the last 58 years.

One of the best things about being a nonbeliever is I don’t have to try to fit any new beliefs in with my old beliefs. I have had a completely open mind whenever I have studied any of the great spiritual teachings that millions of people believe in. I have never found any of them that I can believe in.

I know a lot of people that will never be able to find peace and understanding because they have so many hang-ups brought on because of their religious convictions.

The only time I ever think about religion is when I’m around other people that bring the subject up.

© 1
July 2013

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

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MCCR, Dignity, Integrity and the Radical Fairies by Louis

Personally, I am what you would call semi-religious. In this essay I talk a lot about “I, I, I, me, me, me” not for the sake of an ego trip but to use myself as a typical gay American trying to find his spiritual niche, a pilgrim. I think religion should be a part of one’s life. We know, however, all too well, that the churches we have been dealing with as we were growing up were mostly intolerant bastions of homophobia.

Many religious gay people grew up in a church they thought was a sanctuary. A sanctuary is supposed to be a safe place. If the identity of the gay religious people was revealed, they were often asked to leave; in many instances, the “sanctuary” was not safe at all, au contraire, it was dangerous and hostile. As a result, the vast majority of gay people have become atheists, agnostics or humanists, and they have a low opinion of churchdom. My parents felt that religion was a mental sickness. So many wars in the past have been fought over differences in religious dogma. They thought religiosity = hateful intolerance and narrow-mindedness. And religious people just love judging their neighbors. They claim to worship God but they really worship the almighty dollar and social climbing.

I thought many religious people have these faults, but just as many do not. So, I went shopping for a church. Many churches nowadays tolerate gay parishioners. MCC offers an even better theology in which we celebrate our sexual orientation in a joyous Christian service. It is completely gay and Lesbian positive and completely Christian. Jim Burns is the pastor of MCC Denver. He is exactly what is needed. About 30 years ago, an MCC minister said that real liberation and empowerment of our community will come from our spiritual understanding of the divine nature of our sexual orientation, of our status as God’s children with all the rights and privileges that derive there from. I feel comfortable with that assessment.

Integrity is the gay “caucus” of the Episcopal Church which claims it has a positive view on gay rights, which is true. Integrity nowadays assists gays looking for a church to choose an accepting Episcopal church as opposed to a homophobic congregation, of which there are still many unfortunately.

In New York City, however, Integrity has a history of putting on beautiful services of its own with the emphasis on pomp and circumstance and beautiful organ and classical orchestral music. If nothing else, an Integrity service was a grandiose cultural event. Their services were held at St. Martin in the Fields in the West Village. It was run by Lesbian and gay people. It was Episcopal but quite independent.

After a while, the NYC Episcopal Church said they did not see any need for Integrity unless it became a funded ministry of the Episcopal Church. The leader of Integrity at the time, Nick Dowen, appropriately declined the offer of funding. One of the later presidents of Integrity agreed that Integrity was unnecessary. Her name was Sandy, a black Lesbian who said she felt perfectly comfortable as a parishioner of St. Paul’s Apostles Church, which she attends regularly with her partner. St. Paul’s Apostle’s church is located a block away from Penn Station. I did not agree with Sandy. Now all Integrity does is guide Lesbian and gay pilgrims to friendlier churches. I noticed that Integrity Denver has the same policy of guiding and advising only, no actual leadership rôle. I was disappointed with the way the old New York City Integrity ended.

I am sure that the Episcopal Church’s claim that it does accept Lesbian and gay parishioners is 90% true, but, without Integrity offering something special to the wider gay community, I lost interest in the Episcopal church.

Back in the 70’s I went to one Lutheran Church in Queens and spoke with the pastor after the service; he was very homophobic. I went to another Lutheran Church where a more liberal pastor said they welcomed gay and Lesbian people. The better choice yet was the United Church of Christ that combines its claim of accepting Lesbian and gay people with a rather aggressive ministry of advocating for our rights.

MCC fulfills my Protestant side, but I am also part Catholic. I thought in error that the Episcopal Church with Integrity as intermediary might be the answer. It wasn’t. So what about Dignity? As sympathetic as I am to their mission or should I say “mission impossible” of reintegrating Lesbian and gay people into the Roman Catholic Church, despite my Catholic side, I do not feel the need to join the RCC.

I want a gay and Lesbian positive congregation that worships with a Catholic inspiration, but I still have not found one.

      Q. “Do you believe in God?”
      A. “Yes, but I do not believe in organized religion.”

A lot of people feel comfortable with this position. I think what this really means is that, though I am a believer, the established churches are for the most part so reactionary, mindless and hateful, they repel me. The adversaries have big well-financed religious organizations that protect an evil status quo. I have nothing; I have no church that is geared to promote my interests including my spiritual well-being.

Lesbian and gay people have been victimized more than most by an evil status quo church. I do not, however, think that this revulsion of traditional churches is universal. The Unitarian Universalist Church is a beacon of enlightenment. Perhaps the gay pilgrim could join a UU congregation and fight the fight for gay rights in an American organized religious setting.

A radical alternative for the Lesgay pilgrim could be the Radical Faeries. According to Wikipedia:

The Faeries trace their name to the 1979 Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies.[note 1] The conference, organized by Harry Hay and his lover John Burnside, along with Los Angeles activist Don Kilhefner and Jungian therapist Mitch Walker, was held over the Labor Day weekend in Benson, Arizona and attracted over two hundred participants. From this, participants started holding more multi-day events called “gatherings”. In keeping with hippie, neopagan, and eco-feminist trends of the time, gatherings were held out-of-doors in natural settings.[6] To this end, distinct Radical Faerie communities have created sanctuaries that are “close to the land”.[7]

The Radical Faeries recognize that, in the context of an earth-oriented spirituality, such as the religion of Native Americans, gay people were never marginalized but were accepted members of the Tribe. Radical Faeries also promote the idea that earth-oriented spirituality should be based on our common sexual orientation. This leads to empowerment and liberation of our community. I think the Radical Faeries make a very convincing case for a new spirituality.

© 25 June 2013 




About the Author



I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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My Bi-Sexual Soul by Terry

My friend Ann, my college buddy, bridesmaid, and now Facebook Friend and I were just yesterday in the midst of a Facebook debate when she reminded me how we used to have “knock down drag out” arguments, forty odd years ago, the favorite topic having been religion. Still a loaded subject.

Atheists don’t believe religion is reality based, some adamant having suffered at the hands of hurtful and or bigoted leaders and their followers. Some denominations or nondenominational churches point fingers at each other, claiming to be the only ones who will avoid hell and other forms of outer darkness because of their particular beliefs and practices. My church welcomes LGBT people, where we are respected as equals and there is no problem with marriage or who uses what bathroom.

My soul, I believe, is probably an average soul. I find painting and writing and helping others to be its best nutrients. Of course, a community of kind people falls in that category.

In the early seventies I remember that gay and lesbian people were walking out of churches in the middle of sermons in protest of their being set up as sinful horrible and lesser than.” The churches took longer to realize that there were bi-sexuals in their world, so it seemed to me that the others wound up paving the way, or at least beating down some of the resistance to gay ways.

There are still many hostile and bigoted churches, though educating individuals seems to have helped in some quarters.

I get annoyed when I hear about pools of burning phosphorus, as though God didn’t have better things to do than to barbeque unruly, misbehaving, or simply “bad” individuals.

There are the metaphysicals and the mystics. I suppose I fall somewhere in that category, god being more of a mysterious metaphor.

There is obvious corruption and downright evil in some religious groups and factions. Some are distressingly ambitious to take over the American Government so as to enforce their beliefs and way of life on everyone else.

I find what is nourishing to my soul (which is another kind of metaphor to me) among friends and kind strangers. As far as coming out spiritually I am just not into a lot of openness. For me it would be just wrongheaded to inform people who I do not know or have reason to trust. Coming Out is unquestioningly spoken of as the only way of life that is valid, healthy and wholesome in the LGBT Community. As a pure benefit. For me, some know and some I don’t bother to inform.

I wish there was some way out for the LGBT young people abandoned by their parents to try to survive on the streets. It is shocking how many there are, who came out or were outed to awful parents.

When the minister of my hometown church found out I was not heterosexual, he did not have any problem with that. In that church we had talk back sessions where anything could and was intelligently and respectfully discussed after the sermon and main service. Free thinkers were not chastised or excluded.

I wish we didn’t have all this bad blood between some atheists and some religious people. Religion, is one of the ways ordinary people can be divided against each other, especially when manipulated by those powerful officials who have a vested interest in keeping civilians weak and easy to control for their own aims, enrichment and ambitions. In fact, as is described in “Genocide, A Problem From Hell,” the root cause of genocide is the purposeful manipulation to drive people against each other. Using religion as well as race, and class. Hitler was especially adept at creating this type of divide between Germans, within their citizenship and between the Germans and those from countries that he wished to attack and conquer, kill, and enslave.

I haven’t really told a story. Maybe there is too much patchwork to my spiritual development.

At twelve I decided that I did not believe in talking snakes and naked people in a garden, much less naked people getting kicked out of a garden for eating an apple. Thus, I declared that I was not going to church any more, and was given the ultimatum that I would have to spend the day in my room, which I did. Nothing could shake my resolve and eventually my parents gave up and just let it go.

I eventually came to a more sophisticated interpretation.

© 2 July 2013 




About the Author  

I am an artist and writer after having spent the greater part of my career serving variously as a child care counselor, a special needs teacher, a mental health worker with teens and young adults, and a home health care giver for elderly and Alzheimer patients. Now that I am in my senior years I have returned to writing and art, which I have enjoyed throughout my life.

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Coming Out Spiritually by Ray S

     My muse took the week off when she learned what I wanted her to address. She looked askance at me, and allowed as how someone lifted her Ouija Board years ago. I can’t complain too much though, she’s really tried hard for me.

     Spiritually, I’m not sure how to explain the word relative to coming out. We have all had some sort of “ah ha” moment when after a long and arduous trip we’ve leapt, crawled, ran, or stumbled out.

     But to put it simply for myself the moment really materialized into reality when I learned how wonderful it is to affirm my friendship and love for my GLBT companions with a sincere kiss and or caress, and the swelling in my chest when I saw the stars and rainbow stripes flag bravely flying next to the red white and blue of our other flag on the suburban porch of a neat neighborhood brick bungalow–how proud they must be and how curious and proud I was to see their statement and maybe come to know them.

© 23
February 2013

About the Author