Organizing Gays: Part TWO Religion.
Discussing how Gays might harness the power of religion to organize and form Gay centric groups. About the possibilities in creating a new religios practice for Gays.
Introduction
In terms of organizing people into cohesive groups with strong group identities and committed to a purpose, religions and religious organizations are very effective and long lasting.
The Roman Catholic church is over 16 centuries if we count from when the early church split into Eastern and Western halves. Even Protestant denominations have lasted centuries. Outside the West we see Buddhist temples that have existed for centuries and other religious buildings equally as old.
Most of these organizations have members strongly identified with them and committed. They raise significant amounts of money for projects and constructions.
In many cases religious groups have a role in building a stronger identity for an ethnic or national group. Shinto strengthens Japanese identity. Buddhism and Thai identity are merged. In the Midwest where I grew up there were Swedish Lutheran, Norwegian Lutheran, and German Lutheran churches with services in those languages. Living in California there were Korean Baptist, Chinese Baptist churches. I knew Japanese who when growing up went to the Young Men Buddhist Association.
Religious groups provide support and social services for their members and others.
Importantly these groups exist outside political factions and often straddle class divides. Some religions are world-wide in scope with local adaptations.
It is important to examine how this powerful social phenomenon to organize people might be utilized for the benefit of the Gay community.
Gay people clustered together are likely to start other Gay organizations.
One of the critical benefits for the Gay community is that these institutions would exist as independent cultural organizations and thinking and not subject to the opinions of LGBTQXYZ social workers, university queer theorists, and the various political factions. Religions generally think they are to exist upholding values against the practices of the world, if necessary, in defiance of the world.
Before going forward, I want to make some things clear.
This essay isn’t about advocating that Gays should adopt a religion or that they should be atheists.
There will always be some Gays that have religious beliefs and there will be some that will be atheists just as it is in the general population. One of the things that really irks me are Gays who want to throw other Gays out of the Gay movement.
This essay will be critical of Christianity, as it is, as a means for organizing Gays, but it will also suggest alternative ways for Gays to be Christian.
For full disclosure I have an occasional Gay atheist action newsletter, but one of the fundamental principals is accepting that some people will always be religious and that the concern should be about only those religious that attack Gays and consider that some religious movements amongst Gays could be allies. The purpose is to mobilize Gay atheists to fight against anti-Gay religious.
This essay will be about the problems, challenges, and opportunities for Gay organizing by utilizing religion, but it isn’t going to suggest specifics, but instead outline the issues.
The lack of Gay religions and Gay denominations.
Some might remark there is already a Lesbian and Gay denomination, the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), but they aren’t by their own self-identification as not being a Gay church.
I was once talking and referred to the MCC as a Gay church, and several MCC members piped up with great concern and said simultaneously:
“MCC isn’t a Gay church, it is a church with a lot of Gay members.”
With an attitude like that, they aren’t a vehicle for organizing Gays. They are concerned how the greater Christian community sees them and worried that being a Gay church would undermine their legitimacy. They have defined themselves as being against Gay centric organizing and expelled themselves from the Gay community.
You won’t hear a member of a Korean Presbyterian Church saying, “We are just a Presbyterian Church with a lot of Korean members,” because they aren’t ashamed of being Korean or that their church is a Korean Church.
Some MCC members reading this essay, might reflect on how MCC might be a vehicle for Gay centric organizing, or at least not get in the way of organizing Gays by pushing their own personal religious agenda by criticizing the Gay community’s efforts to Gay centrically organized.
Problem with Gay Christian religious groups as they currently are.
As I said, what I am going to discuss is Gay Christianity as it is currently existing. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a type of Gay Christianity that is in alignment with Gay centric goals.
The first problem with Gay Christians is that they are usually advocates for Gay inclusion in some denomination. This necessarily requires an assimilationist policy to behave in ways that the straight people in the denomination would find acceptable to help these Gays win approval from straight Christians.
The second problem is that Gay Christianity doesn’t have a specific message for Gays and its practices are oriented to serve the needs of straight people without practices directed and for Gays. Even where there are possiblities to do so, it isn’t done.
Catholic bishops and other religious will perform blessings and prayers for a new building, fishing fleets are blessed, animals at zoos are blessed, athletic events are blessed, and many other things get blessings from religious groups.
When have you heard of a new bathhouse or Gay bar blessed by local clergy? I don’t believe even the MCC clergy have done this since it would embarrass them with the larger Christian community.
Could any clergy be found to bless a circuit party or one of the Gay parties, such as a Daddyland Festival? Maybe ask that the attendees find happiness and boyfriends.
Do any of the Christian denominations provide a ceremony to ask for God’s blessing to find a boyfriend?
If this seems fanciful or crazy to Gays, other religions do support Gay needs.
One of the major activities at the Taoist temple to Tu’er in New Taipei City, Taiwan is a ceremony to get Tu’er, a Gay god, to bless the efforts of the Gay person making the offering to find a Gay boyfriend. It seems to be successful since Gays talk about it working. I think that after a ceremony like that you are likely more focused and perhaps more confident and do get a boyfriend.
[I provide a link to an interesting short movie about Tu’er at the very end of this post. It has nearly 3 million views so far.]
Thai BL series, (BL from the Japanese expression “Boyzu Lovu”), are produced for fujoshi, (Japanese for rotten girl), straight women. They are about romances between adult men.
This link will provide an explanation.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-japanese-women-who-love-gay-anime
One of the BL movie companies had a big Buddhist ceremony to launch their production. The video is no longer online and the production company canceled their production. What was interesting was that at the beginning of the effort they had a big Buddhist ceremony to have the effort blessed. All the cast and production people were there and there were several Buddhist priests there, and it was a rather elaborate ceremony to launch the film. The activities of Gays are worth getting a blessing.
I have been engaged in studying Gay religious practices in other places where they have Gay religious practices oriented towards Gays to see what the Gay community here could learn. For example, there is this book.
It is about the LGBT religious groups in Thailand. A religion which acts to meet Gay needs is a possibility.
It isn’t impossible to have a Gay centric Christian faith. There are mystical Christian traditions which might be the basis of a Gay centric religious group. There is always the possibility of revelations.
However, Gay Christianity, as it generally is practiced now, is generally oriented towards straight acceptance by co-religionists in a specific denomination or it is like the MCC which seeks straight acceptance from what might be their co-religionists and fearful of being called a Gay church.
Though Gay Christians might squawk about this assessment of their activities, we don’t need to listen to them until there is a Christian Gay organization which doesn’t object being known as Gay and doesn’t say.
“We aren’t a Gay church; it is a church was a lot of Gay members.”
In fact, we don’t need to hear from them until they bless a Gay bathhouse, a Gay bar, or a Gay event.
Until then let them not get in the way of the larger interests of the Gay community.
Gay religious disaffiliation and the future of Gay religious organizing
This is a poll by the Pew Research Center in which it finds that Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Americans are considerably less religious.
This is the more detailed study and is easier to read.
Of the LGBT, all the Christian denominations are 48%, all the non-Christians religious together are 11%, and unaffiliated are 41%. Of the unaffiliated, 17% are atheist or agnostic, and the balance was “nothing in particular” 24%, which was composed of “religion not important,” 14% and “religion important,” 10%.
Religious affiliation is declining rapidly in the United States and particularly Christian denominational affiliation is declining rapidly.
However, there is a growing number of people who are what is called spiritual, but not religiously affiliated. The poll shows that 10% of Gays think religion is important, but they aren’t affiliated with any religion. As for those who feel religion is unimportant, (14%), people’s ideas change and also importantly it should be noted they aren’t self-declared atheists or agnostics either, they haven’t decided there are no gods..
Historically, often a large body of religiously unaffiliated persons or weakly affiliated persons are a fertile field for new religions to arise.
Even the rise of agnostic and atheistic faith may be in some part a reaction against the Christian right and its endless campaigning against Gay people. With a diminishing Christian presence in society it is not impossible that the precentage of agnostics or atheists might decline.
We should not look at the poll numbers as indicating that the religious possibilities for Gays are being shut down. Instead, we should see that with the rise of the unaffiliated religious we are seeing what historically is typically a great opportunity for new religions.
For Gay people the high percentage of unaffiliated might be largely because they aren’t offered alternative Gay religious choices, instead of choosing between Christianity and atheism.
The potential for new Gay religions is high. The risk that some unaffliated Gays will fall into a religion or cult that is anti-Gay is also there and so a Gay religion would prevent them from sort of free floating and in danger of falling into an anti-Gay religion.
Gay Pagans
There are Facebook pages for Gay pagans and Gay witches and similar religious groups. I don’t see them working to form Gay centric efforts, but I am not really familiar with their efforts. I plan on posting this in Facebook groups to find out.
The seems to be focused on self-healing and finding peace and individualistically self-focused. Maybe they are refugees from Evangelical religion and so that is why their focus is on themselves and healing. Here in Dallas a lot of the atheists are dealing with their Evangelical Christian past.
What I do know at the present is that they haven’t launched a Gay religion and I am not sure they even have considered the question or possibility of doing so.
Starting new religions, possibilities and challenges.
There are significant challenges to starting a Gay religion. Most people belong to the faith of their parents.
Also, the existing Gay religions tend to be bound to specific local, ethnic traditions. For example, the Temple of Tu’er, a Gay god, is part of the Taoist religious tradition of the Chinese people. It could be bound by its ethnic roots to be a Gay religion for Chinese Gays and it not be possible to bring to the United States or elsewhere. This might apply to other Gods.
Buddhism is more universal, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Gay Buddhists to have some Gay centric focus either.
Religious belief isn’t something you can turn on or off like an electric switch. However, generally those who find that their current religious practice fails their psychological needs are open to adopting new religions. Religious needs find a way and they have their own processes and are not bound by rationalist logic such as in science or mathematics. People do change religions.
There are four important factors to consider.
[1] In the Abrahamic faiths, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, belief there is the idea that you are all in or nothing. This isn’t true for other religions. For some non-Abrahamic faiths there are low barriers to being involved. You don’t have to be entirely a believer, or even have much belief at all to be participating in their activities.
In the Far East you might go to a temple, and there are participatory activities, like putting a message in a box, or tying a string or some nominal symbolic action.
In Bangkok, Thailand those hoping for love go to the Hindu Trimurti Shrine to place red roses and burn candles. At Buddhist and Shinto temples, they have Ema, small wooden plaques in which worshipers write messages or wishes and hang them on hooks. At the Chao Mae Sam Muk Shrine in Thailand you can write a message on a kite in hopes of love.
I think that if someone had a shrine for love in the United States, likely Gay couples would visit to do some symbolic action whether they were believers or not. Going to a shrine or temple would be a symbolic act for each other and it would be in a divine location for divinely valued Gay relationships.
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[2] Eastern religions are NOT exclusionary like the Abrahamic faiths. In the Abrahamic faiths you are either a true believer or you are an infidel or worse a heretic and if you left it, an apostate. Not being exactly all in and believing all of what a particular faith believes makes you a bad person, a criminal, an offender against god. The Abrahamic faiths have a long tradition of torturing and executing people who reject or deviate from the faith and its practices. The slur “faggot” derives from the fact that Gays were burned alive.
Outside the Abrahamic faiths, it is different. Their gods aren’t jealous like the Christian god. People can and do participate in multiple belief systems. Japanese go to both Buddhist and Shinto temples. Thai may go to Buddhist, Hindu and Indigenous god’s temples.
There is a famous Chinese painting, “Three laughs at Tiger Brook,” in which a Confucius scholar, a Buddhist monk, and a Taoist religious leader walk along through a beautiful landscape having a great time talking.
The three persons in the painting aren’t planning on how they are going to be burning each other at the stake.
A person in these religious traditions might remain primarily a member of one faith, but participate in a another religion to some extent. With a new Gay religion, we could see the same type of practice.
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[3] Religions are extendable. Hindus use bodies of water both here in the United States and in Britain.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-18102020
https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-bay-cleanup-focuses-on-hindu-ritual-items-120865074/163545.html
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/nov/02/guardiansocietysupplement
Religions that see the natural world being related to their religion would likely think that it includes the whole world and not stop at some border.
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[4] New religions start all the time including modern times as well as older religions given new adaptations, interpretations and directions. People fall asleep and dream and have revelations.
Usually all it needs is one individual who has a new religious faith and that it meets the needs of some in the Gay community.
Conclusion
In reflecting on these four points, if we think of a new Gay religion being like one of the Abrahamic faiths or denominations, it is very unlikely that a new Gay religious practice can be started.
However, if we think of a Gay religion designed and practicing like some Eastern religions with their low barriers to participation, non-exclusivity, and flexibility, it is very possible for there to be new religious practices for Gays.
A pleasant temple with good snacks, miscellaneous items for sale, and a ritual related to a common Gay concern could draw a regular crowd. The temple for Tu’er in Taiwan gets a regular stream of visitors of Gays performing a ritual hoping to find a boyfriend and sell soap with the image of Tu’er. I go to the Dallas Buddhist Temple because on Sunday they have numerous stalls selling Thai food. I am as religious as a materialist stone, but if a Gay temple had good food, I would show up.
These religions could also serve as a counter force against anti-Gay religious forces. They would certainly open up the question that there could be to faiths which are always pre-occupied with hating people.
They could be a significant force in the Gay community with their membership being only a few percent.
As for people who are agnostic, atheist, or irreligious, reflect that new Gay religions can greatly aid the Gay community and not attack them. It is of course alright to be non-religious, and to discuss the issues philosophically, but publicly mocking them really isn’t in the interests of the Gay community.
This process of getting Gay religions started, first starts with recognizing the need for a Gay religion and what it might be able to do and how it might be done, which is the point of this essay.
I think that if there is a person with a new religious idea, we should consider giving it some support if it is likely going to be popular in the Gay community regardless how much we might personally believe in that new faith.
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