History Revealed: Gospel according to Mary — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT #TheGnosticGospels

Last week, the service at my Unitarian Church (the Unitarian Universalist Church of Mt. Airy in Philadelphia) was about the Gospel of Mary Magdelene.  Since I was heavily influenced by the Gnostic Gospels when I was writing my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books; 2018), I was fascinated.

Also in my life, informing some of my other books, including The Unicorn, The Mystery (Adelaide Books; 2020), I have been heavily influenced by the Gnostic Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels can help people think in new ways, critical for this time. Consider that “gnosis” is the common Greek noun for “knowledge.” Perhaps, the reason the Gnostic Gospels are scorned is in the name: Gnostic (“knowing”). Apparently, it is heretical to know your own truth.

The Gnostic Gospels were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. There are some conflicting theories about when they were first written, but some historians say that they were written before the New Testament. The Gnostic Gospels were known throughout history – particularly in the Middle Ages – but were always banned by the Church.

The Gospel of Mary Magdelene was found in fragments (like much of the poet Sappho’s work).

I’ve decided to read a short excerpt from my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders inspired by The Gospel of Mary Magdelene.

cover image of THEY

intersexed Adam and Eve reclining with a tree growing out of them

Mary looked dejected. Thomas wanted to cheer her up.

“It does not matter,” Thomas said. “You and I are Yeshua’s favorites. We’re the only ones he trusts, really. He told me himself that there is no way to know that the apostles won’t abandon him in a crisis.”

“That’s true,” replied Mary. “Besides, we’ll be travelling with Yeshua when he performs his miracles. There’s nothing that Peter can say that will change that.” Mary nodded and then spoke: “Peter treats me like an adversary. But I am trying not to respond with anger. For one thing it would tarnish the feeling that I hold for Yeshua. I do feel that he can truly save us. Also, I know that the angry person’s wisdom is the seventh power of wrath.”

“What are the first six powers?” asked Thomas.

“The first form is darkness; the second, desire; the third, ignorance; the fourth, death wish; the fifth, fleshly kingdom, the sixth, foolish fleshly wisdom; and the seventh, as I told you, the angry person’s wisdom.”

Mary picked up her basket and glanced back toward the Temple. “I should go before the meeting is over and the men come out.”

Thomas looked at Mary with respect bordering on awe. Mary was wise, to be sure. She had much to offer.

You can also read an excerpt, written as standalone short fiction, in the online literary journal BlazeVOX15

Another excerpt is in the recent issue of Sinister Wisdom — the fortieth anniversary issue

A different excerpt is also in the aaduna literary magazine  (this excerpt was nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

Text excerpts from THEY and my introductions presented at UUCR (Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration) can be clicked on below.

To read the text to the “Descent of Ishtar” and the introduction (where I talk about ancient Babylon), click here.

To read the text to “Forty Days And Forty Nights” as well as my introduction, click here.

 THEY is available where books are sold online, from your local bookstores and library.

For more information on THEY, click here:

They: A Biblical Tale of Secret Genders: Mason, Janet: 9780999516430: Amazon.com: Books

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Biblical stories jumping to life — #Easter2024 #Transgenderdayofvisibility2024 #amreading

How wonderful that the Transgender Day of Visibility falls on the day of the Easter holiday this year! In honor of the occasion, I decided to post Vanda’s review of my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books) that she wrote for Amazon.

Vanda, author of Juliana Series

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fanscinating Read

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2018

All the Bible stories from your childhood suddenly jump to life in Janet Mason’s new novel. They. The manner in which they are presented I found to be a lot of fun.
The story is about a woman named Tamar who lives in ancient times, around the same time as Joseph who had the cool colorful coat. Tamar and her family live in tents; she is obsessed by her camel, Aziza, who she keeps reminding everyone is not a camel, but a dromedary because she only has one hump. Her friends and family don’t seem to care a fig about the difference, but it is very important to Tamar. She and her dromedary have a special relationship as important to her as her relationships with her friends. Aziz is so important to Tamar that she has her sleep inside, an action that will later bring her problems.
I, especially, enjoyed discovering Biblical characters though their stories and name. I was part of the discovery. I’m watching people from a different time period living their lives and suddenly I realize their talking about someone I know. As a young teenager I was in search for answers. so I read the Bible cover to cover looking for those answers. I don’t know that I found any answers, but I enjoyed the stories. The way the stories are told do not sound Biblical, they sound human.
The main character, Tamar, takes us through the whole book. She even dies and lives in the book as a spirt. Then she ends up in a womb until she is born again into a new life.
Gender is flexible in these Biblical stories. Although the people are as hung up about gender as we are—I guess we probably got this way because of them. The different genders appears. Tamar in her first life has an lesbian experience that she wanted to continue, but the other woman couldn’t accept Tamar’s favorite camels sleeping in the same hut. There were also intersex twins who lived their lives as males because this was the preferred sex.

You can also read an excerpt, written as standalone short fiction, in the online literary journal BlazeVOX15

Another excerpt is in the recent issue of Sinister Wisdom — the fortieth anniversary issue

A different excerpt is also in the aaduna literary magazine  (this excerpt was nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

Text excerpts from THEY and my introductions presented at UUCR (Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration) can be clicked on below.

To read the text to the “Descent of Ishtar” and the introduction (where I talk about ancient Babylon), click here.

To read the text to “Forty Days And Forty Nights” as well as my introduction, click here.

 THEY is available where books are sold online, from your local bookstores and library.

For more information on THEY, click here:

They: A Biblical Tale of Secret Genders: Mason, Janet: 9780999516430: Amazon.com: Books

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Musings on the Bible and imagination — #amwriting #LGBTQ #Bible

I’m still getting comments about the novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books — New York/Lisbon) that was published in 2018.

The recent comments were “what Bible are you reading?” and “You have it all wrong.”

Musing this morning, I realized that there is a connection.

Like it or not, the Bible is made of myths. Myth is defined as a story …”especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.”

It sounds to me that this dictionary definition of “myth” is about the Bible. Of course, there are many other holy books or creation stories. When I read the Bible, it was natural for me to imagine myself and others in it. In particular, I wondered how marginalized people (including women) survived in a fierce patriarchal desert climate. That’s how THEY was born.

I would say that it’s impossible to be wrong when you start to imagine.

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

To learn more about my latest published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:

The Unicorn, The Mystery now available from Adelaide Books — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT

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The Bible and the rise of LGBTQ suicide —#LGBTQHistoryMonth

 

Recently, I read with considerable consternation that suicide rates among LGBTQ youth are up — again.

Then I was targeted online with anti-LGBT citations from the New Testament. I was tempted to let this go — like most writers I have moved onto other topics — but then it occurred to me that there is a connection between anti-gay sentiment in the Bible and LGBTQ youth committing suicide.  Young people are being taught that they don’t matter — and the few anti-gay passages in the Bible are trickling into the bully culture of mainstream society.

My first thought was that citing the anti-gay passages from the Bible does not make one a Biblical expert.  In fact, the second citation was wrong.  The first citation from Romans (which Biblical scholars believe was written by the Apostle Paul who is believed to have been gay himself, unfortunately with no small amount of internalized homophobia) is one of the few (if not the only) references in the Bible to lesbianism. The citation reads, “women exchanged natural relations for those contrary to nature.”

To which I reply, “Good for them!”

It’s nice to know that some 2,000 years ago, same sex passion did exist and was important enough to have several mentions in the Bible.

There are plenty of references to men engaging in “unnatural” passions with each other. But what I noticed most when I read part of the Bible as research for my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders is the intense misogyny.  By comparison, the anti-gay parts seemed to drop away.  It is after all — one (patriarchal ) history of the creation of the world. Some would say it is THE history of the world.  But there are plenty of creation myths. Then there is science.  The Bible just happens to be a very popular set of creation myths.

There are also, beyond a doubt, some absolutely beautiful passages in the Bible. So rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water, I have decided to claim the parts of the Bible that suit me.

 

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

 

 

 

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THEY excerpted in LGBT Book Buzz — #amreading #LGBTQ

THEY, A Biblical Tale of Secret Genders by Janet Mason (an excerpt)

Genre: LGBT Literature or Fiction

The following is excerpted (Chapter Five) from THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders by Janet Mason (Adelaide Books ñ New York/Lisbon) the novel of which LGBTQ icon and Biblical scholar, Amos Lassen, has written:

THEY is a groundbreaker and I am sure that the author will agree with me that attempting to add new meaning to given bible stories is tantamount to heresy. I have no doubt that she will suffer repercussions from those who do not agree with her approach. Personally, I found her story to not only be wonderfully written but charming and liberating to us who have lived in a binary world for too long.

“Close your eyes and imagine the long ago city of Babylon, in a land called Mesopotamia, near the mighty Tigris.  A gentle wind blew.  There was a beautiful Goddess named Ishtar. She was also known as the Queen of the Night,” said Tamar.

“Which night, Auntie?” asked Pharez, sitting on the floor of Tamar’s tent, playing with one of the  figurines.  Zerah crawled toward the camel Aziz.

“Zerah, look at Pharez’s doll. See how pretty? Here’s another one just like it.” Tamar grabbed a clay figurine from the woven basket.  Zerah came crawling back.

“Ishtar was called the Queen of the Night because she was known as the goddess of love and …  well of love,” said Tamar.

Ishtar was the goddess of love, war, fertility, and sexuality.  And she may have been a sacred  prostitute.  Tamar felt protective of the twins.  They were too young to hear about war and sex.

“What did the goddess look like, Auntie?”   Zerah looked up at her with big brown eyes under long thick lashes. The child was sitting cross legged.

“She was tall and beautiful and she had wings,” answered Tamar. “She had a face like… well a goddess … with wide set eyes shaped like almonds and a high forehead under a crown that was piled very high with ridges like a fancy temple. She held her arms up. Her hands grasped two

loops of rope that also may have been hand mirrors. Her two pet owls were usually by her side.”

“Ooooh owls! Do you have an etching?” Pharez dropped the figurine.

“I have one that we can look at later, but first I want to tell you the story of someone “That’s what happens to us eventually. We cease to exist.  But don’t worry.  It won’t happen for a long, long time. And if you meet a spirit guide like Asushunamir it might not happen at all.”

Tamar told herself that lying was okay if it made people feel better — especially children.

“How did the spirit guide save the goddess?”

Tamar could tell now that it was Pharez who was asking the questions.  Pharez’s nose was a little

more snub than Zerah’s.  They had the same oval faces ending in pointy chins.

“I was just about to tell you that,” continued Tamar.

“Ishtar wanted to go somewhere new and she had never gone to the underworld where her evil sister, Ereshkigal, ruled.”

“Ha. Ha.”  Zerah covered hir mouth with a small hand.

“Evil sister,” repeated Pharez. “It sounds like you and mama.”

Zerah shot Pharez a look.

The twins were silent.  Both looked down. The fringe of their long lashes covered their secrets.

Tamar wondered what Tabitha had told them.  Her sister had left the twins while she went shopping at the market.  She said she would be back this afternoon. They had agreed not to tell the twins that they were sisters, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about one of them blurting it out around Judah. They told them that Tamar was a good friend of their mother’s. The twins called her “Auntie.”

Unless she was busy, Tamar always watched the twins.  Sometimes it felt like they were her children. She loved them that much.

“Ishtar wanted to go to the underworld.  But first she had to ask the other gods if she could go. They ignored her so she asked again and then again. Finally, they said she could go.”

Tamar paused.

“The underworld had many gates,” she continued.  “There were seven in total.  Ishtar came to the first gate and rang the bell. Claaanggg. There was one ring for the first gate and two for the second gate and so on. Ishtar rang the bell and waited.  She tapped her foot.  Finally, the gatekeeper came, but he did not open the gate.  Like most goddesses, Ishtar had a temper.

To read more on LGBT Book Buzz, click here:

https://www.lgbtbookbuzz.com/they-a-biblical-tale-of-secret-genders-by-janet-mason-read-an-excerpt/?fbclid=IwAR0MMG0hIUlyIHMuc-VIy9_S2CnLoK71PscJnDmfihtxpvgIPq6LQE5mvhQ

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

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Local author reclaims the Bible for LGBTQ in her latest novel — #amreading #LGBTQ — THEY in the Philadelphia Gay News!

Many thanks to the Philadelphia Gay News for the article they ran this week before my reading at the Penn Book Center (with Anjali Mitter Duva) at the fiction series at the Penn Book Center, 130 S. 34th St., on the University of Pennsylvania campus, Jan. 30 at 6:30 p.m.

Mt. Airy author Janet Mason is well known on the Philadelphia literary circuit and within the local LGBTQ community for her provocative writing that includes poetry, memoir and fiction. Her last book, “Tea Leaves,” won the Golden Crown Literary Award for lesbian memoir.

Mason’s new novel is set primarily in biblical times. “THEY: A Biblical Tale of Secret Genders” (Adelaide Books, $22) is quite different from Mason’s other work. The novel details the story of Tamar of the Hebrew Bible and a twin sister Tabitha, Tabitha’s intersex twins and the dawning of the concept of defining male gender as preferential, along with the concept of gender as finite — two genders with no variants.

Mason, who will be reading (with Anjali Mitter Duva) at a fiction series at the Penn Book Center on Jan. 30, delves deeply into the variants with her lesbian protagonist and the character’s family.

It’s a complicated story that evolved over the past couple of years as Mason experienced her own awakening with regard to religion, the Bible and gender.

“I was raised secular,” Mason said. Her mother, the subject of “Tea Leaves,” was “a Bible-burning atheist.”

About five years ago, Mason joined the Unitarian Universalist Church where she became a lay minister.

“I started reading the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, which I’ve always been curious about,” Mason said. “There is some great stuff in both books of the Bible, but there’s also a fair amount of misogyny and violence. I remember that in my high-spirited 20s, I announced at some opportune time that someone needed to rewrite the Bible.”

Mason says while reading the Bible for the first time, “I came across the story of Tamar in Genesis, the muse descended, and I was off and running. I was also influenced by taking yoga and developing a daily practice that included Buddhist meditation.”

Other influences included “knowing a young family on my block whose child transitioned at age 5 to become a happy little girl. I was also reviewing several books on trans issues,” Mason explained. “Later, when I was finished writing the novel, I found out that Biblical scholars — including a rabbi who published a piece in The New York Times — had found that the Hebrew Bible, in particular, did have original words such as ‘they’ to connote both and all genders.”

 At a time when the political climate has turned anti-LGBTQ and evangelicals seem to have taken ownership of the Bible, Mason said she wanted to “send the message that we are all valued. The evangelicals definitely don’t ‘own’ religion, even if they think they do. Many of their children are staying in the religion and changing it to be more liberal. And there are plenty of liberal religions — and they are changing, too.” Religion, she says, “is becoming more inclusive of LGBTQ people.”

For Mason, “Working on ‘THEY’ was my way of entering the stories and myths of the Bible made real to me by my imagination. My hope is that ‘THEY’ might be an opening for some to enter the stories and find that there’s room for them, too.”

Though Mason is currently promoting her new book with readings and book signings, she is also working on new projects, which include revising another novel titled “The Unicorn, The Mystery,” of which several sections were recently short-listed for the Adelaide Literary Prize.

“It’s a novel that is set in an abbey in medieval times where several nuns who happen to be in love with each other live. A monk and a talking unicorn narrate
the story.”

Mason will be reading (with Anjali Mitter Duva) at the fiction series at the Penn Book Center, 130 S. 34th St., on the University of Pennsylvania campus, Jan. 30 at 6:30 p.m.

(interview by Victoria Brownworth for PGN)

 

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THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders — preview of new novel #transpositive #LGBTQ #amwriting

In this post, I wanted to give you a preview of my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders.  Three sections have been presented at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia).  The YouTube videos are below.  Short fiction excerpts of the novel have been published in several journals.  And one journal nominated a section for the Pushcart Prize.  The links to the journals are below the YouTube videos.

THEY is a novel based on the Bible (with some creative interpretations) and has gender fluid, intersex characters.  It also includes some strong female and gentle men characters who act on their passions and, in some instances, live as LGBT people.  But the novel (which also includes some carry overs from goddess culture) begins somewhere in the time period of 800 to 600 bce (before the common era) and that was definitely before labels!

The three YouTube videos below are excerpts from THEY  are in consecutive order from past to present.

 

 

 

 

You can also read an excerpt, written as standalone short fiction, in the online literary journal BlazeVOX15

Another excerpt is in the recent issue of Sinister Wisdom — the fortieth anniversary issue

A different excerpt is also in the aaduna literary magazine  (this excerpt was nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

Text excerpts from THEY and my introductions presented at UUCR (Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration) can be clicked on below.

To read the text to the “Descent of Ishtar” and the introduction (where I talk about ancient Babylon), click here.

To read the text to “Forty Days And Forty Nights” as well as my introduction, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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#VoteBlue — a UU Dharma Talk

 

Note: The following is a talk I gave at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration Sunday morning July 17 2016.  You can see most of the talk on YouTube be clicking here.

 

When I was a pre-teen, my mother gave me a book called Courageous Women, which was a young adult reader about women’s suffrage.

The book reminded me that not all people have always had the right to vote. The fifteenth amendment, passed in 1870 gave black men the right to vote.   A half century later, in 1920, the nineteenth amendment was ratified, giving all women the right to vote.

The passage of both amendments involved long, hard and violent struggles.

Frederick Douglas, a social reformer, orator, writer, statesman and former slave was a leading abolitionist.

Susan B. Anthony was a social reformer and feminist and one of the women who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement.

There were many black women who also played pivotal roles in women’s suffrage. Anna Julia Cooper was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a commemorative postage stamp in 2009.

She was known for her statement: “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter in the quiet undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence or special patronage; then and there the whole black race enters with me.”

Only propertied white men had the vote until 1856 the year that it was determined that all white men could vote regardless of whether they owned property or not.

When as an adult, later in life, I became a Unitarian Universalist, I discovered a religion that embodies civic duty in all of its principles, perhaps especially in the second principle “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;” and also in the sixth principle “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”

As Rev. Emily Gage, reflects on the Unitarian Universalist Assembly website, “Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations points us toward something beyond inherent worth and dignity. It points us to the larger community. It gets at collective responsibility. It reminds us that treating people as human beings is not simply something we do one-on-one, but something that has systemic implications and can inform our entire cultural way of being.

“Compassion is something that we can easily act on individually. We can demonstrate openness, give people respect, and treat people with kindness on our own. But we need one another to achieve equity and justice.”

The larger community and collective responsibility. That’s what I learned about in my childhood book Courageous Women.

My mother was born in 1919 — a year before women won the right to vote. Perhaps having older parents gave me a different sense of history as well as an enhanced understanding that history is important.

In 1972, when I was thirteen, Shirley Chisholm ran for national office.  I paid attention.  Here was history in the making.  She was paving the way for African American people and women of all races to be presidential candidates.

I grew up to have a close friend who not only voted for Shirley Chisholm but was a delegate. And it is not surprising that Chisholm made an appearance in my writing — Art, a novel of revolution, love and marriage. It is fiction but definitely autobiographical when I wrote of my character:

“Five years ago Grace was watching the nightly news when Walter Cronkite announced that Shirley Chisholm, an African American congresswoman from New York, was running for the Democratic nomination for president against the incumbent Richard Milhous Nixon. Grace was just thirteen in 1972, but she remembered thinking things would be different.  She didn’t think she’d ever run for president.  But if Shirley Chisholm could, maybe girls could do anything.”

I voted as soon as I was able too. When I moved to Germantown in my early twenties, I was proud to stand in line with my neighbors — most of them African American men and women.  We were doing what was demanded of us.  Voting is not just a right. It is a responsibility.

Around that time, I came out as a lesbian. One of my favorite T-shirts was a black shirt with a pink triangle on it with black letters on the triangle that read:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This widely-known poem was written by Pastor Martin Niemellör about the cowardice of German intellectuals in Nazi Germany.

My T-shirt was lost in some long ago Laundromat but its sentiment stayed with me.

I could have done without the rocks being hurled through our bedroom window or the numerous instances of workplace harassment, but being a lesbian has given me some firsthand knowledge of oppression. For one thing, it may in fact be natural to respond to hatred with hatred — but it is not healthy, necessary, or productive.  I have not evolved to the point where as it says in The New Testament in Matthew, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

But I do think there might be something to that.

I also learned that we have more in common than we may think and it is very important for us to stick together. Civic duty and collective responsibility is certainly a big part of that.

Ecclesiastes in The Hebrew Bible and in the Christian Old Testament states in part:

“1  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2  a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3  a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4  a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5  a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing   ….”

Now it is up to us. It is our time.

We have one vote, one voice. Think about your one vote and the difference it can make.

It’s time to be counted.

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Religion and the LGBT community: 3 Books to Find Faith

Lately, I’ve been warming up to religion. Like many in the LGBT community, I had managed to avoid the whole thing. I haven’t so much run from it. Thank God, I was raised by a Bible-burning, atheist mother — something that I wrote about in my book Tea Leaves: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters.

But I kept religion at a distance. Then I started going to a nearby Unitarian Universalist church. It started with a crisis, of course, like many religious conversions. I was laid off from a high-stress job. But it was more than that. I was a mess — physically and spiritually. I felt like I looked: fried. An old friend who was a yoga instructor suggested that my partner and I take her yoga class at the UU church where she is the music director. When my partner began drumming there some Sundays, I went with her. I liked it so much that I became a member and then joined the lay ministers.

To me joining a church was a major leap of faith. I was concerned how many I have known over the years, would take the news. Some were surprised. I overheard someone who we had known for many years saying, “Janet joined a church?” A close friend asked abruptly, “What gives, Janet? A church?” I told her that it was about community, and she could understand that. It’s also about diversity — including sexual orientation, age, gender and race as well as religious, or lack of, background. Fortunately, many of my friends calmed down when they heard it was a UU church the place where people sing Holly Near songs and Sweet Honey in the Rock on Sunday mornings. Becoming a UU has broadened my horizons. For one thing, I found out that many have been damaged by early religious experiences — even many who were not LGBT. This gave me pause.

I understood intellectually, of course, but it took me a while to really “get” that LGBTQ teens were killing themselves because they thought that they were going to hell. My secular intellectual background translated hell into mythology (starting with Greek mythological creation stories ) and literature (I’ve always loved the Divine Comedy). These teens, however, were told they were going to hell by their communities. And hell was real to them. They were told that their lives with not worth living.

Traditional Christianity is not my path. But there is hope. Rev. Al Sharpton writing on The Huffington Post addressed the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that was signed by Governor Mike Pence last week, by stating that “My religious conviction compels me to fight for civil rights and social justice; I don’t divide the two. Each and every one of us must speak out against this egregious Indiana law.”

When I read Gay Conversations With God: Straight Talk On Fanatics, Fags and the God Who Loves Us All by James Alexander Langteaux from Findhorn Press, I had a little snicker. The author was a senior producer and host of the Christian 700 club. He writes that invariably after an “ex-gay” show (where men who had been through so-called reparative, conversion and ex-gay therapy all of which is condemned by the American Psychiatric Association), the “cured” men would hit on him. His response was that it sounded fun, but what would their lesbian wives and their 17 children think. My snicker at this hypocrisy stayed with me as a kind of joy that arose every time I heard anything about the 700 club. I came to think that maybe God (feel free to substitute any other word that works for you, Divine, Great Spirit and definitely She as well as He) wants me to feel that joy. The sad part of the author’s experience is that he was struggling with his own sexuality at the time and the ex-gay overtures only made him depressed. But he also talks about his faith in terms of “pure love:”

“Perfect love casts out all fear. And on that final day as you stand in the presence of that perfect love, the last thing you will feel… is queer.”

The book is written glibly but leaves no doubt that the author has been through it — as a result of being gay and Christian.

In The Peace Seeker (Peace Seeker Press) author Susan E. Gilmore goes deeper in relating her struggles between her sexuality and her strong faith in the Baptist religion in which she was raised which instilled her with “an unwavering confidence that the Bible was the infallible word of God and that every word was correct and could be relied on for spiritual truth and everyday wisdom.” The Peace Keeper talks about her observation from a young age of the church’s position that the role of women “was to be submissive to men.” The author is bright, intelligent and driven — qualities that any organization (including her church) should develop and put to use. Instead, she was thrown out of Bible college for having an “inappropriate” sexual and romantic relationship with another female student. Ultimately, she is accepted by another Bible college and goes abroad to do missionary work.

Since her entire life is based in her religion, the author partners with other Christian women. This is during the late ’70s and early ’80s and there was a lesbian community in existence. At one point when she comes home and becomes involved with another partner, the two of them attend a church together, but stay in the closet. What follows is a harrowing tale of the couple being broken up by the church members and elders. Susan left that church, but at no point does she consider changing her religion or leaving it entirely. Her faith was that strong.

Susan finds love again with another Christian woman, and together they find a church that embraces them because one of the pastors’ mind and heart had been opened because he had a gay brother who had been treated badly by the church. This man checked in with the two women, encouraged them to come out, and accepted them as a couple. It would be nice if this part of the story ended there. However, this pastor’s acceptance created considerable division among the congregation. The church leadership, however, encouraged them to stay. Susan generously describes the situation: “Some church members fully accept us; others remain on the path to understanding.”

Coming Out in Faith: Voices of LGBTQ Unitarian Universalists edited by Susan A. Gore and Keith Kron was, as I anticipated, a breath of fresh air. The writers in this collection share their experiences of being amazed at being around straight allies who are genuinely not homophobic. Social justice is a strong component of Unitarian Universalism and LGBT rights are important among them.

One of the writers is Drew Johnston who identifies as “a queer bi/trans Unitarian Universalist.” Drew relates the experience of transitioning while being a UU minister. Drew attended a potluck dinner and took questions from the congregation. One person asked about gendered pronouns. “Did I prefer male or female …. Then I heard myself finally answer the question. I said I like it when people at least alternate. I said, ‘Then I feel seen.'”

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