John Burridge

Last Saturday, I wanted to march in the Eugene Pride parade while holding Mark’s hand. Retrospectively, I had an unconscious desire to recreate the magical NYC Pride float experience of 2023, only with Mark this time. This was probably at odds with Mark’s disinclination to participate in public events, like dancing, or the Saturday Market, or Eugene LGBTQ+ choral performances, or the Eugene Bright Parade. Which can bring out his contrarian side.

On one hand, two over-fifty, gay, married men holding hands while one of them waved a small rainbow flag is a political statement about gay life, gay liberty, and the pursuit of gay happiness; on the other hand my imagining of the moment involved fast-paced 1970’s disco, and gauzy rainbow on the edges—I’m pretty sure in my vision we weren’t marching so much as gliding. So probably more fabulous than what was going to happen.

This year the Pride Celebration was moved up from August in Alton Baker Park to June in the Lane County Fairgrounds. Of course this caused controversy. I prefer having Eugene Pride in June when it’s typically cooler; and I’d much rather march in the rain at the end of grass pollen season than under a 95°F August sun in the middle of wildfire smoke season. Security was also a concern: it’s easier to put up fencing around the fairground venues than it is a city park. The security measures also meant a bag-check for non-clear bags and no signs, banners, or flags larger than 11X18 inches.

Mark wanted to skip the rally at Kesey Square and just join the 10:30 parade from the square to the fairgrounds. Since dealing with the car would probably be a rigamarole, we opted to walk downtown—which takes about twenty-five minutes. Between yoga, looking after a neighbor’s animals, dealing with some of The Child’s childhood junk treasures, slathering on sun screen, and taking the dog to the dog park—but no gay brunch—we started out not quite as early as I would have liked. Which necessitated a brisk walk—water bottle swinging from my belt; 12X18-inch pride flag in my hand; and keys, tickets, mobile, and wallet in my back pockets. It was already a clear-skied 72°F.

Somewhere along Willamette Street my paper ticket to Pride worked its way out of my back pocket.

We got to Kesey Square at 10:32. It was quiet. And empty. An abandoned, pink, open, VooDoo Donuts box did its best tumbleweed imitation next to the statue of Ken Kesey. I still don’t know if the parade started early, or if the rally decamped to a different march staging area.

We walked west on Broadway Street toward the fairgrounds and met some other folks also looking for the march.

Mark noticed my rising Sun-in-Capricorn-Moon-in-Virgo-You’re-Doing-It-Wrong-This-Is-Why-We-Can’t-Have-Nice-Things sense of frustration and advised me to breathe out frustration and breathe in calm. Or something. We found a bakery with chocolate brownies, macarons, and coffee for Mark.

As we were paying, someone behind the register took in my black T-shirt with a Progress Pride flag on it, my Rainbow flag, and very likely my Hair and asked for a social media photo.

Fortified with the photo-op and some little white bags of baked goods, we soldiered on, ever westward.

As we neared Franklin Street, I caught the sounds of drums, and we could see police blocking off streets. We were just in time to insert ourselves into the tail end of the parade and jockeyed for a space between various other groups based on whatever it was their signs and banners read. No one resurrected the chant, “Hey-hey, ho-ho…”.

I waved my little Pride flag. “Hey, Mark,” I said. “Give me those bags.”

“I can carry them,” Mark said.

I eyed the small cup of coffee in his other hand. “But I wanna hold your hand.”

“Where’s your brownie?” he said.

“I snarfed it as soon as we left the bakery.”

I held the flag and the bags in one hand and Mark’s hand in the other. It was nice for about sixty seconds until I had to let go of Mark’s hand to push my hair out of my face. Which prompted mock-protests of a typical Leo nature from Mark about being abandoned.

Five blocks later the parade transmogrified into a fairground entrance line. After an interval of shuffling, during which I realized that I could display my ticket on my phone, we made it through the Event Center back entrance doors and emerged next to a stage where dancers we wanted to see were scheduled.

We sat down in the audience section and got blasted by loudspeakers during a sound system accident.

Mark thought having Pride in the Fairgrounds venue made it seem like a combination of the Eugene Holiday Market or Boat/Home Show, which was a little cramped and overwhelming for him. He would have liked vendor booths arranged circularly around a central performance area instead of the grid layout they used. He also missed being able to picnic on the grass (which is hard to have inside).

I did like being in the shaded, if not air-conditioned, indoors; but it would have been nice to have picnic tables set up.

The dance groups were entertaining and interesting.

Prompted by the experience with parade, I made a point of asking someone at the information table where the after-party dance was going to be held (since the location wasn’t clear). We bumped into four folks we knew and had quick updates with them.

And then we were done.

We walked back home.

I spent the afternoon digging through an unorganized collection of mostly papers looking for my party ear-plugs. I found them behind some coffee-table books on Ancient Egyptian Art.

Around 7 p.m., I drove to the 21+ after-party dance event, which was located next to the Lane County Events Center, in an old Quonset hut. In some ways, it was a throw-back to the dance floor, twenty years ago, at Perry’s on Pearl; only with newer songs. And much less clothing. With go-go boys.

The music was danceable, and I was glad for the earplugs. I had fun, and I was dancing by myself in a Quonset hut filled with people. I thought about braving the long line to purchase a soft drink or mocktail, and wound up paying $3 for a 16oz bottle of water. I danced to the four quarters, and stayed in my body. I danced and danced, and only realized the music kept on playing a half-hour after the dance’s official end when I looked at my phone.

The crescent moon hung above the western horizon as I walked past folks breaking down chairs and booths; past the deflated rainbow arch at the Event Center front entrance; through the main parking lot and over a creek, to where the car waited in auxiliary parking.

After at least twenty years, I've finally managed to get my hands on a 2003 copy of “Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe,” by Christopher Penczak. It’s a Wicca 101 book, highlighted with gay overtones. It’s the sort of book I would have loved in the 1980s; it appears to be grounded in sources like Margot Adler, Janet and Stewart Farrar, Marija Gimbutas, Charles Leland, Starhawk, and Native American practices. Early chapters are a survey of world pantheons with a focus on gay, lesbian, and transgender deities where applicable. Later chapters are quick sketches of astrology, reiki, crystal healing, and herbal remedies.

It’s more same-sex centered than “The Gay Wicca Book,” by Bruce K Wilborn. It does have some ritual and practices for same-sex lovers, but it’s not really a gay essentialist tome in the way Storm Faerywolf’s more earthy “Satyr’s Kiss” is. Specifically, the Great Rite—placing an athame (ritual blade) into a chalice—is presented as a symbol for the heteronormative union of the Horned God and the Great Mother, i.e. Heiros Gamos, which in itself is a symbol for the union of cosmic principles. While I appreciated the handful of paragraphs exploring the Oak and Holly Kings recast as lovers, I did wish for more exploration of cis gay male eros, agape, and amore as a source of gay gnosis and as a lens for queer praxis within the framework of American Wicca.

To work beyond the book, it could be fruitful to one’s personal practice to explore decoupling elemental tools and directions from a male or female view. I’m not sure if that would make, say, a wand both masculine and feminine, neither male nor female, or some other intersection of the gender continuum. Perhaps it could be useful to move linguistically from statements like “fire is male” to “fire has male” (in the same way that one might say “he has hunger” instead of “he’s hungry.”) At the very least a reexamination of how gender and desire are woven into symbolic correspondences would result in more mindful symbolic acts, i.e. rituals.

I suppose to continue the decoupling, one could explore silent, mimed ritual. (Pause to imagine Wiccans trapped in a glass box.) Hmm. Maybe not. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

I discovered paintings by Wes Hempel the other day.  I don't know why I hadn't run across Hempel's work earlier, as he's been painting for about twenty years, and he seems to be exploring a reworking of queer stories and myth in painting.  Maybe I hadn't heard about him before because he seems to be working from a Christian foundation, and not so much from a Neo-Pagan one.

Although there is a Judeo-Christian vibe to the paintings, they speak to my sense of being a gay man navigating life and spiritual issues.   I like the painting, "Stuck," where a strapping boxer is trying to take off his gloves so he can eat a feast spread out before him.   The only problem is that he has to take off his gloves before he can eat.  He almost appears to be trying to gnaw his gloves off at the wrist.

One of his paintings, "Reoccurring Dream" has a shirtless man standing in rising water in a white tiled room.  When I saw it, I had an aha! moment because it could have come out from one of my dreams.  

There was another painting where a strapping shirtless man is posed like a mother.  He's surrounded by small children, toys, and soccer balls, and he looks exhausted.   It looks exactly like a 1800's painting of a mother on display at the Portland Art Museum.  I like Hempel's image of a sexually desirable (but harried looking) father and how the two aspects interact (or don't)

Other paintings similarly feel as if they were telling my stories as a gay man.  I particularly like "Book of Shadows."

Hempel manages to paint beefcake that's more than beefcake.  The nude or semi-nude male body is a powerful and subversive image, and he manages to make his paintings subversive with erotic overtones, while managing to not stray into explicit or gratuitous images.  Well, maybe a little gratuitous.

When I think about images of NeoPagan Deity I usually run across, the gods imagined are oiled up with a strategically placed vines or wolf pelts draped across their loins as they gaze out of the picture with smoldering bedroom eyes.  Or they're body builders, tattoed or artfully dirty, holding up animal horns to their brows and pouting like underwear models.  Or else they're about to perform The Great Rite  with a buxoum, blonde, blue-eyed goddess.  And actually, I don't need to see depictions of two men performing The Great Rite because my spirituality is more than just a queer retelling of Heiros Gamos.   Hempel's paintings have embodied men navigating questions, they are working through something instead of being merely pleasing objects.

And they're easy on the eyes.

A while back I read The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, by Cynthia Eller (Chapter One excerpt: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/eller-myth.html).  I keep referencing it, and I realized I hadn't blogged about it much.


The basic gist of The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory is that the prehistoric record is such that no one can say with certainty anything about prehistoric people other than things like, "they left behind these ruins," or "they buried people this way," or "they produced these sculptures and drawings." Eller then goes on a point-by-point argument against the story of a golden, pre-historic age (roughly 5000 to 2500 BCE) where society was centered on women, in which women were revered for their mysterious life-giving powers and honored as incarnations of the great goddess, and which was subsequently somehow transformed into what is called "patriarchy."

Eller concludes that the story of a golden age of woman-centered society (especially a pan-European one spanning over 2000 years) is a myth which should not be treated as historical fact.  As a myth, Eller argues that it is neither helpful as a guide for how women and men conceptualize their self-perceptions of gender and how the genders relate (her view is that the myth engenders sexism by heightening the differences between male and female), nor is the myth of prehistoric matriarchy required as a template from which to model a future society that has reached feminist goals (since it's a myth, it's not a history we're doomed to repeat; let's move on to equality).  She concludes, however, that adherents of the story of a golden age of prehistoric matriarchy are unlikely to abandon their "passionate hope and religious faith" in the story.

Eller's tone is sarcastic in places, and I found myself saying "ouch!" after reading several passages.  I did wonder at times if she was using particularly silly sources (ala Philip Davis in Goddess Unmasked).  However, I would recommend The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and I found it useful for generating the following questions:

• Does Harry Hay's story of the Qeddishim count as a "Golden Age of Male 'Homo-archy'?"
  
• Golden Age stories seem to feed into 'apocalyptic end-times,' 'after the revolution' or to 'boosting self-esteem' thinking; is there another way to incorporate them into a world view?
  
• As someone who is seeking the Divine Queer, is there such a thing as a "divine queer way of knowing?"  How would a story help to weave together our erotic, the spiritual, and mental lives -- and how would my story as a gay man be different from someone with a different gender and orientation?   Or, to put it another way, is a book like "Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-sex Love" (in the Eugene Library, 0974638838) going to be useful?

In applying The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory to my own experiences and observations as a gay man, I came up with the following:

In my experience, gay men have tried to seek myths of how gay men have functioned in various other cultures (for example, Greek, Japanese, First Nations).  The rational behind using other cultures as material for gay myths has been to bolster gay self-esteem by providing modern U.S. gay men with prototype gay ways of being.

These myths are unsatisfying to me because I am neither an aristocratic warrior nor an indigenous pre-industrial native.  And instead of synthesizing new cultural solutions to the question of what it means to be a gay man, it seems to me that there are many "Indian-wanna-bes" trying to heal their self-esteem issues by being something they aren't.

This is not to say that the myth of a prehistoric matriarchy would motivate women the same way that my gay male examples seem to motivate gay men.

There is also a "Golden Age" in American Gay Culture, which would have been around 1980 in New York City (post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS).  This golden age helps support the stereo-type of the urban gay male (think Will and Jack from Will and Grace and the Bravo TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy).  As evidence for my supposition that the gay golden age promotes stereotypes, I'd present the movie, Jeffry; and the novels An Arrow's Flight, by  Mark Merlis and Like People in History by Felice Picano.  These are mostly literary sources, and could be biased.

But - like the myths borrowed from other cultures - this golden age (at least as it is represented in cultural and literary sources) is not helpful to me because I am not a Castro Clone nor a Greenwich Village Artist.  The internal push-and-pull about personal identity and big city gay social expectations can be seen in the book Life Outside by Michaelangelo Signorile -- which basically blames Wall Street for seducing gay men into restrictive roles about what is "masculine" and "gay" -- think Tom of Finland. (Unfortunately, Signorile seems to have not read Starhawk, Niomi Wolf, nor an introductory statistics text.)  Signorile's solution was to suggest that gay men move to small cites and find mentors.

I should point out that I'm very lucky - I've never been institutionalized or beat-up physically for my orientation (although 1976 through 1983 were very rough years to be a nerd and perceived queer) .  And I'm very lucky to be maintaining a household with a loving partner.

So, to bring this back to  The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, I can empathize with Eller's written preferences for a history grounded in archeological evidence (as opposed to imagined or intuited myths), although I don't know how easily applicable an archeological history of people can be mapped onto today's culture.  Rather than fetishizing a place (such as Stonehenge or Isreal or Canterbury Cathedral or the Parthanon), focusing on prehistoric cultures seems to fetishize a particular time.

Eller argues that the story of a prehistoric matriarchy comes with strong expectations about what it means to be a woman (and by inference, a man) which set up restrictive gender roles. Given my experiences with the Golden Age of Gay New York City, I would have to agree with her.

But maybe I'm stuck in a pre-Hegelian modality - or perhaps I need to re-read a copy of Godel Escher Bach and practice writing "mu." 

Others have not been so amused as I have been with The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and here are their reviews and critiques:

Review by Kristy Coleman: http://www.cynthiaeller.com/colemanreview_new.htm

 Eller's response to Coleman:  http://www.cynthiaeller.com/responsecoleman_new.htm

 Review by Joan Marler:  http://www.belili.org/marija/eller_response.html

 Comentary by Marguerite Rigoglioso:  http://www.belili.org/marija/rigoglioso.html

 Eller's response to Marler and Rigoglioso:  http://www.belili.org/marija/c_eller_response.html

 Review by Max Dashu: http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller.html

 Eller's response to Dashu:  http://www.cynthiaeller.com/responsedashu_new.htm

Over the weekend I indulged in a nice hot bath and read Jung's Aspects of the Masculine.  The thing that struck me the most was Jung's comments on the "problem" of male homosexuality.  The kindest thing he had to say was that among students, it wasn't a bad thing for them to experiment with.

Given that Dr Jung's comments were from essays written before he had formalized his theory of the collective unconscious, and given that I was reading essays from 1905-1930, I wondered what Jungians have to say about homosexuality in general and gay men today.  (Note to self: time to hit some peer-reviewed materials...)

The other thing that struck me were his comments on transference, fathers, and gods.  Jung presented a patient's dream.  She was on a hill overlooking a field of grain.  The mountain grew into a kind of god, who cradled her in his arms.  The wind blew, and the dreamer was rocked in the arms of the god while the fields of grain waved. 

Jung seemed more interested in how the dreamer had made a connection between wind and spirit -- but the passage made me wonder if the need to gender our deities, and the tendency to confound our parents and our gods is a part of a kind of cultural transference process.

And thinking about this particular dream more, it seems so Neo-Pagan to me; I wish I knew more about the (presumably) Judeo-Christian  woman who dreamed it.  What about her upbringing enabled her to have a vision of "Father Earth" ? 

Mark and I were having a conversation and somehow the Jontue perfume commercials came up. "Oh, I used to love those old commercials," I said. "That should have been Clue Number One [that I was gay]."

"You say that about everything," said Mark. "You have several 'Clue Number One's'."

After a few more exchanges, we agreed: there should be a list. And then, after some editing (Mark says to take out the things that were just "goofy"), the list got pared down. So here it is: The Official List of Events That Should Have Clued Me In (But Didn't):


1968: Saturday morning I would turn on Johnny Quest. Sure, I liked Bandit the dog. And the over-dramatic danger music was a plus, too. Okay, and the mechanical spy spider that tried to steal the secret of the para-power ray! But I think what kept me coming back every weekend was Race Bannon. Maybe it was the sharp red shirt with the buttons up the side. Or maybe it was the fact that Mr. Bannon seemed to lose his shirt about as much as...

1970: Captain Kirk. Okay; it's true. Seeing William Shatner's sweaty bare chest made me all tingly inside -- which was very confusing because I really had no idea what I was feeling and also all that tingling was a little overwhelming. I guess I was losing my sanity.

1971: There was something both frightening and oddly compelling about Burt Ward and Adam West on the old Batman TV Series; especially when they were tied up in Yet Another Crazy Super-Villain Trap. And now that I'm thinking about it, The Riddler's (Frank Gorshin's) body suit was doing something for me, too.

c. 1972: You remember the commercial for Irish Spring that starts out with two brawny guys wrestling shirtless? Manly, yes; and I liked it, too (but I didn't know why).

c. 1974: One Easter, I must have tried to watch The Ten Commandments in its entirety. Hot sweaty guys building stone monuments, dancing girls, hot sweaty guys rowing boats, the sybaritic splendor of Hollywood's Egypt, hot sweaty guys in kilts, armbands, chest straps and jewelry. "Oh Moses, Moses, Moses!" it made an impression. The movie became a yearly guilty pleasure every Easter -- for reasons I wouldn't figure out for decades (I mean, come on; Charlston Heston?).

1977:  Really not understanding what all the fuss about Cheryl Tiegs and Farrah Fawcett-Majors was all about.  But kind of liking Kate Jackson.

c. 1981: When describing a high school girl, "Oh, she's got pretty hair."  And meaning it.

c. 1983: Noticing that the kind of woman I was attracted to tended to be tall, thin, and not buxom.

c. 1984: During a Reed College Renn Faire, we were watching the old 1960's Batman Movie (Adam West and Burt Ward, again!)  An auditorium of Reedies started hooting when Lee Meriwether appeared in her Catwoman suit.  For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what everyone was carrying on about, and had to be informed just what upper-torso body parts Ms. Meriwether possessed which "looked sharp enough to slice bread with."   -- In a slightly related issue, it took me something like two years before it dawned on me that I was supposed to be drooling over Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine (really?).

c. 1985: In one of those "Oh My God! It Burns My Eyes But I Can't Look Away" moments, I managed to catch The Beastmaster while channel surfing. I think it must have been during a PBS pledge drive and we wanted to watch Dr. Who instead. In any case, I found myself mesmerized by Marc Singer (The Beastmaster, Dar). Somewhere in the second half of the movie, viewers are treated to an overhead camera pan of our shirtless (of course) hero traveling upside-down along the underside of a kind of chain bridge. For what seems like a slo-mo eternity we watch Mr. Singer pull himself (one sweaty arm reaches out, a mighty hand grasps a length of chains, oiled pectorals contract, and... repeat!) farther along the chain links while a chorus of half-crazed animal-men (minions of the the evil wizard) grunt and try to pull him off of the bridge and into their cages. Oh, -- was there? -- I think there was hot lava or hot coals or something under the bridge. I was kind of too busy to notice.

c. 1991. I had traveled across the state with some friends to a Neo-Pagan Gathering in Madison, Wisconsin. It involved a lot of driving, and I had harped during the ritual. We (and other travelers) were offered crash-space in a barn, which we reached at midnight. As we were shuffling about in the barn's loft, a Sweet Young Neo-Pagan Lass looked at me, looked sideways, looked back and said, "Oohh! Do you need a place to sleep?" I think there might have been batting eyelashes and heaving bosoms here, but I honestly don't remember. "Oh. Oh," I said. "No, my sleeping bag is over here. Thanks. Goodnight." Only after the lights were out and I was drifting off did it occur to me that I was supposed to say "No", and then she was supposed to invite me to share her sleeping bag, and then....


There. Now it's official. I'm sure there's a few things that I've left off of this list. And I want to emphasize that during the seventies, at least, these little clues were feelings I couldn't verbalize or understand, and they didn't go much beyond feeling a little short of breath or vaguely thrilled. Looking back, I'm trying to tease out where naivety gives way to denial.... and that's another blog post.

Epiphany is coming up. Every year at this time I think about the kind of graceless way I came out to my parents on the Feast of Epiphany, 1996.

Close on the heels of thinking about coming out to my parents is the process of coming out to myself. My orientation should have been obvious to me in 1976 (when I was in sixth grade), and again in 1983 (when I was a Reed freshman). Well, okay; now that I really think about it, Captain Kirk loosing his shirt in the late sixties and early seventies was compelling in a way that I couldn't articulate at the time. But, for various reasons, the process didn't really happen until 1993 (when I was 29 years old).

Over the years, various friends have mentioned, almost as asides, "Oh, John; we all figured you were gay." (The high school jocks jeering "gay-boy" at me and fellow dance class students don't count.) My response has always been between a bemused, "What?" and "Why was I the last one to know?" So this year I'm curious - when did you know; and if you knew in the eighties and nineties did you think I knew, or were you waiting for a moment of self-discovery, or something else ?

Happy Epiphany! On this day in 1996, I came out to my parents. I was driving them to the airport. It was kind of like one of those family comedy movies: "So. Um. I'm gay. No joke. Oh, here's your plane; I'll get your bags. Have fun in Mexico. See you next week!"

Probably not the best way to come out... and I'm thankful that my family is loving and supportive.

In other news... my shoulder is "stiffer than it should be." Sigh. I must do my stretches six times a day. I must do my stretches six times a day. I must do my stretches...

President Obama has proclaimed that June is LGBT Pride Month. So I guess I need to post my thoughts on same-sex marriage.

I see marriage as a ritual that builds a spiritual vehicle. The lovers involved are pledging not only to uphold and maintain each other, but to uphold and maintain the spiritual vehicle. Participating in a marriage is the process of building something larger than, and inclusive of, the participants. I think the usual phrase is called, "building a household."

Socially, for good or for ill, marriage is one of those milestones our society uses to judge if you are a Real Person or some kind of unhappy, unloved, juvenile delinquent.

Mark will probably say something wildly practical, like "marriage is doing the dishes for each other."

On the spiritual front, if a particular religious flavor wants to reserve the ritual of marriage to a certain set of people, well gee -- that's their religion. My preference is to reserve marriage to lovers -- emancipated adults able to choose whom they love.

However, in the USA, marriage is also a business contract. Straight married people receive all sorts of tax breaks prohibited to same-sex couples. Oregon's actually pretty nice about some credits; but if either Mark or I kick off, we do not receive the other's Social Security benefits because the Federal government does not recognize same-sex marriage partners. My health insurance, granted through Mark's employer, is a taxable benefit -- the same benefit would not be taxed were we straight and married.

And it doesn't stop there. Hardy Meyers, then acting Attorney General for Oregon, pointed out in an opinion a few years ago that children of same-sex couples are monetarily discriminated against by the government because of the sexual orientation of their parents. This makes them a minority class deserving of special protection -- which they don't get.

So. Yeah. It's Pride Month. You know what I think I'd like more than a proclamation? Or a parade? I'd like it if religions were left alone to have whatever religious marriage ceremonies they can come up with and I'd like it if all married couples had the same taxes regardless of the genders of the spouses involved. It'd be easy to do -- either give everyone the same tax breaks, or abolish marriage tax breaks.

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to conclude with, "Yes, We Can."

It appears that Amazon is pulling Gay-Lesbian-Queer titles from their ranking lists.  It's possible this is part of a plan to generate buzz for the Kindle.   Links here:


http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html


http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-censors-its-rankings-search-results-to-protect-us-against-glbt-books/


http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23amazonfail


http://booksquare.com/open-letter-to-amazon-regarding-recent-policy-changes/

Not much in the dream department today; all I can recall is a mish-mash.

So instead, here's a review (another one) of Gay Neo-Paganism:

I've been frustrated for a while with Neo-Paganism, the major approaches of which seem to be

• "Everything's the Goddess" (which seems about as unbalanced as saying "Everything's God"); or,
• "Girl-Goddess meets Boy-God, and Their love makes the universe go 'round" (which strikes me as terribly heteronormative); or,
• "You can do spells to get parking spaces" (which seems to view the universe as a psychic mail-order catalogue); or,
• "I had a counselling session with my deity yesterday, and S/He told me that I needed to be less codependant," (which seems more like therapy and less like religion)

Unfortunately, turning to my "gay brothers" doesn't help much. Most gay male Neo-Pagan schools of thought fall into several categories:

• The "Adam and Steve" approach -- we'll make Robert Graves' Winter and Summer Kings lovers. Well, yeah; OK. Sacred sex is nice, but I'd like my spiritual practice to be more than sex. Is there more to being a man than physiology ? Besides -- when one doesn't kill the other --the Winter and Summer Kings are traditionally either brothers or father and son, so recasting them as lovers feels like a gay Pagan retelling of Lot's Daughters. I'd say that Micheal Thomas Ford's The Path of the Green Man falls into this category.
• The "Goddess in Drag" approach -- we'll put on our Cher wigs and draw down the moon. I'm sure this can be fun, and I like dressing up as much as the next guy. And sure, Cher's a goddess. But I'm interested in exploring divinity as a man. I mean, how far can singing the praises of a wig get one? I'd say this is the approach advocated by the likes of Harry Hay.
• The "Jungian Anima" approach -- since all Wiccan rituals require one man and one woman, we'll get in touch with our inner woman. This is kind of insulting to me, as it has an implication that queer couples choose one partner to "be the man" and the other to "be the woman." Conversely, you would be hard pressed to find this sort of suggestion in a book for lesbian Neo-Pagans who seem to have no problems forming Dianic Circles; but it's what you find in The Gay Wicca Book by Bruce K Wilborn.
• The "King Victim" approach -- we're a persecuted minority of men, and persecuted minorities have heightened powers of perception and consciousness. I'll grant you minorities have a different perspective, but if you carry this one out, then victims of social injustice should have some pretty impressive powers of ESP and magic. Harry Hay came up with this line of reasoning, and you'll find this approach in Mark Thompson's, Gay Body.
• The "Left-Hand Path Adept" approach -- the purpose of sex is to combine the participants' auras so that the scattered divine cosmic energy from the male may be "earthed" through the female on its journey back to the divine source. Since the male-to-male sex act does not complete the "cosmic circuit," the raised sexual energy may be used for "left-hand" rituals and Black Magick. This one shows up in Dion Fortune's writings (along with many euphemisms, references to decadent, decaying cultures, and electrical batteries) and is illustrative of homophobic (and sexist) attitudes of some of Neo-Paganism's roots.
• The "Ritual Semantics of High Magick" approach -- this one actually works a bit for me. The argument is that, ritually, a man and a woman coming together is symbolically the same thing as touching a chalice to a blade and vice versa. It's not about sex, it's about the ritual symbology behind the sex. I read this one on the web... and it turns up in Wilborn, too. And what's this got to do with getting in touch with the divine? It's all very well to clink a chalice and a blade together; but it's so vanilla and it reduces the world to terms of electronegativity and which battery-ends are showing. So what happens when you touch two blades (or chalices) together? And, uh, if it's not really about sex, how can it be about sexual orientation?

So there it is: after years of reading books on Neo-Paganism and gay men's spiritual studies, it appears that in order to be a Real Western Neo-Pagan, I have to have a gender change or to think of The Goddess when I'm having sex. Some other common approaches that attempt to address gay male spirituality are:

• The "Dutiful Initiation to Love" approach -- since our heritage as whole gay men has been lost, we must seek to reconstruct it from feudal or aristocratic societies -- usually from Greece or Japan. This typically involves an older, more experienced man instructing a younger, less experienced man. I think some people find it attractive because of the defined roles of Mentor (really the Goddess Athena) and Telemachus. But, it's so Lord and Page Boy; so Coach and Athlete. It's so Iron John. So NAMBLA.
• The "Jesus Loves You Even If You're (a Sinful) Gay" approach -- this one would work for me if I wasn't a Neo-Pagan and if I were into the whole sin thing. Not to be confused with the ...
• The "Jesus Was a Sexual Deviant" approach; which would also work for me if I wasn't a Neo-Pagan; although it is fun to wonder what kind of "foot washing" was going on in Gethsemene between Jesus and the unnamed man in a towel. (Kripal, J John 1962. "The Serpent's Gift." Chicago. Suggests that when the authors of the bible wrote "foot" it was a code-word for penis. This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "The Goddess is alive and magic is a foot." Roscoe, Will. "Jesus and the shamanic tradition of same sex love." San Fransisco. Suggests that Jesus may have performed ritualized, erotic baptism, and that the man in the towel was Lazarus.)

At least I don't have to deal with Original Sin, but I do wish that I could connect with more folks who were interested in Neo-Pagan Communion, Celebration, and Transformation -- and less hung up on finding sex and parking spaces.

I guess there's a reason I'm a solitary practitioner again.