Turn that smile back upside down

To Los Angeles, with love

Stephan Hoeller, Gnostic bishop, religious scholar, Hungarian aristocrat and all around knowing/seeing kind of guy told me, about a year before I moved here, that Los Angeles has many of the same qualities as ancient Alexandria: openness, religious/spiritual exploration, spread-outness, a bit superficial to the untrained eye and lacking the pretentious culture sense of, say, Cairo or Paris, but deeply imbued with a sense of freedom of expression that invites the artist, seer, prophet, filmmaker, L Ron Hubbard, Gore Vidal. He spoke as though he had just moved here from ancient Alexandria, and knew it like his home town, and I had no reason to question or doubt him.

The comparison sticks with me as I look down at the brown smog blanket from Griffith Park or the Getty Center, a kind of Mexico City at sunset running through my soul. It's beautiful and terrible, ugly and fascinating. There's something about the mountains near Glendale, the houses along Los Feliz Boulevard, the futurama of Century City, the mid-century ghostness of Hollywood, the abstract severity of Mulholland Drive, the Singapore cleanliness of Beverly Hills, the Jews of Fairfax, the Russians of West Hollywood, the Chicanos of Echo Park - there's just something about all of it that pushes one into the next era, finally and forever out of that Old World America that looks to Europe or one of the Roosevelts or Kennedys or Chicago with its faltering Carl Sandburg sensibilities or San Francisco's dead new era for a face lift on a countenance staring west and new forever. It's LA, or nowhere.

Driving up Beachwood with its hauntings of Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann, the buildings off Franklin and Cahuenga give birth to the last and only myth of film, and I'm reminded like Christopher Isherwood that Berlin like this Los Angeles bleeds with the love of those lost in the search for the uncreated self. Faust's bargain died here, and we reclaim from nature the lost god standing in the shadow of the tree of life. Yes, it's here or nowhere. Ask yourself in the hazy sunset and see what the reflection from the Hollywood sign oracles for a not too distant future.

I always hated the future, because I could not let go of a past that would not have me even its desperate attempts at love. So it's the orphan in me that wakes up now, scared, angry, looking for the lost love that was never there and finding close to me a promise of dark foreboding and unutterable beauty that has me staring west and forever to something I fear to create but must unfold to find the terrible, wonderful god that exiled me.

So this is my love letter to you, Los Angeles. You are my last great 1492 fresh green breast of a new world. I'm frightened and lonely, and more that a little skeptical, but it's a wonderful opera, and yes, it hurts so much. Be kind, or at least observing, when I stumble, and I will awaken in you my ounce of creation to help bring new magic to a dusty planet.

Brian

Kill Bill and The Book of Job

Uma was not having it. Bill's long speech on fate and destiny and don't try to escape and if you move I'll shoot you just didn't hold up against mother and daughter. The Old Man had met his match. It's been a long time coming.

Fifty years ago or so, rather late in his career, the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote 'Answer to Job,' where he also took on the Old Man. He put God on the couch, and made him answer up. In the biblical Book of Job, God and Satan sit down one fine afternoon and have a conversation about loyalty and faith, God boasting about his humble servant Job and Satan answering that anyone who had it so good would naturally be loyal and faithful. After a lengthy conversation, the two (or the one and his shadow, it could perhaps be said) decided to settle the matter by testing Job. Job has almost everything taken away - prosperity, family, friends, health - for no apparent reason other than this little wager worked out in the otherworld. Job is driven to the brink, where, by many interpretations of the story, he finally surrenders to the will of God and all is restored. Jung saw it differently. He took the biblical ending as no ending at all, but rather a kind of deus ex machina wherein submission to that which can never be understood drops down from the stage ropes and triumphs. The real ending, he believed, came eventually through The Christ, who, like Job, demanded a relationship with God.

Christ and Job were not content with the bow, kneel yield approach to God, much as Uma was not content to blindly carry out her fate as dictated by the Old Man Bill. Both demanded a relationship with an almighty power which, in the end, they found not to be so almighty as perhaps, like Oz, more scared and curious about the goings-on in the day to day world of humble servants, ordinary Judeans, or mothers and daughters.

At the end of these classic stories, religious mythologies and Hollywood reels is an enduring sense of relationship: man with God, mother with daughter, humankind with fate. Bill spends a good ten minutes of valuable screen time telling Uma what's what in this world, a kind of stone tablets from the mountaintop preaching to which she responds with the golden calf of the demand for love. The same relational principle is at work in Job's why questions and Christ's my God why haft thou forsaken me?. Somewhere between submission and defiance a balance is struck, a deal worked out in this world that could not be solved where God and Satan reside, a daughter that nobody in the audience expected, a son to save the world.

Though it seems a stretch to connect Hollywood to Carl Jung to Christian lore; all knowing comes by likeness said Plotinus. In Uma's struggle I found the thousands-year fight for simple humanity.

Final(?) Thoughts on Gay Marriage

In many traditional cultures, the reigning mythology, which is to say the fundamental values and beliefs that were held by the tribe, had it that each child brought with it unique gifts for this world. Thus each birth was vital, prepared for months in advance with special rituals and gatherings. The actual event was attended by elders, priests, midwives, family members, each rapt in waiting, devotionally preparing for the gifts which this new soul would bring.

At a certain point, usually around adolescence, the elders of the tribe would watch the child, or young man or woman, at play or in conversation or going about his or her daily tasks - the watching was not a policing or even a looking out after, but rather a looking for - a careful eye kept for the manifestation of the child's gifts. 'Look, that one there - he is a warrior, watch how he leads the rest; that one there, he is a seer, watch how he talks to others; or that one, now that is a priest, look how others come to him.' Each child had gifts. Everyone had a purpose - everyone.

In many West African tribes, gay people were known as gatekeepers. Their special gift was 'seeing both' - masculine and feminine, this world and the spirit world. We were a vital addition to the tribe - we were the visionaries, the mystics, the priests, the healers. We were watched, and our gifts were recognized and embraced. We were as important to the tribe as the hunters, the warriors, the housekeepers, the craftspeople.

In thinking (and feeling) more and more about the issue of gay marriage, it occurs to me that what we might be seeking is something akin to these traditional recognitions. In contemporary Western society, we are still largely seen as somehow deviant or perverse or just different in a 'less than' sort of way. We are often tolerated or accepted, but rarely are we embraced or celebrated. In fact, if it could somehow be determined before birth whether a gay son or lesbian daughter was forthcoming, I wonder if a celebration would be planned by the family and neighbors or if a sense of dark quiet would instead prevail.

We come out, we move to the city, we find jobs and compete with the rest, we fall in love, we build a home, perhaps we even adopt kids and raise a family - but are we ever celebrated, even by ourselves? Are our gifts - our unique contributions to this world - are these sought out and rewarded?

We long deeply for something - something more than just recognition or acceptance. Deep in our souls we still listen for the trumpets and watch for the bright colors that were supposed to announce our arrival. Finding only silence and dull gray, we protest politically, we create artistically and we achieve financially, physically, spiritually; we even usher in new forms of love and recognition for diversity, announce new humor and style and, attending to our brothers and sisters who died of AIDS, we revisit the ancient funeral pyre in our mourning, but in the end we are left, abandoned. We long in the dark and quiet.

Perhaps marriage promised somehow to adopt us into this world, to say, at one level, 'you have the same rights and priveleges as us,' but at a deeper level, 'you are now welcome here, we are glad you have arrived, we are anxious to see what you have brought.' Perhaps we simply want to hear 'welcome home.'

But even with the eventual success of marriage rights, and even with greater priveleges and more acceptance - somehow the void still echoes, the longing endures and the aloneness persists. We are mythical figures without a myth, characters without a story. The introductions were never made, the announcements never went out, there was no one at the gate to meet us.

But perhaps this longing, this gap or wound, is somehow our unique myth. Longing, or more precisely, the longing that can never be fulfilled, is, according to many texts of Greek mythology, one of the principal manifestations of Eros, god of love and desire. The wound of abandonment is a prominent feature of the centaur Chiron, one of the first and most important teachers and healers to the gods. Among Chiron’s pupils were Asclepius, the ‘original’ wounded healer (from whom is derived one of the first concepts of the snake coiled around the staff, as is seen on the Cadaceus, or medical healing emblem), and Hercules, who in turn inflicted the second wound upon Chiron.

But why talk of mythology? Because every culture – which is to say every set of values, beliefs, mores, modes of social functioning and ways of interacting – is rooted in myth. For Rome, it was the myth of the war god Mars and the wolf that gave birth to Romulus and Remus that set the context for that culture’s empire building. For the Greeks, it was the wisdom and beauty of Apollo (and the banishment of Dionysus outside the city walls). For much of contemporary Western culture, two myths have dominated: the Christian myth, with its notions of suffering and redemption and the split between spirit and body; and the Enlightenment/Scientific-Technological myth that trumpets the primacy of man and his dominion over nature. Mythologies always reign, it is usually a matter of how conscious a particular culture is of its own ‘story.’

In the West, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Karl Kerenyi, James Hillman and many others have done a great deal of work to bring our consciousness of mythology back into culture, but it is a constant struggle against the literalism that dominates our thinking – a literalism, that is, ironically part of the myth of the Scientific/Technological revolution.

A culture that is highly conscious of its mythology possesses a strong sense of purpose. This strong sense of purpose is felt also (and, could be argued emanates from) in each individual. Much of the alienation felt today in America, or in the West (and perhaps even in the world) as a whole, can, I believe, be traced to our lack of consciousness of myth – our own and those of other cultures. There is a prevailing sense of purposelessness. A study recently conducted by the United Nations found a single word that stood out across cultures as people described themselves and their nations – that word was ‘uprooted.’

The traditional cultures that I mentioned, with their notions of gay people as ‘two spirited’ or ‘gatekeepers’ are rich examples of the consciousness and sense of purpose that is present when a people is immersed in its myth. Not only are we in the West not immersed, or even conscious of our myth, there is a strong argument that could be made that the myths of Christianity and the Scientific Revolution are no longer relevant. The popularity of the New Age movement, on the one hand, and the rise in crime and ‘random’ incidents of violence such as Columbine and the Maryland sniper on the other, all point to this – but that, at this point, is a generalization that would need to be explored in much more detail in another essay.

Coming back to gay marriage, I try to link our unique mythology – our unique culture – as gay people, to this ritual – this ceremony. As I said before, I think we search for a blessing – a traditional recognition, which is to say, an embracing by the larger culture of our presence and our vitality. We want the ‘welcome home’ that we never got. Marriage gives us this, but as with all things given, something is taken away. What is taken away, or rather diluted in this case, is our sense of uniqueness – as we assimilate more and more into the larger culture, we lose our own mythology; a mythology, that, granted, may begin with the longing of Eros and the abandonment of Chiron but which also points to deep traditions that we have not even begun to explore. The mythos of Dionysus, Aphrodite, Hermes (and the ‘combined’ Hermes/Aphrodite – the Hermaphrodite) – with its sense of beauty and sensuality and passion (both dark and light); the Sumerian saga of Gilgamesh and Enkidu – with its deep sense of comradeship and wholeness; the West African notions of the gatekeeper and the Native American concept of the two spirited one; Plato’s Symposium, Whitman’s poetry, even some versions of the story of Christ himself – these are but a few examples of our rich heritage.

The larger culture of which we are a part, and in which we assume a more prominent role with the eventual granting of marriage rights, seems to have as little interest in exploring these traditions as it does its own traditions (of which ours are a part). It is left for us to define ourselves – we have always known this, and in most cases accepted and even rejoiced in this exploration. My concern with marriage is that, while we are granted the same rights and privileges as the ‘insiders,’ that we not lose the passion and uniqueness bequeathed to us by our traditional role as ‘outsiders.’ Perhaps the greatest mythical outsider of all is the Trickster – Hermes, Mercurius, Legba, Loki, Prometheus – these figures have incarnated in some of the great visionary minds of our time – Socrates, Leonardo, Jung – and also in some less grandiose but equally relevant figures – Oscar Wilde, Robert Mapplethorpe – even Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Creator, visionary, humorist, troublemaker, stirrer and shaker of the status quo – the Trickster moves between inside and outside, never content with either, creating something beyond both.

Perhaps the other side of the wound of our rejection is the gift of our ability to see from the outside-in; to even bring something from the outside, in – a gift of new understanding, of enriched culture. In closing, then, I say marry, but in so doing, do not forget who you are – always something of an outsider, an outsider who comes bearing gifts – gifts that may not be welcomed but must, nonetheless, find a way to getting opened. I think Martha Graham said it best:


"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
If you block it,

it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not yours to determine how good it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.

No artist is ever pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others."

"One of the challenges we face is to see our lives in terms of an intinsic cycle of growth and development that does not take a heterosexual model as its point of reference...Myths can offer glimpses of such nonheterosexual and non-oedipal individuations."
- Will Roscoe

Will Roscoe, along with Harry Hay, Don Kilhefner and many others have been researching, writing, politicking, psychotherapying and generally excavating gay mythology, psychology, sociology and history for years now. Will has done extensive research and writing on Native American tribal societies, and how many of these honor what we would today term "gay" people as two-spirited people - those with a deep understanding of both the masculine and feminine psychology and mythology. He contrasts this Native American understanding (and the understanding held by many in the classical civilizations such as Greece and Rome) with our modern Western understanding, which is all too often one sided, over-literal and narrowly focused, causing many in the dominant modern culture to continue to look upon gay people as somehow deviant or perverse.

I mention all of this as introduction to my continuing thoughts on the gay marriage issue, and how, on the one hand I applaud (and march with) it at a political, and in certain respects, social issue; but how, on the other hand, I recoil at what I perceive to be "taking the heterosexual model as a point of reference." While the feeling I got, walking around City Hall and observing the ceremonies, was deeply genuine and heartfelt, I also sensed a kind of sub-strata of "wanting what they have" or "we're just as good as them." That we should be granted equal rights, priveleges and recognition under the law is without question and should be vehemently defended, but that we should so emotionally involve ourselves in a "we have finally arrived" state of mind and heart is troubling, at least to me.

It has been very difficult to write these last few posts, and I have recieved a not insubstantial volume and tone of rebuttals. The difficulty for myself comes in the split between my political zeal and social/cultural concern. One is almost like an extroverted, hit the streets feeling while the other is more introspective, sit and reflect. I simply cannot get away from the feeling that we lose something along with what we gain (and I'm convinced we will ultimately gain the political/social right).

What we lose is more difficult to pinpoint, as are all things that run the sub-strata, but it has, paradoxically to do with that same energy that got us out in the streets protesting in the first place. The "gay mythos," if it exists, which I believe it does, carries a strong strain of the transgressor and the trickster - the Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, the Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle, the Loki playing all sorts of tricks on the Norse gods. These archetypal foundations of our personality came to the surface and danced in the streets during Stonewall and the AIDS activism of the 80s, and I notice them coming alive again in the marches to defend gay marriage rights (and in our participation in antiwar protests). I wonder, though, how, in the decades to follow the ultimate winning of these marriage rights, these same energies - these vital components of our personalities, will have become more domesticated, more settled, more imitative of the dominant culture.

I only hope that Prometheus, Hermes, Loki and the other folks who like to dance around in our souls do not start to wonder, at some point in the near future, when the music died. There is just something about us being on the outside of dominant cultural institutions like marriage that awakens a certain vitality of spirit, a looking from the outside in, a compassionate poking fun at, a richening of culture from the tension of contrasts, a defining of our beautiful and indivisible uniqueness as a people, separate but equal.

So, in closing then, my heart is with all of you - couples and individuals, observers and participants at City Hall, marchers and cheerers on. My soul, however, as it is wont to do, questions.

I want to make a few clarifications on my gay marriage post.

In case I did not state it strongly enough, I fully support our right to marriage, and I'm getting quite a kick out of how it's ruffling the feathers of a conservative faction that purports to keep the government out of our private lives as much as possible while interfering in one of the most private aspects of life. I'm not sure I agree with Barney Frank and others that argue we should not have thrown this out there so boldly. Boldness has genius in it, said Goethe. Sometimes you have to act.

So while the activist in me applauds what is happening out there, a softer, and in many ways deeper voice in me wonders where all this is headed. I really do believe, and assert, that our relationships are different (again, not better or worse, just different) because we are different. Psychologically, we simply do not fit into the sterotypical husband and wife roles - our relationships are based more on mutuality and a sharing of life between two people, rather than a projection of the feminine onto the woman and the masculine onto the man (Harry Hay also spoke of this in his essay 'A Separate People Whose Time Has Come) - that doesn't mean we don't have gay husband/wife relationships, I just think that our potential is for something quite different - two people with masculine/feminine traits sharing life and expereince together - or three people, or four - this is also something different - I am not at all convinced on the monogamy front, but that's a separate issue. Mythologically, we are what the Native Americans refer to as a 'two-spirited' people, embodying aspects of two worlds in one heart, or one mind. Much of classic marriage fits the 'halves seeking whole' archetype, which does not, in essence, fit us.

So why, it could be asked, can we not be all of these things and still get married? No reason. We can certainly be whatever we want, or whatever is allowed nowadays, and get married. In doing this, though, it is not difficult to see that, 10 or 20 or so years down the line, we will have taken further steps to assimilating ourselves with the larger culture. With or without marriage this may be unavoidable, and it could even be argued that it is to be favored, but it is important to recognize that assimilation comes at a cost, and that cost is our unique identity.

Some may say that our identity should naturally evolve as our political and social rights are won. It should simply not be as difficult to come out today as it was 20 years ago. We should have a right to marry, and be recognized in the same class of citizenship as our hetero friends and neighbors. As the struggle for these things are won, we should quite naturally settle into a certain equality with the larger culture. Perhaps. I believe it is important to remember though, that at a certain very deep level, we are in fact not all created equal, and that the struggle inspired by our former status as outcasts, while screaming for revolt at a political level, whispers also for reflection on our deeper nature. We all need equal rights, priveleges and access under the law. But under our skin, in our hearts, we are not the same as them, and they are not the same as those. The more we fail to realize and make good on the promise of our unique nature, the more we fall victim to a kind of Matrix-like existence, plugged into a system, playing less of a vital role in the human world and more of a humdrum part in the machine world.

Just what is this unique nature? Well, it's not his and his matching towels consumers. It's not Will and Grace. More Hedwig, really. We are trickster faggots and campy queens. We are cultural revolutionaries, traipsing in dark Eros to reinvent Aphrodite for a loveless world. We take the soul out of a whitewashed heaven and dirty it with the spirit of cock. It's a duende dance of the bastard stepchild before his absent father. We are the compassionate spirits in the fire. We love, because we know betrayal. We are the artists, painting subway tunnels and running through the Louvre. Smile Mona. We dart and dance and dash, and cannot nor will not be caught. Panic, for we bring Pan. Howl, Coyote. Watch out Apollo, Dionysus is about to break through the city wall. City Hall? Never been there.

Cheers

A faggot's thoughts on gay marriage

In Apache culture, the marriage ritual began way before two people ended up together, usually with the woman interviewing a series of potential candidates. The interview was not a typical one, at least not in the way we might think of it. The woman would ask questions about the deeper qualities in the other person: 'what is it about being a warrior that speaks to you?' 'what is it about being a medicine man that calls to you?' 'what are you prepared to sacrifice for us; for the spirits; for your own legacy?' The questions went deep, as did the eventual relationship.

In our culture, if we ask much of anything before we marry, it usually has to do with money or sex or what’s a good thing to get for your Dad for Christmas. Maybe that’s why we have a 50 plus percent divorce rate and separate bedrooms/separate vacations for many of those who fall into the other 50 percent. At any rate, the burning question for me, writing only a few blocks from the events going on at San Francisco City Hall, is: why are we as gay people so excited about imitating our straight friends? I understand the political aspect, and the need to have our legal rights recognized and supported. I strongly defend all of that. I can also see that having our relationships recognized as marriages rather that civil unions accords us a measure of respect equal to all other voting, working, trying-to-get-health-insurance citizens. Maybe that’s what all the excitement is about – we’re just so damn tired of coming out of the closet only to be pushed back in not so subtle ways: Sunday talk show demagogues dragging out the traditional values ox; district attorneys dancing away from hate crime laws for bashings; and, of course, the biggie - constitutional amendment talk coming from the Bushwhacked White House.

OK, but why are we so excited? I walked past the lines at city hall here in San Francisco and it put me in mind of newsreel footage of those miles-long lines of people voting for the first time in newly democratic countries. But that is something to get excited about. Mimicking straight relationships – and that’s not an entirely unfair description of what we’re doing here – just does not get me going. I find it hard to care.

Actually, that’s not true – in taking the time to write this piece, I obviously do care, so let me try to tease out what it is that’s under my skin here. I guess my fear is loss of identity for our unique gay culture. Aside from the political aspect of this issue, which includes social acceptance and dignity – all of which I support – there is an underlying demon to all of this that I feel is about to surface. That demon is conformity.

We are not like them. We are not better or worse, simply different. This business of everyone being the same deep down works great if your goal is to misunderstand social theory or paint a broad stroke of the afterlife, but here and now individuality plays a pretty big part in our dignity and our freedom. I’m not talking about the hyper-ego individuality from which 10 or so percent of our society gets to benefit (and a dubious benefit it is at that), but rather what the ancients referred to as the unique daimon, or spirit in each of us – the special gifts or talents we bring into this life, the miracle of our individual personalities, our little corner of fate. Ironically, the ancients also believed that community played a huge role in this individuality – community was the circle of people who could help you identify your gifts, your uniqueness, your contribution to the world. They were the ones who gave you your name. Many of us gay people have felt this to one degree or another in our gay community – we understand each other, and can help (and hurt) each other. We usually come out to each other first, and then to the larger world around us.

Which brings me back to this ritual of marriage. Our relationships are not the same as theirs, and our community is not the same as theirs. Again, we are not better or worse – simply different. Unique. If we choose to marry, then we should have that right – no question. What I am aiming at here is the deeper consequence of the en masse rally towards gay marriage. I fear that in all of our excitement we may forget who we are. We may forget that our relationships are not like theirs. We may end up in divorce court. He and he, she and she, he and she – well it’s all the same your honor. Well, from a perspective of legal rights and social acceptance, or even dignity – yes, it’s the same. But from a deeper cultural perspective, no, it’s not the same at all.

First of all, as our response to the AIDS crisis demonstrated so well, we have a different, and in many ways larger, conception of love than that of the dominant culture. We do not confine ourselves to couples – our friendships generally go deeper (with both gay and straight people), and our social commitments usually run larger. We are found in high numbers as teachers and healers of various sorts (doctors, therapists, priests). We turn out in larger numbers to protest injustice and protect the rights of the disadvantaged. From an archetypal, or mythological perspective, we fulfill the role of the Lover far more often than the Warrior. Love is, for us, a sharing of our heart that is not specifically confined to a romantic relationship. It is a kind of living in and with love, or, as the English philosopher Edward Carpenter put it:

The Uranian (Carpenter’s word for gays) temperament in Man closely resembles the normal temperament of Women in this respect, that in both Love - in some form or other - is the main object of life. In the normal Man, ambition, moneymaking, business, adventure, etc., play their part - love is as a rule a secondary matter. The majority of men (for whom the physical side of sex, if needed, is easily accessible) do not for a moment realize the griefs endured by thousands of girls and women - in the drying up of the well-springs of affection as well as in the crucifixion of their physical needs. But as these sufferings of women, of one kind or another, have been the great inspiring cause and impetus of the Women's Movement - a movement which is already having a great influence in the reorganization of society; so I do not practically doubt that the similar sufferings of the Uranian class of men are destined in their turn to lead to another wide-reaching social organization and forward movement in the direction of Art and Human Compassion.

Secondly, we are quite different in our sexual and social behavior. We define our relationships in different ways. The concept of monogamy may or may not work for us – that is an individual decision left to each person. . Some choose the model of the monogamous couple, some choose to stay single, some choose a three way or larger relationship, some choose a coupled relationship but prefer to keep it open sexually – there are many ways and many forms that we choose. One of the many aspects of being gay that I’ve come to truly embrace is the opportunity to define myself, my values, my beliefs, and the rituals I care about and in which I will engage. This is especially valuable, living in a time when everything and everyone seems to want to make us conform to this or that. While it is true that couples going to city hall and getting married does take away this opportunity, I wonder just how socialized into the larger culture we will be 50 or so years from now because of this historic event, and how much we will look back on our unique relationships today as a thing of the past.

What I want to remember during all of this is that we as gay people, though we win hard fought rights and privileges from the larger culture, are still quite different as a subculture, and have a deep interest in remaining different – note different, not better or worse. This deep interest hearkens back to something found in the Apache rituals – not traditional values, as conservatives keep wanting to parade as protest against our rights as citizens – but rather deeper values. We need to be careful that in winning all of our rights and privileges from the larger culture that we do not also seek to imitate or be as good as them. Though it is vital that our relationships be respected and accorded the same privileges as relationships between a man and a woman, it is equally vital to recognize that our relationships are different. Political liberties and social respect are not the same as individual identity, and the former should not be won at the sacrifice of the latter.

In other minority communities, particularly the African Americans, fifty plus years of civil rights struggles have won a great deal, but they have also brought these communities to a point which can best be described as a spiritual crisis – a crisis of identity. Rights and privileges are always won at a cost, and the cost to many minority communities has been a slow but steady draining away of their core identities – their own specific values and ways of being. As they integrate with the larger society, they also dilute their potency as a definable group.

Gay men and women, like all people, have a special calling – again, not special as better or worse, but special as unique. The ways in which we express our love are an important, if not the most important part of that unique calling and form the foundation of our identity as a people. Art, human compassion, social justice, healing arts, a sense of the sacred or religious, camp humor, bawdy spectacles, transgressive behavior in many forms – all of these are just some of the ways that we show our love to each other and to the larger culture – they are a part of our unique identity.

As we line up to get married, I applaud and cheer us on, but also whisper not to forget who we are. I close with some thoughts from Thomas Moore on the notion of soul:

We are who we are because of the special mix that makes up our soul. In spite of its archetypal, universal contents, for each individual the soul is highly idiosyncratic. Power begins in knowing this special soul, which may be entirely different from our fantasies about who we are or who we want to be.

New email address! My link to the left "Find Me" finally works, so I can now start opening fan mail again, which is a huge relief to this starlet, who lives for her press clippings.

Cheers and thank you to the academy