I Am Me

Sunday, February 5

I can't believe this was discussed in 1976! Maybe we don't need to reinvent the wheel for civil rights...just use the stuff we've already got!

January 10, 1976

The Gay Pagan's Manifesto

Although the text of this document as presented in the January 10, 1976, Gay Community News lists Tommi Avicolli as the author, the accompanying not states "below a group of gay pagans centered in Philadelphia states their reasons why they do not support the Christian or Jewish faith." It is a useful view of the diversity of religious exploration in the gay and lesbian community in the 1970s and an aspect not often discussed.

The recently passed California bill legalizing gay sex has, of course, come under attack by fundamentalists organizing to oppose the bill in a referendum next year. It seems likely they will at least succeed in getting the signatures they need to promote such an action. In other states, other cities, everywhere, wherever gay rights or anti-sodomy statutes have risen so have the crazies - the religious fanatics with their bibles, self-righteousness and their tales of impending doom. It's all so confusing to me that in the midst of this, gay church people are still urging us to cling to Christianity. But to give them the benefit of the doubt, let me examine briefly the HIStory of the Christian church!

The Jewish nomads settled in the promised land, a land ripe with patriarchy and father-right. Whatever remained of the former matriarchies had been washed away by the onslaught of the male deities Zeus, Jehova, Rama, etc. Some matriarchal influence remained in the pagan cults which the good Jews protected themselves from through such ordinances as the ban on homosexuality, on idolatry, etc., attempts to purge themselves from their neighbor's lifestyles.

The Jews were a small people, yet Christianity was born out of their patriarchal roots. Jesus, whom we're not even sure existed (read The Pagan Christ) established a new order. His was to be a church of love, yet his teachings speak only of "brotherhood" and of men, not of women. His only dealing with women seems to be the forgiving of a prostitute. What did he do with her afterwards? Was it for his own "convenience" that he forgave her?

Christianity was strongly misogynistic from the start. Paul denies the right of women to teach: he further asserts that Adam was innocent of the first sin. Writings of the early Church fathers also try and deny maternity, but in theological terms, of course! ICorinthians 11:8-9 said, "The man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man." It's not much different than the attempt in Genesis to deny maternity by depicting Eve's creation from Adam's rib. Clement in the second century A.D. said: "every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman" (Elizabeth Gould David, The First Sex, p. 231). Thus echoing an earlier Jewish prayer and completing a full circle.

Later Christians sought out the witches, females who revived earlier systemic practices, and together with the faggots, burned them on the altars of male supremacy. A woman could be persecuted for the most obvious "crimes": lesbianism, refusal to have sex with a priest, and/or even striking back a husband who had just beaten her. Heresy was a catch-all charge, loaded and convenient for the medieval patriarchs to use any attempt on the part of women or faggots to break the chains of their oppression.

Modern Christians try to whitewash this tradition, apologizing for Paul and Clement, for the persecutions of the nine million women and countless faggots! Even the gay church apologists strive to make right the wrong of Christianity.

Christianity is based upon the belief that men are superior to women; witness Genesis. Witness the absence of any strong female deity. Mary is an impotent fertility figure probably robbed from the Egyptians. The main deities of the Christian faith are male. The basic creation myth of the Christians concerns a male god creating life, an impossible situation since only women biologically can give birth. Christianity is a good psychological study of womb envy on the part of the male sex, the envy to procreate.

Christianity punishes women for the first sin. Eve is told to bear children in pain as punishment, and to be subservient to her husband. In medieval times, women were denied the use of pain killer, belladonna, during childbirth because the church felt it was against God's will. After all, they said, women were meant to suffer in childbirth!

Christianity clearly declares gay love sick. The bible cannot be changed. Nowhere does it give us the freedom to love. All those vague passages about everything are of no use to any free-thinking gay person.

Christianity is a bigoted way of life. It segregates one person from others of different faiths, declaring them heretics and sinners: it promotes prejudice and male supremacy. In other times, christians waged holy wars against pagans and murdered millions of us. Today it wages these same wars in other ways, through political manipulations and economic control. Witness the defeat of Intro 554 at the hands of the Catholic Church!

It has never been accurately determined just how much wealth the Vatican has. Millions (if not all) of the poor could be fed on what the Catholic Church owns. Yet the Pope chooses to live like an aristocrat and to appease the poor with phony encyclicals and ridiculous pomp and circumstance.

The poor have been deluded by centuries of queer-baiting and sex role reinforcement done at the expense of their freedoms of choice to love and to be adequately fed and housed. The church helped the feudal lords oppress the masses, helped capitalism, and did nothing to stop Hitler in the '30s. The silence of the church during times of oppression only reinforces my own concept of it as concerned with its own patriarchal existence.

Christianity has most of all created a network of co-optation that can incorporate any current trend back into itself. A few years ago the church complained of dwindling members; now recently they're rejoicing at their growing numbers. A clever propaganda campaign? Probably not. Economic recession sends people back to their security blankets and Christianity is an easy crutch to lean on.

Christianity can even absorb gay liberation. It can pretend to be accepting and loving to us while all the time greedy to snatch our cooperation. What will the church of the future be like? Will gays be worshipping a male deity, marrying and establishing nuclear family units (2.8 adopted kids) and supporting holy wars in Vietnams? Will we be feeding the new popes and patriarchs? NO!

Christianity has attempted to co-opt feminism by setting up a token commission to study the status of women: and in some churches by ordaining women. Yet if it were truly feminist, it would burn the cathedrals and feed the poor, abolish male deitied, obliterate the nuclear family and allow us to love and live in total freedom. I don't trust Christianity, not in its most tolerating, liberal streak. It's fool's gold. I don't understand why gays find it necessary to apologize for their homosexuality by asserting that God loves them, too. The Christian's patriarchal God doesn't love dykes and faggots and queens. He's all of our fathers, the strict disciplinarian who for years told us to be women and men in the finest tradition of the sex-role system. Little ladies and gentlemen, pooh!

We are queers in the eyes of this male God. We are perverted. But we shouldn't be ashamed of this fact. We should realize that in this fact we are most free. Free to challenge the millions of years of oppression and persecution against gays and women for their violation of a sexist and male supremist theology, a theology based upon the twisted logic of man creating life through womb envy. Man has never created life; his HIStory is one of wars, violence, and persecutions.

This male god is my enemy. I do not ask any acceptance from him. I rejoice in my queerness. He is not my god, nor my savior. I await his destruction as I await the destrction of all homophobes.

There is no salvation in Christianity: only a continuation of our oppression as queers and as women. As free entities. As adrogynes. As pagans and atheists. As goddess worshippers. As earth lovers, as matriarchy seekers. The goddess lives. Paganism now!

Woo, baby...that was so intense, I may need to go lie down for a little bit. While I'm away, consider this:

- if God hates Fags, maybe God is also wrong. Maybe there is something higher, more noble than a deity who discriminates.

- maybe I know there will always be something higher than a discriminatory God.

- If you say God is homophobic, then I await his destruction as I await the destruction of all homophobes.

- someday, we will all live and love in total freedom. But that can never happen without people willing to fight for change.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that has."

~ Margaret Mead

Kim 10:48 AM |