Either you are reading this or you are not. If you are not, then a philosopher may wonder if this article is being read all. But let’s say that you are reading this article. In that case, I am addressing you. You are not merely a reader, but the subject. You are what this [...]
By Joe Perez
Perhaps the Gay Rights movement will be won when there is an end to discrimination against people on account of sexual orientation, but this is too narrow a vision of what we are called to accomplish in our time. We are in a Worldwide Movement of being Liberated into our Fullest [...]
By Joe Perez
Who owns Jesus? Can Jesus legitimately be a symbol for “pro-family” and “pro-gun” politics? Andrew Sullivan is doubtful. I think there is enough ambiguity in the Scripture for Jesus to be appropriated by a wide variety of theologies and ideologies each of which have claims of legitimacy relative to [...]
By Joe Perez
Don’t tell me you don’t believe in God and therefore you don’t need to care about spirituality. Spirituality, as Paul Tillich tells us, is about our ultimate concerns. And everyone has ultimate concerns. Joseph Campbell once said words to the effect that half the world thinks their religious metaphors are literal [...]
By Joe Perez
It is understandable to think that getting called names or physically harmed or denied rights are the greatest threats gay people face. But there is a deeper truth: it is society’s ignorance of the gay face of God that we ought to fear most. Only when the world understands that [...]
By Joe Perez
A rebel is only as good as his cause. If you choose the path of the rebel, make service to all sentient beings your cause. From this wide stance which is completely un-alienating because it affirms the entirety of your Being, a more specific focus for rebellion may be seeded. [...]
To have envy is a very human condition. Do not allow the envy to fester. Instead, notice the object of your envy and ask what it is telling you. What gold or beauty or wisdom or power do you think you don’t own, when in fact is part of [...]
In this passage from 1994′s Gay Soul, mystic and poet Andrew Harvey addresses the topic of wounding.
Mark Thompson: In Hidden Journey you movingly write, “From the deepest wound of my life grew its miraculous possibility.” Most gay men, having been deeply soul-wounded themselves, would be able to relate to those words. Still, I [...]
Human beings seek to experience reunion with God by encountering God in relationship to one another. At a fundamental level, hetero-philia is the drive to encounter God in The Other or Different. At a fundamental level, homo-philia is the drive to encounter God in The Same or Similar. It is impossible to imagine a [...]
By Joe Perez
Does being gay send you from youth onward always looking for secret hidden patterns, secret codes that will unlock the mysterious workings of the universe for you? That’s the theme broached recently by Daniel Mendelsohn and Andrew Sullivan. Their view — Andrew calls his part of his “pet theory” about [...]
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