From White Crane issue #78, 1987
Assimilation or Affirmation
by Don Kilhefner
Invocation
There was a time when you were not a slave,
remember that.
You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember…
You say there are no words to describe it.
You say it does not exist.
But remember. Make an effort to remember.
Or, failing that, invent.
Monique Wittig
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These notes are not about the historical roots of the American Gay movement. Instead, they address
an increasingly critical, but virtually ignored, dilemma faced by Gay people — our assimilation into the
mainstream versus our enspiritment as a people. I am talking about nothing less than reinventing
ourselves as Gay people.
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Today, regardless of the Gay movement's sociopolitical rhetoric, homosexual and Gay are virtually
synonymous (for a brief period between 1970 and 1975 this was not true). No matter how liberated
and progressive our self-image as Gay men might be, most of us still lead our lives within the matrix
of the Myth of the Homosexual—albeit, on subtle levels sometimes. Our so-called Gay identity is still
largely hetero-male derived and defined. For example, the plethora of conferences in recent years
aimed at "developing a positive Gay identity" are really aimed at learning more positive ways of
coping with the homosexual myth structure in which we still find ourselves enmeshed. They have very
little to do with discovering our true-self identity as a people. Our minds have been colonized well.
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When we try to share with our dominant society just who we think we are as Gay people, we find
ourselves simply feeding back to them permutated definitions of the sexual orientation myth they
originally fed to us. This process, of course, is not unique to Gay men. Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology, for
example, provides a brilliant analysis of a similar predicament in relation to the emergence of a truly
woman-centered identity for women.
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We now stand at the metaphorical fork in the road. I refer to one path as Gay assimilation. It is based
on the positive Myth of the Homosexual, a largely unexamined, underlying assumption that "we're no
different from anybody else except for what we do in bed." Other than our choice of sex partners,
we're just like heterosexuals.
For Gay assimilationists, civil rights and acceptance by heterosexuals are panaceas. Personal identities
and life plans are based on heterosexual models of respectability and upward class mobility. Non-Gay,
Caucasian physical attributes and behaviors are emulated. For the Gay assimilationist, political success
means Gay people becoming as power-oriented, manipulative, and competitive as hetero men in
playing the game of electoral and community politics. At present the Gay movement and media are
dominated by Gay assimilationists. And it is one of the reasons we can't trust our leaders.
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When I am around Gay assimilationists, I often feel like I'm associating with straight men, and I'm
reminded of Gay author James Baldwin's warning that when a minority group attempts to assimilate,
it always does so totally on the terms of the dominant culture. And Gay men are being accepted by
hetero culture to the extent that they look, behave and think just like straight men, in the process
becoming dispirited people.
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At the metaphorical fork in the road where we now find ourselves, an alternative possibility is available
to us as Gay men. I refer to it as the path of Gay enspiritment. It is less well surveyed at this point,
but across the country, this alternative is increasingly being explored by a new generation of Gay
men, many of whom had ventured down the Gay assimilation road, only to find the price too high for
their souls.
This other possibility says that there is a reality to being Gay that is radically different from being
straight (note: different not better or worse). This Gay reality is inside of us and it is substantial and
meaningful. It is real. We can feel it in our hearts and in our guts. And it has nothing to do with hetero
mythologies, either negative or positive, about what it means to be Gay.
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As Gay men continue to reclaim our cultural and spiritual history outside the Myth of the Homosexual,
we are discovering a rich historical lineage pointing toward the current emergence of Gay
consciousness. During the past century this Gay spirit has been identified, nurtured, deepened and
passed on by an incredible line of Gay mystics and visionaries—Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter,
Gerald Heard and Harry Hay, to mention one such lineage.
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Carpenter's far-reaching observations about the unique functional roles of Gay people in society have
recently been reiterated and enlarged upon by Harvard's E.O. Wilson, the founder of the new
academic field of sociobiology. In his On Human Nature, Wilson concludes: "There is a strong
possibility that homosexuality is a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important
element of early human social organization. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some of
mankind's most altruistic impulses."
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Harry Hay and this writer, following the pioneering efforts of Arthur Evans and others, have made an
important breakthrough work in Gay consciousness by reclaiming a faerie archetype to probe at the
mystery. At 1979's seminal Spiritual Gathering for Radical Faeries, nearly two hundred Gay men from
all over North America found their way to a remote spot in the Arizona desert to experience a brief
taste of true-self identity. They were invited "to tear off the ugly green frog skin of hetero-male
imitation to reveal the beautiful Faerie Prince hidden beneath."
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For a long time Gays have been trying to minimize our differences from heteros as an act of survival.
But now, for the first time in history, Gay people are being urged to begin maximizing our differences
from straights as an act of love—to ourselves and to them.
Maximizing our differences does not mean us versus them. It is not a call for Gay separatism and
elitist groupings. It does mean, however, that Gay people must begin a radical new process of selfdiscovery that starts with what is inside of us; we must begin to discover who we really are; and we
must begin inventing a language capable of revealing these essential differences to our dominant
culture.
At a time when hetero-male culture has become lethal to the continued survival of our species and
other beings on this planet, what greater act of loving kindness could Gay people perform? This is a
contribution Gays have been making all along. Now, however, there is the potential for doing our
dharmic dance with a level of awareness and compassion never before available either to Gays or
straights.
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We must learn to honor, not hide, our being different; affirm and celebrate our Gayness in original and
playful ways; acknowledge a rich hidden heritage both within and outside of us; and find new models
to explain the body of information and intuitive knowledge we have been carrying for a long time but
that had no way to get out.
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So, my evocation to Gay people is to keep moving beyond the Myth of the Homosexual. Understand
that being Gay is not the same thing as being homosexual. A new wave in Gay liberation is forming.
In deep and profound ways, none of us has really "come out" yet.
The Myth of the Homosexual: Creating Power in the Concept of Otherness
By Pat Gourley, Ppublished in the GLBT Center Newsletter December 1980
Ronald Reagan is the president and according to the national gay press the sky is falling. We are
told the “gains” in the area of gay/lesbian rights made in the late ‘70’s are seriously imperiled. No
doubt this is possibly true. Perhaps though there is a valuable lesson in this for us as gay/lesbian
peoples. On one level we need to realize how fragile our “rights” are when handed to us by society.
Can they just as easily be taken back? On yet another level the issue becomes the validity of
gay/lesbian peoples putting any energy into gay rights issues or any straight politics: left, right or
middle-of-the-road.
According to Mitch Walker, a gay visionary, “…. even from the start gay people were forced to
battle on society’s terms, as to whether or not homosexuality was ‘bad’ and therefore whether they
won or lost this argument, they lost their vision.” The sky may be falling as far as gay/lesbian peoples
are concerned but it started long before Ronald Reagan was elected president. It began for each of us
when, sometime early in our lives, we started to become aware that straight hetero society had
categorized and defined us. We were HOMOSEXUALS.
Instinctively as little lesbian girls and gay boys we naturally began expressing our non-hetero
essence at a very early age. This essence was quickly identified as “other” by the hetero hordes who
surrounded us and they didn’t think it was cute. You see hetero society has realized over the centuries
that they cannot stamp out this “otherness” in us. So what society has done instead is to exercise
control over its definition and in that way control over those expressing it.
This definition is embodied in a myth about us. It is the “myth of the homosexual”. Simply stated
this myth implies that the essence of gayness/lesbianism is a sexual act. An indication of how we have
swallowed this line is the frequency with which you hear gays/lesbians everywhere and frequently
screech, “ The only difference between us and straight people is what we do in bed”. How sad, and
threatening to us as a people, that this is actually a fairly apt description of how most of us view
ourselves 11 years after the beginning of this wave of gay liberation.
Why has society felt it so necessary to have control over us? Simple! They have realized, much
better than we have, that we are a real threat to the status quo if allowed to flower into our
“otherness”. As Mitch Walker so succinctly states in Visionary Love: “The purpose of this myth has
been, and is, to rob gay people of the power inherent in them to destroy the established order and
replace it according to their vision”.
We have much personal and group work to do though before we are going to replace the death
dance that is the world order. The first step is to extricate ourselves from the dance. This needs to
begin with our getting in touch with our true gay/lesbian natures, and this will involve by necessity a
total repudiation of the myth of the homosexual.
It is a bit scary that in search of ourselves we are definitely embarking on uncharted waters or
else waters last traveled so long ago that guides are hard to come by. We are in search of a lost
vision: a vision of the universe perhaps unique to gay/lesbian peoples. Similar visions will most
certainly be shared with many of our non-gay sisters and brothers, but before this can happen we
need to rediscover our own so that we will have something to contribute – some uniquely gay and
lesbian insights into how humankind needs to go about re-balancing with Mother.
An exercise others and I have found helpful in beginning to get in touch with our true essence is
to remember back to the first inkling you had that you might somehow be different in some way from
everyone around you. Try and remember the circumstances around this bit of insight. This is a
particularly good vision rediscovering/creating exercise to do in groups. Just trying to recall what your
early feelings and perceptions were of the world around you can lead to some amazing insights.
Particularly helpful is to re-explore those behaviors that elicited the remarks “little boys/girls don’t
do/say/feel those kinds of things”.
The election of Ronald Reagan was a timely reminder, which we really didn’t need, that the
dance is truly out of hand. Gays and lesbians buying into the myth of the homosexual must realize that
that they are no more a threat to the status quo than Ronald Reagan. The rediscovery/creation of our
vision can extricate us from the dance and return us to control of our identities. Our vision quest will
allow us to soar above their dance and thus avoid getting hit with any falling pieces of sky while we are
working on the growth-full business of creating a whole earth.
(This piece was originally titled “The Sky is Falling or the Re-birth of a Vision Quest”.)