Gay People of Faith Come Out of the Closet

But similar images are rare in mainstream media. In addition to the Mel White segment, 60 Minutes has done segments on openly gay ministers including the Rev. Gene Robinson, bishop of New Hampshire, and the Rev. Peter Gomes of Harvard University's Memorial Church. Practicing Catholic and openly gay journalist Andrew Sullivan often appears on news and talk shows, defending gay people and their place in communities of faith. But such images are few and usually narrowly limited to Christian representatives. The Web has become the best place to find diverse, positive representations of gay people of faith. A wonderful example is Al-Fatiha.org, a website founded to help create a supportive community of LGBTQ Muslims. Al-Fatiha's founder, Faisal Alam, says that the website and the Al-Fatiha Foundation emerged from his sense of isolation. “Because I was in my own struggle to reconcile my sexuality with my faith, I tried to find other people who were also in the same situation,” he says. “And in my attempt to find other people, I found that there were absolutely no other resources that existed [for LGBT Muslims].” Alam believes that “visibility for gay Muslims of faith is important in order to emphasize that Islam is not a monolithic religion.” Daayiee Abdullah is an openly gay imam who also created a supportive place for gay Muslims on the web. He leads a Yahoo! discussion group called Muslim Gay Men where people from more than 22 nations are represented. Abdullah says that for the gay Muslim men who participate, the group is essential: “Without it, they believe themselves to be alone.” When it comes to the larger media's representations of gay Muslim people of faith, both Alam and Abdullah single out the gay press for its failings. Both say the gay press joined in the pervasive, post-9/11 Islamophobia, simplistically blaming Islam's homophobia and sexism for the creation of terrorists when, looking at the major religious traditions throughout the world, there's enough of those particular bigotries to go around. But they also find recent examples that imply the gay press is taking small steps to address their criticisms. Abdullah points to The Advocate's recent inclusion of a regular Muslim columnist, while Alam refers to the two In The Life segments, which he feels were, on the whole, fair. Alam also brings up the most anticipated media event in the gay Muslim community: In The Name of Allah, a documentary by gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma and, in an act of interfaith support, produced by Trembling Before G-d director Sandi Dubowski. The feature-length film, due in 2007, was filmed in 12 different countries and nine different languages and investigates life for LGBT Muslims in some of the most draconian nations in the world for homosexuals. Like Al-Fatiha, GLBTJews.org, is another advocacy website attached to a larger foundation, the World Congress of GLBT Jews. The site offers news, support and a structure to create community for gay Jewish people all over the world, and the current news section even mentions a fundraiser for Sharma's LGBT Muslim documentary. Gay Buddhists have also found a home on the web in the Gay Buddhist Fellowship, which has online discussion groups, an e-newsletter and links to gay-friendly Buddhist organizations. Lar Bryer, a member of the governing body of the Gay Men's Buddhist Sanga, feels that gay people often come to Buddhism because, unlike other religious traditions, there are no proscriptions against homosexuality. “What Buddhism has to say is that you shall refrain from sexual misconduct — sexual activity that harms oneself or others,” explains Bryer. “And one of the things that Buddhism does is it leaves it to the practitioner to meditate on what that means.” A fascinating primer on Buddhism and homosexuality is the anthology Queer Dharma, edited by Winston Leyland. It includes historical Buddhist texts that deal with gay love, essays by practicing gay Buddhists and theologians, interviews, fiction and poetry. Bryer also recommends Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey by David Schneider, a biography of drag queen and former drug addict Dorsey, who came upon Zen Buddhism, became an abbot and founded one of the first AIDS hospices in the nation. Bryer points to Dorsey as both a positive image of a gay person of faith, and of the compassion in the gay community. “It's critical that gay people of faith be seen in the media,” Bryer says. “If we're not there, and the conservative right is allowed to essentially trademark the words ‘faith' and ‘morality,' we are lost as a community.” It was compassion that led devout Christian and seminary student Justin R. Cannon to defend his gay friends from religiously motivated attacks by researching and writing his 15-page pamphlet, “The Bible, Homosexuality and Christianity.” The pamphlet is a scholarly de-clawing of the six biblical passages used to oppress gay people, and during his work on it, Cannon realized that he was gay himself. The pamphlet is now available for free on Truthsetsfree.net, a website founded by Cannon to support LGBTQ Christians with listings of gay-friendly congregations, links to other gay Christian sites and online discussions where gay Christians can connect. In addition, Cannon has founded Gayharmony.net, the most popular gay Christian personals site on the Web, where gay and lesbian Christians can find anything from a Bible study partner to a life partner. Cannon's groundbreaking efforts have landed him on Out magazine's upcoming Out 100 list. “By being visible [gay people of faith] are able to make the statement publicly that there is a place for us too in Christ's Church,” Cannon says. “We are able to witness to youth that they don't have to choose between their faith and sexuality.” Cannon adds, “It's similar to the message conveyed at Stonewall: We are gay, we are here, and there is just as much of a place for us as there is anyone else.” Cannon's inclusion in 2006's Out 100 speaks to a change in the gay media towards images of faith. Mel White says that while his efforts as an activist have received lots of mainstream press, until recently there was nothing — and certainly nothing positive — about his work in the gay press. “The gay community is so leery of religion,” White says. “And why shouldn't they be? They'd been so damaged by it.” This past month marks the first time White has been featured in The Advocate, and his recent work with his organization Soulforce has had positive press in both mainstream and gay media. Soulforce's peaceful protests outside religious conventions and the shutting down of military recruitment centers to protest Don't Ask Don't Tell have garnered features on network newscasts and gay media alike. What those images of Soulforce — and all the images discussed here — accomplish is to begin to take back, for gay people, the moral high ground in the religious debate. For good, for ill or for both, religion is an enormous cultural force, and ceding the religious ground on the debate over gay rights relinquishes an awful lot of territory. ‘There are so many millions of gay people of faith who aren't going to be satisfied with empirical data,” White says. “Gay people of faith need to be seen and heard for that particular constituency.” And White, who has worked in tandem with Muslim groups and marched alongside Wiccans, stresses that when he says faith, “I mean every faith.” For every faith, these new images affirm what many gay people come to know as the truth; as one of the gay Jewish men who comes to embrace his gayness in Trembling Before G-d puts it, “Being gay is a blessing. It is a gift from God.”