Religion, Racism, Sexism &
Homophobia in California
By
Steven N. Goings
Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
Preface
In polite company, it is said that sex, religion and politics are taboo subjects and should
be avoided. This paper deals with all three. The reader should understand that the views
expressed are my own and while I feel passionately about them, I have done my utmost
to present them as fairly and objectively as I can manage. There are, however, a couple
of issues I feel I should address before you begin.
First of all, this paper deals almost exclusively with Christianity and its relationship to
various minority groups. This is merely because in California history and U.S. history in
general, Christianity has been the dominant religious player. For the most part, I speak of
Christianity in the broadest possible sense. It should be kept in mind that Christianity is
the largest and most diverse religion in the world; the spatial limitations of this essay
allow only a superficial look at the most obvious of Christian influences on race and
gender issues.
The same can be said of the various minority groups I consider in this paper. These too
are simple sketches. I hope that the cumulative effect of presenting several groups will
reveal some broad themes in how belief systems affect distinct groupings of people.
There are a number of references to communism in this paper. This is not meant to imply
that I, personally, have communist leanings. I do not. But, several historical people I
include in this paper had ties to communism because they perceived it to be an anti-racist
political philosophy.
I also wish to point out that I have chosen to focus on gay history and the gay rights
movement both because I, myself, am gay, and because as a minority group,
homosexuals have been so taboo that our history and our presence in history have been
largely invisible. I feel that we too are deserving of our place in the sun.
And finally, this research paper for my HIPP (Historically Informed Praxis Project) is
much longer than a typical HIPP should be, however I may use it for other purposes and
felt I should take as long as I needed to say what I wish to say.
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
Introduction:
When Moses speaks to God in the burning bush, he asks:
“When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, ‘The
God of your fathers hath sent me unto you;’ and they shall say to me,
‘What is his name?’ What shall I say unto them?” And God said unto
Moses, “I AM THAT I AM:” and he said, “Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”1
One of the things I admire about religion and mythology is the way they have of
condensing profound ideas – ideas that would take a doctorate’s dissertation to fully
examine and explain – into a simple, poetic phrase or symbol. If I were to translate this
verse into modern, irreverent English, I would render God’s answer as: “Yo! Don’t label
me, dude.” In fact, there are a number of sacred writings from around the world that
strike a similar chord. China’s Tao Te Ching, comes to mind:
“There are ways but the Way is uncharted;
There are names but not nature in words:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.”2
On the other hand, the thing I most detest about religion and mythology is that despite
ample warnings incorporated into many religions and myths, most religious people tend
to go about labeling everything and everyone, sizing everyone up against mental images
and ideas that attempt to ascribe concrete attributes to poetic abstractions. You will see
what I mean, shortly. Let us take, for example, the most famous Bible character of all,
Jesus Christ. Jesus is portrayed as the Son of God, a man who completely understands
and embodies the wisdom of Divine Reality – God.
He famously echoed the
aforementioned “I Am” statement in the book of John.
1
The Bible, Exodus 3: 13, 14. Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotes used in this paper
are from the King James Version.
2
Lao Tzu (Translation by R. B. Blakney). The Way of Life. (New York, N. Y.: Penguin
Books, 1983).
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was
glad.” Then said the Jews unto him, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and
hast thou seen Abraham?” Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, before Abraham was, I Am.”3
Here, of course, the Jews are identifying Jesus as the son of Mary, a man who has grown
up with them and whose family they all know. However, Jesus is meant to be understood
as speaking not merely as Jesus, the son of Mary, but as the eternal Christ, Son of God!
Whatever the reader’s views on the credibility of his supernatural divinity; his life, his
teaching, his consciousness are offered as a symbol, a concrete human manifestation of
the abstract God, “I AM.”
To fully understand both the poetic subtleties and the
profound ramifications of this interpretation, substitute the name Jesus for Abraham, so
that the scripture reads:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was
glad.” Then said the Jews unto him, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and
hast thou seen Abraham?” Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, before Jesus was, I Am.”
If it is not yet apparent what I am trying to say, that is okay. I have embarked upon a
Historically Informed Praxis Project (HIPP) that I believe will clarify my point as it
unfolds. As you will see, my HIPP consists of two basic ideas 4.
1) Human minds are
designed to simplify experiences and form general beliefs and belief systems. 2) All
beliefs and belief systems produce consequences.
Like the God of Moses, I too would like to avoid labeling myself and by so doing, avoid
the myriad associations the reader may attach to those labels. If I were standing in front
of you now, I would ask you to try to relate to me in the dynamic moments of time that
we would be co-creating together – rather than merely relate to your own thoughts and
feelings about the labels and categories used to describe a simplified version of who I
AM.
3
4
The Bible. John 8: 56-58.
These should be considered the thesis statement for this paper.
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
Yet, it is these very labels and categories – this simplified version – that will give you an
appreciation of why I have chosen the topic of race and religion for my HIPP.
Section I: The Broad Picture
I was born and raised and lived most of my life in California. I am a Liberal Studies
Major.
I could also be described as a gay, male, African-American, Californian,
Christian student of comparative religions. As you can imagine, these have not been an
easy set of identities to integrate into one life. I have experienced discrimination on
many levels, not only within society at large, but also within my race, within my religion,
even within my own family.
My personal struggles and difficulties combined with a life time of spiritual seeking and
self-reflection have given me a keen interest in trying to alleviate all forms of prejudice
and discrimination. Of all the prejudices that exist in the world, I believe religious
prejudices are the hardest to overcome. So that is where I have decided to focus the
majority of my efforts.
As a Liberal Studies Major seeking a teaching credential, I am cognizant of the fact that
other Liberal Studies Students will complete their own HIPPs in the future and I offer my
own HIPP as an imperfect model, which I nevertheless hope can be of some use to future
students. With that in mind, I will try to make explicit the requisite elements as I present
them. It will be up to you and future instructors to point out my failings and (hopefully)
avoid them.
The Issue:
My broad issue for the HIPP is human diversity in California5. More specifically, I am
interested in the intersection between identities and belief systems.
5
My issue is primarily a social issue although it is influenced by the environmental
history of California
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5
Ideologies,
Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
philosophies, religions and belief systems have a huge impact on how groups and
individuals view the world and interact with one another. Many people use their religion
or belief system as their primary source of identity. Others use other categories of
difference such as nationality, race, gender, social class, language, or sexual orientation
as their principal defining characteristic. In all cases, there is the potential for conflicts
between groups and individuals based on these identities and beliefs. As we shall see,
California history documents many of these conflicts.
I believe that one of the most prominent themes in the history of civilizations in general
and the history of the United States in particular has been the struggle human beings have
dealing with their diverse identities and beliefs. That the last few thousand years have
been marked by genocides all over the world, suggests either that we have done a lousy
job of getting along with our differences or that the task of dealing with these differences
is an extraordinarily difficult one. In either case, I think that the present moment of
history has exponentially raised the stakes.
Human beings have now spread all over the world and have solidified global
interdependencies
through
trade,
communications
and
international
alliances.
Furthermore, the modern technological age has increased our impact upon each other, our
global village and the entire planet to such a degree that I believe that, for better or worse,
the present living generation of human kind will be the most consequential ever! Once
upon a time, we lived in a world where most challenges were personal or local
challenges. In the early 21st Century, however, we are being confronted with global
challenges that require global cooperation. Therefore it is imperative that we quickly
develop the means to overcome our ancient and recurrent prejudices so that we can come
together to solve the colossal challenges of our day.
The Project:
For my HIPP, I have started a multi-cultural, multi-faith peace organization, “The
Gathering”, which meets at California State University of Monterey Bay. The club itself
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
has been designed to mimic the praxis cycle. The praxis cycle begins with self-reflection,
is followed by systematic study, and hopefully culminates in thoughtful, informed action.
I had actually started The Gathering as a personal project a few months before this class
and I had intended to put it on hold during the semester. But, because SBS 385 requires
participation in a project that one feels passionate about, The Gathering was resurrected
and transformed into a school club for this class. The difficult part was how to make it
relevant to California social and environmental history. That is what this essay is meant
to address. For the essay portion of my HIPP, I have a number of research questions for
which I will be seeking answers.
1) How did religion affect the way European/Americans viewed the indigenous peoples
of California?
2) Has religion played any constructive role in the liberation struggles of various
California minorities?
3) How did the cultural and religious/spiritual beliefs of European Americans and
Native Americans determine how these groups interacted with their environment?
4) How have Constitutional Amendments changed the relationships between majority
and minority groups in America?
5) Why is San Francisco the center of the Gay Rights Movement?
This essay is divided into three main sections. The first section gives an overview of the
project, my personal biases and points of interest as well as a background sketch of race
and religion in World and U.S. History. The second section, starting with the “Religious
Origins of Race Prejudice in California” gives an abbreviated and broad history of the
several forms of prejudice and oppression in California. The third and final section of the
main body, “Gay Rights – A Final Frontier?” constitutes the research portion of this
paper and focuses on the development of the Gay Rights Movement in California. At the
end of this essay you will find some “Spiritual Reflections”, my “Final Thoughts” and
two documents relating to The Gathering. The first document, About The Gathering was
written prior to my HIPP and the second document, The Purpose Statement of The
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
Gathering @ CSUMB, was written as a direct result of my HIPP. Our World – Peace
Park, (OWPP) which is mentioned in this second document is the name of the
organization with which The Gathering is collaborating to present a World Fair at
CSUMB. OWPP serves as the community liaison required for my HIPP.
Personal Relevance:
If you take the time to think about it, you will probably find that your personal story is
the true wellspring of whatever you select as your project. It certainly is true in my case.
I have always been something of a mystic, which I define as someone who perceives
exotic aspects of reality and then translates those perceptions in meaningful ways. I am
also quite philosophic by nature so I have been an avid reader of philosophy, comparative
religions and more esoteric works. And I have been a member of several churches and
multi-faith organizations. In the fall of 1990, a series of events occurred which
profoundly affected my current point of view. I was living in San Francisco and I was
member of a multi-faith Church called “Radiant Light”. At that time, Radiant Light was
teaching that in every situation you encounter in the world there is an opportunity to
discover something about your self, in essence, the world you perceive is a reflection of
what it going on inside of you.
The series of events started with a dream: I was standing between two groups. In front
of me there was a black minister and his choir. Behind me, holding picket signs and
seated in front of the congregation, were homosexual activists from the groups, Queer
Nation and Act-Up. Both camps seemed to want to understand where the other was
coming from – but just couldn’t make that leap of faith. The next morning, when I
awakened, I instinctively knew this dream would prove prophetic.
Later that day, I read in one of the local gay newspapers (the Bay Area Reporter) that the
Rev. Lou Sheldon6 would soon be bringing his “prayer warriors” to San Francisco to
battle the demons of homosexuality and witchcraft that he and his group believed were in
6
Rev. Sheldon is a Presbyterian pastor and Chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition
and author of the book: “The Agenda: The Homosexual Plan to Change America”
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
possession of the soul of the city.
The gay newspapers were outraged and were
determined to whip up a counter demonstration from the gay community. Having just
had this incredible dream the night before, in keeping with Radiant Light philosophy, I
knew this was telling me something about myself. Where did I stand? After much
prayer and meditation, I came to this realization: this was an opportunity to take a stand
for peace and to begin to heal the societal conflict between sexuality and spirituality by
healing the sexual/spiritual conflict within myself.
On the evening that the prayer warriors were to arrive at the civic center, I spent the
morning in prayer. I prayed that no violence would erupt between the groups and that in
some small way I might be used to heal some of the division and misunderstandings
between the groups. Early that afternoon, I went down to the civic center, with my Bible
in my hands and gospel music in my headphones. To identify myself with the gay
community, I wore a t-shirt that had a picture of two young, bare-chested gay models
who were arm in arm and draped in the American flag with the motto underneath: Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It wasn’t long before a young Christian, who had arrived early, and spotting my Bible,
came up to me and struck up a conversation about Jesus. We talked for quite some time
and really bonded through our conversation about the Lord. It was only when he turned
to wave goodbye that he noticed my t-shirt.
He was baffled.
But because our
conversation was so genuine, he could not simply dismiss the encounter and I felt that he
was departing with something new to consider.
As day turned into night, the prayer warriors began to arrive, en masse, by bus. Many
members of the gay community and other counter-culture communities arrived (as
expected) to protest. The police were called in to set up barricades between the two
groups. As the members of the Christian delegation filed into the civic center, some
couldn’t resist waving their Bibles at the crowd to taunt the protestors. They, in turn,
were greeted with lewd gestures and shouted obscenities. Since I was not a part of the
arriving delegation, I was kept on the protesting side of the blockade. As I watched the
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
taunting of the Christians, and the rudeness of the protestors, I was moved to read this
passage from the Bible in my best (and most sincere) actor’s voice:
“Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, “The
scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they
bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for
they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be
borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move
them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of
men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their
garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in
the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men,
Rabbi, Rabbi… But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for
ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in
yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”7
[emphasis mine]
At one point, a yelling match broke out between two individuals on opposite sides of the
barricade. I went over to them and starting praying. Some of the gays, who had noticed
the Bible in my hand, began hurling hateful insults at me, I turned around and one of
them stopped yelling and started whispering to the others as he pointed at my shirt. A
lesbian in the group confronted me: “Are you a Christian or what, man?” “Yes”, I
answered. “Well then are you gay?” “Yes.” “Then how do you reconcile the conflict
between the two?” she asked. I answered: “There is no conflict between Christianity and
homosexuality, there is a conflict between this gay community and this church.”
Shocked by my answer, she became overwhelmed, hugged me, and thanked me. Quite a
healing took place and there were several more incidents where I was able to make a
small difference and someone was moved to consider things from a deeper perspective.
In considering the fact that the police actually put up physical barriers between the
groups; in believing, as a Christian, that we each have our own special calling; and in
believing, as a member of Radiant Light, that we each have the opportunity to extract
lessons from every circumstance in our lives and to transform those lessons into
7
The Bible. Mathew 23: 1-7, 13.
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
blessings, I created my own personal mission statement which is this: My purpose in
life is to break down the barriers between belief systems and to support all people in
finding their own personal paths to spirit.
I view this class and this project as a
perfect continuation of my own path and purpose in life.
Church Vs State:
E Pluribus Unum is the motto of the United States of America. It means out of the many
one. This is the fundamental principle of democracy. The principle that all voices be
heard before we agree to move in any direction as one people. In theory at least, there
has also been a longstanding separation between church and state. The tension between
these two principles, E Pluribus Unum and separation of church and state, at once form
the boundaries that hold us together as a people and at the same time constantly threaten
to tear us apart.
The American idea of the separation of Church and State is actually a Christian idea.
According to CSUMB Professor Gerald Shenk, “the Anabaptists, out of whom the
Mennonites and Amish emerged, were the first major Christian sect to advocate this. But
they drew on the teachings of Erasmus for this doctrine” 8. During the time of Jesus,
Israel was under Roman occupation. Romans, of course, were pagans and polytheists,
and they considered their emperor to be divine. This was anathema to the strictly
monotheistic Jews. Some Jewish leaders felt that by paying taxes to the Roman emperor
(Caesar) they were paying homage to a foreign god, which, in their eyes, was a sin. It is
in this sense that the Christian foundation for the separation of Church and State can be
traced back to the gospel of Luke:
“And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands
on him; and they feared the people: for they perceived that he had spoken
this parable against them. And they watched him, and sent forth spies,
which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his
words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the
8
CSUMB Professor Gerald Shenk was the instructor of SBS 385 for whom I wrote this
paper. This is quoted from his notes on the rough draft of this paper.
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
governor. And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest
and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest
the way of God truly: Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?
But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, “Why tempt ye me?
Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it?” They
answered and said, “Caesar's.” And he said unto them, “Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the
things which be God's.”9 [emphasis mine]
After the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, the one thing that kept the rival
European powers together was the Christian Church that it had inherited from Rome:
“If any single entity commanded the loyalties of all or most Europeans, it
was the Roman Church, which was centered upon the person and office of
the pope of Rome. The pope, whose title means “father” in Latin, was
bishop of the city of Rome and claimed authority over all of Christendom,
not just the Western Church, by virtue of being the heir of Saint Peter.
According to arguments first put forward in the fourth century, Christ had
given Saint Peter, the leader of the apostles, “the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven” and, therefore authority over the entire Church. Peter later
became the first bishop of Rome, and it was as bishop of Rome that he
exercised his God-given authority over Christendom.” 10
As subsequent bishops of Rome (Catholic Popes) sought to exercise authority on earth as
well as in heaven, for centuries they quarreled with European Christian Kings over whose
will was ultimately to be done on earth.
By the 1500s, shortly after Columbus’
“discovery” of America, there was widespread resistance to the power of the Catholic
Church and Marin Luther broke with the Catholic Church beginning the Protestant
Reformation in Germany.
(Another of the requirements for the HIPP is to tie your issue into the U.S. Constitution
and a current California law. I will let my speech given at the June 30 th Gathering in
9
The Bible. Luke 20: 19-25.
Juanita B. Andrea, and Susan L. Overfield. The Human Record, Sources of Global
History (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005). This is one of my
secondary sources by two historians
10
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
celebration of Independence Day introduce this section:
The Gathering
It also picks up on the
chronology of the previous section on Church and State.)
Fourth of July Message for The Gathering
My mind wanted to go in a million different directions with today’s topic, but in honor of
the Fourth of July, I have chosen Independence Day. Actually, before I realized that the
fourth of July was coming up, my first idea for a topic was E Pluribus Unum, which is the
motto of the United States of America and which is Latin for “out of the many, one.” I
got the idea for E Pluribus Unum from a book I was reading about Bill Moyer’s interview
with Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth, in which Campbell says:
“We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group
[race, religion, gender, nationality, sexual orientation] but with the planet.
A model for that is the United States. Here were 13 different little colony
nations that decided to act in the mutual interest, without disregarding the
individual interests of any one of them…”11
And I think that is a good model for The Gathering too. Here we are, each in a sense in
our own worlds or own separate states of mind, with our own belief systems, our own
pasts, our own points of view and yet we too can decide to come together and pool our
knowledge and our experiences and our wisdom for our mutual benefit in such a way that
no individual voice is left out until a fuller understanding is reached. To illustrate what I
am talking about, take a moment to pull out a dollar bill and look at the back.
Joseph Campbell says:
“I carry a copy of the Great Seal in my pocket in the form of a dollar bill.
Here is the statement of the ideal that brought about the formation of the
United States. Look at this dollar bill. Now here is the Great Seal of the
United States. Look at the pyramid on the left. A pyramid has four sides.
When you’re down on the lower levels of this pyramid, you will be either
on one side or another.”12
So let’s look at this in terms of the commitment of the Gathering: which is to break down
the barriers between belief systems and encourage all people to find their own individual
11
Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth. (New York, N.Y.: Bantam doubleday Dell
Publishing Group, Inc, 1988). Page 24. 2nd Secondary Source.
12
Campbell, Page 25.
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
paths to Spirit. When I am convinced that my little piece of the puzzle is the absolute
truth, I am down on one side of the pyramid, which I am convinced is the “right” side!
Of course, it is perfectly naturally to believe that you’re right. And there are situations in
life in which you have to choose a side. If two people are running for President, and I
want to vote, I am going to have to choose a side. But, I also have to recognize that my
side is only one side and that to reach a fuller understanding I am going to have to seek
to co-operate with and give a fair hearing to the ideas of those with whom I disagree.
Now, if I should go beyond simply proclaiming my own point of view and I arrogantly
begin to vilify the people on one of the other sides of the pyramid, the pyramid has now
become a barrier between belief systems and no progress can be made. In my mind, my
side becomes the right side and those who are on the other sides of the pyramid are
wrong. But when I am able to maintain the integrity of my own point of view, and yet
remain open and willing to co-operate – working together – all sides can make progress
along their own paths to the top of the pyramid. And what happens when you reach the
top? E Pluribus Unum! Campbell says: “But when you get up to the top, the points all
come together, and there the eye of God opens”, which is religious language for a fuller
understanding.
The Hindu saint, Ramakrishna put it this way:
“One can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole hearted
devotion…being firm in thy devotion to the deity of thy own choice, do
not despise other deities, but honor them all. Bow down and worship
where others kneel, for where so many have been paying the tribute of
adoration, the kind Lord must manifest himself, for he is all mercy.” 13
And again, according to Campbell, God (or Ramakrishna’s “the kind Lord”)
“is a god of reason. This is the first nation in the world that was ever established
on the basis of reason. The Founding Fathers did not think the mind of man was
cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal
concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the
rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God…All men in the world
are thus capable because all people in the world are capable of reason. All men
are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because
13
Ramakrishna. I originally used this quote for this 4 th of July message read as a speech,
rather than as a student required to cite sources. I have been unable to find the original
source of this quote.
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Steven N. Goings
My HIPP
The Gathering
everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special
authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should
be.”14
For the early Americans, that special authority was the King of England, and the “special
revelation telling you that this is the way things should be”, was the Church of England.
The first thing that the colonial settlers tried to escape from, by crossing the Atlantic to
the New World, was the Church. In Europe, after the Protestant Reformation, part of the
Catholic Church broke off into several new denominations. England, under King Henry
VIII, established its own official Church of England and all the other denominations and
religions were officially banned. Some of the banned Christian sects (such as the
Pilgrims) left England for the American colonies so that they could worship freely away
from the authority of the Church of England. A number of these sects, like the Puritans,
founded their own colonies and yet, just like the Church of England had, they too banned
rival denominations within their borders. So when the Revolutionary War broke out
between the colonists and England, it wasn’t merely a bunch of separate political entities
that were forced to work together to achieve independence from England, it was also a
bunch of separate religious entities. And if they failed in their endeavor they would have
been put to death as traitors. Benjamin Franklin famously joked: “we must all hang
together, or surely we will all hang separately!”
One Christian sect or another founded almost all of the American colonies and they
imported the same religious intolerance and persecution to their colonies that they were
trying to escape from. It wasn’t until they had decided to embark upon the greater
struggle for their independence from England that they put their sectarian differences
aside to mastermind the creation of a new type of government, of the people, by the
people, and for the people, that they hoped would be free of religious intolerance by
recognizing that all men are created equal and are naturally endowed with the rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Essentially, for the American colonies to
succeed in their bid for independence, they had to break down the barriers between their
14
Campbell, Page 25.
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Steven N. Goings
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The Gathering
own belief systems, and guarantee the right of every human being to find their own paths
to spirit!
The nation that we live in today is considerably freer that it was back in the time of
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. Despite their rhetoric, it
is doubtful that any of the Founding Fathers would have been comfortable in a nation in
which a woman, a black man, and a Mormon could run for President [2008 presidential
candidates] and each have a legitimate shot at winning. As great as the Founding
Mothers and Fathers were, and as grateful as I am to live in the nation they so brilliantly
designed, I am also grateful that we have outgrown them. We are far better at actualizing
what was only potential in them. We are living in a society that is much closer to
believing that all people, not just rich, white, Christian, heterosexual men, but all people
are created equal.
When you look at that pyramid on your dollar bill you will notice that it is unfinished.
There is a gap between all the work that has been done – the foundation – and the eye of
God / the kind Lord / the fuller understanding. You may also notice to the right, there is
the American Bald Eagle with a banner in its beak proudly bearing the words: E Pluribus
Unum.
The Gathering is an attempt to continue working at the top of the pyramid. We have
come a long way; human kind has reached a new plateau, we are no longer merely
operating on a local or national scale, but on a global scale. And we have global
challenges (such as global warming) to be solved. For the colonists, the barriers were
between the belief systems of a single broader faith, Christianity. In our time, the barriers
are between other faiths, such as Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, Neo-paganism, the New Age
and so forth, and increasingly we have to recognize the contributions and points of view
of atheists, agnostics and the anti-religious. Because the language of religion in general,
and Christianity in particular, so dominates the conversation, I believe we must make a
diligent effort to reach beyond the borders of our own views to establish some common
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language with the various minority points of view so that all voices are included in our
common quest for a fuller understanding.
The Purpose of the Gathering is to encourage all people to reach their highest potential
and contribute to their communities. My Purpose in Life, and the Commitment of the
Gathering, is to break down the barriers between belief systems. That means I want to
live in, and help create a world, where we all have the right to practice our own religions,
espouse our own ideas, and voice our own opinions. I want to live in a world where I am
free to hang out with anybody I choose, and I want a forum to express my grievances
whenever I think that my nation, or my religion, or my school, or my employer has
disregarded my individual rights. Basically, I want the rights guaranteed by the First
Amendment to the United States Constitution: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the
Press, Freedom of Religion (the freedom to walk your own spiritual path), Freedom from
Religion (in the form of the separation of Church and State), the Right of peaceful
assembly, and the right to petition the government for the address of grievances.
So, as we gather today to share our individual, hard won wisdom with one another, keep
in mind that by breaking down the barriers between our many belief systems, and
supporting each other’s right to walk our own paths to spirit, we are engaging in that
most American of activities. E Pluribus Unum! Happy Independence Day.
Laws and the Constitution15:
10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Before the civil-rights movement of the 1960s and the modern age of communication,
and certainly before the aftermath of the “War Between the States”, the dominant player
in the lives of U.S. citizens was not the United States government, it was state
government. Nor were individual states required to show the same deference to the Bill
of Rights established by the Federal Constitution, consequentially each state had their
15
This section fulfils the requirement to compare the constitution to my HIPP.
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own laws of who did and did not constitute a citizen and these laws were based, by and
large on what I think of as secondary characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity,
religion and so-on.
14th Amendment: 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
15th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
19th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
The 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments explicitly trumped “state’s rights” and states
were forced to accept U.S. citizenship for all its native born members and the right to
vote was extended first to all races16 and then to women. Nevertheless, individual states
still found legal (though unjust) means to enforce second-class citizenship upon various
minorities. The Civil Rights Act of 196417, Title IX of the Education Amendment of
197218 and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 199019, have continued to extend civil
rights
16
protections
to
more
Americans
by
weakening
institutionalized
Although Native Americans did not get the right to vote until 1924.
17
Document Number: PL 88-352. 88th Congres, H. R. 7152. SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be
entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges,
advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this
section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national
origin.
18
Title 20 U.S.C. Section 1681. Sex. a) Prohibition against discrimination; exceptions. No
person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied
the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity
receiving Federal financial assistance.
42 U.S.C. 12181. Sec.36.101 Purpose. The purpose of this part is to implement title III of the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12181), which prohibits discrimination on the
basis of disability by public accommodations and requires places of public accommodation and
commercial facilities to be designed, constructed, and altered in compliance with the accessibility
standards established by this part.
19
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discrimination, providing more equitable athletic programs for female students and
mandating public accommodations for disabled persons, respectively.
The latest civil rights struggle is the struggle for gay rights. Among the rights some gay
activists are trying to acquire is the right to same-sex marriage. California is among a
handful of states that could be considered on the front lines of this culture war. Like
slavery and civil rights before it, this struggle has taken on moral connotations and cannot
be divorced from religious considerations. The majorities in individual states differ
greatly on this hot button issue. But both sides of the issue have to contend with the full
faith clause of the Constitution:
Article 4 Section 1: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts,
Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws
prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the
Effect thereof.
In terms, of the gay marriage debate, this article requires that marriages performed in any
state have to be recognized in all states. In 1996, President Clinton signed into law the
Defense of Marriage Act which allows states to ignore gay marriages performed in other
states. On the face of it, this law appears to be unconstitutional and there have been some
legal challenges, however, by not accepting those challenges, the Supreme Court has
effectively allowed this law to stand. Several states, including California, have also
passed their own bans of gay marriage. In 2000, California’s Proposition 22 became law
and was added to the Family Code Statue:
California Family Code Section 308.5: Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or
recognized in California.
Yet in 2005, the California legislature approved a same-sex marriage bill only to have it
vetoed by Governor Arnold Swarzenegger who argued that the issue should be decided
by the courts or a new people’s referendum.
As we shall see, as we delve more specifically into California history, religious beliefs
have played a prominent role on each side of all of these legal battles involving race,
gender, sexual orientation and the like.
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SECTION II: CALIFORNIA HISTORY
The Religious Origins of Race Prejudice in California
All forms of prejudice essentially boil down to a hatred of the stranger. As the California
writer John Steinbeck once wrote, “This hatred of the stranger occurs in the whole range
of human history, from the most primitive village form to our own highly organized
industrial farming.”20
The ancient world was certainly full of prejudice.
In the
intervening years after the Jewish sect formed around the teaching and life of Jesus broke
off into a full-fledged world religion called Christianity, over-zealous European
Christians considered the Jews to be the “killers of Christ”21 and so, in an ironic twist of
history persecuted the members of the very race to which Jesus himself belonged!
There were also fierce battles between Christianity and Islam on the outskirts of Europe
and with the various pagan peoples within its borders. By the time of the renaissance, the
great artists of the period had reworked the image of Jesus to resemble that of a then
contemporary European. In later years, Jesus and his disciples became “white” in the
imagination of the times and they have remained white in the public consciousness to this
day. Despite Christianity’s origins in middle-eastern Judaism, it mostly disappeared from
that region22 (although several Crusades were undertaken to reestablish it there) and
became associated instead with eastern and western European whites. Once Columbus’
voyage to the western hemisphere united the Old World with the New World, rival
20
John Steinbeck. The Harvest Gypsies, On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. (Berkeley,
CA.: Heyday Books, 1936.
21
My favorite website, http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_jesu.htm, reports the following:
Various groups have been blamed for Jesus' execution: These have included blaming…all Jews
including even Jews born over a thousand years after Jesus’death who lived thousands of miles
away from Jerusalem. Jews as a whole were called “Christ killers.” This belief justified centuries
of Jewish persecution and mass murder.
22
Buddhism has a similar history, the Buddha preached in Nepal and India where it
remains a minority religion, yet it spread throughout Asia as the dominant regional
religion.
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European nations brought these notions of racial superiority23 and religious warfare based
upon an uncompromising evangelizing monotheistic religion to their encounters with the
native peoples of the Americas.
These attitudes along with centuries of religious wars and competition between nations in
the Old World gave Europeans a model for cruelty as they encountered American Indians
in the New. As early as 1514, the Spanish crown, out of concern for the cruelty of the
conquistadors towards the Indians they encountered in the Caribbean, required
subsequent conquistadors to read (in Spanish!) a document called the Requerimiento as
part of their ritual of taking possession of the land in the name of the King and Queen of
Spain.
The Requerimiento, which means requirement in Spanish, was written by Spanish jurist,
Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios, and was used as the official justification for Spanish
sovereignty over the Americas and “required” the native peoples to whom it was read to
acknowledge and accept the suzerainty of the Spanish Crown.
You may recall at the beginning of this paper, I said that my HIPP consists of two basic
ideas.
1) Human minds are designed to simplify experiences and form general beliefs
and belief systems. 2) All beliefs and belief systems produce consequences.
I believe
that as individuals our minds generate insights and generalize beliefs, but as cultures and
societies we take the accumulated insights of our particular group and create cultural
myths and religions. Like individual beliefs, myths and religions have the capacity to
guide and enhance our lives or become cultural stumbling blocks that substitute the
wisdom of the past for the unique requirements of the present or even become
institutional instruments of domination and oppression. Keep this is mind as you read
(this edited version of) the Requerimiento24:
23
See the quote from Mr. Botts in the section on the California Constitutional Debates
Rose Marie Beebe, and Robert Senkewics. Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles
of Early California, 1535-1846. (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2001.) Pages 17 & 18.
This is the 1st of 3 sources used from class materials. The Requerimiento specifically
applies as a primary source as well.
24
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“the Lord our God, Living and Eternal, created the Heaven and the Earth,
and one man and one woman, of whom you and we, all the men of the
world at the time, were and are descendants, and all those who came after
and before us… Of all these nations God our Lord gave charge to one
man, called St. Peter, that he should be Lord and Superior of all the men
in the world, that all should obey him, and that he should be the head of
the whole human race, wherever men should live, and under whatever
law, sect, or belief they should be; and he gave him the world for his
kingdom and jurisdiction.
And he commanded him to place his seat in Rome, as the spot most fitting
to rule the world from; but also he permitted him to have his seat in any
other part of the world, and to judge and govern all Christians, Moors,
Jews, Gentiles, and all other sects. This man was called Pope… and so
has it been continued even till now, and will continue till the end of the
world.
One of these Pontiffs… made donation of these isles and Tierra-firme to
the aforesaid King and Queen and to their successors…So their
Highnesses are kings and lords of these islands and land of Tierra-firme
by virtue of this donation… almost all those to whom this has been
notified, have received and served their Highnesses… without any
resistance, immediately, without delay, when they were informed of the
aforesaid facts… And also they received and obeyed the priests whom
their Highnesses sent to preach to them and to teach them our Holy Faith;
and all these, of their own free will, without any reward or condition, have
become Christians… and you too are held and obliged to do the same…
[my emphasis]
You may notice that “the Lord our God, Living and Eternal, created…one man and one
woman, of whom you and we...were and are descendants” simplifies the complex
generation of mankind by positing a Creator and two original ancestors. Many cultures
around the world have similar origin stories. These are examples of my first idea that
human minds (and cultures) simplify knowledge and generate beliefs. But as we read on,
we find that God has commanded St. Peter to place his seat in Rome, as the spot most
fitting to rule the world from. What matters here is the second part of my idea: beliefs
have consequences. The consequence of Catholic Spanish beliefs was that they served as
justifications for imperial and religious colonialism. The Requerimiento continues:
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But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you
that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country,
and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and
shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their
Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall
make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their
Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall
do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not
obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him;
[This is followed by a general shirking of responsibility and self
absolution:]
and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are
your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers
who come with us. And that we have said this to you and made this
Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his testimony in
writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses
of this Requisition."
History shows that ultimately the Spanish empire made good on their threat. After
conquering Mexico, the Spanish continued to explore up the California coast. After one
such expedition, Antonio De Ascencion, a Carmelite priest, became the first to argue (in
1620) that California should also be colonized because of its
“potential wealth & strategic location. The institution which Ascencion
urged as the core of the colonization effort was the mission. He urged that
men from his own religious community be put in charge of the California
missions. Ascencion also believed that even if military force were
necessary to establish a foothold among the native peoples, they would
then spontaneously see the superiority of the Spanish way of life –
especially its agriculture – and voluntarily Hispanicize themselves.25 Such
results were to remain out of reach for most California missionaries.”26
European American VS. Native American Views on
the Environment:
I can’t resist noting that this reminds me of the Administration of Pres. George W.
Bush’s cheery hopes for the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq
26
Beebe and Senkewicks. Pages 46 & 47.
25
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The Bible:
“And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in
the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And
God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth
upon the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb
bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the
which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to
every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing
that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green
herb for meat:” and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made,
and, behold, it was very good”.27
This Biblical view of the relationship between man and the earth is sharply contrasted by
the view held by most Native Americans. Perhaps the most famous summary of the
sacredness that most Native American tribes held for the land was expressed in the
(possibly apocryphal) 1854 letter to the American government from the chief of the
Suquamish Indians, Chief Seattle.
Chief Seattle:
“Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the
earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not
weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our God is also your God.
The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on
its creator. Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the
buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen
when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men
and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the
thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say
27
Genesis 1:26 -31
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goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the
beginning of survival”. 28
There is some controversy about both of these works. Many religious scholars have
pointed out that there are actually two creation stories in Genesis. Likewise, there is an
alternate version of Chief Seattle’s supposed 1854 letter to the U.S. government.
Nevertheless, both writings capture the fundamental difference in outlook concerning the
earth and man’s relation to it between the Judeo-Christianity of the Europeans and the
nature based religions of the many Indian Nations.
SBS 385 Professor Shenk has pointed out that these very different points of view resulted
in completely different relationships to the environment. Simply put, Europeans thought
of the land as something to be subdued and overcome, whereas the Indian Nations valued
moving in concert with the natural rhythms of their environments. Also, the natives
considered ecological resources to be public property whereas whites were busily
converting everything they could into state or private property. Because, in general,
Native Californians practiced variations of subsistence living, the establishment of
missions, presidios, and pueblos (towns) severely disrupted their routines.
“First, the town…they were laid out around a central plaza with land for
houses, plots of arable land for agriculture outside the urban area were
also distributed…The ultimate aim of colonization …was to transform
the land and its people into productive parts of the Spanish empire.
[my emphasis] Second, the presidio…the government established a series
of presidios along the caravan routes to guard the miners and settlers and
also to serve as bases for mobile expeditions against the Indians. Finally,
the mission. In reconquista Spain [reconquered from Muslim rule],
Christian warriors were given jurisdiction over the people who lived in the
areas they had taken from the Moors. In return for protection the people
were “entrusted” to the knight and had to give over a certain amount of
their labor to him. In the Caribbean, the Indians were forced to labor for
the conquistador…In 1542, Spain promulgated the New Laws, which
abolished Indian slavery…but massive resistance…prevented that…As a
reaction to the brutality [against the Indians], religious [sects] advocated
establishing separate areas for the Indians in which they could be
protected from the worst abuses of the system…As each locality was
brought under Spanish control, a church was constructed, sometimes on
Barefoot Windwalker. “Chief Seattle’s Letter to All the People”
http://www.barefootsworld.net/seattle.html. (Accessed on Dec 1st, 2007).
28
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an earlier indigenous ceremonial site [my emphasis]…The colonial
government that established the missions intended for them to be
temporary institutions. The Indians were to learn the Spanish religion,
language, and way of life, and then after a period of ten years or so, the
church was to be turned into a regular parish… [But] the slow pace of
secularization led to criticism that the missionaries were keeping the
Indians too separated from the Spanish settlers and in a kind of perpetual
servitude in order preserve their own privileges, riches and land.”29
As the mission system was established up the California coast, Indians were brought into
them through various means. Initially, curiosity and trade were motivating factors, but
ultimately as missions were established, the resources used to maintain them were gained
at the expense of the Indian ways of life.
“In addition to the enslavement and exploitation of Native peoples, the
Spaniards, Mexicans, and other European newcomers were actively taking
and destroying land and the various other resources from Native
Americans around the Bay Area. Major ecological changes resulted. The
Spaniards and Mexicans brought extensive open-range livestock grazing
to California and introduced new, less productive grasses of
Mediterranean origin, resulting in major damage to the native grasslands.
The area’s ecological disruptions were linked directly to a Native
subjugation at the missions because when the resource base was nearly
exhausted, some Ohlones, out of desperation, sought out the Franciscans
for assistance.”30
From Spanish to Mexican to American California:
In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain and California became a Mexican
territory.
“Three changes that accompanied this transition would alter the territory’s
economy permanently. First, Mexico repealed a number of the restrictive
Spanish laws regarding foreign trade, and ships from England and the
United States began to call at California more frequently…Second the
missions were [finally!] secularized…the missions now became churches
without extensive lands attached to them, and the mission Indians were
legally emancipated and no longer tied to a particular church
Beebe and Senkewicks. Page 67
30
David N. Pellow, and Lisa S. H. Park. The Silicon Valley of Dreams, (New York and
London. New York University Press. 2002). Page 32. This counts as my second source
from class materials.
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complex…The third development was closely related to secularization of
the missions. As ownership of the lands was taken away from the
missions, it was generally distributed over the next few years to the
Californios [generally considered non-Indian descendents of Spaniards &
Mexicans born in California] and their families. On these lands, the elite
of this generation built their ranchos and took over the already profitable
hide and tallow trade.”31
Meanwhile in the United States, Americans with expansionist ambitions were busily
concocting the idea of Manifest Destiny.
Like the Spanish Requerimiento, which
conveniently claimed that European pontiffs had the God-given authority to donate
Indian lands to the King and Queen of Spain, so Americans came to believe in Manifest
Destiny, which was the equally ludicrous idea that God had declared that Anglo-Saxons
were destined to spread Republican Democracy across the American Continent. Also
like the Spanish, it was through the agency of a successful military campaign in the 1846
-1848 U.S. – Mexican War that the U.S. was able to achieve its “Manifest Destiny.”
And what a rich destiny it was! From the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the U.S. gained
the lands that comprise the present states of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona
and New Mexico and confirmed the possession of Texas. Even more remarkably, a little
more than a week before the treaty was signed, and four months before it was ratified,
California struck gold! This drastically changed the landscape and the population of
California.
“Anglo-American explorers and newcomers from Europe hunted sea otter,
beaver, grizzly bear, pronghorn and tule elk, and several species of whale
to near extinction by the mid-nineteenth century. The causes of this
overkill shifted from an initial subsistence orientation to sport and
international commerce.”32
The California gold mines quickly became a magnet for people all over the world and
soon California was the most ethnically diverse territory in the nation. It was under these
conditions that Californian Anglo-Saxon leaders took up the debate on the legal
definitions of race that would be used to decide who would be the haves and the have not
in terms of property, voting rights and legal status in the new Californian State.
Beebe and Senkewicks. Pages 313 &314
32
Pellow and Park. Page 32
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Parsing Race: 1849 California Constitutional Debates:
“It was not for the native Californians we were making this Constitution; it was for the
great American population, comprising four-fifths of the population of the country.”
These are the opening lines of the 1849 Constitutional Debates. In fact, the minutes of the
California Constitutional Debates, display the most unabashed institutional bigotry one is
ever likely to come across. One of the chief concerns of these debates was the fear that
the terms of Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo between the U.S. and Mexico, might in effect,
restrict California’s ability to restrict the franchise to “white” males. Suffice it to say
that this is one of the most blatantly racist official documents I have ever seen. Here are
some excerpts from its tortuous examination of racial terms:33
[On Religion]
“Mr. BOTTS: One of the most eloquent and beautiful clauses in the
Constitution of Virginia, was the following, in the bill of rights. He
proposed it as a substitute for the third section reported by the Committee:
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner
of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by
force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free
exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is
the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity
toward each other.”
Mr. SHERWOOD: There have been sects known there to discard all
decency, and admit spiritual wives, where men and women have herded
together, without any regard for the established usages of society. It was
for this reason that the clause was put in the Constitution of New York. No
such thing as an attempt to limit the Roman Catholics to any fixed rules of
worship was intended; but it was deemed necessary that society should be
protected from the demoralizing influence of fanatical sects, who thought
proper to discard all pretentions to decency.
33
Debates on the California Constitution, Monterey, 1849. From the California
Constitutional Convention, September 1 – October 13, 1849.
(Colton Hall, Monterey, California). This is the second of two primary sources required.
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(As we shall see in the section on gay rights, there has been a long history of institutional
opposition to “sects” whose members are said to engage in non-sanctioned sex acts.)
[On Negroes & Slavery]
Mr. WOZENCRAFT said: Mr. President: We have declared, by a
unanimous vote, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever
exist in this State. I desire now to cast my vote in favor of the proposition
just submitted, prohibiting the negro race from coming amongst us; and
this I profess to do as a philanthropist, loving my kind, and rejoicing in
their rapid march toward perfectability. If there was just reason why
slavery should not exist in this land, there is just reason why that part of
the family of man, who are so well adapted for servitude, should be
excluded from amongst us. It would appear that the all-wise Creator has
created the negro to serve the white race. We see evidence of this
wherever they are brought in contact; we see the instinctive feeling of the
negro is obedience to the white man, [!] and, in all instances, he obeys
him, and is ruled by him. If you would wish that all mankind should be
free, do not bring the two extremes in the scale of organization together;
do not bring the lowest in contact with the highest, for be assured the one
will rule and the other must serve.
(In the coming pages I will consider more closely the Biblical roots of this idea that “the
all-wise Creator has created the negro to serve the white race”.)
[On the significance of “white”]
Mr. NORIEGO desired that it should be perfectly understood in the first
place, what is the true signification of the word "white." Many citizens of
California have received from nature a very dark skin; nevertheless, there
are among them men who have heretofore been allowed to vote, and not
only that, but to fill the highest public offices. It would be very unjust to
deprive them of the privilege of citizens merely because nature had not
made them white. But if, by the word "white," it was intended to exclude
the African race, then it was correct and satisfactory.
Mr. BOTTS had no objection to color, except so far as it indicated the
inferior races of mankind. He would be perfectly willing to use any words
which would exclude the African and Indian races. It was in this sense the
word white had been understood and used. His only object was to exclude
those objectionable races--not objectionable for their color, but for what
that color indicates.
[On Indians]
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Mr. HASTINGS remarked that… it would be a most injurious measure to
permit the Indians of this country to vote. There are gentlemen who are
very popular among the wild Indians, who could march hundreds up to the
polls. There is no distinction between an Indian here and the remote tribes.
An Indian in the mountains is just as much entitled to vote as anybody, if
Indians are entitled to vote. But men who have Indian blood in their veins
are not for that reason Indians. There are, perhaps, many persons resident
in this country who have Indian blood, but who are not considered Indians.
[On the former citizens of Mexico]
Article VIII of the Treaty of Guadalupe – Hidalgo: Mexicans now
established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, …who shall
prefer to remain in the said territories, may either retain the title and
rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States.
Mr. Botts: proposed to amend the amendment by inserting the word
"white" before the words "male citizen of Mexico." He hoped it would be
the will of the House that no citizens of the United States should be
admitted to the elective franchise but white citizens. All he asked was that
citizens of Mexico who had become citizens of the United States should
be placed upon the same footing with ourselves; that white citizens alone
should be admitted to the right of suffrage.
Mr. GILBERT: The treaty has said that Mexican citizens, upon
becoming citizens of the United States, shall be entitled to the rights and
privileges of American citizens. It does not say whether those citizens are
white or black, and we have no right to make the distinction. If they be
Mexican citizens, it is sufficient; they are entitled to the rights and
privileges of American citizens. No act of this kind could, therefore, have
any effect. The treaty is above and superior to it.
Mr. BOTTS: The States of this Union are free and sovereign. They
prescribe for themselves the right of suffrage. Gentlemen need not look to
the treaty of peace for authority; it is competent for the people of this
country to declare that no man, unless he have black hair and black eyes,
shall vote.
Mr. GILBERT: rose to say a word [to]…Mr. Botts… He would call the
gentleman's attention to the 6th article of the Constitution, section 2d:
"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made
in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;
and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the
Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." This
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treaty is therefore the supreme law of the land. It appeared to him that
nothing could more definitely settle the question. We cannot go beyond
this treaty, and disfranchise any man who is admitted under the treaty to
the rights of citizenship.”
Economics,
Environmental
Injustice,
and
Racial
Hierarchies:
The California gold mines, the building of the transcontinental railroad, agricultural labor
and high technology industries of the Silicon Valley all followed similar patterns of
ecological devastation, human exploitation and the distribution of hardships, resources
and political access based upon gender, race, religion and the like.
“The racial division of labor and of everyday activities had real
consequences for different racial and ethnic groups. In the New Almaden
mine, Anglo-American and European workers were employed in the less
taxing occupation of “reduction” and were paid $5-$7 per day. In
contrast, Chinese and Mexican workers were employed in the much
heavier and less desirable occupation of “ore-carrier,” and were paid $2$3 per day…. White working class interest succeeded in passing the Land
Law of 1851, which made all Spanish and Mexican land grants subject to
review and rejection. This law quickly opened the door to a flood of legal
challenges, the dismantling of the Californio ranching economy, and the
transfer of massive landholdings to whites…This era saw the creation of a
new racial hierarchy, with Mexicans just below whites; next came African
Americans, then Asians, and then Native Americans. Whites allowed
Mexicans a relatively elevated status because most of them were Catholic
(a European-based religion), because they were Spanish speaking (a
European language), and because, as metizos, they had physical features
and bloodlines that were part European.”34
The Chinese started coming to California in large numbers around the time of the gold
rush. Like all other forms of ethnic labor, they were both needed and unwanted. The
problem, as always, was how to benefit from their labor but restrict their gains and their
rights. The first step was to establish that they were not white. In the 1854 case of The
People Vs. Hall, George W. Hall appealed his murder conviction on the testimony of
Chinese witnesses on the grounds that they should be considered Indians (of the
Mongolian race) or at least not white. At the time California law stated: “No Black, or
34
Pellow and Park. Page 35.
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Mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a
white man.”
“The court found that in using these words “the Legislature, if any
intention can be ascribed to it, adopted the most comprehensive terms to
embrace every know class or shade of color, as the apparent design was to
protect the White person from the influence of all testimony other than
that of persons of the same caste. The use of these terms must, by every
sound rule of construction, exclude every one who is not of white
blood.”35
By 1882, the U.S. Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act suspending Chinese
immigration. Japanese immigrants began to replace the Chinese. But the Japanese were
quite aware of American prejudice towards the Chinese and non-whites in general so to
avoid the same treatment the Chinese had met with,
“Some Japanese, in fact, strenuously insisted they were white ...Japanese
leaders and white officials in California agreed, for the most part, that the
Japanese were racially distinct from the Chinese. It mattered most that
Japanese in California organized gender relations for reproduction and
production in ways that defined whiteness. In particular, unlike the
Chinese before them, Japanese immigrants by 1917 often lived on family
farms, and within nuclear families headed by males, often converted to
Christianity, and were likely to learn English.”36
The Japanese were also characterized as a “male race” in contrast to the “feminine”
Chinese:
“Since the Gold Rush, as Gary Okihiro has written, “because of white
men’s choices and the dearth of women, work such as cooking and
cleaning and washing were open to Chinese men, who according to a
prevalent idea, were lesser men belonging to a feminized race.”…Japanese
leaders sought to distance themselves from these stereotypes that had
dogged the Chinese…they were content to let white Californians portray
Chinese as effeminate, and Japanese as masculine… [because]
“masculine” races were superior to “feminine” races.”37
California’s relationship to the Chinese and Japanese changed dramatically when
America entered the first and second world wars! In deference to the human fodder that
35
J. Ross Browne. California Constitutional Convention, 1849.
Gerald Shenk. Work or Fight. (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave MacMillan. 2005). Page
120. This is the third of the required sources from class materials.
37
Shenk. Page 120.
36
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would be needed for World War I, according to the black and white bi-racial
categorization used by the United States Armed Forces, Chinese men suddenly became
“white” and therefore were eligible for the draft. In World War II, American citizens of
Japanese descent were summarily (and infamously) rounded up and sent to internment
camps for the duration of the war.
I invite the reader to recall these early examples of the meanings placed upon gender in
defining a people when I consider the matter at length in the sections on Gender
Inequality and Gay Rights.
The Religious Origins of Gender Inequality in
California:
“Civilizations everywhere undermined the earlier and more equal
relationships of men and women…Women have long been identified, not
only with the home, but also with “nature,” for they are intimately
involved with that fundamental natural process of reproduction. But
“civilization” seemed to highlight “culture,” or the human mastery of
nature, through agriculture, through monumental art and architecture, and
through the creation of large-scale cities and states…a further aspect of
“civilization” that may well have contributed to patriarchy was warfare.
Large-scale military conflict with professionally-led armies was a feature
of almost all the “first civilizations,” and female prisoners of war were
often the first slaves…and the buying and selling associated with
commerce was soon applied to male rights in women, as female slaves,
concubines, and wives were exchanged among men…By the second
millennium BCE, various written laws codified and sought to enforce a
patriarchal family life that offered women a measure of paternalistic
protection while insisting on their submission to the unquestioned
authority of men. Central to these laws was the regulation of female
sexuality.”38
38
CSUMB Professor Robert Strayer. All Under Heaven. (not yet published) 3rd
Secondary Source.
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As with virtually all the world religions in the historical era of great civilizations,
Christianity too, is a patriarchal religion. Here are just a few of the Biblical scriptures
that support the view that:
Men should rule over women:
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”39
Women are less pure than men:
“If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall
be unclean seven days… But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be
unclean two weeks,”40
Men are worth more than women:
“And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation
shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy
estimation shall be three shekels of silver.”41
Californian missionaries were not at all pleased with the relatively equal or high status
that native peoples afforded their women, nor were they enthused with their more
permissive attitude towards sexuality in general. Consequently, as American aborigines
were brought into the Mission system, the status of their women underwent a predictable
decline.
On the other hand, American Anglo-Saxons also perceived women as a
civilizing force, and the virtual absence of women during the Gold Rush years was
deeply felt.
“It was no wonder then that life in the mines, where the population was 97
percent male, provoked male nostalgia for that intricate mosaic of
meaning seemingly embodied in female friends and relatives, a mosaic
men felt themselves incapable of piecing together on their own.”42
39
The Bible. Genesis 3:16
The Bible. Leviticus 12: 2, 5.
41
The Bible. Leviticus 27: 6
42
Susan Lee Johnson. “Bulls, Bears, and Dancing Boys. Race, Gender, and Leisure in
the California Gold Rush.” Raidical Hisory Review. (1994.) 18pp.
40
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Despite this nostalgia, like the relationship between minorities and whites, women
everywhere were treated as inferior to men. Minority women, of course, had (have) it
worse.
For one thing, most women have been socialized to be more docile and
accommodating than men, and therefore (it is assumed) more easily controlled.
“Women workers were highly sought after because they could be paid
less…Not only women, but girls aged twelve and above were
recruited…Employers also sought out immigrant female workers because
they were believed to be much easier to control than native-born women.
Nearly 90 percent of these women workers were of foreign birth.”43
“The concentration of people of color in hazardous, health-compromising
jobs is well documented. However, the relegation of women – particularly
immigrant women and women of color – to hazardous jobs …deserves
equal attention…women and their children are consistently on the front
lines of chemical exposure and environmental justice struggles in Silicon
Valley…Not only do women constitute the majority of production
workers in high-tech firms; they also account for the majority of
temporary workers, the majority of workers doing piecework in their
homes, and the majority of workers in low-status occupations that support
the electronics industry and the regional economy, such as housekeeping,
janitorial and health care jobs.”44
Resistance, Civil Rights, and Labor Movements:
As stated in the HIPP Guide, “we hope you are learning/will learn from this class, all
“problems” or “issues” have interrelated social and environmental components.” I would
include economic components as well. Beyond the religious evangelism and imperial
colonialism that drove the European powers across the Atlantic to the New World, these
powers were equally driven by economic greed and competition.
However much
religious and racial bigotry facilitated the exploitation of Africans, Native Americans,
and multi-national immigrants, economic desire for and dependence upon cheap labor has
always been one of the chief obstacles to alleviating these social ills.
43
44
Pellow and Park. Page 48.
Pellow and Park. Page 11.
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It turns out that economic justice as well as environmental justice is crucial to achieving
equality for minorities and under-valued groups. Civil rights and labor rights are
intimately linked. So it should come as no surprise that communists, socialists and
various other labor advocacy groups have all played their part in American civil rights
struggles.
From the earliest days of the Spanish colonizers, all oppressed groups in California have
engaged in periodic or sustained forms of resistance. In the days of the Spanish Missions
there were numerous Indian desertions, uprisings and rebellions. On a national level,
1865 saw the abolition of slavery in the United States, by the turn of the century women
were stumping for the vote that they would not receive until 1920s. In the 1950s and
1960s, the great civil rights movement was launched by African-Americans, struggles for
women’s liberation and gay rights would come along in the decades that followed.
More specifically, in California, the Chinese faced a great deal of white hostility as there
numbers grew and all sorts of laws were passed to impede their success.
But the
Japanese that began to replace the Chinese after the Chinese Exclusion Act were less
compliant, and began organizing as early as 1900. Soon different ethnic groups were
working together:
“In the 1910s, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized and
led strikes in California among workers of all nationalities. The IWW
believed in letting growers' crops rot until they paid a living wage. They
pioneered direct action tactics.”45
The communist party too was involved in civil rights movements in the early decades of
the 20th Century. This involvement later came to haunt some civil rights leaders in the
McCarthy and post McCarthy eras. One of my personal heroes; gay, African-American
civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin, organized the famous 1963 March on Washington.
Because of his earlier association with the American Communist Party, Rustin was a
controversial choice to be the chief organizer of the march. He said of that earlier time:
45
Carlos Marentes and Cynthia P. Marentes. The Struggle in California. 1996.
(Updated December, 1999.). http://www.farmworkers.org/strugcal.html . (Accessed
on Dec. 1st, 2007).
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“the communists were passionately involved in the civil rights movement so they were
ready-made for me."46
The 1960s and 1970s saw the birth of a number of famous labor and civil rights groups
and coalitions in California. Among these were the Black Nationalist group, the Black
Panthers; the Chicano student group, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan
(MEChA), and the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), which supported striking
Filipinos and Mexicans, and was headed by the now iconic Cesar Chavez. The UFW
conscientiously followed the non-violence principles of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Interestingly, Dr. King was not killed while marching for racial equality. He was killed
while planning a Poor People’s March to Washington as he made a visit to Memphis,
Tennessee to support that city’s striking sanitation workers.
The Redemption of Religion:
Despite my criticisms of Christianity throughout this paper, I am myself a deeply spiritual
and religious person. I would like to repeat one of my earlier points that “religions have
the capacity to guide and enhance our lives OR become cultural stumbling blocks that
substitute the wisdom of the past for the unique requirements of the present OR even
become institutional instruments of domination and oppression.” Because this paper is
an examination of the religious roots of prejudice, it has been and will continue to be
necessary to expose the dark side of religion. It is an unfortunate truth that religion has
played a destructive role in Californian and American racism. Thankfully, that is not the
whole story. One of the pillars upon which our Judeo-Christian culture rests is social
justice. Religion has also been at the heart of progressive movements for racial harmony
and social justice:
“In Judaism…history is in tension between its divine potentialities and its
present frustrations. There is a profound disharmony between God’s will
and the existing social order that laid the groundwork for social protest.
46
I have lost the source of this quote, see my general footnote on Bayard Rustin on page
55.
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As things are not as they should be, revolution in some form is to be
expected. The idea bore fruit. It is in the countries that have been affected
by the Jewish perspective on history…that the most intensive movements
for social reform have occurred.”47
In fact, religion has also been at the heart of progressive movements for racial harmony
and social justice throughout the world. The organization called Human Rights Watch is
dedicated to defending human rights world wide. Their website offers a history of the
religious basis of the human rights movement around the world:
“Some in secular circles would suggest that history has come full circle.
To them, the human rights movement is the product of the Enlightenment
and, as such, part of a determined attempt at reducing the power of
religion over state and society. Today, however, it is resurgent religious
movements that are challenging the place of human rights.
In [many] countries religion was the prime mover behind campaigns for
human rights. The role of U.S. and English Protestant churches in the antislavery campaigns, in the Congo reform movement, and in solidarity with
Armenian victims in the late days of the Ottoman Empire belong to the
best chapters of the history of the human rights movement. The “social
teachings” of the Catholic Church in the late 19th century also created a
context that allowed committed Christians to press actively for social
justice and contributed to the development of strong labor unions and
mutual help associations that fought for social and economic rights.
In South Asia, Hinduism was the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi’s long
march for the liberation of India. Since the occupation of Tibet by China
in 1949-51, a religious figure—the Dalai Lama—has been guiding the
Tibetans’ struggle for freedom, pushing for a democratic, self-governing
Tibet “in association with” China.
In the 1950s and 1960s the human rights movement grew in part thanks to
the involvement of leading religious groups and individuals. Although the
Church took a cautionary approach, Catholic intellectuals (first among
them Catholic writer par excellence François Mauriac), journalists, and
activists played a prophetic role in the fight against the use of torture and
“disappearances” by the French army in the Algerian war of
independence, invoking their faith to combat what they considered brutal
attacks against human dignity.
Houston Smith. The World’s Religions. (NewYork, N.Y.: Harper Collins. 199). 4th
Secondary Source
47
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The civil rights movement in the United States was powerfully inspired by
religious figures, among whom Martin Luther King, Jr., stands as an icon,
and was in many cases supported by mainstream Christian and Jewish
denominations.
After the 1964 military coup in Brazil a significant part of the Catholic
Church, centered around Bishop Dom Helder Camara, inspired by the
teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and of mainstream
Protestant denominations, became a vibrant defender of human rights.
Political coups in Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay in the 1970s and civil wars
in Central America in the 1980s often placed the official Church, or at
least some of its most powerful voices, on the side of the human rights
movement. The Servicio Paz y Justicia founded in 1974 in Argentina by
1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the Vicaria de
Solidaridad in Chile, and the Tutela Legal in El Salvador were focal points
of the human rights struggle.
San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero’s last sermon in March
1980, with his passionate plea to the army and National Guard to “disobey
an immoral law”—“Brothers, you come from your own people. You are
killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be
subordinate to the law of God which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’” —stands
out as one of the most powerful documents of the Latin American human
rights struggle.
In the 1980s in the Philippines, the Catholic Church was one of the major
actors in the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship. In Eastern Europe,
particularly in Poland with its strong Catholic Church and in East
Germany with the Lutheran Church’s support of independent pacifists and
dissidents, religious organizations joined in the fight against state
authoritarianism and repression. In the 1970s, in the wake of the
ratification of the Helsinki Accords, Jewish organizations and individuals
in particular played a decisive role in Eastern Europe and the USSR in the
defense of dissidents and fundamental freedoms of expression, belief, and
movement.
In the 1980s and 1990s, in South Africa, Jews, Christians, and Muslims
fought apartheid, in alliance with secular or even Marxist-inspired
organizations such as the South African Communist Party and the African
National Congress.48
48
Human Rights Watch. History. (2006). http://hrw.org/wr2k5/religion/4.htm (accessed
on Dec. 1st,2007.)
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Yet, sometimes it is religious institutions themselves that are in the greatest need of
social reform. Let us remember that even as the Catholic Church provided a rationale for
converting the Indians and colonizing their lands, some religious leaders were also often
vocal critics of Christian mistreatment of Indians.
In 1522, a Dominican priest,
Bartolome de las Casas, in “A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies”,
unflinchingly describes the Caribbean Indian’s deep understanding of the true motivation
of their Christian oppressors.
Here he tells of a conversation about the Christians
between, a Caribbean noble (cacique) named Hatuey, and his people:
[the Indians:] “It may be that they [the Christians] are by nature wicked
and cruel.” And he [Hatuey] told them, “No, they do not act only because
of that, but because they have a god they greatly worship, and they want
us to worship that god and that is why they struggle with us and subject us
and kill us.”
49
You would probably assume that they are talking about God the Father, Jehovah or the
Son, Jesus Christ...not quite:
“He had a basket full of gold and jewels and he said, “You see their god here, the
god of the Christians.”
Ultimately, Hatuey ends up being burned at the stake:
“And he was told what he could do in the brief time that remained to him,
in order to be saved and go to Heaven. The cacique, who had never heard
any of this before, and was told he would go to Hell, where, if he did not
adopt the Christian Faith, he would suffer eternal torment, asked the
Franciscan friar if Christians all went to Heaven. When told that they did,
he said he would prefer to go to Hell. Such is the fame and honor that
God and our Faith have earned through the Christians who have gone out
to the Indies.”
Not only was Christianity and the Christian Bible used to justify stealing Indian lands, it
was also used to justify African slavery through the story of the curse of Ham:
“And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham,
and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of
Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. And Noah began to be
an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and
was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father
49
Beebe and Senkewicks.
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of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren
without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both
their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their
father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's
nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger
son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of
servants shall he be unto his brethren.”50
Many Christians used this Biblical passage to argue that Canaan had settled in Africa
and that he was therefore the ancestor of all black Africans who, like Canaan (through
the curse of Ham), were condemned to be slaves (a servant of servants).
In trying to present the various ways in which Christianity has been misused to justify
bigotry and cruelty, one could easily get the impression that Christianity is merely a
quarrelsome religion based upon a past revelation that is hopelessly out of date. That is
decidedly not my point of view at all. In principle, and often in practice, Christianity is
based upon the ideals of brotherly love, forgiveness and charity. Go to any large city,
(and most smaller ones as well) and you will find shelters, soup kitchens, orphanages
and shelters run by Christian organizations such as the Red Cross and the Salvation
Army. The push for the abolition of slavery had its strongest allies among the Quakers,
who were also strong supporters of the equal rights of women, the ending of warfare,
the promotion of education and the humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally
ill.51 Fifty years ago, it was primarily black church leaders, including of course, the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that finally managed to push the U.S. government
into honoring the civil rights of its African-American and other non-white citizens.
SECTION III: CALIFORNIA GAY HISTORY
Gay Rights – A Final Frontier?
50
The Bible. Genesis 9: 18-25.
Wikipedia contributors, "Quaker history," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_history (accessed December 1, 2007).
51
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Like religious forms of prejudice, anti-homosexual prejudice is extremely difficult to
overcome. This is exacerbated by the fact that homosexuality is itself so often the main
target of religious forms of prejudice. The main difficulty with religious based prejudice
is that religion itself, in most societies, is one of the main instruments of socialization.
Once a prejudice becomes incorporated into an orthodox belief system it becomes
extraordinarily difficult to remove. One of the chief functions of institutional religions is
to give authoritative answers on matters of social values and mores – answers that are
meant to go unquestioned and unchallenged.
In order to understand the unique problem of anti-homosexual prejudice, hatred and
oppression, I am using two excellent books to serve as my scholarly research for this
paper. For an overview of the ancient origins of class warfare against homosexuals, I
have chosen, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, by Arthur Evans and for an
analysis of the contemporary gay movement that started in California, I have chosen a
biography by Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay – Founder of the Modern
Gay Movement. I am supplementing these selections with one of the assigned readings
for this class, Gay by the Bay – a History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay
Area, by Susan Stryker and Jim Van Bushirk.
Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture:
There are a couple of striking parallels I would like the reader to keep in mind as I
summarize Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. First of all, the pattern of conquering
the land from peoples who lived close to nature, converting the original inhabitants to
Christianity and transforming much of the natural environment into resources for a more
urbanized culture occurred in Europe before it occurred in the Americas. Second, the
pre-Christian peoples in both hemispheres had their sexual roles and family relationships
restructured along Christian ideals.
And third, the religions figures, the gods and
goddesses of pre-Christians in both the Old World and the New World were considered
witches and devils by the new state religion.
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In, Who Were the Fairies, the second chapter of Evan’s book, the author argues that
modern human kind has been systematically alienated from the natural world and from
our original, more natural expressions of sexuality which more closely resembled the sex
lives of other animals.
“Animals do not live in neat little nuclear families, as the mass media
often claim. Instead, the mating instinct is separate from the sexual
impulse…Some mammals even live in separate herds of male and
female…Usually females alone raise and protect the young. When rearing
is done by pairs of both sexes, as among many birds, the pairing usually
lasts for only one season…Monogamy and the nuclear family are almost
unknown in nature.”52
Evans agrees with many scholars that women had a higher status in pre-civilized societies
and claims “the first shamans (or healer priests) in nature societies were women. The
first male shamans imitated women by taking on their roles and wearing their clothing.”53
Throughout his book, Evans argues that ancient forms of nature religions included a
worship of the Great Goddess, ritual sex orgies and the inclusion of homosexuality.
As we saw in the section on gender inequality in California, patriarchy had a devastating
effect on the status of women. Here again is part of the quote by CSUMB Professor
Robert Strayer:
“By the second millennium BCE, various written laws codified and sought
to enforce a patriarchal family life that offered women a measure of
paternalistic protection while insisting on their submission to the
unquestioned authority of men. Central to these laws was the regulation
of female sexuality.”54
In a similar vein, Evans writes:
“After 1000 B.C., the city-state emerged as the typical political unit.
Cities became economic centers…the effect of this urbanism, militarism,
and growing bourgeois ambition was predictable. ‘Civilization’ (that is,
52
Arthur Evans. Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. (Boston, Mass. : FAG RAG
Books. 1978). Page 15. This is one of two of my most important secondary sources.
Arthur Evans is an historian.
53
Evans. Page 17.
54
CSUMB Professor Robert Strayer. 2007.
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urban culture) increasingly lost touch with the nature religion of the
peasants, who formed together with the urban slaves, the lowest level in
the new economic order. The status of women fell because maledominated activities like war, trade, and government service were now the
crucial activities on which urban society depended for its survival. A
negative turn developed in the attitude towards sexuality in general and
homosexuality in particular.”55
By the time Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, “the standard of judgment
used by Christians was one of the most sex-repressive in the history of the world.”56 But
there is more to Christian sexist and anti-gay views than mere repression. It must be
remembered that the first and most important of the Bible’s 10 Commandments is not
thou shalt not kill, but is instead:
“Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make for
thyself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or
that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou
shalt not bow down to them or worship them; for the Lord thy God is a
jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and
the fourth generation.”57
A major factor in the origins of Christian bigotry against gays and women was the
conflict between the sexual decorum demanded by the urban God of the Christians and
the freer sexual expression used to honor the many gods and goddesses of the country
folk. Women of high status and homosexuals became associated with their nature
religions, and with the worship of the many forms of the Great Goddess and the Horned
God. Their goddesses were turned into witches and the various horned gods, like Pan,
became the visual inspiration for the Christian Devil.
Gays and women were also
associated with sexual rites, ritual prostitution and the idolatry of the “pagans”. Evans
explains:
“The word ‘pagan’ comes from the Latin paganus, which means country
dweller. [The Christian theologian] Augustine labeled his ideal Christian
community the city of God and subtitled his book of that name ‘Against
the pagani’… Regarding effeminate priests Augustine writes:
‘Effeminates consecrated to the Great Mother [same as Great Goddess],
55
Evans. Page 35
Evans. Page 37
57
The Bible. Exodus 20 :3-5
56
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who violate every canon of decency in men and women. They were to be
seen until just the other day in the streets and squares with their pomaded
hair and powdered faces, gliding along with womanish languor, and
demanding from shopkeepers the means of their depraved existence.’”58
For evidence of this association of gays and female priestesses with sex and idolatry,
Evans cites extensively from documents dealing with the inquisitions and witch burnings.
(In fact, so close is the relationship between homosexuals and goddess worship that the
derogatory term “faggot” historically refers to the bundle of sticks used to burn witches at
the stake!) He begins by quoting the indictment of Joan of Arc, the French heroine who
was burned at the stake and was famous for wearing men’s clothing.
“Jeanne, rejecting and abandoning women’s clothing, her hair cut around
like a young coxcomb, took shirt, breeches, doublet…tight-fitting boots or
buskins, long spurs, sword, dagger, breast-plate, lance and other arms in
fashion of a man of war.” … The court had enough evidence to condemn
her anyway, in view of her claim that her transvestism was a religious duty
and her belief that her personal visions were more important than the
institutional authority of the church…On May 30, Joan [having been
sentenced to life in prison] again resumed the wearing of men’s
clothing…Margaret Murray observes, “the extraordinary fact remains that
the mere resuming of male garments was the signal for her death without
further delay. On the Sunday she wore the [male] dress, on Tuesday the
sentence was communicated to her, on the Wednesday she was burned, as
an “idolator, apostate, heretic relapsed”.59
Evans offers more evidence:
“In 1582, the Inquisition at Avignon, France, delivered this judgment
against a group of condemned witches: “You men have fornicated with
succubi and you women with incubi [demons who are said to have sex
with humans]. You have wretchedly committed genuine sodomy and the
most unmentionable of crimes with them by means of their cold
touch.”…Homosexuality and witchcraft became so closely associated that
the two were often linked together in popular tracts on the subject. In
1460, an anonymous tract appeared during the trial of accused witches at
Arras, France. It made this accusation: “Sometimes indeed indescribable
outrages are perpetrated in exchanging women, by order of the presiding
devil, by passing on a woman to other women and a man to other men, an
abuse against the nature of women by both parties and similarly against
58
59
Evans. Page 42.
Evans. Page 5.
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the nature of men, or by a woman with a man outside the regular orifice
and in another orifice.”…In many witchcraft trials, defendants were
tortured into confessing that Gay sex acts took place at the
sabbat…During the peak of the terror, judges, theologians, and
intellectuals routinely combined charges of witchcraft with lesbianism and
male homosexuality.” 60
Among the other elements Arthur Evans presents as historical antecedents of modern
homophobia, the two most important are the use of the military for invading and
conquering the pagans of Europe and natives of America; and the religious and political
directive to procreate enthusiastically (“Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth
and subdue it”61) in order to populate and become the majority in these conquered lands.
“The Indians loved nature and knew how to talk to plants and animals,
whom they regarded as their equals. They were able to feel (and not just
know) that everything that is, lives. Onto this scene came the
industrializing whites, burdened and propelled by over two-thousand years
of patriarchal institutions. The whites denounced the Indians as
“primitive,” “savage,” and “barbarian.”
They accused them of
worshipping devils and ridiculed their Gay shamans…They plied them
into violence against each other, stole their land…quarantining their
survivors in concentration camps called reservations. The whites’
genocide against the Indians affected how the whites thought about sex.
They came to view sex as an instrument of imperial policy. For them, the
purpose of sex was to breed as large a number of people as possible in
order to push aside the relatively low-density Indian population.”62
The Trouble with Harry Hay – The Founder of the
Modern Gay Movement:
Harry Hay was born in 1914. He was destined to become the founder of the very first
successful gay organization in the United States called the Mattachine Society (founded
in Los Angeles in 1950), as well as the tribe I belong to, the Radical Faeries (founded in
1979 whose first meetings were also held in California).
60
Evans. Page 8.
The Bible. Genesis 1 : 28.
62
Evans. Page 113.
61
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Harry got the idea to organize gays after having read the Kinsey Report (released in
1948) that claimed that 37% of adult men had experienced homosexual relations.
Biographer, Stuart Timmons tells of Harry’s idea:
“On the drive back to Cove Avenue, he talked with himself about the idea,
and later noted his train of thought: “The post-war reaction, the shutting
down of open communication, was already of concern to many of us
progressives. [Harry was actually a member of the Communist Party] I
knew the government was going to look for a new enemy, a new
scapegoat. It was predictable. But Blacks were beginning to organize and
the horror of the holocaust was too recent to put the Jews in this position.
The natural scapegoat would be us, the Queers. They were the one group
of disenfranchised people who did not even know they were a group
because they had never formed as a group. They – we – had to get started.
It was high time.”63
As a self-help, grass roots organization, the first name for the Mattachine Society64 was
patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous and was called Bachelors Anonymous. Here
Harry writes what has been called the first manifesto of the American gay rights
movement:
“We, the Androgynes of the world, have formed this responsible corporate
body to demonstrate by our efforts that our physiological and
psychological handicaps need be no deterrent in integrating 10 percent of
the world's population towards the constructive social progress of
mankind.”65
Because of the anti-communist climate of the 1950s McCarthy era, Harry was eventually
forced to resign from the leadership of the Mattachine Society and because of his
63
Stuart Timmons. The Trouble With Harry Hay (Boston, Mass. : Alyson
Publications,1990). Page 135. This is the second of my two most important secondary
sources.
64
Here is a quote from Harry describing the origins of the name “Mattachine”. "One
masque group was known as the 'Société Mattachine.' These societies, lifelong secret
fraternities of unmarried townsmen who never performed in public unmasked, were
dedicated to going out into the countryside and conducting dances and rituals during the
Feast of Fools, at the Vernal Equinox. Sometimes these dance rituals, or masques, were
peasant protests against oppression — with the maskers, in the people’s name, receiving
the brunt of a given lord’s vicious retaliation. So we took the name Mattachine because
we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a masked people, unknown and anonymous, who
might become engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others, through
struggle, to move toward total redress and change." [2] Katz, Jonathan. Gay American
History. Crowell Publishers; 1974.
65
Timmons. Page 137
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homosexuality (homosexuals were not allowed to be members of the Communist Party)
would also eventually have to step down as a member of the Communist Party which, in
compensation, “reeling at the loss of a respected member and theoretician of 18 years
standing, refused to expel Hay, instead dropping him as a 'security risk' but ostentatiously
announcing him to be a 'Lifelong Friend of the People'.”66
Harry was not only a life-long political activist devoted to coalition politics, but he was
also an intellectual bent on uncovering the history of homosexuality.
“He processed as many as thirty books a week in the fields of history,
anthropology, and mythology, constantly scanning texts for traces of gay
people and gay culture. Gay history, he realized was “between the lines”
of straight history…he searched…in the works of scholars who, through
personal prejudice or professional intimidation, rarely mentioned any
aspect of homosexuality. The terms “immoral,” “lewd,” and “too vulgar
to merit discussion,” which he found frequently in standard reference
works, became red flags for further investigation.”67
Ultimately Harry took on:
“An enormous investigative project... “The Homophile in History: A
Provocation to Research,” sketched out from 1953 to 1955. Divided into
fourteen periodic sections, it traces homosexual prototypes from the Stone
Age through the European Middle Ages up to the “Berdache and the
American Scene…The model Harry used for his study was the berdache.
A French term applied to cross-dressing Indians found by the European
colonists in the New World, berdache sometimes referred simply to an
Indian who committed “the abominable vice” of homosexuality. But to
Harry, it meant a cultural role.”68
As I said earlier, Harry Hay was a practitioner of coalition politics and one of the groups
he had a long association with was Native Americans. Timmons writes:
“Harry rebelled, however, against Hardie’s (his maternal greatgrandfather) bloody politics. Among his many military campaigns, Hardie
served as an officer in Colonel George Wright’s war against the Spokane
Indians in 1857, and Hardie introduced the newly invented long-range
66
Wikipedia contributors, "Harry Hay," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hay (accessed December 15, 2007).
67
68
Timmons. Page 193.
Timmons. Page 194
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rifle in the “highly successful” slaughter. His son, Francis, then carried
the Third Cavalry flag at the notorious massacre of Indians at Wounded
Knee. This “shadow” in his family background haunted Harry, and
perhaps partly in compensation, he cultivated a lifelong relationship with
Native Americans.”69
The culmination of Harry Hay’s life and research was the founding of a new gay group in
1979 patterned after his blended understanding of queer history in the pagan cultures of
Europe and the Native American berdache, which he named the Radical Faeries. Here
then are a couple of examinations of the Radical Faeries, first from Hay’s Biography and
then from the Wikipedia article written by current Faeries (last modified Dec. 2, 2007).
Timmons:
“The Radical Faeries, like their mythological antecedents, cannot be
easily defined or pinned down. A mixture of political alternative, a
counter-culture, and a spirituality movement, the Faeries became Harry’s
“second wind” as a major figure in gay culture and found him enmeshed
in a new kind of organizing – a networking of gentle men devoted to the
principles of ecology, spiritual truth, and, in New Age terms, “gaycenteredness…It was Harry’s idea to couple the words Radical and Faerie,
and the combination was carefully chosen. “Radical,” in this case, meant
“root” or “essence” as well as “politically extreme.” The term “faerie”
also had two meanings, one modern and one ancient. In recent times,
“fairy was a scornful epithet, but one that many gay men were now reevaluating. (Parallels of this in other minorities include “Chicano” and
“black,” which both began as pejorative terms.) The ancient fairy, on the
other hand, was an immortal, luminous nature spirit who danced in circles
in the moonlight and did good deeds at whim. By combining these
meanings, the Radical Faeries expressed one of their basic tenets, the oftbandied notion that gays are a spiritual tribe…In selecting fairies as a role
model for gays, he combined logic with inspiration to surpass the
medieval Mattachines – to a pre-Christian time and beyond human
limits.”70
Wikipedia:
“Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated international group of mostly gay
men seeking to "reject hetero-imitation" and redefine gay identity; many
are also counterculture and pagans. The Faeries began in California, and
have spread throughout the world over the past several decades, in tandem
69
70
Timmons. Page 7
Timmons. Page 250, 251
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with the larger gay rights movement. The group challenges the
commercialization and patriarchal aspects of modern gay life while
celebrating pagan constructs and rituals and adapting rural living and
environmentally sustainable concepts to modern technologies as part of
their creative expression.
The Radical Faerie movement started in the United States among gay men
during the 1970s sexual revolution. Radical Faerie communities are
generally inspired by aboriginal or native, traditional spiritualities,
especially those that incorporate queer sensibilities. The Radical Faeries
use heart circle, communal living, consensus decision-making, dance,
drag, pagan ritual, drumming, sex, magic, and intimacy to examine what it
means to be a whole human who is also a queer person. In the beginning,
the movement was open exclusively to gay men, though most
communities are now open to all genders and sexual orientations. Radical
Faerie communities practice queer-themed spirituality associated with
radical politics, pagainsm or neopaganism, feminism, gender liberation,
and may encompass any and all religions or a lack of them…
Hay introduced the idea of merging spirituality into gay liberation,
recognizing the isolation and disconnectedness that gay men grow up with
as a spiritual wound needing spiritual healing… Some Radical Faeries
hold that the queer soul is linked with the natural world, that queerfolk are
called by the good goddess to be gatekeepers to the spirit world. As a sign
of this spirit connection, many Radical Faeries take a ritual name, known
as a faerie name. [Mine is Quazar] This tradition is inspired by the
Native American "Medicine Name" tradition, where a shaman gives
spiritually significant individuals a medicine name. In the Native
American traditions, a shaman always bestowed medicine names upon
initiates; one does not choose it. The faerie name tradition is similar,
though Radical Faeries usually choose their own faerie name(s).”71
Gay by the Bay – a History of Queer Culture in the San
Francisco Bay Area:
In Armistead Maupin’s introduction to Gay by the Bay, he writes:
“Witness this book, the first-ever effort at compiling a queer history of
San Francisco. It tells a remarkable story that spans two centuries—from
the cross-dressing practices of Indians at the Mission Dolores to the
signing of a municipal transgender rights law in 1995. The story is all the
more compelling because it isn’t driven by war or money or politics—the
way most histories are—but by the basic human need to find love and self71
Wikipedia contributors, "Radical Faeries," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Faeries (accessed December 1, 2007)
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fulfillment. It’s a chronicle of quiet courage and noisy protest, one so
richly varied that it transcends the usual boundaries of race, class, and
religion.”72
Not only does queer history transcend the usual boundaries of race, class, and religion,
but it is also uniquely positioned as a point from which we can examine all these
categories and more. Like men and women, the primary gender division of human kind,
homosexuals and lesbians are found in every culture. In fact, we are, in a sense, the
original and eternal minority that is found in each and every culture throughout the world
– no matter the race, gender, class, religion, place on earth or time in history, we are the
constant Other with which every group of people have had to contend with or ignore.
It seems to me quite fitting that the Gay Rights Movement should come into being within
a hundred years of the turn of the century women’s movement of the early 1900s.
Because women and homosexuals both suffered under millennia of patriarchy, it makes
sense that the women’s movement, the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and the gay rights
movement would be so intimately connected.
In Gay by the Bay, we learn from the section entitled, From War to Revolution – 1940 to
1967, that World War II was the first time the U.S. government actively tried to drum
gays out of the military. Of the many troops that went through San Francisco on their
way to the war in the Pacific, many of those who were discovered to be gay were “outed”
by the military.
Because many of the now officially declared homosexuals were
understandably reluctant to return to their home towns, the gay population of San
Francisco began to swell.
By labeling and ejecting homosexuals from their ranks, the military inadvertently
heightened the profile of homosexuals within the American consciousness so much that
the during the 1950s McCarthy Era, homosexuals were considered as big a threat as
72
Susan Stryker, and Jim Van Bushirk. Gay by the Bay, A History of Queer Culture in
the San Francisco Bay Area. (San Francisco, CA.: Chronicle Books. 1996.)
Introduction by Armistead Maupin, page 2. This is the 4 th source I have used from class
materials.
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Communists! Concerted efforts were made to expose both Communists and homosexuals
“lurking” within the government. (In Nazi Germany homosexuals were rounded up with
Jews and sent to concentration camps with pink triangles tattooed on their arms to
identify their “crime”).
Throughout America, because homosexuality was itself a crime, there were no political
or social organizations for gays and lesbians, so bars and nightclubs became the
clandestine meeting places of homosexuals. Gay bars were routinely raided by the police
and shut down.
“The state Alcoholic Beverage Commission (ABC), which had the power
to revoke liquor licenses, was the primary bureaucratic body that
attempted to regulate queer sociability by policing gay bars and
taverns…throughout the 1940s bars could be closed simply because they
served drinks to self-professed homosexuals in the presence of undercover
ABC officers. A landmark California Supreme Court case overturned this
practice in 1951.”73
As we saw earlier, the 1950s also saw the establishment of the Mattachine Society which:
“quickly established a number of chapters across the country, including in
San Francisco and Berkeley. Sharp political differences between members
in the early years of the organization resulted in the resignation of the
Marxist-oriented founders and the relocation of the Mattachine Society’s
national offices to San Francisco by 1957…the homophile group’s
political ideology grew steadily more conservative—prefiguring in
important ways the “Log Cabin” Republican stance adopted by a later
generation of gays…Shaped partly in reaction to the virulent homophobia
of McCarthyism, these assimilationist Cold War-era groups primarily
sought to educate the general public about the “normalcy” of
homosexuality and to provide lesbians and gay men with safe discreet
meeting places where they could socialize without the fear of police
harassment that went hand in hand with bar patronage…While the
homophile movement succeeded in securing limited civil rights and public
acceptance of lesbians and gays who embraced mainstream cultural
values, it did so at the expense of other queers who occupied more
countercultural positions.”74
73
74
Stryker and Bushirk. Page 30.
Stryker and Bushirk. Page 38.
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Finally, the 1950s also brought with it the influence of the literary beatnik culture that
boasted prominent homosexual talents such as poet/author Allen Ginsberg. The 1960s
saw the emergence of the “free love” scene of Haight-Ashbury hippies which signaled
the dawn of the sexual revolution that in turn softened the ground for the gay rights
movement that followed in the 1970s.
As I have said in previous sections, religion has always played both sides of the fence in
civil rights struggles; this has been true also of what is now called the
Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (LGBT) struggle for civil rights.
“As a result of the black civil rights movement, a wave of social activism
had spread through liberal members of the Protestant clergy during the
early 1960s. In San Francisco, Glide Memorial Methodist Church, in the
heart of the Tenderloin, was perfectly situated to become a center of
progressive Christianity –especially since the Reverend Cecil Williams
already had a history of activism there in the fight for racial equality. Ted
McIlvenna, a young social worker at Glide… [organized] the Council on
Religion and the Homosexual (CRH), which devoted itself to combating
homophobia within the mainline churches and worked closely with the
homophile groups. When the CRH held a benefit Mardi Gras Ball on
January 1, 1965, the police showed up in force…Liberal heterosexual
ministers witnessed firsthand the kind of official intimidation that
constituted a regular feature of lesbian and gay social life, and, for the first
time, voices that commanded a sense of social legitimacy began speaking
out about anti-gay policies in San Francisco.”75
By the late 1960s, Gay Liberation was a full-fledged movement and Life magazine had
named San Francisco the gay capital of the United States.
“Gay liberation …drew inspiration from the youth counterculture and the
many radical movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was
especially true in the Bay Area, where the sheer density of urban social
space compelled various subcultures to overlap, intersect, and crossfertilize on another. Psychedelic aesthetics, student unrest, the tactics of
the civil rights struggle and black militancy, labor organizing, social
critiques rooted in the anti-war movement, the second wave of feminism,
and Marxist political analysis all contributed to the rise of the gay
liberation movement.”76
75
76
Stryker and Bushirk. Page 41.
Stryker and Bushirk. Page 53.
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Shortly after the 1967 “Summer of Love” in the Haight-Ashbury district of San
Francisco, gays started moving into an Irish working class neighborhood in Eureka
Valley and the Irish started moving out. The neighborhood soon became know as the
Castro (for its main street and the Castro theatre) and became the hub of gay life in San
Francisco. By 1977, Harvey Milk, nicknamed the Mayor of Castro Street became the
first openly gay official elected in the country to political office when he became a San
Francisco County Supervisor.
Unfortunately, he and S. F. Mayor Mascone were
assassinated a year later, now Harvey Milk was not merely a hero, but a martyr and icon.
In the 1980s the fortunes of the gay and lesbian community took its worst turn when
HIV-AIDS began to ravage the community. Among other things, the AIDS epidemic led
to the rise of more militant gay advocacy groups like Act-Up and Queer Nation. It was
during this period that I moved to San Francisco and began to form my beliefs about
identities and belief systems.
What I find most intriguing about gay culture, especially San Francisco gay culture, is
how even though it is but a minority within all the cultures of the world, it simultaneously
contains all the cultures of the world. This gives us an opportunity to study prejudice at
its most virulent, absolute worst and yet often also gives us the opportunity to witness the
most extraordinary examples of human compassion and understanding as straight allies
from all walks of life defy the relative homophobia of their particular cultures to reach
out to this most maligned of groups.
Before moving on to my conclusion, I want to leave the reader with a couple more quotes
from, Gay by the Bay, that demonstrate how the gay rights movement itself has been a
microcosmic proving ground for dealing with the intricate, overlapping issues of race and
gender.
“Within the homophile movement, women and men had tended to work in
parallel, and the most radical thrust of gay liberation had always addressed
women’s issues. But with the emergence of a powerful feminist
movement in 1969 and 1970, some lesbians began to forge alliances with
other women’s groups. This was partly a response to the masculinist
biases of the sexual revolution. Many radical males simply failed to
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comprehend that the open expression of sexuality might have different
implications for women than it did for men….The consolidation of a
feminists alliance between lesbians and straight women depended on a
gender ideology that regarded gender itself as inherently oppressive. The
task of women’s liberation was thus to overthrow the gender system and to
open up for both women and men new possibilities for attaining a more
fully human form of personhood…”77
“The gay liberation movement sought to align itself with other
progressive social movements that fought dominance based on race and
gender, but it all too often reproduced the very oppression it ostensibly
sought to overturn. Although many people of color participated in gay
liberation, the movement remained predominantly white. Queers of color
often did not have the opportunity to address issues of sexuality in
isolation from their other concerns and, unlike many whites, could not
make being gay the principal focus of their struggles. Moreover, gay and
lesbian culture could be every bit as racist as the dominant society. Just
because white queers were learning to resist one form of oppression that
personally affected them did not guarantee they understood their role in
perpetuating other forms of oppression.”78
Personally, as a gay African-American, I consider the outsider relationship that I have
with much of the African-American community to be one of the most significant
disappointments of my life. I lived in or near the Castro for some twenty years; I can tell
you from experience that it is an overwhelmingly white male culture. Yet, I considered
myself quite fortunate in that I was lucky enough to be able assimilate easily into this
predominantly white world.
In fact, I found it far easier to be accepted as black in a
white gay world than as gay in the hyper-masculine straight African-American
community.
My Gay, African-American Role Model:
What makes African-American homophobia so ironic is the fact that the principal
organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, was a gay African-American. Unbeknownst
77
78
Stryker and Bushirk. Page 55.
Stryker and Bushirk. Page 54.
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to most contemporary African-Americans, one of the greatest crusaders of the AfricanAmerican civil rights movement was the gay, African-American, Bayard Rustin.79
“Rustin was born in Pennsylvania. He was raised by his maternal
grandparents. Rustin's grandmother, Julia, was a Quaker. She was … a
member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James
Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. With these
influences in his early life, Rustin campaigned against racially
discriminatory Jim Crow laws in his youth.
Rustin moved to Harlem in 1937 and began studying at City College of
New York. There he became involved in efforts to free the Scottsboro
Boys— nine young black men who had been accused falsely of raping two
white women. He also became a member of the Young Communist
League in 1936.”80
It was while attending City College that his political life began in earnest. He, like many
African-Americans at that time, became interested in the promises of racial and economic
equality preached by the American Communist party and became a prominent member
and organizer of the school club known as the Young Communist League (YCL). Rustin
fell out of favor with the YCL, however in 1941, during World War II, when the party
asked him to give up his work on civil rights in favor of mobilizing for the war against
Hitler. As a black man and a pacifist, Rustin resigned in disgust.
Shortly thereafter Rustin met A. Philip Randolf, one of the most prominent black labor
and civil rights activists in the country. Mr. Randolf helped lead Rustin away from
communism towards socialism and much deeper into civil rights activities. Over the
course of the next twenty years Bayard Rustin, who was gifted with unusual
79
Most of the following is taken from a lower division paper I wrote that did not require
citations so I have no record of the exact sources I used for the information, but Bayard
Rustin is an historical (if not quite famous) figure and most sources will yield a
biography similar to the one I present here. Because this is not properly cited, it does not
count as one of my secondary sources.
80
Wikipedia contributors, "Bayard Rustin," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin (Accessed on December 1, 2007).
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organizational skills and seemingly limitless energy, contributed his talents to an
impressive list of organizations for civil and human rights.
Here is just a brief summary of the many organizations and movements in which he was
involved. He was an important member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), and
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He helped protect the property of Japanese
Americans imprisoned in internment camps. He was instrumental in President Truman’s
desegregation of the Armed Forces. In 1945, he organized FOR’s Free India Committee
and became a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings of non-violence. He protested
French nuclear testing in the Saharan desert and was generally involved in anti-nuclear
demonstrations. In the 1950s he fought against apartheid in South Africa and for African
independence especially in Ghana and Nigeria.
In 1956, Bayard Rustin was dispatched to Montgomery Alabama to meet Martin Luther
King, Jr. during the famous bus boycott sparked by the arrest of civil rights icon Rosa
Parks. Rustin’s influence on King and the movement were as profound as they were
hushed. It was Rustin that firmly ground King (and therefore the movement) in nonviolence.
By 1963, it was decided among the leaders of the civil rights movement to have a march
on Washington. A. Philip Randolf insisted that Rustin be the march’s chief organizer,
while others dissented, fearing Rustin’s known homosexuality, past ties to communism
and conscientious-objector status during World War II would be used against the march.
They were right. Two weeks before the march, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond
denounced Rustin on the floor of the senate as a draft dodger, a homosexual, and a
communist. However Randolf called a press conference and issued a statement, backed
by the other civil rights leaders, saying “We, the leaders of the March on Washington,
have absolute confidence in Bayard Rustin’s character and abilities.” The condemnation
went nowhere and the march proceeded with Rustin as the deputy director.
Throughout the rest of his life, Bayard Rustin remained a strong advocate for oppressed
people. He had a long involvement in the affairs of the refugees from Viet Nam, to
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Cambodia to Haiti. He monitored elections and human rights in Chile, El Salvador,
Zimbabwe, Grenada and Poland. And he testified on behalf of New York City’s gay
rights bill saying in 1986, “The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is
no longer the black community, it is the gay community because it is the community
which is most easily mistreated.”
What is unique about Bayard Rustin is not that he fought for the rights of his own people
(gays and African-Americans) but that he fought for oppressed people the world over.
He died on August 24th, 1987. I believe that it is entirely because he was gay that, twenty
years later, he has remained a largely unsung hero of the civil rights movement.
Spiritual Reflections:
When Moses speaks to God in the burning bush, he asks:
“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers
has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall
I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to
say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "81
Another translation of the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching:82
The Tao that can be expressed
is not the Everlasting Tao.
The Name that can be named
is not the Everlasting Name.
He whose name is “Spirit in Man”
is Life-spring of Heaven and Earth.
He whose name is “outward possessions”
is Mother of all created beings.
My version of Jesus’ I AM statement:
81
The Bible: Exodus: 3: 13,14
82
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. (October, 2004) Translated by Isabella Mears (1916).
http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tao-te-ching.htm (Accessed on Dec. 1st,
2007.
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“Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it
and was glad." "You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and
you have seen Abraham!" "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before
Jesus was born, I AM!"
The Buddha:
“Apart from consciousness, no diverse truths exist. Mere sophistry
declares this “true,” and that view “false.” These sturdy advocates of
private paths to bliss claim purity as theirs alone, not found elsewhere.
Stubborn in theories which they themselves devised; these wrangle on
through life. Leave then dogmatic views and their attendant strife! No
dogmatist can win, by self-concocted views, the way to purity. No
Brahmin true attains the goal by mere research; not partisan is he, all
vulgar theories—which others toil to learn—he knows but heeds them
not.”83
Ramakrishna:
“One can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole
hearted devotion…being firm in thy devotion to the deity of thy
own choice, do not despise other deities, but honor them all. Bow
down and worship where others kneel, for where so many have
been paying the tribute of adoration, the kind Lord must manifest
himself, for he is all mercy.”84
The Apostle Paul:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ
Jesus."85
--
Final Thoughts:
For spiritual and personal reasons, long before I began writing this paper, I have been
interested in religious rivalry and bigotry. It was with this in mind that I began creating
The Gathering a year ago. My primary goal was to lesson the tensions within and
between religions and the non-religious. While I have always been painfully aware of the
83
This is another quote from some book I read long ago. I believe it was, The Teaching
of the Compassionate Buddha.
84
Ramakrishna. I originally used this quote for this 4 th of July message read as a speech,
rather than as a student required to cite sources. I have been unable to find the original
source of this quote
85
The Bible. Galatians 3:28
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sexist and anti-gay stance so prevalent among most religions, I have always thought of
racism as a completely separate issue. That is to say, I thought of racism as a separate
form of prejudice having nothing to do with religion at all.
Now, after writing this research paper, I am convinced that they are not separate forms of
prejudice at all. They are cut from the same cloth. It seems to me that there is no way of
truly creating a multi-cultural society free of prejudice without also creating a multi-faith
society that truly respects both secular and religious beliefs. I believe that humans are
meant to be diverse in both spirit and form. We are no more meant to think and believe
and worship the same than we are meant to be the same race or the same gender or the
same nationality or the same height or the same age.
(I apologize to the non-theist among you but I don’t know how else to say what I am
trying to express here except through religious language.)
No matter how exalted the teaching or the teacher we must resist the temptation to
confuse the one with the other. It is the nature of man to shape spirit into form. To have
a concept of God is to have an image of God. God itself is beyond all concepts and
images. This is what the Jewish prohibitions against idolatry, the Taoist descriptions of
Tao, and Jesus’ I AM statement are all about. The word “Tao” is not the actual Tao, nor
is any concept or idea of the Tao the actual Tao itself. But the word “Tao” and concepts
and ideas of Tao point towards the Tao. Likewise, in Christianity, Jesus Christ points to
God. For the Christian true-believers among you, I am not trying to say that Jesus wasn’t
the Son of God. I am saying God is not Jesus. To understand God as a truly Universal
God, a god not merely of the Jews, but of humankind is to recognize that God is not the
unique possession of any particular culture but in fact will be expressed through each
culture in distinct, diverse and unique ways.
The great Hindu dictum is “Thou art That”. This phrase is meant to express that in some
unfathomable way, each one of us individually is paradoxically the totality of the
Universe/Being/God. Like the great Hindu sages, Jesus fully identified himself with
God, “The Father and I are One, but the Father is greater.” Now whereas Buddha,
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Krishna and Jesus (to name a few) are symbolic religious figureheads from different
cultures, I maintain that when a Mahayana Buddhist prays to the compassionate Buddha,
when the Hare Krishna’s are giving their devotions to Krishna and when Christians sing
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, the Ultimate Object of their devotions is the same!
This will be nonsense to some of you, common sense to others and heresy to the rest.
Questions of Ultimate Truth are, of course, beyond our abilities to know with any
certainty.
That is where faith comes in.
Nevertheless, our understanding and
interpretations of religious metaphors can have profound psychological and real world
consequences. With that in mind, let’s look at these quotes from the introduction again:
God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the
Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "86
"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I
AM!"87
“I tell you the truth, Jesus answered, “before Jesus was born, I AM!
What I am trying to point out here is that while Jesus may have been the Christ, Christ is
not Jesus! When the poetic abstraction88 that is God speaks to Moses he refuses to be
named; when Jesus answers with “before Abraham was born, I AM,” he is speaking as
the Christ. Not only is he refusing to be named but he is also refusing to be identified
with any concrete attributes associated with that particular time and place, including the
concrete attributes of his own earthly body and life of a mere 33 years! God or the Christ
or Tao, etc, are not to be named or identified with anyone or anything that is finite and
temporal. The Christ is not to be identified with a body – even the body of Jesus! He can
express through a body, but he is not the body. He is beyond the body.
The danger of associating or indentifying the Divine exclusively with Jesus (or any other
holy figure), the danger of believing that there can be a Holy Land such as Israel or India
86
The Bible: Exodus: 3: 13,14
87
The Bible. John 8: 56-58
This is not to say that God is merely a poetic abstraction but that he is at least a poetic
abstraction!
88
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or Egypt is that psychologically we begin to believe that God is a person or a place.
Once a poetic abstraction takes on concrete attributes, it is a short step to creating a world
in which men are better than women (because God is a man), white people are better than
black (because Jesus was “white”) and Jews, Christians and Muslims are willing to kill
each other for possession of the “Holy Land” of Jerusalem because of its historic
relationship to Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, holy men who lived centuries apart!
Spirituality is not a chosen people, holy lands, or a set of beliefs. It is a transformation of
the heart. It is loving your neighbor as your self. It is valuing the planet and its living
creatures, our neighbors and ourselves more than we value our possessions, ideas and
beliefs.
Peace.
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About The Gathering
My Purpose in Life:
To break down the barriers between belief systems and to
inspire every person to find their own personal paths to Spirit
Dear One:
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about the Gathering. My “spiritual name” is
Quazar, my given name is Steven Nelson Goings, and I am the founder of the Gathering.
I personally have a “spiritual outlook” on life – complete with my own beliefs about God
and my past and present participation in several religious and spiritual organizations.
Some of those who have attended previous Gatherings have held similar beliefs or have
their own separate religious and spiritual affiliations. Others are either agnostic or
searching for something that feels right and still others share a very strong view that
religions are themselves the source of many of the evils in the world.
.
Let us start with what the Gathering is not: The Gathering is not a religion, a cult, a
political organization or therapy. The purpose of the Gathering is to encourage people to
actualize their highest potential and contribute to their communities. The Gathering
intends to support this purpose by breaking down the barriers between belief systems and
inspiring every person to find their own personal path(s) to Spirit. We hope to lessen
some of the tensions within and between various religions and the non-religious.
However, it is not my intention that the Gathering be used to lead anyone astray or to
weaken their faith in their own religion, philosophy or point of view, quite the contrary. I
hope that everyone who attends the Gathering will feel that their own connection to
spiritual or intuitional guidance has been strengthened and enhanced. We do not oppose
people who have definite boundaries and firm commitments.
From my individual point of view, one of the chief purposes of the Gathering is to learn
how to share our deeply held convictions in the presence of others who may have
conflicting points of view. I believe that, like I did, you will discover that religions,
philosophies and belief systems are languages. While it is true that some languages are
better suited for describing certain phenomena, the bulk of languages are translatable. It
is my hope that we will each learn new languages and gain practice in translating them
into our “native tongues” (own belief systems). For me, the question which is right,
atheism or monotheism, Christianity or Buddhism, is as nonsensical as asking which is
right, German or Japanese?
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As I envision it, the Gathering is not a representative of or endorser of any particular
religious or anti-religious point of view and therefore should not be considered a religious
organization.
So, what happens at a Gathering?
Well, it depends on the particular Gathering. By definition, the Gathering consists of
those who have gathered (the Gatherers). By design, the Gatherers come from diverse
backgrounds and while there may be a few “regulars”, each Gathering primarily hosts a
fresh group of participants. Gatherings are held on at CSUMB on scheduled Saturdays
from 2-to-4 pm. These are usually small events of a dozen people or so who pass the
time with lively conversation. The topics vary from week to week and the degree of
structure depends upon the dynamics of each particular group. These Gatherings usually
consist of a speaker or facilitator who will speak for about 20 minutes, followed by a
round table where a talking stick is passed around to all of the participants. The
participants are encouraged to bring a meaningful personal item to place upon the
communal altar and a meaningful piece of music.
After the guests have arrived, each Gathering begins with some piece of high-energy
music to get everyone’s juices flowing. This may be followed by a short period of
silence, a prayer, meditation, or affirmation of intentions for that week’s Gathering. At
the opening and closing of each Gathering a participant is chosen at random to share their
music with the group. Depending upon that week’s facilitator, there may also be optional
group activities and fun surprises! At the end of each Gathering there is an opportunity
for someone to step into the role of guest speaker, facilitator or Gatherer (the person
whom invites new people to the Gathering that they, themselves, host) for a future
Gathering. Also at the end of the Gathering a church, ashram, synagogue, mosque, (etc,
etc.) or lecture is chosen to be visited by those who wish to go as a group the following
week.
Well, that’s about the gist of it! I hope that you will consider coming to an upcoming
Gathering or perhaps hosting a Gathering of your own!
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Purpose Statement of The Gathering
(A New Club @ CSUMB)
Our Vision
We envision a world in which every individual is empowered to actualize their
highest potential and is further inspired to contribute to their communities. Our
grandest vision is to be participants in bringing about perfect peace in three distinct yet
interdependent arenas, inner peace, social peace and world peace.
Our Mission
Our mission is to breakdown the barriers between belief systems and to build
bridges that support all people in finding their own personal paths to healing,
wholeness and spirit as they themselves define it. In other words, we want to learn how
to free ourselves from the limiting prejudices and consequences of our individual and
cultural beliefs even as we take full advantage of the rich contributions, benefits and
accumulated wisdoms of our various cultures, faith and belief systems. In this way, we
hope to lesson some of the tensions within and between various religions and the nonreligious and to alleviate all other forms of prejudice and discrimination. We believe
prejudice is overcome through education and the deliberate interaction and
communication between people from diverse walks of life. Therefore, it is the mission of
The Gathering to promote cross-cultural education and interaction by collaborating,
holding, and sponsoring multi-cultural and multi-faith meetings and events.
Our Goals
Our goal is to hold a Gathering twice a month. The Gathering is a coming together of
people who realize that we all have our own methods of finding meaning and
purpose in life, people who are willing to share how their own beliefs give them
strength and nurturance, people who are willing to use their own lives and their
owns stories to inspire others, people who are willing to be inspired by the stories
and example of others, and people who will set small differences aside for the sake of
improving their own lives and communities. The Gathering is meant to be a discussion
group not a debating society. Although we may address controversial issues, our primary
concern is in discovering how we can use our various belief systems to our personal and
mutual advantage, not in reaching group consensus or in judging the rightness or
wrongness of any particular point of view.
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At each Gathering we will explore various methods of obtaining inner peace. These
methods will be drawn from both religious and secular sources, both traditional and
exotic. No one will be coerced to participate in anything they find objectionable or
uncomfortable. (Although we encourage examining those feelings!)
We will address the issue of social peace by hosting a different guest speaker once a
month who will educate us about a particular culture, belief system, or social
condition. We and the presenter will then share in a group discussion about the issues
raised in the presentation. The intention of this goal is that the members of The
Gathering be constantly exposed to diverse peoples, belief systems and lifestyles. This is
meant to help us learn how to both listen to and share deeply held beliefs and convictions
in the presence of those with whom we might initially disagree.
And finally, we have a goal to begin laying the foundation to world peace, through
education, interaction and social activism. We plan to collaborate with the non-profit
organization, Our World-Peace Park, in presenting a multicultural, multi-faith exhibit
here at CSUMB at the end of this school year. The exhibit will consist of educational
booths representing different countries, cultures, belief systems, non–profit and peace
organizations, as well as representative performances and presentations from various
cultures and traditions.
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Bibliography
The Bible
Genesis. 1:26 -31; 3:16; 9:18-25.
Exodus 3: 13, 14; 20 :3-5
Leviticus 12: 2, 5; 27: 6
Mathew 23: 1-7, 13.
Luke 20: 19-25.
John 8: 56-58.
Galatians 3:28
Books :
Andrea, Juanita B., and Overfield, Susan L. The Human record. Boston,
Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005
Beebe, Rose Marie; and Sendewics, Robert Lands of promise and
despair: chronicles of early california, 1535-1846. Berkeley, CA:
Heyday Books, 2001.
Campbell, Joseph. The power of myth. New York, N.Y.: Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc, 1988
Evans, Arthur. Witchcraft and the gay counterculture. Boston, Mass.:
Fag Rag Books, 1978
Katz, Jonathan. Gay American history. Crowell Publishers; 1974.
Lao Tzu (Translation by Blakney, R.B.). The way of life. New York,
N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1983
Park, Lisa S.H.; and Pellow, David N. The silicon valley of dreams, New
York and London: New York University Press, 2002
Smith, Houston. The world’s religions. NewYork, N.Y.: Harper Collins,
1989).
Steinbeck, John. The harvest gypsies, on the road to the grapes of wrath.
Berkeley, C.A.: Heyday Books, 1936.
Stryker, Susan; and Bushirk, Jim Van Gay by the bay, a history of queer
culture in the San Francisco bay area. San Francisco, CA.:
Chronicle Books. 1996.
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Timmons, Stuart. The trouble with Harry Hay Boston, Mass. : Alyson
Publications, 1990.
Websites:
Barefoot Windwalker. “Chief Seattle’s letter to all the people.” From:
http://www.barefootsworld.net/seattle.html. (Accessed on Dec 1st,
2007).
Human Rights Watch. History. (2006). From:
http://hrw.org/wr2k5/religion/4.htm (accessed on Dec. 1st,2007.)
Lao Tzu. (Translated by Isabella Mears, 1916). Tao te ching. (October,
2004) . http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tao-teching.htm (Accessed on Dec. 1st, 2007.
Marentes, Carlos;and Marentes, Cynthia P. “The struggle in California”.
1996. (Updated December, 1999.) From:
http://www.farmworkers.org/strugcal.html . (Accessed on Dec. 1st,
2007).
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. “Decide, the murder of God,
about Jesus’ execution. From
http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_jesu.htm (Accessed on
Dec 1st, 2007.
Wikipedia contributors, "Bayard Rustin," Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin
(Accessed on December 1, 2007).
Wikipedia contributors, "Harry Hay," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hay (accessed December 15,
2007).
Wikipedia contributors, "Quaker history," Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_history
(accessed December 1, 2007).
Wikipedia contributors, "Radical Faeries," Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Faeries
(accessed December 1, 2007)
Miscellaneous:
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10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
14th Amendment: 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
15th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
19th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Article 4 Section 1: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts,
Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws
prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the
Effect thereof.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964:Document Number: PL 88-352. 88th Congres, H. R. 7152.
SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods,
services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of
public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation
on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.
Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972: Title 20 U.S.C. Section 1681. Sex. a)
Prohibition against discrimination; exceptions. No person in the United States shall,
on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be
subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal
financial assistance.
The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990:42 U.S.C. 12181. Sec.36.101 Purpose.
The purpose of this part is to implement title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of
1990 (42 U.S.C. 12181), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by
public accommodations and requires places of public accommodation and commercial
facilities to be designed, constructed, and altered in compliance with the accessibility
standards established by this part.
Debates on the California Constitution, Monterey, 1849. From the
California Constitutional Convention, September 1 – October 13,
1849.(Colton Hall, Monterey, California).
Article VIII of the Treaty of Guadalupe – Hidalgo: Mexicans now established
in territories previously belonging to Mexico, …who shall prefer to remain in the
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said territories, may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or
acquire those of citizens of the United States.
California Family Code Section 308.5: Only marriage between a man and a woman is
valid or recognized in California.
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