The Purpose of Homosexuality
A Universal Fellowship
Survival of the fittest -- mutants
Why Homophobia
Homophobia and the Norm
Gays Have Entered the Unconscious
Gays Don't Have Children
Staying Single
Why Gays are Hated
We all must change our orientation
The Paradigm of Coming Out
The Purpose of Homosexuality
People with a differing orientation, not only to sex, but to life itself, are a needed alternative in a world stuck in a destructive rut. The gay variation is part of evolution’s quest for the sacred self, a needed difference to redeem the world.
The heterosexual norm remains wedded to denial in the face of a global crisis. The average person sees no problem in having children which not only overpopulates the globe and stresses natural resources, but distracts these parents from the necessary work evolution requires -- enlightenment through self-reflection.
Having children for the unenlightened is a substitute for inner work. And the children produced by unenlightened parents are not only in trouble -- but troubled. Parents who have not done their internal homework have a damning effect on the children they so vigorously defend having and unleash a crop of disturbed offspring into the world. There is a limit to the amount of negativity the earth can absorb – physically and metaphysically. We need a new template.
If the purpose of life is enlightenment and most people refuse this urgent summons and stick with the tried and not-so-true (non-reflective family life with children), then we need a variation on the theme of being human. We need a new orientation toward life. The norm can learn a lesson in alternative living from its gay brothers and sisters.
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A universal fellowship
When gays come out, we break from the confines of our parochial backgrounds in the name of love, authenticity, and passion for life. By forming an identity from within, and not from the external trappings of the tribe, we join a new ethnicity made of all ethnicities. As gays transcend the definitions of clan, and become a universal people, we are able to see the common threads in all humanity and common solutions to our travail. We become a new type of United Nations showing a way out of the cult of the family and the narrow views of the tribe to a universal vision that honors all people.
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The survival of the fittest -- the mutant
If life’s deepest purpose is enlightenment, then evolution’s fittest to fulfill this plan is no longer the non-reflective norm, stuck in a futile rut of replicating parochial patterns that pollute and overpopulate the planet. Now the valued mutant is any creative outsider, including the homosexual, who remains unmarried, childless, and willing to self-reflect. This new species is indeed the fittest and freest to seek enlightenment through self-awareness and provide the change needed for life to endure.
Many species have become extinct. Homo sapiens is next if we continue in our mindless approach to living, oblivious to the impact that our narrow-minded way of living exacts. But Mother Nature wants to help. That the creative mutant and homosexualls have has survived humankind’s scorn testifies to Mother Nature’s tenacity in preserving her outcast and gay children and indicates that the creative mutants place in evolution’s plan is intentional and vital.
In the seeming quirky, haphazard accidents of evolution, there are no accidents -- only a deep, purposeful direction to evolve life to light. In the fierce mystery of nature, creative mutants and homosexuals continues to emerge to foster life and its renewal, and its evolution toward enlightenment.
By nature’s decree, all creative mutants including homosexuals are part of Mother Nature’s plan to evolve life to its awakening.
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Why homophobia?
If homosexuality is an intentional part of nature’s plan, then why do gay people send such a seismic rumble through society, religion, and our families? Certainly in a sexually permissive society, one more variation on a sexual theme shouldn’t be grounds for concern. So why does being gay cause such fearful and negative reactions?
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Homophobia and the norm
It is often and rightly argued that deviation from gender conformity is a major source of homophobia in the norm. The femininity in gay men and the masculinity in lesbians are contrary to strict gender compliance necessary to belong. In a conforming culture, identity is established by adherence to prescribed roles, certainly gender roles. Men must be ideally aggressive protectors, and leaders. Gay men, who are at times sexually passive and emotionally empathic and nurturing, are held in disgrace. For the norm, women must be submissive nurturers, and powerful lesbians with masculine demeanors and abilities will also be derided as a threat to the “natural” order in this simplistic scheme.
At a deeper level
But at a deeper level, it is not gender variation or even divergent sexual behavior that is most alarming to the norm. The deepest reason average people find gays so threatening is that we have explored the unconscious to establish our identities.
To come out – we go within which is the norm’s worst nightmare. Gay people’s access to the unconscious and our ability to form an identity from this deep and dangerous pool threatens the norm’s externalized posture. Anyone coming from a true self sends a seismic shock wave through any house of cards. We gays must wrench our identity out of the unconscious by defying the tribe’s prohibitions against self-reflection. Our genuine quest for an authentic self is antithetical to the norm’s self-satisfaction in conformity. The average person doesn’t think twice about identity and dons the cloak of convention as self-evident and vilifies those who don’t.
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Gays have entered the unconscious
Gay people have a natural affinity with the unconscious. When we come out, we investigate this forbidden realm to claim our identity.
Gay people’s familiarity and affinity with the unconscious is the norm’s deepest fear of homosexuality. When gays come out, we explore this perilous realm, this forbidden tomb, and retrieve not only our orientation, but we catch a glimpse of other secrets buried there – horrible and wondrous.
We begin to see how the pathology of our parents and our ancestors has hurt us. We have a perspective on the crimes of the family and we can out them, just as we “outted” our identity. This threatens the norm and its idealization of parents and tradition and its denial of hidden cruelty.
As we search deeper, under our traumas, we also encounter our sacred self. We see how our traumatic history has entombed our magnificence. With this awareness, now unlocked from the unconscious, we begin the process of our enlightenment. This also terrifies the norm for the challenge it offers. If others are outing the crimes of the family and becoming enlightened through resolution of the dark secrets of the unconscious, how can we justify our passivity in spiritual sleep?
Gays who align with life’s deepest purpose, enlightenment and fostering the enlightenment of others, as the result of coming out is anathema to the norm and threatening. For the average, religion is not about personal enlightenment, but devotion to family, ancestors, and tradition. The norm’s creed is not about self-knowing, but self-denial with cultural and religious traditions supporting this psychic slumber.
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Gays don’t have children
The fear of gays is compounded by the fact that we don’t have children. Without the obligations and distractions of spouses and children, we have the energy and freedom to explore the unconscious and do the most forbidden work of all – name the crimes of the family, instead of perpetuating them in the next generation. Without the burden and distraction of family and childrearing, and the great temptation to project unresolved issues onto spouses and children, we can seek the truth. Without children, we can indict -- not inflict -- the pathology of the family. For this outing of truth, we are feared.
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Staying single
Remaining single, a person can devote his or her life full time to personal evolution. It is no mistake that priests and holy people of the past remained single, celibate, and married to God. Now this can be described in psychological terms as the marriage within. When we marry ourselves, we are of a single mind. We are at one, consonant with the true self and our deepest purpose.
But there is great pressure within conventional society to get married and have children. On the surface, married with children seems so worthy. Family life creates a stable setting to raise children to pass on property and wealth in an orderly manner, and also to pass on the traditions and values of the culture to the next generation. Family life gives meaning and identity to so many.
The darker, unacknowledged purpose of marriage with children is that non-reflective, socially sanctioned family life is a convenient way to deny buried traumas. Instead of resolving our psychic carnage from childhood, we simply project it unto our spouses and children. Whatever hurts or unfulfilled wishes remain within us, our spouses and children carry the burden.
Collectively, a married population with children, who as a group deny the unconscious and the traumas it carries, will seek saviors and enemies of all sorts externally. And onto these angels and devils, the norm projects split off dreams of love and rage. We can always formulate heroes to rescue us and villains to hate as we remain unconscious of the harm roiling inside of us. Unconscious tribes and nations are quick to go to battle and call it God’s war and will.
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Why gays are hated
If the norm fears gays because as outcasts, we can see the truth about familial and societal dysfunction and live enlightened lives -- they hate because we don’t.
This irony may shock us. Our straight families intuit the danger, the transforming potency inherent in homosexuality and were always quick to fear us. As outsiders, we have a vantage point to see the truth and betray the lies of the family, and to evolve into a new way of being. This is threatening to the norm. Yet unconsciously, society and our families hate us gays for our failure to take this opportunity seriously. We do not summon the courage to tell the truth, but instead squander our lives in dissipating addictions, or in conforming depression with partners, even seeking to marry and have children, hoping to pass as “normal” just like everybody else. In fact, few gays grasp our potent capacity -- or if we do, we fear it ourselves.
As we fail to use our freedom in a disciplined, constructive manner, the straight world, strapped to its roles of producing children and replicating values, is disappointed.
When we gays mimic conventional heterosexual relationships and marriage, even with children, or dissipate ourselves in self-indulgent sexual acting out and addiction – this is a source of bitter disillusionment among our straight brothers and sisters. When gays simply couple up to lead comfortable bourgeois lives with two incomes and houses in the country, or misuse freedom in nightly drinking and sexual carousing, this is not the purpose of a divergent orientation.
The norm fears our transforming potential – yet hates us for missing the stunning opportunity our freedom affords: gays could be authentic seekers of truth that could regenerate the family and society itself – yet we fail to do so.
In fairness, gays have been psychically brutalized by the family’s and society’s rejection. This is not easily overcome. We can’t underestimate this trauma and its profound effect on gay people. The traumas of our past explain why we act out in so many self-destructive ways. To know the pain of the past and integrate its torture is terrible work. Yet, not to get beyond our pain and simply act out our traumas or sink into conformity, depression, and conventional living destroys our gift as outsiders and truth seekers. We are hated for this misuse of freedom. We deceive ourselves when we call criticism of our bad behavior homophobia. It is time for us gays to heal and give our gift.
From what is best and true in our straight families, they hope we will do what they can’t -- cure the family’s and tribe’s wounds that entangle them. As we gays heal and find our authenticity, we can bring our discoveries of truth home to the family, who are psychically paralyzed in a deadening system of denial and dissociation.
We gays have done something courageous and life transforming by coming out – we have defied convention for authenticity’s sake. But not to take this venture to its next level and its ultimate conclusion in enlightenment is to miss an awe-inspiring opportunity. Not to use our coming out as a paradigm for further exploration of the unconscious is a heartbreaking failure. The lost opportunity to dissolve the unconscious is a tragic waste of a dazzling human occasion.
Gays’ failure to explore life’s purpose with our deviant orientation and lead the way to a new world for all is a cause of great sadness and disappointment in our straight counterparts who envy our freedom and resent our misuse of it.
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We all must change our orientation
As the most evolved species on earth, we humans wield immense influence over the natural world with the choices we make. Sadly, we are choosing to destroy, not enlighten, the planet. We need to change our orientation.
Denial of ancestral brutality, etched within our collective psyches, is having its say in our individual lives, and in society local and global. The unconscious will always erupt in violence at home or in warfare abroad, until we address the horror buried within us – individually and collectively. We will kill life itself if we continue to maintain our ignorance of our childhood traumas, passed on from one unconscious generation to the next, with a population exploding across the planet. If we continue in our cloud of unknowing, disowning our tragic and violent legacy, we will lose our lives and our planet home -- by our own doing.
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The paradigm of coming out
We can use a gay person’s cathartic process of coming out as a paradigm of the profound change required of us all, if we are to survive. We need to come out of our psychic sleep and change our orientation -- not our sexual orientation -- but our life orientation. We need to move away from entrenched tribal purposes that keep us tied to unconscious demons and deadly behavior and move to a universal purpose that will serve us and save us – our enlightenment.
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