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Every UMSU LGBT Controversy

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Original protagonist: [Something mildly controversial/potentially offensive]

Antagonist: That is [sexist, homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, cissexist, heteronormative, homonormative, encouraging of stereotypes, exclusive of religious/black/disabled/woman-identified/queer people]! You can’t say that!

Original protagonist: Why not? I have freedom of speech!

2nd Antagonist: Safespace!

Original protagonist: Stop being so sensitive! You just need to get over your feeling of being persecuted all the time!

2nd protagonist: It’s political correctness gone mad, mate, can’t even say anything without a degree in gender studies here.

Friend of the Antagonist: This isn’t political correctness, it’s about creating an inclusive environment!

[Massive argument ensues]

Interested gay: [Insightful comment about striking a balance between freedom of speech and protecting minority groups that is largely ignored]

Uninterested gay: Wtf are you all arguing about? Stop it, you’re acting like children.

Disinterested gay: Lol, this is funny.

[Unplanned kneejerk response by committee member that deletes/bans/destroys the forum in which the OP committed the original action]

Original Protagonist: I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST DID THAT.

Antagonist: It was totally appropriate!

3rd protagonist: That was not on, no-one has the right to censorship! We live in a free country! {Optional: comparison to Hitler}

2nd Antagonist: Free speech doesn’t include the right to offend!

Libertarian gay: I don’t give a toss about this argument, but no-one has the right to censor another person!

Random gay who has just read through the entire argument and come out sympathetic to the Antagonist: I think its acceptable for the committee to act on issues that are offensive to other members though.

{Optional: Argument about whether rightwing/leftwing viewpoints have equal status and whether the society should be political or not}

Original Protagonist: Who makes that decision? The committee, who the hell are the committee?

Committee member: Hey, we’re all volunteers, we’re all doing the best we can, people make mistakes…

Disgruntled former (sort of) member: [Snarky comment about committee]

[Argument about the committee, its actions that year, the people on it, elections and the sort of events being run]

Member hoping to derail the controversy: Hey, check out this [inspiring video/article about a new step forward for gay rights/suggestion for a new event]

2nd member hoping to derail the controversy: Wow, yeah, that’s really cool. Why don’t we [upbeat and constructive suggestion that no-one replies to]

Original protagonist/Antagonist: Look, I’m not trying to make a big deal about this, I just feel that my identity as a [minority/majority gay man/gay woman/bisexual/trans person/queer person/black person/middle class/working class person/right wing/left wing/religious/atheist] is being compromised and I feel hurt. Something Must Be Done.

Antagonist/Original Protagonist: What do you mean, your identity?! What about MY identity as a [majority/minority gay man/gay woman/bisexual/trans person/queer person/black person/middle class/working class person/right wing/left wing/religious believer/atheist]? We’re oppressed too!

Academic gay: Well, actually, [comment about structural inequality/queer theory/"racism cuts both ways"]

Non-academic gay who shouldn’t be at university: Look, none of this matters, alright? It’s just academic theories, can’t we all just get along?

Original Protagonist/Antagonist: This isn’t about getting along, it’s about a serious point that strikes at the very fabric of what it means to be [LGBT/non-heterosexual/a member of this society/a student/democratic/free/part of a union]!

[Argument continues but now involving reference to liberation theory and class analysis]

Former committee member: Nothing changes.

2nd former committee member: Yeah, do you remember when…

[Short conversation between old LGBT hacks ensues about former controversies]

Ordinary member no-one has ever heard of before: Look, I signed up to this society for updates about events and to meet people, not to read this kind of petty infighting. We need to be united, get a grip!

Original protagonist: I wasn’t trying to be divisive, I only [original action] and it seems some people just can’t cope with that…

Ordinary member no-one has ever heard of or will again: Just stop it! Just stop it, alright! I am sick of this happening all the time!

Antagonist: My point was totally valid and you needed to be challenged! You said…

[Argument continues until everyone gets physically tired and/or has to leave the keyboard]

[A committee meeting is held where the same arguments are rehashed for two hours but no conclusions are reached]

Tags: censorship, facebook, free speech, freedom of speech, gender studies, lgbt, minority groups, political correctness, queer theory, umsu
Posted in | No Comments »

Using your Negative Experiences to Write Positive Blogposts

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Yay generic church captions!

A few months ago, I was deleted by someone on Facebook for making a joke about Christianity that they found in bad taste. It turns out that this had also been fuelled by the fact that I had earlier poured withering scorn on their belief that we should forgive unrepentant rapists and because I had called them sexist and homophobic (which I still believe is true for various reasons, the latest being that they referred to LGBT in their last blogpost as “politically correct lingo”). My subsequent attempts to reconcile with them privately failed miserably, as they sent me increasingly bizarre messages that included mocking me for having a mental breakdown last summer and a lengthy explanation about how they had only started sending me abusive messages only when they considered that our relationship was doomed and that’s why it was justified. I’ve never found “Thou may abuse ex-friends and strangers” in the Bible, at any rate.

I found the hypocrisy of someone sending me messages telling me that I am unconscionably rude and arrogant and then signing them, “Your better” breath-taking. I still find it reasonably incredible that someone can call for a Christian attitude towards men who commit violence against women and then apparently fail to demonstrate it themselves to people who offended them. To this end, I wrote a blogpost on the matter entitled, “A Joke to Delete For? Religious Humour and Hypocrisy on Facebook”. I took it down after a lot of criticism for apparently attacking religious people and because the person involved claimed I was back-biting.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the comments that I received. They ranged from suggesting that I should never have posted the joke at all in order to offending someone’s sensibilities, to the fact that my post was largely intended to publicly proclaim someone to be a hypocrite.
(more…)

Tags: christian attitude, christianity, humour, lgbt, rape, Religion, religious humour, religious hypocrisy, sarahmcculloch.com, sexism, violence against women
Posted in Meta, Personal | 1 Comment »

“The first time I met another gay person I broke out in a cold sweat.”

Monday, October 10th, 2011

This article was originally written for a private zine about coming out experiences, and has now been published on LiberateYourself.co.uk.

Jolie pitt2 The first time I met another gay person I broke out in a cold sweat.

...this is quite nice.

You know, I was writing my CV today and as I was looking it over, I realised it was quite, um, gay. “Coordinator, LGBT WikiProject”, “Delegate, NUS LGBT Conference”, “Bi rep, UMSU LGBT”. I spent a brief moment thinking that maybe, maybe it would be a bad idea to go around announcing my sexuality to any potential employer looking. Our society’s pretty down with people like me, but there’s still plenty of homophobia going around. So I thought about it for a second. And then I thought, “Yeah, fuck them”, and kept gaying up my CV. It’s like the Graham Norton of CVs now.

Because what’s my life worth if I can’t actually live it? I’ve done my time in the closet. I had my lightbulb moment when I was 14 when I fell for my best friend – she was mildly homophobic, I was in an all girls’ school where I was bullied quite a lot. I subsequently spent three miserable years trying to hide that fact from her and everyone else. I knew I was one of millions of LGBT people, I knew that teenager-falls-for-same-sex-best-friend is nothing new, but that’s really all besides the point when you’re the only one you know, you know? The first time I met another gay person I broke out in a cold sweat. The first time I came out on a message board, I realised a friend had once used the same message board, freaked out and spammed fifty other forums so that one post wouldn’t show up on my account if she had happened to look at it. Sometimes, I literally struggled to breathe.
(more…)

Tags: biphobia, bisexuality, coming out, cv, cvs, gay person, growing up, homophobia, lgbt, sarahmcculloch.com, sexuality
Posted in Articles, Personal | 1 Comment »

Cool Charities to Give to in 2011

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Every year I try to donate a portion of my income to charity. This year its been a bit lower because I wasn’t getting lots of money from the Student Loans Company. I used to try to find a single charity to donate to, such as the Iranian Queer Railroad, to whom I donated in memory of my friend Jeff, but this year, as last year, I donated to several different charities and write about them here. However this year, I have also added charities you can volunteer for if you don’t have any money to give.

Lama Foundation

general intro8 Cool Charities to Give to in 2011

The Lama Foundation is one of the few intentional communities left over from the 1960s. It’s a non-denominational spiritual community that is, quite frankly, AMAZING, and everyone should go visit it. There are statues of Quan Yin by the kitchen, Sacred Hearts over the door, water goddesses by the spring, and hindu gods in alcoves all over the places, random images of gurus and teachers scattered on every wall and in every room (which were all built by hand over decades of work). And most importantly, people everywhere giving their time and love to maintain a community where you can just be yourself and everyone likes you for it. It is awesome.

I have never felt so happy about giving large amounts of money to the Lama Foundation. When you turn up, their cars are battered beyond recognition, the building are home-made from straw and mud, and they don’t have indoor toilets. Every dollar you donate goes on feeding people who come to visit, to putting on programmes, to supporting the stuff that needs to be done instead of making things look good. Really, go check them out. They want to build a new roof for the main dome complex that will last the next fifty years, go donate!

The Albert Kennedy Trust

1f2eb2c3 8ffe 40c6 ba4b 3a158964ebf4 Cool Charities to Give to in 2011

The Albert Kennedy Trust was founded in 1989 to provide LGBT young people in crisis with accommodation and support. It was named after Albert Kennedy, a 16 year old Mancunian who fell to his death from a car park while trying to flee homophobic bullying.

They regularly have to turn away homeless LGBT teenagers, because they don’t have room to take care of them all. I am not, unfortunately, able to offer foster care because of that whole being-a-student-and-moving-every-year thing, but if you have the time, they’d appreciate that a lot more than money. Although money is also useful…

Re:Vision Drug Policy Network

Yep, I’ve donated money to the drugs charity that I helped found. Always be suspicious of the person who won’t put their money where their mouth is, or expect other people to pay for their charitable endeavours.

The Re:Vision Drug Policy Network is a national charity aiming to empower young people to campaign against the war on drugs. The aforementioned “war” is often used to destroy the lives of young people under the bizarre illusion that this will somehow protect them. It’s therefore important that we as young people stand up and say “nuh uh.” We stand for the control and regulation of all drugs – it’s a little ambitious, but we’re confident we can make an impact. We started up in March and are looking to start doing some serious stuff from September. If you don’t have any money, we’ll take your time instead. :)

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Tags: albert kennedy, charitable giving, charities, charity, cool charities, donating, donations, Drugs, lama foundation, lgbt, Re:Vision Drug Policy Network
Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Letter to Theresa May re deporting Ugandan lesbian Brenda Namigadde

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Dear Ms. May,

I am writing to you with great concern regarding the pending deportation of Brenda Namigadde this week. Brenda came here in 2003 fleeing persecution as a lesbian. Even setting aside the horrors of a system that has left her in legal limbo for no less than eight years, it seems hard to believe that very system has also apparently deemed her not a lesbian. Given that Brenda fled to the UK in the first place as she faced threats on her life because she was living with her female partner, Janet Hoffman, I can only wonder by what criteria the immigration service deemed someone gay at all.

However, regardless of these questions, which go well beyond the specifics of an individual case, the fact remains that of Brenda Namigadde is deported to Uganda, she will be arrested, tortured, and killed. Whether she is in fact lesbian or not, though all evidence before everyone but the judge suggest that she is indeed gay, is absolutely irrelevant to this case: the Ugandan government clearly believe that she is a lesbian, and will duly persecute her as they persecute all homosexuals. David Bahati, a Ugandan MP, has already called for her to “repent or reform”, saying that “Brenda is welcome in Uganda if she will abandon or repent her behaviour. Here in Uganda, homosexuality is not a human right. It is behaviour that is learned and it can be unlearned. We wouldn’t want Brenda to be painting a wrong picture of Uganda, that we are harassing homosexuals.” Mr. Bahati is also responsible for trying to introduce a law that would sentence people found guilty of gay sex with life imprisonment. Only international pressure has commuted his original attempt to introduce the death penalty.

With this background then, it seems unfathomable that as a nation we can be knowingly sending a woman back to her certain death because of ideological views on immigration. Economic migration is a matter of fair debate, but when the Daily Mail holds sway over our policy-making over asylum seekers, we are playing with people’s lives for political expediency. As an LGBT person myself, I am horrified that the rights which I have the luxury of taking for granted, like the right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right to be out and proud, are to be denied to another simply because of the country she was born in.

As Home Secretary. you have the power to stop this from happening. I beg you to re-examine Brenda’s case and intervene so that she can have the right to life she is entitled to and we do not have blood on our hands.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah McCulloch

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Tags: Activism, asylum seekers, Brenda Namigadde, deportation, lesbian, Letters, lgbt, lies, politics, stupidpolicies, Theresa May, uganda
Posted in Activism, Letters | 4 Comments »

Letter regarding my resignation from the Liberal Democrats

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Sent to the DELGA (the LGBT Liberal Democrat group) mailing list in response to an appalling email from a current member of the Executive following the principled resignation of a colleague. I will make no claim that this is well-written or well-referenced.

Dear all,

I was waiting it out with regard to the Comprehensive Spending Review, but after reading Dave’s disgusting, partisan, and utterly unacceptable jibe at Ollie, I am hereby resigning immediately from DELGA and the Liberal Democrat Party. The fact that [redacted] is Ollie’s partner is no way enhances or detracts from the fact that our university teaching budgets were just cut by 80%, our cornerstone pledge that every student should receive a free education was ripped up with glee, 100,000 people are about to be forced to move out of London because they cannot pay the rents, legal aid has been REMOVED for housing and family cases, Disabled Living Allowance is being denied to many people with mental health problems, social care for the elderly has been cut by 30% – do you think that people too frail to leave their beds will just learn to care for themselves?

I joined this party because I believe that we should “build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.” I still believe in that and that is why I must quit. We have betrayed those values, we have betrayed those who voted for us, and we have betrayed our own membership by disregarding their horror at what is unfolding due to our connivance with a cuts programme which rivals Thatcher by deriding it as some sort of lovers’ tiff. Shame on you, Dave, and shame on every one of you who has shrugged their shoulders at the CSR and the hundreds of thousands of desperately poor people are who are now facing oblivion.

The Liberal Democrat Party are in the process of making our country more unsafe, more racist, more unfair, and more hypocritical. Access to health, education, housing and justice has been curtailed and people will die as a result. I hope you can live with that, because I certainly can’t. Goodbye.

Yours faithfully,

Sarah McCulloch

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Tags: Activism, Letters, lgbt, Liberal Democrats, lies, politics
Posted in Activism, Letters, Personal | 13 Comments »

Cool Charities to Give to in 2010

Monday, September 6th, 2010

Every year I try to donate a portion of my income to charity. I can’t say it’s tithing as such but it’s somewhere around that. I used to try to find a single charity to donate to, such as the Iranian Queer Railroad, to whom I donated in memory of my friend Jeff, but this year I donated to several different charities and thought I would do them an extra favour by writing about them here and encouraging you all to give to them as well. :)

Rainbow World Fund

When Haiti got struck by an earthquake in 2010, lots of my friends were making donations to various relief funds. I once worked for Save the Children on a magazine that was funded by money given for the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, so have always been wary of giving to popular disaster relief funds ever since. It’s pretty pointless donating to an organisation that thinks it can divert your donation to its fab new glossy self-promotion schemes.

However, the Rainbow World Fund don’t do that. Instead they do something pretty nifty. Not only do they send volunteers out to disaster stricken areas, as well as running a large number of other projects (“RWF currently supports projects focusing on global HIV/AIDS, water development, landmine eradication, hunger, education, orphans and disaster relief in Africa, Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, and the United States.”), they also raise awareness of LGBT issues in the areas they work in. AND their admin costs total less than 3% of their total income as well, which is phenomenal. They got my cash, at any rate.

http://www.rainbowfund.org/

Erowid

erowid banner7 Cool Charities to Give to in 2010

“Erowid is a small non-commercial organization that operates in the controversial and politically challenging niche of trying to provide accurate, specific, and responsible information about how psychoactives are used in the United States and around the world. ”

In other words, Erowid has lots and lots of information on drugs. What they do, where to find them, how to use them safely, how they combine with other drugs, and more. Erowid is primarily built through the “trip report”, or a written account of the author’s particular experience with a drug, including dosage, coming up times, and even body weight.

This might seem like a stoner’s dream, but it has a very serious purpose. There will be people who will have lived because they got the information they needed to stay safe from Erowid, and no other organisation or website in the world can offer the level of experience, knowledge, and more importantly, impartiality that Erowid can.

That’s the important part for me. For the little drug policy geek that lives in all of us, however, Erowid has also sought to archive every document and record relating to the development of recreational drugs and their usage throughout history. They currently store more than 50,000 documents recording the research of psychoactives – the entire notebook collection of Alexander Shulgin (the scientist who brought MDMA and the 2C family to the world) has been loaned to them for transcription and archiving.

Basically, Erowid is amazing, and you should give them lots of money (or time, they need more volunteers!). Failing that, you can always write a trip report…

http://www.erowid.org/

Friends of Antara UK

Friends of Antara UK is a support organisation for Antara, a mental health charity in North East India. Less than 1% of India’s health budget is spent on mental health, and there are only 2-3 psychiatrists per million people (the UK has 50), so the need is pressing. Antara provides 200 inpatient beds, communty care services and a rehabilitation centre, and treats over 1600 outpatients a week.

Friends of Antara engages in fundraising and awareness activities over here, mostly through university societies (currently located at Leeds, Warwick and York). More importantly, a friend of mine sits on the General Committee and badgered me about how helpful FoA are until I finally sent them a cheque.

http://friendsofantarauk.org/

Roleystone Horse Sanctuary

Cool Charities to Give to in 2010

I will confess, I have little interest in horses. A friend on my Facebook, however, does, and when I put up a request for a charity to donate to, ranted at me about how horse sanctuaries needed extra cash for hay for the winter until I sent them a donation that was small but will probably cover a horse or two for a bit.

I can’t say much about them, but to judge from their (hilariously mispelled) website, their expenditure on self-flattering publicity or expensive branding is precisely nil. If you do want to ensure any donation you give will go straight to its intended purpose, Roleystone is your place.

http://roleystonehorsesanctury.com/

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Tags: charity, donate, Drugs, horses, lgbt, mental health
Posted in Personal | 6 Comments »

“The personal is political” – some thoughts from Christopher Hitchens

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I am currently reading the extremely interesting autobiography of Christopher Hitchens at the moment. Besides the vast, vast , VAST amount of name-dropping, the work is enthralling, the narrative compelling, and the prose grandiloquent. But Hitchens’ recollection of the time he spent as a young Marxist revolutionary while at university is the part I find most intriguing. I didn’t realise it when I first came across his work, but Hitchens has a criminal record as extensive as his capacity for alcohol, the product of many demonstrations and altercations with the police, and in his time at Oxford managed to have an Oxford Debating Union meeting indefinitely suspended for the first time in its 147 year history due to his rather well planned disruption of a debate on the ethics of Vietnam. It’s all fascinating stuff (especially the parts where he talks about all the sexual encounters he’s had with men – but that’s my own personal, ahem, research interest…).

The part I wanted to share, however, is brief, but interesting:

“As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as “anticlimax” began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself. People began to intone the words “The Personal Is Political”. At the instant that I first heard this deadly expression, I knew as one does from the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was – cliche is arguably forgiveable here – very bad news. From now on, it would be enough to a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic “preference”, to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or ask a question from the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words, “Speaking as a…” Then could follow any self-loving description. I will have to say this for the old “hard” Left: we earned our claim to speak and intervene by right of experience and sacrifice and work. It would never have done for any of us to stand up and say that our sex or sexuality or pigmentation of disability were qualifications in themselves. There are many ways of dating the moment where the Left lost or – I would prefer to say – discarded its moral advantage, but this was the first time I was to see the sell-out so cheaply. ” – p121, Atlantic Books (2010)

I’m not so what my friends and comrades in the liberation movements or the Left make of that, but I think he has a point. Not to say that those who work, hard, on feminism and other liberation movements are not making advances on behalf of us all, but that it is their work which matters and not the features they have which qualifies them to be termed “activists”. Sadly, many seem to believe otherwise.

Check out Hitch 22: A Memoir on Amazon.co.uk.

51JLWO%2BqphL. SL500 The personal is political some thoughts from Christopher Hitchens

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Tags: "the Left", biography, black and minority ethnic, books, Christopher Hitchens, disability, feminism, lgbt, liberation, marxism, politics
Posted in Extracts | 2 Comments »

An Interview on Baha’i and Homosexuality Part 3: Ultimately We Will Find a Place

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Sean is a gay third generation Baha’i who has been with his partner for ten years. He kindly agreed to give an interview about his experiences to God Made the Rainbow. This is the third part of a three part interview. Read the first part here and the second part here.

Bahai Rainbow Star1 An Interview on Bahai and Homosexuality Part 3: Ultimately We Will Find a Place

What do it mean to lose your administrative rights as a Baha’i? What impact does that have on someone’s participation in their community?

To lose your Administrative Rights is quite a blow to a Baha’i. Although you are not shunned you cannot attend the 19 Day Feast (which serves as a spiritual, administrative, and social meeting once a Baha’i month), you cannot give to the Baha’i Fund, and you cannot take part in Baha’i elections for Baha’i Administrative bodies. People who loose their Administrative Rights can only attend Baha’i Holy Days. Ultimately most people who lose their Administrative Rights become estranged from their faith community.

The way the law is applied in various Baha’i communities concerning gays and lesbians varies. The interpretation can be as strict as losing your Administrative Rights for being “flagrantly” gay (interpret as being openly gay). The more mature communities just leave their gay members alone as long as they “keep it under the radar”, renounce gay relationships and live lonely celibate lives, or go through therapy and become magically straight!

An interesting fact is that back biting is considered an awful offense like arson, theft, etc., yet my entire Baha’i life I never witnessed anyone losing their Administrative Rights over it: most of the Baha’i world would have to collectively loose thier Administrative Rights if we were going to be playing this game of “Scarlet Letter”.

How do you see the Baha’i faith ultimately resolving the conflict between Baha’i law and homosexuality? Do you think there is an answer?

I believe the future for gays in the Baha’i Faith to be bright. Gays will ultimately will find a place in the Baha’i Faith as their straight Baha’i peers become less homophobic. Baha’i Administrative Bodies will have to re-examine how Baha’i law is applied to gay Baha’is in committed relationships. There will have to be a campaign to educate Baha’is on the harm of homophobia, that homophobia is indeed a form of prejudice that has to be eliminated. Gay Baha’i Gatherings similar to the Black Men’s Gatherings will have to be formed to bring solace to the GLBT Baha’i Community.

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

This interview is part of a irregular segment called God Made the Rainbow, promoting inclusive spirituality. Subscribe to SarahMcCulloch.com via Email so you don’t miss future posts! (or via RSS!)

Tags: bahai, lgbt, Religion, spirituality
Posted in God Made the Rainbow | 11 Comments »

An Interview on Baha’i and Homosexuality Part 2: “Spiritually Handicapped”

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Sean is a gay third generation Baha’i who has been with his partner for ten years. He kindly agreed to give an interview about his experiences to God Made the Rainbow. This is the second part of a three part interview. Read the first part here.

Bahai Rainbow Star1 An Interview on Bahai and Homosexuality Part 2: Spiritually Handicapped

Do you find meaning in Baha’i now? Has your practice changed since coming out?

I still consider myself a Baha’i. There is nothing similar to it out there, the very teaching of “Progressive Revelation” where each world religion is like a chapter of a book (Baha’i being the latest, but not last), our prophecies, and our teachings keep me bonded to the Baha’i Faith. When I came out, initially I was not less active in the city in which I resided; in fact I was elected to our Administrative Body a few years in a row as an openly gay person. As the years passed I was less comfortable sharing my faith with others who knew or asked about the Baha’i stance on homosexuality. How could I share in my faith that teaches those who are in a gay relationship will be spiritually handicapped in the next world? When I moved to the city I currently reside after meeting my partner (whom I have been with for nearly ten years), I contacted my local Baha’i community, and as luck would have it I would be elected to their Administrative Body as well.

My city happens to have the largest gay population per capita in the U.S., so those who would be attracted to the Baha’i Faith for its largely progressive beliefs would be equally turned off with the Baha’i Faith’s stance on homosexuality. I addressed my frustration with my fellow Baha’is in my community; some were understanding, others less so. Ultimately I became inactive in my religious community, seeing that there was no place for openly gay people. To be a gay Baha’i, one cannot be in a gay relationship, gay Baha’is have to deny themselves the basic human need to share their life with someone while their straight peers can lead full lives. It was a very depressing existence leading a double life to remain an active Baha’i. Although I do miss aspects of Baha’i community life, I found that I have to be true to myself.

Is there much of a gay Baha’i community anywhere, similar to the LGBT Christian and Jewish movements? If yes, do you and other LGBT Baha’is find it useful, and if not, do you think one will form?

There is no formal gay Baha’i community life anywhere, though gay Baha’is may meet up on an individual basis. The closest thing gay Baha’is have to a support group is called BNASSA (Baha’i Network on Aids, Sexuality, Addictions and Abuse). BNASSA is an officially sanctioned Baha’i Institute of the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada, and is supported by the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States. BNASSA’s name alone entails a large grouping of “issues”, a far cry from any kind of gay Baha’i support group or Gay Baha’i Gathering. Ultimately GLBT Baha’is will seek each other out and will form support groups or Gay Baha’i Gatherings as a way to bond and share their love for Baha’u'llah.

Black Men’s Gatherings were groups started by African-American Baha’i Men as a way to heal generations of wounds that were afflicted upon the Black Man, to bring them up spiritually as a group, to share their pain, their strengths, and a way to move forward in their communities and families. It is basically a spiritual renewal for them. I think that the GLBT Baha’is need something similar that is equally encouraged by the Baha’i Administration.

Read Part 1 here and Part 3 here.

Tags: bahai, lgbt, Religion, spirituality
Posted in God Made the Rainbow | 3 Comments »

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Posts Tagged ‘lgbt’

Every UMSU LGBT Controversy

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Using your Negative Experiences to Write Positive Blogposts

Related Posts:

“The first time I met another gay person I broke out in a cold sweat.”

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Cool Charities to Give to in 2011

Lama Foundation

The Albert Kennedy Trust

Re:Vision Drug Policy Network

Related Posts:

Letter to Theresa May re deporting Ugandan lesbian Brenda Namigadde

Related Posts:

Letter regarding my resignation from the Liberal Democrats

Related Posts:

Cool Charities to Give to in 2010

Rainbow World Fund

Erowid

Friends of Antara UK

Roleystone Horse Sanctuary

Related Posts:

“The personal is political” – some thoughts from Christopher Hitchens

Related Posts:

An Interview on Baha’i and Homosexuality Part 3: Ultimately We Will Find a Place

Related Posts:

An Interview on Baha’i and Homosexuality Part 2: “Spiritually Handicapped”

Related Posts: