Affirming Our Essential Goodness

The following is excerpted from Toby Johnson’s book, Gay Spirituality, and focuses on “gay mystical consciousness.”

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Gay identity gives witness to mystical ideals. The deliberate choice to live in the present, accepting death with no pretense of immortality through offspring, affirms that we live in the eternal moment. Saying yes to mortality practices detachment from ego. Transcending ego allows us to realize our oneness with greater consciousness, with life.

As we realize this, we see that only our ego will die. Life goes on. And so we overcome death to the extent we overcome attachment to [the ego]. To see that you are the universe is to see that you cannot die. To see that the universe mirrors you, and is you, is the essence of homosexual attraction.

In the old days, being gay was something people kept secret. For that reason, homosexuality provided a sense of specialness. It was like membership in a special club. That has changed. And that’s good. Though there is still something special about being gay, and there is still a certain amount of persecution that goes with specialness.

We do not need any more martyrs, though we shall likely get them. There are people who carry deep scars that cause them to hate us. They project their own self-hate and sexual confusion onto us. They blame us for all the problems of society. They blame the collapse of tradition values on us. They think that by persecuting us they are somehow dealing with child abuse and broken families. And they create a climate in which violence against homosexuals seems almost patriotic.

Crimes committed against homosexuals are crimes against citizens and cannot be tolerated. . . .

When people are jealous of you and resent what you’ve got, you know you’ve got a treasure. If not, they wouldn’t bother with you, would they?

Accepting things as they are necessarily includes accepting the opposition we face. It also includes striving to create a world in which such violence does not happen. Until then, we must not let the opposition stop us. We must not let ourselves be frightened out of the truth of who we are.

We understandably downplay our experience of being gay. We emphasize the suffering and social difficulties we face. . . . We [do this] to avoid retaliation from the straight people who do not want us proclaiming how lucky we are. We keep a low profile. We poor mouth. But we must tell ourselves the truth about our good luck. We must tell our brothers. This is the good news, the boom of our hero journey, that can save us and them.

We have to believe that being in the altered state of sexual consciousness is a good thing. Any other position is self-defeating. We can create our lives so that this is true. We can take care of ourselves. We can maintain our health and vitality, the glow in our complexion and the flexibility in our muscles. We can protect ourselves from disease. We can work on our moral and psychological well-being, letting go of neurotic behaviors and compulsions. We can cultivate good friendships. We can have positive and delightful sexplay with willing, enthusiastic partners. We can have deep, committed, long-term sexual partnerships. In all these we can affirm our essential goodness.

– Excerpted from Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness by Toby Johnson (Alyson Books, 2000, pp.264-265).

Different Names

The following is excerpted from The Hare by Jill Mason.

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Few animals can have been given as many different names as the hare. Some are very localized and often the hare’s alternative names are associated with cats. This is thought to be because both cats and hares have been linked with witches, as their familiars. Another possibility is that a hare has a split upper lip, similar to that of a cat.

In Wales many of the old names for hares include “cath,” which is the word for cat in Welsh. The old Scots word for a Mountain hare was “malkin,” “mawkin,” or “maukin,” but this does not seem to be in use today. However, there is a country inn in Glen Devon called The Tormaukin which has a sign depicting two Mountain hares with the mountains in the background. Tor means hill.

In some areas of Scotland, hares are known as “fite” hares, fite being the word for white in local dialect. The word “baud” or “bawd” referred to hare in Norfolk. “Wat” or “watt” is another old Norfolk name for a hare. Part of the insignia for the town of Watton in Norfolk depicts a hare (or wat) jumping over a “tun,” an old name for a barrel. The Hare and Barrel is also the name of a pub in Watton. Shakespeare referred to the hare as a “wat,” a term which has also been used in Cornwall.



Many village signs in Norfolk portray features of local interest. The one at Harpley shows a pheasant, hare, and corn. Place names beginning with “Har” sometimes indicate a connection with the hare, so Harpley may well have got its name from the abundance of hares that surround it.

Morning Light XVIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

"Don’t Fence Me In"

The following is excerpted from poet and essayist Thomas March’s review of Cathy Crimmins’ book, How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization.

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The only thing inherently gay about any of my tastes is that I require – I insist – that the person I am dating be male. As soon as we insist that a behavior or a taste or an attitude is inherently “gay,” we’re implying that it’s unavailable for a straight man to accept as part of his system of sensibilities. Establishing such a barrier restricts gay men, too – and promotes the same kind of thinking that reinforces negative stereotypes, not just the lovely myth of the well-groomed gay man.

Early in [her] book, Crimmins tells a story about shopping with her daughter and a gay teenage boy who finds her daughter a beautiful dress and then remarks about himself that he “fulfilled [his] function as a gay man.” He laughed, and I hope he really was being ironic. It looks like that kid could make a great personal shopper or have a very successful career in fashion. And good for him, if that’s what he wants. But there are many ways to fulfill one’s function as a gay man. We’re cops and construction workers, too; we don’t just dress up like them. A gay kid needs to know that if he wants to, he can be a good gay man without always helping people pick out clothes. As we’ve learned, it might be hard to be a gay cowboy, but the first step is to say, “Don’t fence me in.”

– Thomas March (The Gay and Lesbian Review, May-June, 2006)

Symbol of Enlightenment

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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The hare is a symbol of enlightenment, not only of the spirit but of the dawn, the dawn of the day and the dawn of the year which we call spring.

The ancient Egyptian hieroglyph – a picture of a hare – stood for the auxiliary verb “to be,” but auxiliary verbs come late in the development of language and all are derived from words of independent sense. The Egyptian “to be” was associated with creation and had the senses of being, existing, and persisting, which are in mythology often represented by the hare.


Image: Mark Bakker.

Morning Light XVII

Subject: Simon Czaplinski.
Photographer: Paul Reitz.

Where the Mountain Hare Has Lain

One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

W.B. Yeats

Image: Devon Biodiversity Action Plan.

The Domain of Eros

The following is excerpted from Brian Pronger’s The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex.

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Homosexuality, in our culture, rather than forming an identity, is best understood as an unusual way of looking at the world, a paradoxical mode of being in the world. The paradox presents a special sensibility through which some men understand themselves and the world they live in. It is a sensibility that they can employ at various times, depending on the personal and social circumstances. A homosexual man is not just someone who has had a certain number of objectively homosexual experiences. Nor is he someone whose life can be understood primarily through his homosexuality. He is a man whose paradoxical intuitions of the myth of gender have given him a special sensibility.

I [draw] a distinction between objective and subjective homosexuality. Objective homosexuality is merely a matter of two persons of the same sex engaging in sexual activity. Objective homosexuality describes observable, physical behavior. Subjective homosexuality, on the other hand, refers to the psychic dimension of sexual experience. This psychic dimension . . . is the domain of eros. So, subjective homosexuality is the psychic world of homoeroticism. It’s possible for two men to engage in objectively homosexual behavior and not experience it as homoerotic. This is often the case in boys’ schools, prisons, the military, and other exclusively male environments where men engage in homosexual acts without finding it homosexually significant; they don’t think of themselves as homosexual and often don’t consider their objectively homosexual behavior as a homoerotic expression. It is just a substitute for sex with a woman. This is not to say that there aren’t men in prisons and the military who experience a homoerotic dimension in their sex with other prisoners, soldiers, or sailors. The point is, the act does not necessarily define the individual’s psychic experience.

Homoeroticism lies in the individual’s paradoxical interpretation of the myth of gender. . . . One of the effects of being paradoxical, of being gay, is estrangement. Gay men are estranged from the culture from which they themselves have emerged.

– Extracted from Pronger, B. The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex (St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 81-82.

The Ghostly Mountain Hare

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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The mountain hare is not very much bigger than a large rabbit. . . . Its summer coat is an excellent camouflage especially in flowering heather or the mosses and course grasses of the moors. On bare stony ground and against the blue shadows of lichened rocks on a sunny day it is perfect. In summer too there are many places where hares can hide in long old heather or grass. But the winter coat is a terrible danger to the hare unless there is snow.

. . . When he lived in Nairn [in the Grampian Mountains of Scotland] as a boy, [Norman Halkett] used to borrow his uncle’s field glasses and bicycle out to the moors, usually alone, but sometimes with a friend, and lie down to watch birds and animals.

. . . The mystery of the white hare sometimes frightened him. He says that when it was sitting or lying down it looked as if it had been frozen to death or stuffed in a hunched up position like a cat that is feeling the cold. Its staring eyes were like glass eyes. Then watching through field glasses he would ask his friend to clap hands or bang two stones together. The hare would crouch even further in its form. They would approach it cautiously. It would watch them stilly until they were very near. The friend would run on towards it, and he would see through his field glasses how it leapt from the form with a twist of its hindquarters and land about ten feet away in order to leave no scent from its paws. Then it would bound in an easy regular gait, a series of smooth unhurried jumps that reminded him of a horse gently cantering, to the summit of the nearest ridge usually less than a hundred yards away. It would sit up there with its ears erect and look back to survey the danger.


Sometimes when it ran on more level ground it would seem like a puff of smoke rising and falling, blown by the wind. It would often vanish suddenly near a rock or high clump pf heather. When [Halkett] tried to imagine the Holy Ghost he thought of the white hare. The mysterious sin against the Holy Spirit was to kill a white hare.

– Excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart and David Thomson (Faber and Faber, 1972), pp. 36-37.

Tan Lines VII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The March Hare of Wonderland

There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. “Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,” thought Alice; “only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.”

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming.

“There’s PLENTY of room!” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.


“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.

“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.

“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.

“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare.


– Excerpted from Chapter 7 of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Image 1: Gwynedd M. Hudson, 1922.
Image 2: Arthur Rackham, 1907.
Image 3: Sir John Tenniel, 1865.

The Hare on the Bookshelf

Image: The Hare by Jill Mason on the Leveret’s bookshelf - November 2008.