Dear Friends,
Are you queer and celibate, or maybe prefer the term gay, lesbian or bisexual?
Are you interested in monastic life or celibacy until marriage or celibacy lifelong, but aren’t sure how accepted you will be?
Do you know someone in your religious community or in your friends or family which needs support for their chosen aspiration of gay celibacy?
Rightly, then, you came here.
Being queer is a minority. In some countries being any religion but the main religion is a minority. Being celibate is also a minority, but we imagine or know the clergy of religions to have much power and so their minority status is mostly not considered. This being so, we might be within a crossection of minorities subject to discrimination or cleverly evading it.
Possibly like you, I’m a (struggling) celibate religious person (Buddhist and Hindu), I’ve renounced the worldly life, and I prefer to spend my most intimate moments either alone practicing religion or with correligionists. I’ve encountered quite a few queer, celibate, religious persons either in brief or at length, and sometimes only flashing before my eyes when I update Facebook before posting quickly or sending a quick note. Sometimes we evade eachother, maybe out of pride we’ve carved a niche for ourselves and being queer is no longer a problem for us, we know the dialectical process of getting beyond and evading discrimination or maybe we see a need for reform: a queer-friendly version of the Vinaya in Buddhism or monks rules in other religions, suggestions for queer-friendly monastic housing and other rules, etc. Either way, this website is intended to develop community, dialog and action (helping to represent an ordaining monastic if there are difficulties, developing recommendations within religious orders’ rules, etc.) within a silent minority and to integrate queer monastic life within the religious institutes that it rightly belongs and respecting those whom chose heterosexuality. If you’re feeling confident (goodly), send us your information to be on the Guest List of Queer and Ally friends in support of others — your declared presence as a minority can help others be as confident.
As a draft (feel free to email me your thoughts) of mission objectives, QIC aims at:
1. Educating the public about queer celibate life
2. Forming task groups within and between religions to suggest alternate styles of living (or intellectual ways of accepting) queer monastic celibacy
3. Publishing ongoing articles about queer monastic life and the role of queer monasticism withing the modern world
4. Explaining the irrelevance of participation in the sexual act in identifying oneself as queer and other factors of educating our peer queers to undersand celibate and queer is not a betrayal
5. A bit of plain, good ol’ fun (cartoons or such?)
6. Ways of respecting the community’s population of heterosexual followers and explaining how they can work with us
If QIC is something you’re interested in, if you know someone else whom might be interested in QIC, if you have any thoughts, relevant articles, books, etc. please contact me, especially if you have a story to tell about queer, celibate, religious life in any altruistic religion.
And in the meantime, enjoy reading the below articles.
May we not give up, but continue to be and support the celibate queer religious monastics paving the way for liberation and others.
Thank you,
Vishnu Das
Facebook: vishnudassivananda
vishnudassivananda@gmail.com
http://goldendeersangha.wordpress.com