The Gay Face of God
By Archbishop Bruce J. Simpson, Benedictine Order of St. John the
Beloved, an Old Catholic Religious Order
Paperback, 258 pages
Third Millennium Publications, 2004
“Unless progressive
and prayerful men and women are able to fight for the right of all to
be left alone in God, the trend towards hate and violence based on
incorrect biblical interpretations will only grow.”
* * *
Archbishop Simpson’s passionate memoir is an engrossing life story that
begins in late 1953 and travels through the next fifty-one years from
the tribulations of childhood to tentative triumph. Why tentative? Many
will agree that the Archbishop’s personal story is an indisputable
triumph of the human spirit. This autobiography is also a front-seat
view into the compelling history of a generation of LGBT Americans who
rose up and challenged the homophobic bigotry and injustice in our
country. Yet Archbishop Simpson also emphatically reminds us that, even
today, “we have not only religious fundamentalism in the Middle East to
fear, but our very own home-grown, full-fledged, whip me with a chain,
pull out the toenail fanatics that would burn your house down as soon
as spit in your eye. Many hate-groups...have at their core a fervent
Christian fever lapping at their sheets and armbands.”
Simpson was born in 1953, the progeny of a violent rape. His single
mother, Ruth, both worked and raised him while they lived with his
grandparents, Edith and Harry, and his uncle, Norman. Simpson’s
childhood was not idyllic; his mother and grandmother often fought and
his uncle was a violent drunk. His mother eventually married when he
was 14 and the family moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Yet he had
still “not achieved even a modicum of mental stability,” due to
problems in his mother’s marriage. He became a troubled, angry
adolescent. By the age of 16, he found himself in juvenile court for
burglary, but was fortunately not charged. Simpson dropped out of
high school when he was 17 and earned his diploma by attending night
school.
Given his background, Simpson seemed on the low road to a disastrous
adulthood, but his decision in 1970 to enlist in the United States
Naval Reserve proved pivotal. Some thrive in military life, and Simpson
was one of them. After a brief stint in the Navy, he enlisted in the
U.S. Air Force midway through 1971. He chose the Security Police as his
specialty field and served with distinction in numerous commands. By
the end of 1973, however, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI)
made him the subject of an inquiry to confirm whether he was gay.
Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, the military conducted their own version
of the “Salem Witch Trials” in its efforts to expunge gay people from
the ranks. After adept legal maneuverings on Simpson’s part, the OSI
halted their investigation. Simpson’s commanders gave him his pick of
assignments and he selected a fighter base located ninety miles north
of London, England.
Ironically, a medical problem he experienced while serving in England
became the catalyst that propelled Simpson out of the Air Force. While
recuperating in the local military hospital, he met a nurse and the two
became briefly involved. What this nurse said to him changed his life:
“Hell Bruce, you just need someone to love.” Simpson had known he
was gay for many years, but never realized until that moment that he
longed for “tenderness and intimacy.” So, after successfully defending
himself against the OSI investigation just months earlier, Simpson
realized that, as much as he loved the Air Force, he desired to live
his life openly. He became the first gay man to be discharged from the
American military without any notations about his sexual orientation in
his military records.
After leaving the military in 1974, Simpson moved back to Pennsylvania
and worked in law enforcement until he met his life partner, Jack, in
1975. In 1976, the couple moved to Manchester, New Hampshire but
discovered that they preferred more temperate climates. They moved to
Florida in 1977, where Simpson enrolled at the University of Central
Florida in the paralegal program. He earned a B.A. in 1981. During that
time, Simpson became involved as a political activist advocating for
the LGBT community. He helped Chief Assistant State’s Attorney Lawson
Lamar win election for Orange County Sheriff by serving on Lamar’s
campaign staff and helping deliver the gay vote. During that election,
Simpson also ran for and was elected to the Orange County Democratic
Executive Committee. At the time, he was 27. He and his partner later
moved to Prince Georges County, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C.,
where he continued to work in law enforcement for several years. He was
named Police Officer of the Year by the American Legion in 1984,
shortly before he entered the seminary.
Archbishop Simpson first heard the call to ministry in his early
twenties. With the aspiration to be ordained in the Roman Catholic
Priesthood, he entered Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg,
Maryland in 1984. He served his first summer internship at St.
Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Simpson was then transferred to
Theological College at the Catholic University of America for his
second year of study. The Roman Catholic Church brutally interrupted
his aspirations to become a priest after he naively came out during his
yearly formal review. Disconsolate, Simpson returned to secular life,
working again in law enforcement and for the federal government, until
he discovered the Old Catholic Church in early 1995. He was ordained as
a deacon on December 9, 1996, was ordained a priest on July 13, 1997,
and was subsequently consecrated a Bishop on January 30, 1999. As the
Archbishop of the Benedictine Order of St. John the Beloved, he now
dedicates his episcopacy to serving all who have been wounded by
religion, but especially the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered
community.
In its latter chapters, The Gay Face
of God also doubles as a religious discourse. Archbishop Simpson
includes a fascinating history of the Old Catholic Church and its
theological doctrines. Rome originally granted local autonomy to the
Church of the Netherlands in 1215, but that autonomy was challenged
throughout the Counter-Reformation. Catholics in Holland finally
secured permanent autonomy when they dissented and rebelled against
Rome in 1870 over the issue of papal infallibility. Known ever since as
the Old Catholic Church, this denomination has “sought to adhere to the
original beliefs and practices of the catholic church of the
post-apostolic era.”
The most emphatic of Archbishop Simpson’s theological discussions is
his interpretation of the Terror Texts in the Bible. We cannot be
reminded enough, in the face of concerted efforts by the Radical
Religious Right to convince the public otherwise, that the Bible simply
does not condemn sexual minorities. In addition to his theological
arguments, he also provides an elegant Holy Union Rite adapted from the
late John Boswell’s, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe.
Like some self-published works (my own included), The Gay Face of God could use a bit
more editing, but this observation should not deter the reader from
appreciating Archbishop Simpson’s profound and substantial
accomplishments. We are blessed to have women and men of faith, like
Archbishop Simpson, who speak the voice of reason and truth; who are
still willing to confront the unchecked religious bigotry in our
country today.
|
A Gathering of
Angels
By Larry Dean Hamilton
Hardcover, 226 pages
Sigma Logo Books, LLC, 2004
“The general’s arm begins a slow arc from his side, riot stick in hand.
His stiff arm in a rearward motion begins to rise, a motion I perceive
will terminate above his head, the stick leading forward. I grip JC’s
arm, ‘We’d better step back from here.’ Caught in the excitement,
he makes no move to retreat...I dig fingers into flesh and spin him
round, ‘Move, JC! Now!’ The riot stick reaches an apex above the
general’s head. A terrible, terrible sound barks through darkness.
Charge!”
A Gathering of Angels
is much more than an autobiography. It is a potent, riveting, and
brutally honest tale about the journey of one man’s soul. In his
spiritual memoir, Larry Dean Hamilton welcomes us into several periods
of his life where we discover what being gay, and coming out in the
late sixties and early seventies, meant to him. In A Gathering of Angels, Hamilton
pours out his dreams, hopes, love, and loneliness with mesmerizing
stories colored with irony and rich detail.
Hamilton begins with a dramatic narrative portrayal of the ambush riot
that police unleashed on ACT-UP’s protest march to the Houston
Astrodome during Bush the Elder’s 1992 Republican convention. It is
unfortunately shocking to be reminded that, even at this point in the
history of our movement, the civil rights of LGBT people were so
cavalierly disregarded, and violently assaulted. He then flashes back
to his grade school and high school years in Bay Prairie, Texas, and
poignantly shares with us the painful alienation of his youth. Many
will identify with the torment he experienced from being singled out by
his peers as “different” before he’d even begun to understand why he
felt different.
A Gathering of Angels
focuses mostly on Hamilton’s college years in Austin, Texas.
Hamilton “came out” while in college. And, although his is primarily
the story of a gay man’s coming-out journey, he candidly shares with us
what was also his college experience. For that reason, many young
adults today will also identify with his youthful exuberance and
curiosity, his thirst for life, and even his comical misadventures.
Hamilton introduces us to a captivating cast of characters: Jim, his
ostensibly straight roommate; Jackie, a freshman year pal with whom he
brazenly walked out of a final test review lecture…the professor had
the last laugh in THAT incident; Scott, a.k.a. Winnie, Winnie-the-Pooh,
Teddy Bear; Joseph, the nervous queen with the “pompadour” hair; Mother
Ferrel, the literally loony dormitory monitor, and many others. I
laughed hysterically as he related how he and his dorm mates decided to
welcome Joseph with a mock necking session on the unsuspecting young
man’s first visit to Jim’s and Larry’s room. And, I later read with
horror as Hamilton related his rape at the hands of a gay couple he’d
brought home for a threesome...only to find myself on the verge of
tears as he recounted how his roommate, Jim, cared for him afterward
with tenderness and compassion.
While reading, I was often astounded to remember that most of the
events included in A Gathering of
Angels took place before the Stonewall riots: Hamilton’s first
visit to “The Cabaret”, THE local gay bar in Austin at the time,
occurred the night of the same day President Kennedy was assassinated.
Judging from the openness with which he seemed to lead his life,
readers might conclude that Hamilton was coming of age during the “Gay
Nineties,” but he wasn’t. These days were PRE-Stonewall. “PERVERT SWEEP,
QUEERS CAPTURED,” read one local headline. Incidentally,
Hamilton missed the Stonewall Riots by hours: he was living in
Manhattan by then, and had visited the inn on his way to the airport
for a weekend jaunt to Houston.
One might also observe after reading this book, however, that in spite
of the growing social and cultural acceptance we seem to have gained
during the last thirty years, so much else remains unchanged after the
past three decades. During the late sixties, Hamilton was actually
ejected at bayonet point when he came out during his U.S. Army
pre-induction in New York. Gay servicemen and servicewomen living
through “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” might understand THAT experience. Gay
men and women today still have to struggle with finding
self-acceptance, and with fighting institutional discrimination and
religious-based bigotry.
A mystical strand also runs through A
Gathering of Angels. Throughout the book, Hamilton relates
several visionary experiences that ultimately helped him understand his
yearning for love and his search for meaning in his
relationships. This concept sometimes seems absent in gay
encounters today. For Hamilton, the principle of Love is transcendent.
At the end of his elegant, complex, and well-crafted memoir, Hamilton
brings us back to where he started…the police action in Houston, Texas.
The ACT-UP demonstration, and the scenes that flashed across television
sets across the nation during that week in 1992, played their own small
part in unseating Bush the Elder:
“The legion comes quickly, a dark force, manner grim. They set about
their work methodically. They bludgeon the boys on the ground. I see
this clearly, from above, from behind my body running wildly across the
grassy lawn. Boys felled to the ground, begging for mercy, bludgeoned;
boys pleading, arms up stretched, bludgeoned; boys crying out where
they lay helpless, bludgeoned; a slaughter of seal pups—bludgeoned.”
Whenever a person tells their truth, they empower others to do the
same. And “Deano” has told his truth…his stories drip with truth. As I
walked his journey with him, I laughed with him, I loved with him, and
I wept with him. Poetic and well written, A Gathering of Angels is one of the
best books I’ve ever read. It was a revelatory experience.
|