In 1992 White Crane #15 looked at The Wild Man, Robert Bly and Gays,
and included a spirited debate among Harry Hay, Mark Thompson, and
Arthur Evans on the origins of the Faeries. J. Michael Clark issued a
call to ecological reflection:
Toward A Gay Ecological Perspective: the Gay Experience and Ecology
One important
theme in Gay liberation is the realization that we cannot wait for
others to sanction our efforts in theology or spirituality. We must
instead find our own prophetic voice and assume our own authority to
speak in theology and spirituality. Ultimately, neither Gay men and
Lesbians, nor Native Americans, nor the poor, nor any other oppressed
people can afford to wait for an external conferral of authority to
speak. Moreover, the shared nature of oppression means that as we create
our own liberation, so also are we obliged to seek the liberation of
other people, and of the Earth itself, from objectification,
disvaluation and exploitation.
Gay spirituality
and theology, borne out of our experience of oppression, can contribute
something unique to ecological reflection. While we would not expect the
so called deep ecologists and other straight male writers to include
our particular perspective, it is surprising that the majority of
feminist writers also do not include Gay/Lesbian oppression as part of
their analysis of human and ecological oppression and exploitation. Even
when women, African Americans, Native Americans and Third World [sic]
peoples and their environments are acknowledged and examined, Gay men
and Lesbians are consistently absent and invisible. The extension of
rights to Blacks, to women, and in a limited extent to some endangered
species and the environment, conveniently passes over certain groups
which, therefore, remain disenfranchised — most Native Americans, the
poor, the homeless, and Gay men and Lesbians. These groups of people are
all too much of the biosphere as well as invisible, even to so-called
liberals, and treated as disvalued and disposable.
According to deep
ecology, human self-centeredness has led to environmental problems.
According to feminism, masculine privilege and social structures have
devalued and exploited both women and nature. A Gay perspective would
insist that not only are women, nature and the Earth devalued, but our
society, with its fear of diversity, disvalues anyone (Gays, Lesbians,
Native Americans, the poor and homeless, etc.) and anything (the
environment, the Earth) designated as “other.” What we see is not just a
devaluing which leads to domination and exploitation, but a disvaluing
which strips away all value leading to exclusion, to being disposable,
to being acceptable for extinction. This insight is one unique
contribution to ecology which Gay people can offer, Gay thinking must
move beyond the issues of domination and exploitation to those of
disvaluation, exclusion and expendability to radically celebrate
diversity and the intrinsic value of all that is, the human, the
biospheric, the geospheric. Gay people must work against the
disvaluation and exclusion of self and world as disposable, worthless
commodities in a society that disdains diversity and eliminates the
unnecessary — that which has no utilitarian value.
As Gay men and
Lesbians look out on our disposable society of planned obsolescence and
throw-away consumerism, we cannot help but be aware of the growing trash
heap, the over-burdened landfills, the industrially polluted water and
the wastelands of deforestation. We are able to see out society throwing
away our Earth, our home, because we are also aware of how often human
beings themselves have been treated as disposable and expendable.
Historically, African-Americans, Native Americans, the poor and the
homeless, the physically and mentally challenged and virtually all Third
World [sic] peoples have been treated as either expendable after use
(in slavery or minimum wage work) or as totally useless.
In the history of
our own community, never has our expendability been so evident as in
the rising incidence of anti-Gay violence and in the AIDS health crisis.
Our government continues to spend money in the pursuit of protocols and
vaccines, while ouor politico-medical system drags its feet in regard
to approving treatment protocols or to finding a cure. Gay men, IV-drug
users, people of color, and Third World [sic] communities where AIDS
rages heterosexually are still devalued and/or disvalued. Our
expendability becomes an example of our society’s attitudes toward all
the Eart. Hence, our Gay ecological perspective must adamantly oppose
any disvaluation and exclusion that leads to dispensing with diversity
and disposing of life. Neither Gay men and Lesbians, nor the biosphere,
nor the geosphere, nor any of the great diversity which god/dess creates
and delights in is expendable.
An ecological
perspective will also address our own lives as Gay men and Lesbians. We
must be held accountable whenever we accede to or cooperate with the
forces of oppression, exploitation and expendability. We must challenge
any Gay/Lesbian assimilation which mitigates our diversity. Gor Gay men
in particular, we must also examine our socialization as men. We must
discern how we as men have been conditioned to accept exploitation,
disvaluation and expendability — worthlessness — in our lives. If the
typical masculine socialization process of our society works against a
compassionate, caring, empathy for nature, spiritual Gay men who escaped
that socialization may be able to demonstrate, for all men, a
male-embodied love and care for nature.
As we
(re)confront the abuses that imperil the environment, we can begin to
create a Gay ecology that discloses that our Gay and Lesbian existence
is not only a mode of being-in-the-world, but also a way of
being-with-the-world, as co-partners in the process of healing and
liberation throughout the Earth. Granted, in some respects Gay men and
Lesbians, as a larger community, may lag behind other groups in
wrestling with ecological issues and environmental causes because our
energies are so consumed with dealing with AIDS, homophobia and other
forms of oppression. Even with our considerable in-house agenda, which
absolutely must not be forsaken, groups such as the various faerie
circles and Gays United Against Nuclear Arms have pursued ecological
concerns, while individuals have worked within local neighborhood groups
on similar issues. Developing a broader, ecological perspective can
help us see the connection among all forms of oppression, exploitation
and disvaluataion and can facilitate liaisons to confront all of these.
Not through co-option, but through cooperation, working together to
achieve liberation for all peoples and the Earth itself, will we find
out own liberation achieved as well.
Michael Clark is the author of Beyond the Ghetto: Gay Theology in Ecological Perspective, Pilgrim Press 1993
