Gay Men of Wisdom: A Group-Centered Approach to Helping Gay Men Value Their Distinct Gifts

Abstract

Gay Men of Wisdom: A GroupCentered Approach to Helping Gay Men Value Their Distinct Gifts Raymond L. Rigoglioso1 issn 0362-4021 © 2018 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 42, No. 4, Winter 2018 355 1 Founder and Executive Director, Gay Men of Wisdom, Hudson, NY. Correspondence should be addressed to Raymond L. Rigoglioso, BA, ACC, 72 Summit Street, Hudson, NY 12534. E-mail: ray@gaymenofwisdom.org. For more than a century, there has been a tradition among gay men of exploring the meaning and purpose of being gay. This tradition involves an extensive literature, dating back to Edward Carpenter’s seminal 1908 book The Intermediate Sex, Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America in 1951, and Mark Thompson’s (1987, 1994, 1997) influential trilogy Gay Spirit, Gay Soul, and Gay Body. While these books provide intellectual fodder and inspiration for gay men who seek to answer questions about their nature and purpose, the real work happens when they gather in groups. Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Foundation in 1950 (later the Mattachine Society) and leader of the modern gay rights movement, gathered men in circles and explored three questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we for? In 1979, he cofounded the Radical Faeries, with an explicitly spiritual purpose to explore and celebrate the very different (“faerie”) nature of gay men. In 1999, Christian de la Huerta published Coming Out Spiritually and formed Q-Spirit, an international network of gays and lesbians in spirituality. Toby Johnson , author of numerous books on gay spirituality, including one by that very title (Johnson, 2004), led groups in Austin, Texas, toward a similar purpose. In 2002, David Nimmons published The Soul Beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men and formed the nonprofit Manifest Love, which, in addition to 356 rigoglioso staging “loving disturbances,” gathered gay men in workshops around the country to explore their natures. From the beginning—for reasons that still puzzle this author—this inquiry has taken place on the margins of the community of men-who-love-men. Even Harry Hay found himself the focus of resistance in the Mattachine Society for his emphasis on cultural transformation and, for several reasons, was forced to leave. Mattachine eventually chose a much more political direction. Still, the drive to understand gay men’s nature and purpose persists, even if among a subset of gay men. It decidedly requires gathering in groups. In 2012, I began a project inspired by this lineage of inquiry that I call Gay Men of Wisdom. In 2015, I published a book, Gay Men and the New Way Forward, which I describe in more detail later. Mark Thompson attended my book reading and workshop in Palm Springs in October 2015. Afterward, he took me out to dinner and grilled me: “Who are you? Why are you doing this? How did you come to this?” Mark was arguably the most influential author in the genre and one of the guardians of this work in his generation. He attended the first Radical Faeries gathering in 1979 and counted Harry Hay as a personal friend. By the end of our time together, he had given me his blessing. I became the de facto leader of this inquiry for my generation. Mark died the following August. A COMMUNITY-BASED NARRATIVE OF SOCIAL PURPOSE I have always believed that this line of inquiry is extraordinary: A community forced to the margins of society gathers each generation to explore its very nature and purpose. This community generates a narrative about what makes its members different—by virtual, if not complete, consensus. It explores the distinct contributions —gifts—that these differences enable its members to make to society. This inquiry is all the more remarkable for its singularity among LGBT people. To my knowledge (I welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong), lesbians, bisexuals , and transgender people have not developed narratives of social purpose. Some might argue that the existing literature includes L, B, and T people, but a closer look reveals otherwise: All of the books in the genre, with the exception of Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds, written by Judy Grahn in...