Some Notes On Accompanying
Gays And Lesbians
On Their Spiritual Journeys


 
 

This set of notes is merely an outline
for a further development of the topic. My hope is that,
along with others, I will add content and other links
for each of these points to elucidate further
some of the thinking and experiences behind this outline.
Meanwhile, those of you who already do pastoral counseling,
spiritual direction, or Christian guidance
will understand many of these points and may be helped to
organize your own materials in your own way.

1)  Between mentor and client, rapport must move towards mutuality and unconditional acceptance.
Before you can work successfully with any client of a different orientation, it is necessary for you to become comfortable with your own homosexual feelings and develop an appreciative orientation to them. Even though you may espouse a gay-positive party line, your private homophobia will be communicated to your gay/lesbian client in the intimate spiritual-mentoring relationship. You can not help but transmit a negative message to your gay/lesbian client if you believe that homosexual feelings are okay but that heterosexual feelings are better. As with any person of an oppressed group, homosexual people too often learn early in life to hide feelings from themselves and others. Such persons usually become adept at hiding feelings from others whom they perceive (consciously or unconsciously) to be ill at ease with them. Often a gay/lesbian person grows up isolated from a context of mutual respect and confidence and with no one nearby to share his/her feelings. Consult:
2)  A spiritual guide helps the gay/lesbian client by facilitating the transformation of his/her images of God to images of the God who loves and accepts him/her as a homosexual person.
Images of God must be dissociated from institutional, childish, parental, church, patriarchal, projected-anger images. No image of God can replace faith in the God who is beyond all images. To survive with spiritual equanimity, a gay/lesbian person must arrive at this sooner in life than his/her straight (heterosexual) colleagues. As Myrna M. Small writes: "God creates statistically and according to a mysterious bell curve, not according to assembly-line, mechanical exactness. Hence left-handed folk, right-handed folk, and ambidextrous folk, etc."  Consult:


3)  A spiritual mentor can use a type of social analysis to understand a gay/lesbian person's internal dynamics before God.

At some point during the sessions, the mentor might use a chapter or two from a Sociology 101 text concerning the characteristics of minority and oppressed groups and the characteristics of in/out groups. The goal of serious conversations around these chapters might be of some help to discover the elements of homophobia which you and your client have ingested from society. This will also help you to understand why the homosexual subculture exists and how this subculture mimics many aspects -- particularly some of the worst -- of the heterosexual culture. Consult Don Clark's principles by clicking on each of the following: #(3), #(4), #(5).
4)  On Being One's Real Self With God 5)  On The Use of Scripture
As a mentor, you are called to help your clients encounter the living God by assisting them to develop an historical, cultural understanding of those parts of scripture which appear condemnatory of them. Clients need to be helped to move away from what James Fowler calls a Stage Three level, a law-and-order level, of moral thinking, to a more adult Stage 4 or Stage 5 level of moral thinking. You can also help gay/lesbian clients learn to read scripture with the eyes of oppressed persons because being on the margin is a privileged place from which they can appreciate God's word. Consult Finding God on the MARGIN on this website. There are other references there on the same theme.
6)  The Healing Experience
As a mentor, you will facilitate healing by helping your gay/lesbian client to deconstruct or to demythologize his/her ingested anger. The experience of healing can be fostered: Consult
7)  One's Developing Image Of What It Means To Be Sexual
Sexuality is both a language of love and the interpersonal. Since God is love and interpersonal, sexuality with authentic intimacy is a sign of the life of the Spirit -- a sign of yearning for the infinite. However, for the gay/lesbian person, sexuality often exists without interpersonal intimacy. Although heterosexual norms cannot be transferred to the homosexual world, a gay/lesbian person can develop responsibility and morality based on:
8)  Struggling With Evil And Its Many Facets -- Parable Of Weeds And Wheat
As a mentor of gay/lesbian persons on the spiritual journey, you will need to foster in them, in their constant need/drive/compulsion to love and be loved, healthier and more appropriate images of sin, sinfulness and evil. Lesbian/gay persons are often "sinned against" and, in reaction to those experiences, they, themselves, perpetuate evil. In this process of discovering the presence of evil in their life and behavior, you help them consider many aspects peculiar to themselves and characteristic of the homosexual community:
gossip ... need to keep things superficial ... drive to be perfect -- to be the best little girl/boy in the world ... super control ... fostering addictive behaviors in themselves and others ... buying into the world's criteria of what success means ...  and multitudinous ways of keeping God and others at a distance ...
The goal of all this inner work is to further the healing process, to distinguish healthy guilt from unhealthy guilt and appropriate shame from ingested, false shame. A spiritual mentor ought not to focus on their addictions and compulsions except to communicate the theology that Jesus usually preached; namely, the reign of God was closer to some that were named sinners in his society than to those who proclaimed their own righteousness by following all the rules. Sometimes you can encourage your gay/lesbian clients to find 12-step programs to deal with some addictions. Consult Don Clark's principles by clicking on each of the following: #(10).
9)  Embracing One's Creaturehood
The process of all growth, including spiritual growth, is the ability to let go of the past and of those desires for what cannot be in the future. The gift one hopes to receive from God is the gift of being able to "embrace one's creaturehood." Creaturehood implies that: Therefore as a spiritual mentor, it is important that you help your clients to:

 
 

Endnotes


From "Twelve Therapeutic Guidelines", Loving Someone Gay by Don Clark, Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts, 1987,  pp.232-244.
1)  "It is essential that you have developed a comfortable and appreciative orientation to your own homosexual feelings before you can work successfully with Gay clients.... Your private truth will out in the intimate counseling relationship no matter what your party line supposedly is. If you believe that homosexual feelings are okay but heterosexual feelings are better, you are going to transmit that destructive message to your Gay client...."

2)  ...

3)  "All Gay people have experienced some form of oppression related to their being Gay. The subjective reality of that experience must be brought into consciousness so that it can be worked with. ... The clues to experienced oppression are likely to be quite subtle. A client may laughingly tell a story about how she was sitting at a large family gathering around the Thanksgiving table when her uncle told one of his tired fag jokes. ... Behind her laughter is the hurt and rage.... In early childhood we all began to learn the myths about homosexuals. We learned that they are defective people who are not able to perform well in many areas valued in our society...."

4)  "Help your client to identify incorporated stereotypes of Gay people and begin deprogramming and undoing the negative conditioning associated with these stereotypes...."

5)  "While working toward expanding the range and depth of awareness of feelings, be particularly alert to facilitate identification and expression of anger, constructively channeled, and affection, openly given. Gay people too often learn early in life to hide feelings from themselves and others. It is a story partly true of any oppressed group member. Such a person usually becomes adept at hiding feelings from others, but still has the support of family and friends who share the minority identification and are apt to be relatively safe recipients of expressed feelings, so that it is not necessary to hide feelings from self. But the Gay person usually grows up alone with no one in view who shares his or her feelings and deserves the mutual respect and confidence. The early message is that the erotic and affection feelings are wrong. This alone generates some natural anger since you are being told it is wrong to be you...."

6)  "Actively support appreciation of body-self and body impulses. Don't be afraid to touch your client as a means of demonstrating that you value and trust physical contact.... Some therapists say all of the right words of appreciation and never touch a client more than to shake hands...."

7)  "Encourage your client to establish a Gay support system, a half dozen Gay people with mutual personal caring and respect for each other. Like everyone else, we Gay people need support from people with whom we can identify and people whom we trust. Most of us grew up feeling alone and lonely, different from other people...."

8)  "Support consciousness-raising efforts such as Gay discussion groups, pro-Gay reading, and involvement in Gay community activities...."

9)  "Work toward a peer relationship with your client. The message: you are not a second-class of inferior person. It is probably the 'Doctor-god, keeper of life and death' medical model that has so infected the mental health professions...."

10)  "Encourage your client to question basic assumptions about being Gay and to develop a personally relevant value system as a basis for self-assessment. Point out the dangers of relying on society's value system for self-validation...."

11)  "Desensitize shame and guilt surrounding homosexual thoughts, feelings and behavior by pleasantly encouraging graphic descriptions of Gay experiences and, when appropriate, sharing your own. One of the things that has helped us to survive is our available 'camp' humor. It pokes fun at the ultimate foolishness of everything and provides a broad foundation of acceptance for that which is human. Humor is by far the easiest way to get at the guilt and shame surrounding homosexual thoughts, feelings and behavior. 'Had any good fantasies lately?' with a raised eyebrow can do a lot to move things along...."

12)  "Use the weight of your authority to approve homosexual thoughts, behavior and feelings when reported by your client...."

Further Endnotes From Other Sources






"The more authentic you become, the more genuine in your expression particularly regarding personal experiences and even self-doubts the more people can relate to your expression and the safer it makes them feel to express themselves. That expression in turn feeds back on the other person's spirit, and genuine creative empathy takes place, producing new insights and learnings and a sense of excitement and adventure that keeps the process going."

-- From Steven R. Covey,
Daily Reflections For Highly Effective People
(A Fireside Book, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994), p69.

 

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