f you believe, as many do, that Jesus is always with you, then that means he was with you that time you made out with that guy in a bar bathroom.
    Perhaps Jesus even called in the favor for you, for as Will Roscoe asserts in his book, Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love, the son of God had something of a weakness for cute, young boys himself. The difference is that Jesus grew up before the '80s really happened, before something we came to call "identity politics" burst into vogue. As a result, Christ was never given his gay due, and contemporary Christianity remains thoroughly square.
    According to a letter allegedly written around the year 200 A.D. and discovered in a monastery outside of Jerusalem in 1958, there exists a Christian text called the Secret Gospel of Mark. If believed, this text offers evidence that Jesus Christ engaged in intimate same-sex contact, and perhaps even intercourse, with young men to provide them the momentary sensation of rocketing toward the kingdom of heaven.
    Two thousand years later, gay boys are still searching for the man who can provide them a similar service, and Roscoe says it's possible, even in our steely, sin-choked modern world — if we know where to look. Let us pray. — Will Doig I understand you have a degree in History of Consciousness. What is that?
It's an interdisciplinary cultural studies theory program at UC-Santa Cruz. But what is that?
I have no idea. It was something they called it when they created it back in the '70s, back when Santa Cruz was more Marxist. By the time I got there, it was more Lacanian feminist. It was all about the lesbian phallus. Do you come from a religious background?
I'm Catholic. It was my mom's religion, something important to her that she wanted to impart to me, but she also realized that after I was confirmed, it was my choice. It probably broke her heart to see that I wasn't very religious after that. But you're obviously very interested in religion. Why did you flee the Catholic Church?
It was the '60s after Vatican II. Inculcation to the church was very lightweight. I was already reading things about the Inquisition and whatnot and I thought to myself, "What a horrible institution," and that was the end of that. But I still have that Catholic feeling without the institution part. They're separable?
Any idiot could read the Bible and figure out what it means. Historically, Catholicism never emphasized reading the Bible. The popes and the priests did the reading. And then Protestantism was all about translating the Bible into English, people saying that we don't need popes and priests and all the corruption that goes with them, we'll just interpret it ourselves. So we started reading it ourselves and now look what we've got. So you've read the entire Bible, then?
I certainly have not. Your book alleges that Jesus Christ engaged in physical intimacy with other men. Just to clarify, we're talking about anal sex here?
At a certain point, I don't think it was necessarily thought of as sexual at all. It was simply a magical technique that involved intimacy and no one was expected to be erotically aroused. But what I personally allow is, if there was sexual intimacy, and it was all about transferring a spirit from one body to another, then what would be more symbolic of that transfer than for one body to be connected to another, and perhaps even exchange bodily fluids? Could they also have been having sex just for pleasure?
All of the references to kissing and naked contact, it certainly is suggestive. But the bottom line is that that's not what this was about. It's about a magical procedure in which Jesus was able to have a spirit possess him and transfer it to another person so that they could experience what Jesus experiences, which is to be a god and go to heaven. How old was Jesus while all this was going on? Youngish?
As far as we know, he was in his early thirties at the time of his ministry. The men that he was with were referred to as neaniskos, or youth. That term is unique to the Secret Gospel of Mark. That's what's so wacky about this discovery, and why no one ever talks about it. Perhaps people truly believe that the Secret Gospel is a fake.
A consensus among New Testament scholars has developed that the Secret Gospel is authentic, that it's not a forgery. They accept it but they don't ever talk about it. But why not? What would be the harm in admitting that there is now evidence that Jesus had same-sex lovers? Is it all politics?
Oh please. They're certainly not going to accept this material. Not only does it redefine Christianity and the role of same-sex love in the Christian tradition, but it also shows Jesus to be a figure in magical practices. It disrupts everything. Sex and religion have always been intertwined. Great sex is even called "a religious experience." How do you think sex and religion got so wrapped up in each other in the first place?
Sex is one of the last remaining realms in which ecstasy can occur in the secular life in the modern world, in which we have a sense of being beyond ourselves. The intensity of being in love, of hot sex, of orgasm — it's the most intense thing we experience, with the possible exception of childbirth for women. I think that's why sex is the last refuge of the primal emotion in our culture. Can it bring one closer to God?
Based on what I've learned, yes. If praying seems lame to you, and if you pursue your desire in a conscious way, it can be a path for your own self-realization. And I'm also suggesting that, in this way, you can pursue your spirituality if you're a queer person. I'm suggesting that we're never closer to God than when we love, and by loving passionately, expansively, foolishly, we bring ourselves into the age-old tradition of same-sex love. If all of this is really true, why has the Church zeroed in on homosexuality as Sin No. 1?
It's all about uniting against a boogeyman figure. For average folks in Middle America, their own identities and meaning in life are so tenuous, this represents the chance to feel that they're smugly on the side of good. They can think to themselves, "I've divorced five times and cheated on my wives, but at least I'm not one of those." And it's been going on for ages. The Puritans arrived here in this vast forest and thought it was filled with the devil, when what they meant was that it was filled with American Indians. Women who became hysterical were "possessed by witches." It covers up the fact that the people who are pointing the finger are simply not living a Christian life in any way, shape or form. It's a conspiracy!
The thing is, for Americans to accept a minority, an "other," they have to think of that "other" as being just like them. When we urge acceptance of women, we say that women are just like men. When we urge acceptance of gays, we say that gays are just like straights. Even Paul says that a man should love his wife as he loves his own flesh. The mystical extension of that is that one should become androgynous. There's a strong Christian tradition of androgyny. In heaven, there is no male or female. To get to that place, you need to get rid of gender. You need to castrate yourself. Mind you, I'm not advising this at all, this Christian approach to abstinence. There are those who will argue that you're looking for a way to "get God" without having to deal with the bigotry of the institutional Church. That this is all New Age hooey.
Nobody more than I thinks that what I'm saying sounds wacky. I tried very hard to position all of this as just a story. I'm starting out telling a good story to get people to suspend their judgment a little, and then I start mounting up the evidence. I didn't know where it was going. This project unfolded over the course of seven years, two boyfriends, four horrible jobs and two cars totaled. It's a very personal thing that I had to write, and it became about me sharing what I learned during the AIDS epidemic, and that's that love is all that there is time for. And I never would have thought that contemporary gays could be connected to this tradition until I saw what we could do to be connected to each other. It's a love between lovers, but it's just as much a love between friends. We have sex with each other, but we also have these very special, intimately same-sex friendships. Just like Jesus.

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