Being Gay, Passing - God and My Middle Years

From 1930 until the last decade of the Twentieth Century, as an adult worldly male (one who has left the Amish order), I transformed my concerns about Amish directives (Procreate! Do not desire same sex objects!) into erotic images that are meditations on desire.* These images allow me to cross the bridge from my Amish heritage to my “gay” concerns.-- The Amish hat, suspenders and black pants, signified a god-like (and ironically a godly) Amish male, and an onanistic/spiritual response during my years passing for heterosexual.*2 The image and its accouterments were iconic and unattainable. Nevertheless, the images were objects of desire, onanistic orgasm, and transgressive spiritual fulfillment. Thus, being gay, desiring, and having an orgasm became tied to spirituality, a worshipful state of mind, and God. I reorganized my belief in God, so that it contradicted the religious instruction of my Amish childhood. The new belief system supported my position as an adult, homosexual male, caught in a culture that does not allow me a positive conceptualization of my sexuality. In the reorganized belief system, I understood that I was gay because God made me that way, and, because God is good, being gay and desiring a person of the same sex, must also be good. To create a gay man, and designate him as evil, in my mind, would mean that God made a mistake. That is a contradiction. God being perfect does not make mistakes.

* I will publish some of those early erotic images in my next journal entry.
*2 The Amish also use the term “gay” to refer to the world outside the order.


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