A Biblical Approach to Climate Change (part 3 of 3) Joseph’s amazing adaptation plan?

Coat?!? My NIV Study Bible points me to the only other reference to the same garment: 2 Samuel 37:3 “the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore.”

After questioning the idea of being Stewards of the Earth, and concluding that perhaps we are more like parasites and taking a new view of the passage about blaspheming the Holy Spirit, we end our three part series with the story of Joseph in Genesis.

One can easily read the book of Genesis with an eye towards water. So many wells. So many conflicts over wells. Then there are the droughts. The book is loaded with climate migrants escaping famine in search of greener pastures.

In my own Bible scholarship, I spend time on Joseph in Genesis, highlighting the gender differences between his father Jacob/Israel and his uncle Esau. If you have seen my performance lecture, Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, you know how I explore Joseph’s gender differences both in what he wears and how he acts. If you haven’t seen it, here is a video from a presentation I did at Friends General Conference in 2012.

There also is a climate connection with Joseph. As Neil Grungras pointed out to me, he predicts climate change and devises a plan to adapt. During each the 7 years of amazing crops, he stores 5% of the bumper crop. Then during the 7 very lean, dry, famine years, there is food for the people. Ah, but as Fr. Joao Gwann Xerri, who I met in Malta years ago, suggested, Joseph’s plan was effective but unjust. In order to get the food from pharaoh it cost the people dearly.

First Joseph gave out grain if the people paid for it with the money they had. When they ran out of money, he took all their livestock. Still the famine raged on. If they wanted food from Pharaoh’s emergency manager, they needed to pay for it. The people begged for relief.

Why should we and our land perish before your very eyes? Take us and our land in exchange for food, and we will become Pharaoh’s slaves and our land his property; only give us seed, that we may survive and not perish, and that our land may not turn into a waste.”

So Joseph acquired all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. Each of the Egyptians sold his field, since the famine weighed heavily upon them. Thus the land passed over to Pharaoh, and the people were reduced to slavery, from one end of Egypt’s territory to the other. Genesis 47:19-21

Breaking this story down for us is my favorite character, Marvin Bloom. Listen to his telling of this important story. I think there might be a lesson for us today. (transcript below)

Transcript

Marvin Bloom

Hi, This is Marvin, Marvin Bloom, and this is your moment with Marvin

Have you ever seen the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I like the book version better, in the book of Genesis, in the Bible. It has more details and less singing.

So Joseph is one of the youngest kids in a large blended family. His father Jacob, who changes his name to Israel has at least four sexual partners, I mean wives, I mean I don’t understand that lifestyle at all. Anyway there is a lot of tension in the family about inheritance rights; who’s gonna get all the stuff?

Since Joesph is the favorite son, and a bit of a brat, his brothers get rid of him. They ship him off to Egypt where he becomes a slave. He then gets in trouble, does jail time and ultimately becomes 2nd in command of the whole kingdom. And then he saves his family from starvation.

And that is the part that is interesting to me—the climate part of it. You see Pharaoh was having weird dreams. They hauled Joseph out of prison to interpret them. It was his thing. He said there would be 7 years of amazing weather with huge harvests. Then he warned of 7 years afterwards of horrible drought, famine, and potential starvation. He predicted temporary climate change AND he came up with an adaptation plan.

He suggested that Pharaoh grow as much grain as possible and stash it away in storage for a rainy day, well, many days with no rain. Then when the people are hungry and needy, there is food for them. And it was a successful plan. Thefamine hit and Pharaoh had mountains of food to feed a starving nation.

It was an effective plan, but it was not a just plan. It wasn’t fair. There is no such thing as a free lunch. In order to get Pharaoh’s grain, people had to sell everything they had and give it to the ruler. This turned Pharaoh into the ultimate 1% leading to oppression and slavery.

So what lesson do I get from this? In coming up with solutions to address the physical needs of people in a time of climate change, we need to calculate how the plan affects people’s right. Because climate change is a human rights issue.

This is Marvin and this has been your moment with Marvin.

Transgressing Gender in the Bible — Full Lecture

Back in 2013 I gave a 90-minute lecture at Vanderbilt Divinity School as part of the Human Rights Campaign Summer Institute. For those people interested in seeing Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, here is one stop to hear most of the stories I present. In addition I perform a rare scene from Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House where I talk about Lazarus coming out of the tomb and the work of the disciples. You will also see a scene from The Re-Education of George W. Bush–No President Left Behind! in which I talk about the story of Sodom in Genesis.

Then I share Transfigurations. We look at Deborah, Joesph, several eunuchs, and characters in the Gospels.

The audience was made up of LGBTQ people who were part of that summer’s institute. According to the HRC site:

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation LGBT Mentorship program for Religious and Theological Study seeks to encourage and promote the dialogue on LGBT issues and religion in seminaries and, by extension, in our congregations and communities by investing in the next generation of LGBTQ and allied scholars.

So if you are interested in LGBTQ theology or know someone who is, here is my scholarship (with comedy and theater) for you.

Happy 2016! Goals & Guidelines for a New Year

After a cross-country train trip with my man, Glen, I am back in my little study in Sunbury, PA. Shockingly I will be home for two solid months before I head out for a spring tour of New England.

Early morning in Maricopa, AZ after a night on the train, my man Glen keeps warm.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Why disappoint myself? Still there is something about that new year marker that helps me regroup and rethink life and work. On New Years Day I wrote a long letter to myself both reflecting on 2015 and looking ahead to 2016. Wow, so many people have encouraged me in my work as a queer activist and communicator, especially with the new climate change work.

I created some goals and guidelines for myself in the new year.

One huge frustration I have with myself is that I get so little done in the afternoon. I poop out after 1 pm and don’t revive until 5 pm. Then I berate myself for being a lazy slug. After decades of living with myself, I know when I am beat.

A guideline for 2016 is that when I wake up early in the morning to work, I can take the afternoon off to read, watch TV, YouTube, Vine, shop, whatever. Then after dinner I can work for two or three hours (when Glen is usually working prepping for his classes the next day.)

Some goals for 2016 are to blog more regularly, continue my Climate Stew podcast (maybe once a month because of another podcast project I will be part of but cannot announce yet), and eat more of a vegan diet. Oh, and read more for pleasure. Just goals. NOT resolutions.

That’s it. Why disappoint myself? Still I am feeling ambition about 2016. I have projects to complete including a film version of Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible. I have the funding in place, the script almost done, and a film crew on order.

I am also ready to finalize The Amazing Adventures of the Afterbirth of Jesus illustrated story I have been working on with Joey Hartman-Dow from Us and We Art. It may sound like a weird story, but it is surprisingly tender and sensitive (and weird too.) If you want a sneak peek, sign-up for my newsletter (see form below.)

It is also time I finish my third draft of a memoir, Waking Up from a Biblically Induced Coma. I feel like I need to tie up these loose ends as I take on more queer climate activism.

And you? What goals, guidelines, and hopes do you have for 2016? And how can I support you? Oh, yeah, that is another important goal I have for 2016. So many people have been encouraging to me and supporting me in my work, and I choose to get more involved and be more encouraging of other people in theirs.

Happy New Years!

Featured image from the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AR

Beautiful Caitlyn Jenner and Christian Ugliness

Caitlyn Jenner in Vanity Fair

Over on Facebook I have been hearing about a wave of ugliness coming from people reacting to Caitlyn Jenner. A lot of the derision is from some Christian folks. While I am not terribly surprised by this–I had been an Evangelical Fundamentalist anti-LGBTQ Christian myself for many years, even as I tried to suppress my rabid gayness–I am amazed at how ignorant people can be about the scripture they profess to follow.

Many eunuchs were castrated before puberty–they retained high voices and did not develop the facial hair, body hair, and muscle that come with testosterone. They were sexual and gender minorities.

For instance. Do you know about the the first baptism in the fledgling church as recorded in Acts chapter 8? The writer of Acts went out of the way to point out that this first baptism was of a Black, African, surgically-altered, gender-variant, wealthy, literate, civil servant who is a person of faith. To the poorer, illiterate, non-eunuch early church folks, this Ethiopian Eunuch is the ultimate outsider. Yet this is the first baptism.

Of course a eunuch did not usually get to choose to be a eunuch. This identity was forced on them against their will often when they were quite young. What stands out though is not only that they are part of so many Bible stories (and there are many eunuch stories in the Bible) but these sexual and gender minorities are essential to the Bible stories in which they appear. For Christians trying to wrap their heads around gender issues, especially when someone doesn’t fit neatly into traditional boxes, eunuch stories might be a way to open up to new ideas.

People react to difference and change in lots of ways. Some people are shocked when they see someone embrace a different identity. And I totally understand some of the pushback when it comes to Caitlyn Jenner. There are the Kardashians of course and the industry they created promoting themselves along with the parallel cultural pastime that sprung up where people in the media, social media, and over brunch roundly mock the Kardashians. It is a dysfunctional relationship that it seems no one really wants to quit.

Susan Govatos Joseph’s Dreams

So with the Kardashian reality TV machine there are people crowing, “But Bruce Jenner coming out as a woman is just a publicity stunt.” Well duh, she has a show she is promoting. There is publicity of course. We are talking about Hollywood, TV, and Vanity Fair here. Yes this is a well-orchestrated media sustained media event. But it is not a just a stunt to come out as a woman after decades of being known as one of America’s greatest male athletes. Anyone who listens to Jenner for two minutes can hear her sincerity. She has found her voice at last after years of shifting around in the shadows of reality TV.

I completely understand the important critique leveled by some trans people about Jenner’s public coming out, rightly pointing out that most females who transition from male do not have the power, prestige, privilege, and money that Caitlyn has to aid in transition and acceptance in society. This is an essential and healthy argument led by people with transgender experiences. The criticism that I find questionable and inappropriate is by people who are not transgender and who use religion to justify being mean and thoughtless with their words.

Before Christians start jumping on a predictable and tiresome bandwagon of no, No, NO–Caitlyn Jenner is wrong (or worse), I suggest they take a look at one of the Bible’s most celebrated heroes. Dig into the story, look at the original language, and discover Joseph in the book of Genesis. There is more to this story than you may know. Like with most of us today, Joseph has a gender story. You will find that this version of the story of Joseph is completely supported by the Bible. To those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

The Afterbirth of Jesus and other Important Projects

Wow, it has been some weeks since I blogged here. After a insane bout of allergies that led to an infection, I then went away for 10 glorious days in New England and then Baltimore. Really the allergies were out of control. And turns out it was not my imagination running away from me (sing it! Now it is stuck in your head) Even Jon Stewart confirms that this was the worst allergy season ever, as was last year’s and the year before. Yeah, it is getting worse.

Lately I have been thinking about connecting the dots. After reading the excellent graphic novel A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld, and reading some of Brentin Mocks essays about #BlackLivesMatter, policing, and disaster relief, I considered the possible positive future effects from all the recent, robust demands for police reform. How will these changes be felt and experienced during extreme weather events when cities become occupied police states. On a recent episode of the Climate Stew Show I fantasized about a report from 150 years in the future that looks back and lauds the #BlackLivesMatter Movement because of the successes won in changing police policies.

In addition to considering a better future, I looked deep into the past, to the time of Jesus, and created a story about a NEW character in the Jesus story. What if on the heels of baby Jesus surging through the birth canal into the world, (cue the cattle and sheep, angels and Magi) another being pop out–a Super Placenta, fully animated, infused with the holy soup that marinated Jesus during those nine months of divine gestation? What if this placenta truly believes she is the twin sister of Jesus, inexplicably despised and rejected of men, is tossed on the dung and trampled on by livestock? What if in a huff she slinks off to go on her own set of adventures? What happens then?

I attempt to answer these questions and more in my story, The Amazing Adventures of the Afterbirth of Jesus, which is now being turned into a graphic novel by a fine artist at Us & We Art.

: Coming Soon!

Stay tuned and you will hear more. And feel free to sign up for my very occasional newsletter (2-4 times annually) to get the latest information about the comic book, the upcoming Transfigurations play, Climate Stew, and more.

featured image: The Dangerous Logic of Wooing by Ernesto Neto at the Hisrshhorn Gallery in Washington, DC

Big Changes Ahead for Me

Greetings from Boulder, CO where it has been delicously warm and sunny, unlike back home in Pennsylvania, where my husband, Glen Retief, a South African, freezes his bits off during an Artic blast.

I just attended the massive Creating Change conference in Denver with 4,000 earnest LGBTQ activists. As an introvert, an event like Creating Change feels like an Xtreme Sport to me. Thanks to help from my friends (Abby, Keisha, Michael, Jakob, Sharon, Zack) I got through alright.

As the title above announces, there are big changes ahead for me and my performance work. Since fall 2007, right before I retired my Homo No Mo ex-gay comedy, I premiered, Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible. In it I look at the stories and lives of gender and sexual minorities in the Bible. The play morphed into a performance lecture that I will perform later this week at Iliff School of Theology.

But over the past five years much has changed. These days there are so many folks with transgender experiences going to seminary. I’m thrill to see so many young trans scholars, clergy, and activists available to speak to the public. Also, I feel led to add a new issue to the list of topics that move me to performance art.

So, this May I will begin work on a film version of Transfigurations. Out of the blue I got funding for this project, and together with Alex Skiltolsky, we are going to create an artful and beautiful film version of the performance lecture. Hopefully I can even include a study guide for groups that want to go deeper with the stories.

In the fall I will officially retire Transfigurations and no longer perform it. This is important for at least three reasons.

I can move aside so those places that invite me to present Transfigurations can insteaad host trans Bible scholars and storytellers. Of course if there is a trans character actor who has the theater chops to perform Transfigurations, I will be happy to talk about others presenting the work
As an artist, I need to move on so that I can challenge myself and my audience. If I hadn’t retired Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House way back in 2008, I imagine I would still be performing it, which would have inhibited the creation of new work.
Climate Change has made an impact in my life. I see it as the queerest issue of them all, one that brings under its shadow all of the human rights and social justice work that we d0–homelessness, police brutality, women’s reproductive rights, etc.

In the latest episode of Climate Stew, my weekly cheeky podcast, I explain my own transition to climate work. It is not that I am leaving behind the issues that have moved me in the past (gay reparative therapy, justice for trans people) rather these will get incorporated and expanded on through the lens of climate change.

As always I will seek to provide skillful, insightful, and downright silly performance work. My relationship with you, my audience member, is a vital one. I invite you to join me on this next leg of the journey.

My Five Part Series from the Bible Half-Hour

Back in 2012 I presented five short talks at the annual Friends General Conference Gathering. I covered some of the material that I do in my Transfigurations presentation as well as other Bible stories. In large part the talks were a mediation on Bodies and the Text. What I expected to be a series of mostly academic lectures turned into an intimate sharing that brought many people to share with me about the tears they shed during the talks, their new insights, and much storytelling.

The Bible Half Hour with Peterson Toscano.

Note: the quality of the first day is just so-so. It is much better Tue-Fri. Enjoy.

Josephine: A retelling of Joseph and that bad ass coat

My good friend, J Mase III, has created a stunning spoken word piece based in part on my scholarship from Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible. There is a whole lot of gender transgression going on in the story of Joseph in Genesis.

Join J Mase III, Rev. Nancy Wilson, Joe Stevens, and me as we talk about a Queer Response to Climate Change next month in NYC.

From Homo No Mo and Beyond–Web Launch!

Back in October 2002 I sat in my tiny apartment in Hartford, CT considering a play I had in mind which would reveal to the world the 17 years I spent receiving gay conversion therapy and especially the two horrible years I endured the notorious Love in Action ex-gay residential program in Memphis, TN.

I did not feel I had to speak out, but that it was an option if I wanted. I also sensed that I was looking at a five year commitment. As I sat in my room, I said yes, I would produce the play and walk down that path. Almost immediately and over the next six months, ideas came to me about how to create the work, how to present it, how to pitch it, how to promote it. It was like a vast file was downloaded into my mental hard drive.

Peterson officially comes out of the closet in January 1999

In February 2003 in Memphis, TN I premiered, Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House, then spent the next five years traveling through North America, Europe, and Africa telling my story and connecting with others to learn about their experiences. With the help of my friend, Christine Bakke, a fellow ex-gay survivor, we launched the Ex-Gay Survivor Movement

Then in 2008 five years was up. We had accomplished so much in that time, and I felt released from the work while also sensing a leading to new work, particularly a need to address the oppression against trans* people at the hands of gays and lesbians and by churches. This led to the creation of Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, a blend of performance and scholarship that looks at non-conforming gender outlaws in the Bible.

Art by Mila and Jayna Ponder

Again I felt like I knew what steps to take to let the public know about the work. I understood I needed to get to seminaries and places of worship–Christian, Jewish, and Muslim–to share some good news about gender non-conformists in the Bible who stand as the most important characters in some of the Bible’s most important stories. For the past six years I have been doing this work, and I expect I will carry on doing it. This summer I will finally film the play and then have it available for distribution.

But something new started up for me a little over a year ago. After reading, listening, and having some long teary conversations with my husband, Glen Retief, I became alarmed about the reality of Climate Change and what it means for us as a civilization. I understood that I wanted and needed to respond to the growing crisis in the only way I knew how–with art.

I have spent the last year researching climate change and how to communicate effectively about it. I am creating a new play, Does This Apocalypse Make Me Look Fat? A Comedy about Broken Bodies–Large and Small, which will premiere in the early fall (Details TBA).

Decked out in Eco-Drag, wonders, “What Would Walt Whitman Do?”

As I ask questions like, What is a Queer Response to Climate Change? What role will you take on a new planet? How will churches and other places of worship refashion themselves to be relevant in a new climate? I also have gained insights into how to get this work out to the wider world.

So I have pulled together a dream team who have partnered with me to advise, contribute, reach out, and create with me. Over the next few weeks I’ll introduce you to the various team members. And today I launch my new and improve website replete with new presentations as well as tried and true performances. A podcast is in the work and lots of social media. My hope is to create a hub where we can talk about climate change as a queer issues, a pastoral care issue, a human rights issue, and as a community issue. There is so much we can do and so much we will do to face this crisis with creativity, wisdom, and love.

Welcome to the new site. It’s good to be back!

(Original art by Kevin Miller)

Homo No Mo? An ex-gay exposé

Scene from Transfigurations

In September I met Drew, a fellow ex-gay survivor attending the progressive seminary where I performed my transgender Bible play. Like me, Drew once enrolled himself into the notorious ex-gay residential program Love in Action (LIA.) What I call the Homo No Mo Halfway House–gay rehab where gays try to get straightened out in Jesus’ name.

Drew attended the program for a time in the late 1980’s when it was housed outside of San Francisco while I spent two years in the program a decade later under a harsher regime in LIA’s new home in Memphis, TN.

As we spoke about our experiences, Drew insisted that his time was far less severe than what I went through. Compared to the rules and madness of the Memphis-based LIA, his was a holiday camp of sorts. At one point in the conversation Drew almost seem to defend the LIA program and staff even though he had since come out gay. I have seen some ex-gay survivors side with ex-gay programs at times when they feel that the media, activists, and other ex-ex-gays paint a dishonest portrait of the programs.

I understand that no two ex-gay programs are alike. One may advocate “casting out homosexual demons” while another would NEVER condone an exorcism and instead uses a bastardized version of the 12-Steps in hopes of curbing the gayness in clients. The methods may differ, but the primary beliefs are the same–they insist and infer that it is wrong to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, and you must annihilate your sexual orientation, queer identity, and gender differences.

The Homo No Mo Halfway House

Something else these programs have in come is the potential harm they bring to their clients. Facing that we were harmed and still may suffer from the damage is difficult and painful. It is an acknowledgment of abuse for some of us.

Drew purchased a copy of my DVD Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House, a one-person 90 minute comic exposé of my time in LIA including scenes I reenact of my mom and dad at the now infamous Family and Friends Weekends. (You can see a trailer here)

Yesterday Drew posted a review of my play over on a Facebook note which immediately caught the eye of a famous ex-gay who was once a poster child of the movement until he was caught hanging out at a Washington, DC gay bar. First here is some of Drew’s review:

I watched Peterson Toscano’s Doin’ Time at the Homo Nomo Halfway House tonight. It was difficult to watch, challenging and delightful and heart-rending all at the same time. And although it wasn’t “totally” reflective of “my own” personal experience of Love in Action (mine seemed to be a much “kinder” and “gentler” version when it was in San Rafael, CA under the auspices of Frank Worthen and supported by a small church called the Open Door in comparison and before the ministry was absorbed into a mega-church with lots of fundamentalist money), it really opened my eyes to what the ex-gay movement turned into after I was outcast in the late 80’s/early 90’s, put God on the shelf and swore like Norma Desmond that “if I was going to be a homosexual, then by God, I was going to be a HEALTHY homosexual” (although at the times in my heart I still wondered if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms).

Looking back, and due to Peterson’s marvelously crafted work, I can now see just what kind of bad fruit the seeds of an idea that we witnessed planted in our time (Love in Action 1988) manifested into a ravenous beast sucking the life and joy out of, and even causing the deaths of many of, my brothers and sisters.

-snip-

As Peterson states at the end of the DVD, our stories need to be told and we need spaces, opportunities and platforms to tell them.My prayer tonight is that God would liberate all those who toil under the weight of an oppressive theology that denies them the happiness of an abundant and fulfilling life. Bring them freedom in all aspects of their humanity and in every act and expression of their divinity. May we find ourselves becoming more and more ourselves and more fully responsive to the God within as S/He is manifest. And may we resoundingly give voice to the call of that Spirit to once again return to the garden; naked and unashamed…After all…We are the only expressions of God upon this earth.

Thank you Peterson for having the courage to tell your story.

I am so glad I decided to use art and comedy to tell my story. Good art can move people in so many different ways.

Within the hour a well-known ex-gay chimed in. He has long since lost his position as a national spokesperson, but he comments from time to time about the issue. I was shocked by his comment:

WOW….I had no idea you felt that way, Drew. It’s ironic how you and I went through the exact same program, the same year, led by the same people and our impressions and outcomes ended up so differently. I am happy, content with my life and choices, marriage of almost 20 years, three sons, and a life that is fulfilling and at peace.

I reeled at the hubris and insensitivity of his statement. In response I wrote:

WOW, you sound like the skeptical sibling when a brother or sister admits that a parent had been abusing them throughout childhood. “But I grew up in the exact same home as you?! Look, I turned out okay, and you really need to not be …so hard on dad.” I am sure you are aware that the vast majority of people who attended LIA ultimately came out gay. Many of these had to work hard to recover from the damage done. I will not invalidate your happiness. If you are genuinely happy lving a straight life, great for you. But for the majority of us, such a life was not possible or healthy. The theories and teachings of Exodus programs caused many of us psychological, emotional, and spiritual harm (as well as tampered with our relationships, development, and finances.) My story should not invalidate yours. Neither should you experience invalidate the experiences of the majority of people who claim ex-gay treatment caused more harm than good.

To help deepen the conversation, Anthony Venn-Brown, the excellent LGBTQ rights activist and ex-gay survivor from Australia suggested the famous ex-gay take a look at Anthony’s article about Situational Heterosexuality, which includes a section about homosexuals in heterosexual marriages.

There is lots of news going on right now about the Ex-Gay Movement including a petition for Apple to dump an Exodus International iphone app. Lots of people get confused about the Ex-Gay Movement, and ex-gay leaders do not help. They massage their message for the public so they almost sound like they are doing gays a favor. But they are not. They insist that heterosexuals and heterosexuality are superior to anything else. I argue that they are straight supremacists. And sadly their efforts to “help struggling homosexuals” has mostly hurt us.

Need to laugh? Need to cry? Need to better understand the ex-gay world? Check out Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House for yourself.

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Tag: Transfigurations