Quest

Benedict Luckhurst

“That night they caught nothing” (John 21:3)

A feature of my nearby county town is the river that runs through its heart. For decades, however, the town has largely ignored the river. As a result it is mostly hidden from view by factories, a large brewery, and retail parks. Someone, however, has now woken up to the possibility of utilising the river as a focal point for leisure and a potential tourist lure by submitting an application for a floating restaurant adjoining a local park; the only open space on the banks of the river nearest to the town centre.

Objections to the scheme were initially raised by the unlikely alliance of the local police force and gay activists, the latter arguing that it will harm the openness, natural character and freedom of the area. In fact, the proposed three-deck floating restaurant is close to an area used by male and female cruisers and cottagers. A gay website describes it as a place where “fun can be found in-car and in the bushes as well” but warns ‘fun lovers’ “don’t leave your sex litter behind though, it gives us a bad name.” The police have since said they have not objected to the planned restaurant, but warned the town council that there could be a clash of interests between locals and cruisers. The local lesbian and gay alliance posed the question: ‘What about the needs of the gay community? How are they being met in terms of bars and clubs and social spaces?’ Read more…

When Mark Dowd began a teenage fling, a daring lie kept the true nature of his relationship secret. But when his former boyfriend died, he suddenly found himself in an excruciatingly sticky situation.

My flatmate greeted me with an unusually severe expression. It was 10pm after another long day at work and I slumped in the armchair. “You’d better check the answermachine,” he said. I walked over and pressed the red button. A message from a relative in Manchester. My 65-year-old father was dead.

Several gulps of whisky later, I plucked up the courage to ring home. A familiar voice said: “Are you all right? You don’t half sound queer.” It was my father – still very much in this world. What was going on? Sensing an almighty mess brewing, I quickly finished the call and replayed the message. It was from a man calling himself “uncle” whose first name I didn’t recognise. He had left a number and when the blunt Mancunian tone answered “Ronnie Craddock”, the surname sent my mind spinning back to 1979.

Full text on the Guardian newspaper website

Mark Dowd – a former Quest chair.

Mark Dowd

From his new home in Madrid, former Quest chair, Mark Dowd, reports on the difficulties that gays still face despite having some of the most liberal sexuality laws in Europe. A case perhaps of the Spanish equivalent of ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’ (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

Summer 2005. I am in Valencia on Spain’s east coast having swapped my London flat in a holiday exchange for a pad just a stone’s throw from the city centre. Tuning in to the evening news, there is a feature on a male couple. They are the first in the country to have taken advantage of the country’s new gay marriage legislation. The crew from TV España film their first full day as a married couple. And it rather resembles a scene from La Cage Aux Folles as the cameras capture them walking the dogs and ambling down to the bakery for pastries. You can tell that the reporter is keen to inject some tension into the piece by trying to find some detractors. She approaches a gaggle of elderly ladies dressed in solemn clothes. Surely they´ll provide a bit of homophobic opposition? Franco turning in his grave at the thought of same-sex marriage blessed by the state; that sort of thing. When I heard the vox pops, I knew that these new legal changes weren’t just superficial.

“Aren’t they lovely? Why shouldn’t they marry?” asked one woman in a severe black mantilla. “They’re very good with dogs…that’s what I like,” said her elderly companion. In the end, the reporter confessed she’d spoken to a lot of people but failed miserably to come up with any ammunition. So all is well in Spain then? It’s the new gay nirvana?

Well not quite. Read more…

Benedict Luckhurst

According to a press report, the actress Keira Knightly deliberately ignores her mobile when it rings, much to the displeasure of her mother. Keira said: “My mobile phone doesn’t really get answered a lot. I don’t like talking on the phone, which is a nightmare because my mother does.” Doubtless Keira’s celebrity status is the principal reason why she ignores phone calls, but I am pleased to be in such good company. Indeed, I will take my aversion a step further and pronounce a curse on the day the telephone was invented and a thousand curses on the day the mobile telephone was conceived.

I am in a deep sleep or enjoying an afternoon nap, the phone rings. I am praying, the phone rings. I am cooking, the phone rings. I am eating, the phone rings. I am washing up, the phone rings. I am reading, the phone rings. I am in the bathroom, the phone rings. I am watching a favourite TV programme, the phone rings. I am listening to music, the phone rings. It can only be the invention of Satan!

Irascible, belligerent, irritable: I admit to them all when it comes to life with the telephone. In my increasing desire for solitude and to taste something of the eremitical life, the culmination of many years of searching, the sound of a telephone ringing is an intrusion and a source of constant irritation. The answer would be to remove the irritant completely, landline and mobile; but, for the time being, this is not a viable option.

Read more…

Michael Bennett

Paul Bailey. Chapman’s Odyssey. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.

This book is well worth reading; it is in turn funny, witty and touching in places and tells a good story.

The narrative is set in a hospital ward as an older gay man, Harry Chapman, hears ‘many voices’ and recalls memories from his life. Whilst he awaits surgery/investigations, the detailed and rich drama of recollections happens over a period of days nearly a week, but spanning all of Harry’s life! The voices are from his past plus a few historical surprises too! Paul Bailey is a master with words, so much so that by the end of reading this book you know Harry‘s character and his response to a lifetime of pain and pleasure.

I did wonder at one time if Harry was a stereotyped gay man – very arty, cultured and a writer of some sorts, but on the whole he is likeable for what he is .

The ending was a surprise to this reviewer, but I agree with Ali Smith who has some blurb on the back cover: ‘I love this beautiful book’.

Kieran Bohan

Barbara Glasson. The Exuberant Church: Listening to the Prophetic People of God. Darton, Longman & Todd. ISBN 978-0-232-528619

One of the speakers at the Quest Conference in 2010 was the Reverend Doctor Barbara Glasson, a Methodist minister currently working in Bradford. Previously she led Somewhere Else, the community which hosts meetings of the Quest Liverpool group. As she prepared to leave Liverpool Barbara began a series of conversations with Kieran, other representatives of Quest and Storm, an ecumenical LGBT Christian group, and other people marginalised by mainstream faith groups. Her newly published book, The Exuberant Church, is the result of these conversations about how LGBT Christians, and other ‘coming-out people’, may be prophetic examples of the potential for new life and growth in the faith communities from which they spring. The text of her Conference talks form the basis of this book, hence they could not be published on the Quest website as usual. Barbara plans to launch her book at the Quest conference [This text was published in Spring 2011 - editor] this summer in recognition of the contribution this ‘prophetic community’ has played in the formation of this work. Here Quest Liverpool Convenor Kieran Bohan reflects on the coming out experience, based on Barbara’s pastoral and theological  insights. 

In writing about the process of ‘coming out’, Barbara Glasson describes how it takes ‘an unusual and specific sort of courage’. As a gay Christian man I can vouch for this from my own experience. And, as the convenor of the Quest group in Liverpool, and the co-ordinator of an LGBT youth group in the city, I think I can say with some authority that courage is indeed a defining characteristic of the process of questioning your identity and becoming something which defies the dominant norms of culture, society and faith. Read more…

Colin Chalmers

Weiss, David R (2008). To the Tune of a Welcoming God. Lyrical reflections on sexuality, spirituality and the wideness of God’s welcome. Minneapolis MN: Langdon Street Press.

I suppose that, if asked what is the issue leading discussion and controversy in the Churches today, most people would say that of same-sex marriage. It is somewhat salutary to go back to an earlier period where the burning issue was one of simple inclusion of GLBT people in the Churches. Not that this issue has disappeared, with all problems solved. It is still very much alive, as is evidenced in the current controversies within both the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. This book is centred on one man’s struggle with the issue of inclusion of GLBT persons in his own Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). What makes the book unusual is that the author is not in the typical run of ‘gay activist’: he is a ‘self-confessed’ straight, happily married man with five children. A Lutheran minister, David Weiss held a number of academic posts in Universities and Seminaries throughout the United States, among which was the bastion of American Catholicism, the University of Notre Dame. The book’s subtitle of “Lyrical reflections…” is a good description of its range. In addition to articles of varying length, there are examples of the author’s poetry and a compilation of his hymns, hymns for which he – God bless him – gives explicit permission to copy for use in worship. Read more…

From David Birchall SJ (St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales):

Since 1998 I have organised retreats for clergy every other year. After the first retreat I decided that somewhere pleasantly warm like Spain in May or June would help the spiritual atmosphere. After a dalliance with a retreat house in Mallorca run by nuns we have now taken residence in a sea-front house which the group has to itself.

The main object of these retreats is to provide a place where men can be themselves, as priests or religious and as normal human beings, whatever their sexual orientation. With a combination of prayer, serious sharing and light-hearted conversation a worthwhile and enjoyable space has been created.

These retreat have been led by theologians like James Alison and James Hanvey, psychologist Brendan Callaghan, and general retreat givers like myself.
This year we have an Irish Jesuit, Donal Godfrey who works as chaplain in the University of San Francisco and has recently published a book, “Gays and Grays” about the parish of Most Holy Redeemer, Castro, San Francisco where he has done much work. (And was heard once from there on Radio 4′s, Sunday Worship, last year).
The retreat is titled: “Mentoring: self and others” and is being held 13-20 June 2012.

Full details are on www.spanishretreats.org.uk. Read more…

David Walsh

Leviticus 18:22, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence” – This one sentence from the Torah has caused debate, heartache, and controversy for thousands of years, but it is only in the last few decades after much activism, argument and reinterpretation that some movements in Judaism, notably the progressive ones, have found an accommodation which allows gay Jews to be able to live a Jewish life, as recognised by a community without foregoing their homosexuality as either a ‘lifestyle’ or an ‘identity’. The same, however, cannot be said for Orthodox movements.

Jews of non-Orthodox persuasions, be they Reform, Liberal, Masorti (Conservative) or Reconstructionalist may have pointed differences between them, and yet they all have one basic belief in common. It is generally accepted that the Torah was not neatly transmitted in a packaged form from the heavens as the infallible ‘Word of God’ but was rather the beautiful result of divine inspiration, debate and the experiences of the Jewish people at the time. The key issue here being that the Torah is very much of its time, steeped in the culture and society within which it was created. It is within this context that many progressive Jews have explained away seemingly prohibitive verses with allegedly relate to homosexual behaviour, in much the same way as other practices have been abandoned over the past few thousand years. Read more…

Benedict Luckhurst

Glitter and Be Gay is the title of a song from Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide, based on a novella by Voltaire. The sexuality of the composer and conductor Bernstein (1918-90) has long been the subject of speculation and debate. Humphrey Burton’s significant biography, published in 1995, several times suggests that his subject may have been gay. Certainly, while still a student at Harvard, Bernstein befriended many of the leading musical figures in New York, a large number of whom were gay; composers such as Aaron Copland, Marc Blitzstein, Samuel Barber, Gian-Carlo Menotti and, later, Stephen Sondheim, who collaborated with Bernstein on West Side Story. In this respect, Bernstein, like many of his contemporaries, guarded his privacy. Arthur Laurents, another of Bernstein’s collaborators on West Side Story, said that he was “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.”

In Candide, Cunegone, the daughter of a baron, escapes a war that destroyed her family. She is forced to maintain her lifestyle by sharing herself with several important Parisians, thus she sings of her need to conceal her unhappiness by laughter and a cheerful demeanour. Read more…