Elton John
In 1966 John Lennon unleashed the fury of evangelical groups for saying The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”. Elton John achieved the same result without egotism recently when, being interviewed by American magazine Parade he made a remark that he didn’t think would be published ( relating to the persecution of lesbians in the Middle East): “I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems”. There has been a steady movement for decades among gay Christians towards claiming Jesus as one of their own, of which Elton’s now much-publicised statement is the latest manifestation.
Sir Elton John, globe-bestriding star, singer and composer, firmly established as the gay lord of the music world’s dance, enjoys a model civil partnership with David Furnish, and will long be remembered for his expression of the nation’s deep emotion at the loss of Lady Diana. His immense fundraising efforts for AIDS causes stretching from the early case of Ryan White to his tribute to Wyoming gay murder victim Matthew Shepard, “strung on a high-ridge fence”, evidence his own compassionate nature.
Gay Jesus?
One of my first acts of coming out in the ’70s was to attend weekly GaySoc meetings at Senate House as a student at the London School of Economics. One time the guest speaker was Una Kroll who became a controversial fighter for the ordination of women in the Anglican Church. From being a nun, she decided to marry and now boasts ten grandchildren. Finally becoming a woman priest in Monmouth, Wales, she now lives partly as a solitary. I remember Kroll as a mumsy, comforting presence with an Archbishop-size cross swinging from her neck. She warmed to her theme of Jesus probably being gay - after all, He spent so much time with his male disciples - and added subversively: “We’re not supposed to think about His cock”. My anxieties, as a formerly good Methodist boy taking his first public steps into the gay Promised Land, were not not exactly helped by dragging the Saviour into it.
Kroll’s talk followed hard upon the 1976 Gay News blasphemy trial, in which faith vigilante and much-satirized campaigner for purity Mary Whitehouse took the paper’s editor Denis Lemon to trial over his publication of a poem by James Kirkup. The forbidden verses were the imagined, explicit thoughts of a Roman centurion gazing at Jesus crucified. The centurion didn’t stop at having a wild sexual time with Jesus, but cavorted with a fair sample of the disciples, and even Pontius Pilate for good measure! Lemon narrowly evaded imprisonment, though Whitehouse’s action inadvertently led to the founding of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, while giving increased momentum to mainstream gay liberation issues.
For those Christians with open minds, willing to look beyond the synoptic gospels to more esoteric sources, the question of whether Jesus really was gay is answerable. In The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ which claims to more accurately record the life of Jesus and goes well outside the confines of the New Testament, the younger Jesus travels to Egypt where he is put through a series of Mystery School tests to establish His credentials for the spiritual mission he is to undertake. The highest of these is when he is shown a stunningly beautiful young woman who is described as “the highest type of purity and love”. Jesus’s heterosexual feelings for this woman are agitated and He is very tempted by her. However, remembering the great work He is to perform, Jesus manages to conquer all sexual attraction and the lure of the carnal self, so passing the supreme test, and thereafter living an asexual life in the interests of humanity.
I personally believe Jesus was not gay, but I’m with Elton in his belief that nothing is beyond the reach of the compassion of this great teacher and light-bringer, and in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God”, I think He was speaking of us, never forgetting the plight of lesbians and gay men in intolerant lands.
By John Hartley
(c) Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
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