Let’s just calm down a little bit from that headline, oK? Conclusive truth can never be established by debate. However, dialogue and discussion are healthy and necessary in any organization as diverse as a society. I am very pleased to find that people within the Hare Krishna movement are beginning to engage on the subject of Gay Marriage, which is obviously a major civil and religious issue at the moment. At the end of this post I will give some pointers so you can check it out.

I have been following it for some time now, outside the Hare Krishna movement, and respect the coverage given by the Christian Science Monitor. Mainly it is a good gauge for seeing how much energy the ongoing dialogue is generating in the wider society.

Bishop Spong, a well-known supporter of homosexual marriage, made a comment that struck me (I don’t agree with everything he says, so please don’t tar me with any feathers you have for him): Basically he said that the present struggle for gay rights will join the struggles for rights for colored people and for the rights of women in future history books.

Looked at through this lens, it does seem as though the tide of social pressure is inexorably pushing in this direction. As Spong says, history will judge those who oppose gay marriage today as it does those who opposed equal rights for colored people or equal rights for women. I think he is right. I’m not saying anything about the desirability of gay marriage as a social insitution at this point, or making any kind of comment about any type of sexuality. I am just establishing the wider socio-historical context of what is playing out.

I’ve already made some of my views on the role of gay marriage in a spiritually progressive society known here. Let me recap and summarize them by saying that I don’t think that gay marriage really encourages homosexuality (that’s already going on), I think it has the potential to facilitate homosexuals (yes, they do exist already) to be responsible and to form committed stable relationships and get on with the real business of life, spiritual realization.

It might be nice to want to push them all back into the closet, but 1) That just ain’t gonna happen, and 2) I don’t think that that is really the best way to help them out. When I say help them out, I am not talking about “converting them to heterosexuality”. I don’t want to get into a debate about the biology, psychology or supposed pathology of homosexuality. There are people who are homosexual, for whatever reason. I am talking about helping them by giving them a social arrangement whereby they can more peacefully take up spiritually progressive life, just as social support exists to help heterosexual people to do this.

Spiritually progressive life means progressive realizing our identity as a pure spirit soul, separate, distinct from and independent of the body, who are experiencing different bodies in this lifetime, beginning with the experience of being a baby, then a youth, then an adult and so on. At each stage, although the “experienced”, the body and associated mind, are different, we remain the same continuous conscious “experiencer” who sees all these things. Before the experience of this present body, and after it, we exist, and we have an intrinsic eternal relationship with each other and with the Supreme Being who is the original source of everything, which we have presently forgotten. That Supreme Consciousness is known by many different names in different times and places, and one of His names is Krishna, and one of Her names is Radharani. The archetypical male and female aspects of everything are manifested there in their most concentrated and potent form.

Realizing that, really realizing it and experiencing it, rather than just having an intellectual appreciation takes some doing, and there are various “compromise” positions set up, just as there may be different base camps on the way to the top of a mountain.

At different times these material arrangements to facilitate progressive spiritual realization have taken different forms, according to the overall situation of the general populace and the prevailing social climate. For example, in previous civilizations polygamy was a normal social custom and played a part in allowing the people to organize themselves into units to take care of their material (economic, physical, emotional etc.) needs and engage in spiritual life.

The Bhagavad-gita explains how people can sometimes forget the real purpose of these social arrangements and think that they are an end in themselves, or that the limited purposes that they do serve is the be-all and end-all of human endeavour. Civilizations like this turn into degenerate hedonistic societies which generally spin apart shortly afterwards (oh oh…) This is a constant, ongoing problem, and not one specifically related to any particular arrangement.

Polygamy at the moment is not generally practiced, and while it is in many senses a very sensible arrangement, social conditioning, social pressures, and current social mores make it an unworkable wide-spread social policy.

The Hare Krishna movement is a modern implementation of the Vedic culture. Of course, classical Vedic culture is a product of its time, place and circumstance, which give it shape, as well as the essential underlying principles that are its philosophical foundation, which impart direction to it.

The modern Hare Krishna movement is in a different time, place and circumstance, so it accordingly takes a different form, however the goal and the overall direction remain the same.

In the Vedic tradition the body of knowledge known as the sruti provides the fundamental understandings which act as the pole star of the culture and civilization. The smrti, or local laws, are decided by local learned and pure spiritual intellectuals, known as brahmanas. In different places there are differing smrti-sastras, however the goal of the smrti-sastras is the same, they just differ according to the local situation given the time, place and circumstance. This is very similar to the Amish Ordnung.

There are said to be three ways to determine what the local guidelines should be. One can consult the smrti-sastra for that time and place to see if there is a guideline given for that circumstance. If there is no smrti-sastra for that time and place, or it does not address the particular circumstance, then a pure devotee, completely free of material inebrieties may give a conclusion which is just as valid. If there is no accepted pure devotee to give the conclusion, then by a process of consulting seven brahmanas, or spiritual intellectuals versed in the sruti and smrtis and fully conscious of their intent, one can arrive at an equivalently valid course of action.

At the present point in time there is no smrti for modern Western civilization. The most generalized smrti of the ancient Vedic culture, the Manu Samhita is quite unworkable as a whole, although it does contain very valuable advice and gives a good understanding of the purpose, especially when seen from another cultural perspective. (My favorite part is where the king is advised to take an unfaithful women to the public gate and have her eaten alive by his dogs, and have her lover pressed down onto an iron bed with a blazing fire beneath it).

Obviously we are not going to be adopting the Vedic civilization lock, stock and barrel any time soon.

Srila Prabhupada, widely accepted as a pure devotee, and certainly accepted as such within the Hare Krishna movement, gave many practical directions on adjustments to modern culture and Vedic culture (such as “forget the Manu Samhita, if you try to follow that you will all have to be killed immediately”). However, he is no longer physically present, and the present situation is distinct from when he was present. At that time homosexual marriage was not at the stage of civic acceptance that it now is.

We can see, however, from other adjustments that he made that he was sensitive to the condition of the people and concerned to construct a social structure that would both accomodate and elevate them. Most notably he made adjustments to the social role of women to bring the society more in line with the actual situation in the West, in spite of many comments in his books where he states that women as a class are less intelligent and should have a more subservient role. Now, I don’t want to get bogged down in another discussion on a different topic, I just wish to point out that cutting and pasting quotes from Prabhuapada’s writings is not in itself sufficient to arrive at the correct course of action, although obviously his written comments about these things should take a central role in the discussion.

So my conclusion for today is that there should be dialogue and discussion on this topic, and that there is scope and need for dynamic adjustment, and the purpose of society and civilization should be discussed on the basis of the Vedic texts, with their emphasis on spiritual realization, and with reference to the commentaries and personal example of the great spiritual figures, which within the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON) obviously principally means Srila Prabhupada.

OK, just to show you that there are differing opinions (actually I am still trying to figure out exactly what their opinions are, but at least they are talking about it):

Ekendra’s Mrdanga

This is my friend and god brother (and god-brother-in-law =) Ekendra’s webpage where he has posted a collection of selected comments of Srila Prabhupada’s on homosexuality.

ISKCON Cultural Journal

This is not, as the title might suggest, an official ISKCON mouthpiece, but rather the journal of an online friend and correspondent of mine, Krishna-kirti das. I’ve already gone on the record as saying that I don’t agree with everything that he says, but I will defend his right to say it to the death. Others have said (copied this from the web): “an extreme right wing rag written by an Iskcon guy who teaches that the GBC is not as authoritarian, misogynistic, bigoted and oppressive…as it should be”. Yeah, boyee! Now y’all know that I’ve gotta have a lot of love for that. Read it and make up your own mind.

E-mergent Kiwi

OK, he’s not technically a Hare Krishna, he’s a Christian, but God is One right? Anyway, widening the parameters a bit, this is similar to my own thinking on the matter, as I stated it earlier: Don’t expect to see me officiating at the ceremony tomorrow (although I am ordained and able to do it), but it has its place in a modern spiritually progressive society. Regulation is superior to condemnation.

I will post more on this topic in the near future. At the moment I just wanted to say welcome to the dialogue process. It’s needed.