INTEGRITY
GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM
c. INTEGRITY 1975 ISSN: 0095-2184
Vol. 1 No. 4 Feb. 75
INTEGRITY: GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM. 10 issues/$5. 701 Orange Street, No. 6, Fort Valley, GA 31030. Copyright 1975 by INTEGRITY, Inc. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied with stamped return envelope. Signed articles are the views of the contributors. INTEGRITY, Inc., is a non-profit organization of Gay Episcopalians and our friends.
Editor..................................... Louie Crew, Ph.D.
Associate Editor.................. Ernest Clay, Cosmetologist
Associate Editor......................... Dan Fee, Seminarian
Associate Editor....................... Rev. Michael Koonsman
Associate Editor.................... Br. Thomas Williams, LPN
Consultant............................. Rev. Robert W. Cromey
Consultant........................... Norman Pittenger, Ph.D.
BRIEFS
SATURDAY REVIEW which earlier refused our ad, has reversed policy and will print it soon having read our complaint in the December issue. The Homosexual Information Center, 3473-1/2 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood 90028, is seeking gifts of Gay books to add to its extensive collection. The Center has excellent facilities for inter-library loan for those trying to do research in most other barren places.
HONESTLY
By Helga Freitas Cozad
It is not one's way of life that hides spiritual beauty and goodness, but rather ignorance, hypocrisy, bigotry, false fears, and false beliefs. These not only hide spiritual beauty and goodness but are also fatal to religion. Only honesty and understanding reveal spiritual beauty and goodness in one's life.
Harmony in Gayway between two individuals who are caring and loving is as beautiful as in music; and the discord produced by ignorance, hypocrisy, bigotry, and false fear is unnatural, and unreal. Happiness, peace, and love for one another have roots deep in the spiritual nature of the children of God and are not at the disposal of physical senses. In fact, this happiness, peace and love ARE the Kingdom of Heaven; it is not found anatomically. It is a Kingdom revealed when one discovers her/him/self in honesty, in a caring, loving heart. It is found in the absolute, enlightened faith that all things are possible in Christ and that what is vital to each is one's own divine nature.
No one can possibly know the Omniscient Infinite Mind that made us all; and no one can define the deep "within" of another person wherein that Kingdom is found. Each individual must dare honestly to seek such self-revelation. To be true to one's individual nature, with awe at the possibilities of the Creator's infinite ability to create whomever, whatever He chooses to express the beauty of His Mind, His Love, His Life ... this is the Truth that sets us free from ignorance, false belief, false fears, bigotry, and hypocrisy.
Our knowing and understanding of all that we are is the Self-givingness of the Infinite Spirit. It is Love that says to our oppressors: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do or say." It is Love that comforts our more fearful and oppressed brothers and sisters with, "Fear not, little flock, for it is not human codes, patterns, or man-made dogmas, but the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." It is love that calmly gives thanksgiving for the communion existing between two individuals, a communion of spirit, of thoughts and ideas, of feelings, all guided and directed caringly. Love does not suppress or oppress, but can only express itself in beauty and goodness of spirit.
Love expressed in this Christian Gayway is as valid as love can be, and as pure. Such love is not blind passion, but a deep, intimate communion. Yet the unGodly tell us: "This cannot be; it does not follow my pattern, so it is unnatural." Thus the unGodly judges impel us to seek deep understanding of ourselves as total children of God, and to be honest with ourselves with reverence for our commitment to truth and love, and to each other. Our pure and divinely natural love must not be diluted, but must remain true to its own nature, not to the nature of our oppressors.
Who can say what has been prepared for us? Who can search the deep things of Spirit? We can only respond, "Father, I thank Thee that as I move, live and have my Gayness in Thee, I can express love openly in its holy diversity."
Our redemption gives us awesome responsibilities to each other and to all people. We have the responsibility to express ourselves in integrity and dignity in the places where we gather in friendship and sociability. We must be loving and caring, serving the poor, the aged, the orphaned, the oppressed. We must manifest our wholeness as spiritual, thoughtful, feelingful, creative human beings. We must seek such understanding of ourselves and of each other as to form solidarity in our Gay Community and to create an atmosphere of spiritual communion. We must manifest the divine attributes of justice, mercy, wisdom, goodness. We must worship the Loving Father, not as apologetic creatures, but as thankful Children of God.
Let us no longer wonder why we cannot worship in "their" temple. If it is "theirs," it must not then be God's. Let us rather accept the ultimate in spiritual responsibility, and worship in Spirit and in Truth, meeting as we must in our parlors or hallways to receive His body and blood that we can manifest more of Him, ever mindful that so did He and His early followers meet. Let us remember for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters that we are not demanded to face what we can't cope with nor demanded to demonstrate what we do not yet understand; but let us open our hearts wide, enlighten our faith deeply, and peacefully, quietly, lovingly live in that worth-ship of Spirit and Truth with moral courage as Gays.
THE EDINBURGH STATEMENT
As the International Gay Rights Congress, 1974, in Edinburgh, Scotland, we ordained and lay members of various Christian communities, being also practicing homosexuals, have met to explore our relationships to religious bodies.
We are encouraged by the admission of some Churches that their attitude to homosexuals and homosexuality needs examination. There is no denying that the homosexual man and woman feels alienated from his or her fellow Christians.
We believe homosexuality is not intrinsically evil. We a]so know that we have the capacity for full and loving relationships. The Church must acknowledge this fact and encourage the homosexual to live fully and faithfully. Therefore, we urge all Churches to investigate their attitudes and pastoral practice. In particular, we are conscious of the difficulties facing those in training or already ministering who wish to acknowledge openly their sexuality. Another form of oppression is silence and apathy which are an affront to the faith and a scandal to our homosexual sisters and brothers outside the Church. A more positive approach is needed.
We note with approval the pastoral work of the Dutch Churches, the establishment of an Anglican Working Party on Homosexuality, the scholarship for studies in sexual minorities granted by the World Council of Churches and publications of the Religious Society of Friends and the Unitarian/Universalist Church. These ministries must be supported and universally extended by informed teaching and preaching.
Christian conscience demands no less.
THE WORKSHOP ON RELIGION AND HOMOSEXUALITY of THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL GAY RIGHTS CONGRESS, EDINBURGH, DECEMBER 1974.
INTEGRITY GROWS
INTEGRITY is growing from a small abolitionist publication into a comprehensive national organization for Gay Episcopalians and our friends.
In just one week since the mailing of ballots, already readers have rushed ballots ratifying the Constitution and Articles of Confederation of INTEGRITY, Inc. (Full report in March.)
Local and regional chapters are springing up all over.
INTEGRITY/Chicago held its first meeting on 26th January and made extensive plans for future activities. The group, endorsed by six clergy, will incorporate, will hold regular meetings, will advertise widely through local Church and Gay media.... DIGNITY/Chicago has been especially cooperative and friendly. The next meeting will begin with a house mass at the home of the Convenor, Jim Wickliff (312-549-3988) on 16th of February.
INTEGRITY/New York is planning to meet for a meal and communion soon. For information, contact the Convenor, Rev. Michael Koonsman, 31 Stuyvesant St., NYC 10003. This group is also supporting INTEGRITY/Video (Cf. Jan. issue). In cooperation with the Fortune Society, the National Gay Task Force, the Homosexual Counseling Center, et al., INTEGRITY/Video can already make available to interested persons or groups video materials on alcoholism, the third world, and prisons; and audio materials are in preparation on many specifically Gay events, conference or the like.
INTEGRITY/Atlanta is making plans for convening with a mass, followed by discussion. Fuller information can be obtained from the Convenor, Br. Thomas Williams (404-874-6530).
INTEGRITY/SW Ohio & Northern KY is being convened by Bob Hurles, P.0. Box 24096, Cincinnati, OH 45224, who stresses, as with all other INTEGRITY business, that correspondence will be held in the strictest of confidence.
INTEGRITY/Washington is being convened by a district Ph.D. and INTEGRITY/Boston by several local clergy and laypersons.
One member is even investigating the possibility of an INTEGRITY pilgrimage with DIGNITY to Rome.
For more information about these and all other projects, write the Fort Valley, GA, address.
HOW?
Convening a local chapter is more an act of faith than anything else. Let God use you to be an instrument of love to the Gays in your community. Bring people together for communion, and you will be amazed at the Grace which will be generated.
EDITORIAL
RELIGION & SEXUALITY
By The Rev. Michael Koonsman
Unfortunately, for most of us sexuality and religion have never quite been able to mix. Sex has usually been most closely associated with sin and guilt, and even for the most sexually adjusted of us that adjustment has usually come through secular and not religious means. Indeed, sexual acceptance has often come in spite of religious training; and however open some liberal denominations have become with regard to sexual education and practice, the dominant impact of the church with regard to sexuality has always been repressive. Consider Pope Paul's statement in September of 72 that "behind the initiation to sensual pleasure, there loom narcotics" and remember that its anti-sexual and erotophobic tone is not atypical of the church attitudes toward one of God's most glorious gifts, our sexuality. Even the Godspell interpretation of "If thine eye offend thee pluck it out" is limited to the passage's narrowest and most unimaginative anti-sexual dimension. As a people we are sexual and our sexual awareness and fulfillment are as important as, if not more important than, the other aspects of our personalities; yet the church continues to let us down. As a priest of the church has recently written on this subject, "There have been many requests for bread, but too many stones in response."
The depth to which this negative attitude on the church's part separates all of us from a full acceptance of ourselves is very beautifully and poignantly shown in a little-known story by Oscar Wilde called "The Fisherman and His Soul." A young fisherman one day catches a lovely mermaid in his nets and thus begins a relationship which soon leads to a love which to him becomes the one great love of his life. Though she must live in the sea, and he on land, he thinks of her constantly and yearns to be free of the restraints which separate them. Knowing his passion and love for her to be pure and being a God-fearing Christian lad, the fisherman one day takes his hope for union with the mermaid to the village priest. Horrified and angry, the priest goes on at great length to remind the lad that creatures of the sea have no souls, were not created by God, and are among those pagan things of nature which do not have God's blessing or carry the dignity of a soul. Surely, he says, the boy must be sinful to have such desires; and if he persists he must surely lose his own soul in this ungodly union with one for whom our Lord did not die. With that the priest sends the fisherman away.
Yet alas, the fisherman is in love, and he knows in his own heart that to him love is more important than his soul; his love he can experience but his soul "he cannot see, he may not touch, and it he does not know." Not much later then the fisherman sends his soul away alone, and soulless he goes to be united with his true love in the unknown and mysterious kingdoms of the sea. Years pass and from time to time the fisherman leaves his kingdom of love and comes to visit his soul on the earth, a soul who without a heart has learned trickery and deceit as a way of life. On one of these visits the soul tricks the fisherman into an extended stay and the mermaid dies. As he returns to the shore, the sea begins to moan and the waves grow, and then the foam and the sky too turn gray and stormy. As the conches and the creatures of the deep sing their loss, the foam bears the mermaid's body to the shore where the fisherman takes her in his arms and dies of a broken heart. Passing their bodies on the beach, the priest and a rogation procession stop their censers and refuse to bless them. They are then taken to unhallowed ground for a burial far from the eyes of the rest of the town. And then one day many years later as the community gathers for mass, the priest and the congregation are struck by the strange beauty and fragrance of the flowers on the altar, and so transformed are they by this new vision that they conclude their mass with great joy and proceed to bless the countryside, even the fish and animals and all the land, finally to discover that the most beautiful flowers of all, those which had inspired their new devotion, grew only from the grave of the fisherman and the mermaid. Amazed and unsettled, the congregation was never the same again.
There are many parallels in this story, the most obvious for this essay being that just as the fisherman thought he must lose his soul if he loved the mermaid, so too have Christians often thought that they would lose their souls if they really affirmed their sensual nature. And of course, casting off into the uncharted depths of sexual experience has often meant departure from the church; for once the prohibition was broken and found not to be so horrible after all, men and women were less and less likely to take the church very seriously in its warnings, and returned to its heartless and passionless realm only for occasional visits. The trickery to which the fisherman's soul resorted when separate from his heart is merely the more sophisticated reaction which in its commonest form has been guilt. The common man experienced guilt at his inability to maintain the church's sexual law; the more educated scoffed at it and frequently used it to manipulate others.
The degree to which most of us hide our sexual feelings is surpassed possibly only by the degree to which we are taught to hate and fear our homosexual feelings. It is common knowledge that with religious support society has systematically deprived the homosexual not only of his/her dignity but also of his/her basic civil rights, as in jobs and housing. No wonder that even the heterosexual majority feel panic in the face of homosexual feelings and experience. Sodom and Gomorrah was never given the anti-homosexual interpretation until it became useful as a means of preventing Jews from mingling with Greeks; Paul's condemnation of homosexuality equated it with idolatry. These are hardly solid religious reasons on which to base our present prejudice.
The fact is that so far as our sexual life is concerned we have very little developed theology which remains convincing at all. Situation ethics began to enter this area, but it has had very little impact. To the vast majority, the church's teaching on sexuality is still synonymous with repression and fear. While the church may not always be so active in promulgating this as it once was, it has done almost nothing to redirect its thinking in any convincing way. We once made our mind quite loudly understood, and the slight murmurings of change since have not carried the weight of conviction or authority which supported the proclamations which in earlier days shaped our civilization.
What is presently needed is that the church come openly to terms with the significance of the diverse forms of personal lifestyle available to and beneficial to members of its community. If we really believe that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life, we will begin to recognize Him at work in the pluralities of the present day as well as in the forms imposed upon the past.
A GAY CONFESSION - LENT
For our failures joyfully to witness Christ's love for the Gay community, forgive us, Lord.
For the times that we have wasted our energies in destructive self-hatred rather than in redeemed affirmation, forgive us, good Lord.
For the times that we have ignored the sins of our minds by worrying about the beauty of our bodies, enlighten us, holy father.
For failing to listen and receive your beautiful affirmation of us, even when we have been quietly, lovingly visited by you unawares as in our assignations with strangers, have patience with us, Lord.
For our failures to be direct with our nonGay Christian sisters and brothers about their silent complicity in the laws and customs which make us criminals, forgive us, crucified one.
For our cowardice in failing to reach isolated Gay young people with our many open examples of mature adult Gay sexuality, forgive us, Lord, and strengthen us.
For our failures to call upon you to relieve us of our great oppression and for our unwillingness to trust you to give us the victory, forgive us, Lord.
For our fears of losing respectability when those fears have been greater than our fears of losing our souls, redeem us, good Lord.
For the times when we have more than thrice denied our sisters and brothers in the temples of our enemies, forgive us, righteous king.
For the times that we unquestioningly accept the established sexism, racism, and classism of our society, forgive us, good lord.
For our failure to respect healthy Gay styles which vary from our own, forgive us, good Lord.
For our fawning before the power of bishops, other clergy, and laypersons when they have asked us to betray our sisters and brothers by delaying justice to the Gay community, forgive us, Lord.
For our failures to affirm and strengthen our sisters and brothers when they are vulnerably open in their Christian witness, forgive us, good Lord.
For our reluctance to share our Gay and affection with genuine nonGays who could thereby be made aware of our full humanity, forgive us, good Lord.
For the times that we have felt guilty when we have offered genuine affection that has been rejected, forgive us, good Lord.
For the times that we have wanted not to acknowledge the full humanity of our companions, forgive us, good Lord.
For the times that we have poured on ourselves rather than on our oppressors our just anger and resentment against our oppression, forgive us, good Lord.
For the times that we have failed to honor your presence in the Gay temples of our own bodies, forgive us, Lord.
FORGIVE US AND REFORM US, LORD. LIFT US TO OUR FEET AS CHILDREN OF GOD, JOINT HEIRS WITH CHRIST. DELIVER US FROM GROVELING AND SELF-PITY. FILL US WITH HEALTH AND GRACE. Amen.
REACTIONS
How gratifying it is to recognize your awareness of the Lesbian oppression even in the Gay movement by your plans for a Lesbian issue. My thoughts have already turned to writing something for it.... We live in an inescapable tension between a feminist/Lesbian consciousness and a patriarchal/hetero-oriented religion.
Ms. L.C.
_________________________
Congratulations on the first two issues. You must surely have the safeguard of battalions of angels to have succeeded so admirably. To their efforts you know you may join the prayers and good will of many fellow travelers, be they in street or closet. I have shared my copies with friends -- Jews, R.C.'s, et al. -- and I know if you could see their reactions or hear their discussions you would know that by merely beginning the fight you have already won the deeper part of your goal. Dante said God is infinite illumination. Surely they are blessed who work for truth and light.
R.F.
_________________________
I have seen the first two issues of INTEGRITY and I am very much in agreement with the direction in which you are going.
Rev. R.B.
_________________________
I am very interested, as I was pulled from seminary ln 1971 when my bishop learned I was Gay.
G.P.
_________________________
As a Roman Catholic priest and Dignity member, I applaud and support your efforts.
Editorial response to Readers' Letters is a bit militant (we need not give them the same they have been giving us!) -- but I am sure it will mellow.
Rev. Michael Raney
_________________________
I congratulate you on your first issue and wish you well. If there is anything Friends (Quakers) can do to help, please let us know.
Ron Mattson
Committee of Concern
3208 Portland Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55407
_________________________
I have been on the vestry of two Episcopal churches in this area. While I still have one year to go as vestryman at my present church, I have been looking for a new spiritual home since my recent divorce. It seems ironic that while staying at the home of friends before finding my own apartment I was reading a copy of "Our God Too" (the story of MCC) when I got my copy of THE EPISCOPALIAN and read about you.
G.N.
_________________________
I so enjoyed the newsletter and I look forward to its expansion as I am sure you do. I am a non-parochial priest myself with only my summer work (a parish at the shore) and my local "regular member type" church attendance to keep me abreast of what is happening. Both locations, obviously, are very straight and family oriented. I hope that your newsletter will keep me informed of the forum.
T.C.
_________________________
I attend the local MCC where there are several Gay Episcopalians. I have tried to liberate the establishment here by going up to the Bishop but all they offer are the usual comments, viz., we ought to worship together and not have separate churches. When I point out they have Black, Puerto Rican, Chinese, et al. churches, they reply that those are special. So my daily readings from Unity and feast days at Closeted Episcopal Churches and the once-a-month attendance at MCC are for the present; and actually, it is very good. I do not miss as much as I thought I would the old beloved Episcopal Church. The MCC here takes some "getting used to" but the people are very lovely and warm and it's Gay --which is the important thing. I guess the important thing really is that the congregation is Gay and that straights are welcomed. We do get some.
F.P.
_________________________
I must say that I am quite impressed with the scope of your publication. I felt on the whole you were on-target. My only criticism would be that you seemed to tend to be a little more radical than religious in a few places.
As a Christian who ia Gay, I have been in three different denominations seeking a somewhat comfortable feeling; and I believe that the Episcopal Church is by far the most receptive. My parish is quite tolerant and a number of Gays do attend regularly. This attitude and a publication like yours can greatly help a Gay who at times doubts his Christianity because of the condemnation of fellow Christians. It is good to be reminded occasionally that there are many other truly Christian Gays. Keep up the good work.
G.P.
_________________________
I am 21 and have been living with my husband for almost 2 years. I was brought up a Catholic but later became involved with the Jesus Movement, where I went through a healing service for my homosexuality. My husband is an Episcopalian. I am thinking of changing over some day.
Probably due to my experiences in the past I feel doomed to everlasting hell, and I want to see how you have found peace with God.
Richard
_________________________
A NATIONAL MEETING
The members of INTEGRITY/Chicago have strongly urged all of us to consider having a national meeting later this year and have tentatively said that they would like to be our hostesses and hosts. We would appreciate reactions to this suggestion from the membership, particularly from those who feel that they would be interested in attending. If our Constitution is ratified, as seems almost certain, we will have national officers serving from the 1st of July, and it will be the duty of the president to call such a meeting. It would be good to know in advance the feeling of the membership so that this officer can be duly advised.
SEX NEXT
By W.S., Awaiting Ordination
The new political agenda of the Church is sexuality. The evidence for this fact -- which it see to me is an empirical observation, not an exhortation -- is everywhere. Sexuality, after all, underlies the whole of human consciousness in subtle but binding ways. One does not have to be Freudian to see that sexual drives have frequently been channeled and controlled by traditional authority structures which now are fastly disintegrating in every sphere of human activity, conspicuously in the Church.
That sex is moving into the conscious agenda of the Church from the unconscious is signalled by two recent events. The first is the reaction of the Episcopal Church to the women's ordination movement. The second is the reaction of the Roman Catholic Church to the openness in pastoral matters that relate directly to sexuality.
The unauthorized ordination of eleven women to the Episcopal priesthood last July elicited a two-fold reaction. The strongest opponents to women priests said that the Philadelphia orders were invalid because the ordinands were women, and no woman could be a priest. (Presumably because Christ was a man, and the priesthood is/was a male symbol). More genteel and characteristic of liberals within the Episcopal Church was the sentiment expressed by the emergent session of the House of Bishops in August after the ordination. The House decried the "violation of the collegiality of the House of Bishops' and stated quite ambiguously that the orders received by the women were not fully valid. (See The New York TIMES, "House of Bishops Disputes Validity of Eleven Women Priests," August 15, 1974). Both reactions hinged explicitly or implicitly on the perceived threat of an action in disobedience to a system of political and theological authority overwhelmingly masculine in character. Either the ordination was invalid because the people ordained were women, or -- more tellingly -- the act was irregular because a few men acting for women did violence to the sense of authority in a male episcopal club.
In a related way the Roman Catholic Church has tried desperately to contain a spreading sense of freedom in matters pertaining to sexuality among Catholics. Not only did the Vatican try and fail to prohibit the liberalization of Italian divorce legislation, but the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York in effect stopped the passage of Intro 2, a municipal bill for homosexual civil rights. More spectacular was the summary removal of Father Joseph O'Rourke from the Society of Jesus for the "illicit" baptism of a child in Marlboro, Massachusetts, a child who had then refused the sacrament because its mother favored the local establishment of an abortion clinic (New York TIMES, August 19, 1974).
To observe that sex is moving into the Church's political foreground is only to say openly that people who are oppressed by virtue of their gender or sexual orientation should take the structures and organizations within the Church very seriously. For them to do so does not mean necessarily that they should or will diminish the more obvious items on the Church's political agenda such as civil rights, corporate responsibility, or the world's food crisis. It does mean that sexuality underlies all of these other items by virtue of the simple fact that sex is the most common of human denominators and deserves to be named as such in any struggle for human liberation.
It's far too early to predict what the encounter between sexuality and politics within the Church will produce. Yet it is highly important that Christians -- especially Gay Christians --be aware of the encounter, and do everything within their collective power to use the energy which has emerged from the contact so far, and will continue to emerge.
This is important for two reasons. First, the Church is a powerful institution in American society, in spite of its recent decline in membership. It is deemed to have been the most effective single agent for the civil rights movement in the sixties. More recently it has caused several major multi-national corporations to alter their practices, notably with regard to Southern Africa and equal employment opportunity. It remains a potent, if somewhat latent, political force in the United States. The Church can never give the Gay person a sense of personal pride or identity which she or he does not already possess. It can, however, be the means for Gay people to gain broader recognition among the many institutions which govern and control contemporary life.
The second reason is that the Church has always been the subject of deep psychological ambivalence among Gay people as a whole. For women it has been a highly feminine symbol to greater and lesser extents throughout its history, but paradoxically ln the control of men. Men have been likewise attracted by its symbology, liturgy, priestly powers, and by the overall holism of the religious experience but have been quite uneasy with its feminine aspects. Perhaps it is just such ambivalence which has fed the thoroughgoing, overt hostility to homosexuality which the Church has embodied in its role as the prime enforcer of homosexual tabus in western culture. This ambivalence needs desperately to be named and explored for the richness it offers the religiously inclined person and to alleviate the sense of guilt which many Gay people feel by virtue of being both homosexual and Christian.
The question 'how' to take advantage of the dual opportunity for Gay men and women for political enfranchisement and for the religious/psychological exploration of personhood within the Church should occupy the energies of the best talents within the Gay Movement. Every effort should be made for Gay people to reflect collectively within whatever structure afforded them. Every effort should be made to use conventions, caucuses, judicatories, councils and committees to shape and articulate specific aims which will roster the creative interplay between sexuality and religion now possible. It is time for careful thought and for careful political planning for persons who discern the opportunity before them.
There are only two rules. The first is that any activity which seeks to be both intellectual and political] -- whatever its initial diversity -- must strive to be collective and unified in its final expression. The second is that the expression which does emerge from a collective activity of Gay men and women in the Church must take existing institutions and power structures with acute seriousness, even while seeking to use or alter them. To ignore or forget either of these will risk the failures those who were active in the American Peace Movement in the sixties well remember.
SONG: OVERBREEDING
There's too many babies being born
In this old world today;
Now wouldn't it be a better world
If more of us were Gay?
If the people keep on keeping on
Increasing the population,
This old world is headed for
A sad situation.
Little children everywhere,
With teardrops in their eyes,
Made with promises of love,
And facing empty lies,
With no one there to hold them close
And no one cares, it seems,
Dirt and tangles in their hair
And biscuits in their dreams.
If every morgue was a big cafe,
And human flesh was served,
Maybe every baby could be fed
And appetites be curbed.....
But there's a better way
Of working things out
If folks weren't so contrary,
Just name all little girls Butch
And all little boys Mary.
CHORUS
I don't think the world should overbreed
We've already got more mouths than we can feed.
Cold and lonely children, we don't need.
I don't think the world should overbreed.
JO ANN BOX