Is there homophobia in the Baha’i community? In April this year Korey started a discussion on a Bahai Facebook group called “homophobia”. This is what he posted:

First Lessons in Relativity - an installation by Sonja van Kerkhoff

If you are gay or not, you should forward this as a support of your friends and loved ones that are. Love is not defined by color, belief, or gender.

I am the mother that is not allowed to see the children she gave birth to, took care of and raised. The courts say that I do not fulfill the requirements to be a mother now that I live with another woman.

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Many months ago, someone wrote to me in response to my short biography at the top of this site, where I say that I am a Baha'i by faith but not a member of the community. This person was perplexed: how could someone be Baha'i but not a member of the community?

I was a member of the community for 20 years and used to see things that way too. I used to think 'Baha'i' and 'Baha'i faith', and could see no further than the Baha'i community. The community was my little haven and the world beyond the community was a spiritual desert. It's no wonder Baha'is fear expulsion. How can one survive 'out there'?

The story was of a company that had been given by its government the rights to all water.

I didn't have a ready answer to that question when I was expelled. Initially, I just kept to my spiritual disciplines, which luckily I had instilled into my daily routine: read the writings every morn and eve, say my obligatory prayer, fast, and so on. In fact, it took me about 7-8 years to fully get out of thinking that the faith was confined to the community. I am amazed at how long it took. But I had to overcome 20 years of socialisation. I always knew intellectually that the faith was bigger than the community, but it took 7-8 years for my soul to see reality in that new light.

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I believe that the Manifestations of God are the messengers of His word to humanity and that Their word is infallible. Living in Indiana, talk about God usually leads to Christianity. When friends and I talk about God it usually leads to Jesus. They know I am a Baha’i, but I don’t try to bring Baha’u'llah into the discussion too much because Jesus is more familiar with everyone. So, I will be focusing on Jesus more in this post.

My own personal belief that the Manifestations of God are infallible is mixed with the fact that they were also human beings. They were extraordinary, divine human beings but they were human beings nonetheless.

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Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all are the same.

(Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping page 194)

Some broad agreement exists that the right hemisphere is more in tune with sadness, and less with anger, than the left hemisphere. . . . It seems to me a possibility that those emotions which are related to bonding and empathy . . . are preferentially treated by the right hemisphere, as one would expect; . . .

(Iain Mc Gilchrist: The Master & his Emissary pages 62-63)

The path to guidance is one of love and compassion, not of force and coercion.

Given that the right hemisphere is strongly linked to all forms of creativity, it is not a huge leap of logic to suggest that much great art, including poetry and song, will inevitably be tinged with sadness and be rooted in empathy for the sufferings of all humanity.

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