The Fire in Moonlight Stories from the Radical Faeries 1975-2010 by Mark Thompson

In a 1975 edition of RFD, Hay wrote: “To be a true homosexual, is to be put at odds with home, school and society….We are so other that we have to learn early how to protect our very survival.” One thing’s certain, however: You have to have spirit in order to “build.” For Hay, this meant constructing a homosexual spiritual dimension outside the world of conventional religion. Theologians may quibble with that relativist statement, insisting that if one truth is as good as another truth, then there’s no truth anywhere. No one person, no one group, no one ideology has the answer. The homosexual, according to Hay, was a multidimensional being with roots in the mythic, a sort of alien spirit with special healing gifts for the world.Īs Stuart Timmons notes in his introductory essay, “The Making of a Tribe,” Hay once told a circle of 200 Faeries: “We Faeries need to stop saying, ‘My consciousness is better than your consciousness.’ That’s heterosexist. Inspired in part by the writings of Edward Carpenter and the Calamus poems of Walt Whitman, Hay saw the homosexual as much more than a creature fighting for rights in a hostile society. Hay, a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, joined forces with Don Kilhefner and Mitch Walker to start the Faerie movement in order to add a spiritual dimension to the (often dry) nuts and bolts world of emerging gay politics. Mark Thompson’s latest anthology, The Fire in Moonlight (White Crane Books), is a collection of first person accounts of the Harry Hay-inspired Radical Faerie movement. The Fire in Moonlight: Stories from the Radical FaeriesĪssociate Editors Richard Neeley and Bo Young This new anthology by the radical faeries is sure to delight and inspire.

The Fire in Moonlight Stories from the Radical Faeries 1975-2010 by Mark Thompson