ThirdGender

By Michael Kioni Dudley, Ph.D.

Christian Church teaching on homosexuality over the last two millennia has been based on the story of Adam and Eve.  God created a man, Adam, and a woman, Eve, placing a desire for each other within them.  There were no human variants—gays, bisexuals, lesbians, or others.  All humans were thought to be heterosexual.  Anyone lusting after someone of the same sex was turning against his or her nature.  One cannot blame the church for its condemnations of homosexuality; the Adam and Eve story was the only version of creation they knew.  All believed it to be fact. 

Now, most Christian churches, sometimes unofficially, accept that God created humankind through evolution.  And today, homosexual behavior has been documented in over 450 animal species among whom humans have evolved, or from whom humans have evolved. ^[i]  One must, then, conclude that the existence of homosexual humans is consistent with what is found in lower species.  And it follows that, just as we believe that God created all of nature and all of humankind through evolution, we must also believe that God created homosexual humans to be homosexual humans, just as he created homosexuals in the species before us.

So, how are homosexuals truly different from heterosexual males and females?  And are they really a third species, a third gender?

I would like to answer this question by telling my own experiences as a male homosexual from early childhood to the present.  I am 86 years old. 

Let us start by noting that, before Christianity came to their lands, most of the peoples in the world recognized and fully accepted homosexuals living among them.   A number of peoples, like the islanders across Polynesia, recognized three species of humans: Kane man, male; Wahine woman, female; and mahu men and women sharing both male and female traits and interests.

Let us also note that strong evidence from neuroscience and neuropsychological research suggests differences in brain organization and functioning between heterosexual and homosexual men and women. In general, this evidence shows that gay men and heterosexual women are more alike in neural correlates, while lesbian women and heterosexual men are more alike.^[ii]

This is born out in their actions.  From childhood, well before the age of reason, gay children exhibit behavior common to the other sex.  Gay little boys prefer little-girl toys like dolls and purses and avoid roughhousing with other boys, and gay little girls prefer little-boy toys like cars and trucks and playing sports, and sometimes roughhousing with boys.

I experienced this.  When I was four and five, I had my own doll.  Her name was Rosie.  And I had a pretty purse — I remember my dad taking me to work with him in the Hollywood studios one day.  On the way home, I began to cry and told him I wanted my own purse.  He stopped and got me one.   It was an evening purse, about the size of a very large hand and beautiful.  I loved it.

In the first four or five grades of grade school, little boys hate little girls.  They like to play sports and all kinds of games with other boys; they like to be rough with one another; and they like to get dirty.  During first and second grade, I had a tea set and loved to play house with Sharon C. who lived up street.  Throughout grade school, I liked girls and felt completely at home with them.  I pretty much ignored the boys, and hated playing rough and getting dirty.

When I reached 5^th and 6^th grade, we had Physical Education classes, which gave us time out of the classroom to play sports.  The only sport available to us was baseball.  The boys played hardball, the girls played softball—the ball was bigger and softer.  I caught one hardball, and it hurt my hand.  Being the softee that I was, I got the teachers to let me play softball with the girls.  And even though I played shortstop rather than catcher, I always wore the big catcher’s mitt so that the ball wouldn’t hurt my hand.                    

No one ever showed signs that my playing with the girls and wearing a big catcher’s mitt was strange.  All seemed to accept it.  I never had a negative comment from a boy.  Maybe they didn’t want me with them since I was so poor at all sports.  I was the brightest kid in class, however, and maybe this commanded respect somehow.

By the time I got to High School, I was very handsome.  Girls loved me.  I knew girls who attended various high schools in the area, and some invited me to their prom dances.  I attended 4 proms as an 11^th grader, and 3 proms as a 12^th grader.   Even though I was handsome, popular, and went to many events with many girls, I never kissed a single girl during all of my high school years.  All of my friends were enjoying love, even enjoying sex.  I just reveled in being good looking and being popular which caused girls to want to be with me.  Friendship and support was all I wanted. 

Our home was out in the country.  Our nearest neighbor was more than a block away. Bonnie, an absolutely gorgeous girl, lived a half mile away.  Throughout high school, whenever I had free time, I would go down to spend time with Bonnie.  We had a great friendship, and I do believe she was in love with me.  She had a friend who lived some miles away, who didn’t have anything pretty about her.  She was simply unattractive.  But when important events came up, I would call on my older brother to escort Bonnie, and I would escort her not-good-looking friend. I’ve never been able to explain why I did that.  I now think it may have been a way to keep Bonnie at bay, so I wouldn’t have to kiss her.  

I was in love with Tommy Gagnie.  I had been in love with him since 8^th grade.  In our senior year, his parents—likely because they knew he was gay—took us on a short trip to Palm Springs.  We touched lovingly and sexually while swimming in the pool, but then slept in the same bed without touching each other.  Religion had little to do with this.  It was the 1950s.  We simply did not know of any “next steps.”  We had never heard any mention of man-with-man sex, let alone how to engage in it.

As Catholic high school kids, we knew nothing about gay life, or what it meant to be gay.  There was no discussion whatsoever.  I didn’t know I was gay.  I didn’t even know what gay meant.  I was a softee.  I was in love with boys, but in secret. I thought that was normal. I didn’t know how different I was.

But I was so terribly different.  High school friends I knew were having sex with girls.  Girls were getting pregnant.  One girl took on the football team while lying on the fender of a car.

By my senior year of high school, I was beginning to develop negative feelings about marriage.  To me, the idea of sex with girls seemed dirty and ugly.  Actually, repulsive, abhorrent.  I wanted no part of it.  I knew I had to get away from being forced to marry.

It was also the time of the Viet Nam war.  One could get drafted.  Although many of my straight friends felt it was an honor and a duty to go to war, I would rather have died than go to war.  Looking back on that now, I see it as a major distinction between myself as a homosexual and my straight friends.  What a difference in personalities.  What a difference in what is important in life.  What a difference in what one would give his life for.  I wanted to live a iife of service.  My daring, more domineering, straight friends were willing to die for their country.

In addition to my need to escape married-life-sex and to escape being drafted, I honestly did feel called by God to join the Catholic Religious Order of Teaching Brothers who taught me for four years at Notre Dame High School–the Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross.  Three days after high school graduation, I was on a train that eventually got me to a monastery in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, where I spent the next year in silence, prayer, and learning.

After that year of training, the Brothers took one-year vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and headed off for college.  They renewed these one-year vows for three or more years, and when they felt ready, they made vows for life. 

I felt ready for perpetual vows during my third year.  I invited my parents to come back to Notre Dame University for the ceremony.  On the night before it, they took me out to dinner.  On the way back to the Brother’s Residence, my mother said, “Honey, are you sure that you don’t want to come home with us and marry some girl there?”  I said “No, I really do want to live my life as a Brother.”  There was a long, long pause.  Then she said, “Honey, are you sure you don’t want to come home with us and to be with some guy there?”    I couldn’t believe my ears.  “Yes!!” I wanted to scream.  “Yes, yes, yes, forever yes!!!” I wanted to scream with all of my being.  This was my parents, knowing the real me, and wanting to save the real me from possibly making a mistake.  This was the acceptance from my parents that I had been wanting for years.

But it was too late. It was only hours before I would pronounce my vows for life before a thousand people in the basilica at Notre Dame University.  There was no way to change things.  No way out.

That night, God and I spent a long time together.  By the time I fell asleep, I felt we firmly agreed that at the ceremony I would voice my vows good and loud like the other Brothers, and that I would do everything I could to live this life faithfully, contributing everything in my power to its mission.  But, if I ever had to leave, I would walk away knowing I was 100% free to do so.   That time didn’t come for 16 years. 

From the time I was a little boy, I had terrible migraine headaches.  By high school, these were coming three or four days a week.  They continued until I was 30 when a doctor convinced me that I was gay.  Since that appointment, I have never had a single migraine headache.

When I left the Religious Order in 1972, I was fully aware that I was gay.  I was only attracted to men.  By now, the world knew about gays.  There were gay bars, gay theaters, live gay shows, gay picture magazines.  But gays were also ostracized, brutally beaten, murdered, and pushed enough that they committed suicide.   Once Rome released me from my vows, I was free to be me.  I wanted the gay life for myself. I went a few times to gay bars, theaters, and live shows, BUT I was then teaching religion at the Catholic Chaminade University.  I couldn’t afford to be known as gay.

I finally met the wonderful woman who would become my wife of 43 years.  She and I went together for eight years before marrying because I didn’t want to make a commitment that would keep me from living the gay life if and when it might be possible in the future.  Doris knew I was gay.  Over those eight years, I did fall in love with her.  And once married, that love grew to be fathomless.   We thought much alike, enjoyed the same things, and wanted the same things, perhaps because, as noted in paragraph 6 above, gay men and heterosexual women have similar brain organization and functioning, and are more alike in neural correlates.  Amazingly, perhaps because my gay nature didn’t seek to dominate, in our 43 years of marriage, we never had an argument.   Our sex life was normal in the early years, but waned and became non-existent in later years.

After Doris’ passing, there was nothing to keep me from finally coming out of the closet, except that I was 83.

I count it as one of the very greatest blessings of my life that a man was attracted to me.  Lying next to another man, feeling his body against my skin, the touch of his body against mine from head to toe, was, and is, the greatest experience in life.  My soul screams, “I’m holding another man!!!  This is what I have wanted all of my life. This is what I was created for.”  And it is.  And this is just the beginning of male-with-male sexual experience.  It’s joyous.

I thank God again and again each day for making me gay.  The gay man is one of God’s most beautiful creations—so many are sensitive, loving, brilliant, active, tender, caring for others, and accomplish so much.  Israel’s King David,^[iii] Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,^[iv]  Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale,^[v] Abraham Lincoln,^[vi] Mahatma Gandhi,^[vii] and John F. Kennedy^[viii] were all gay or bisexual.  

Clearly, from my pre-age-of-reason gay activities, all the way through my life, my entire nature has shown itself to be non-heterosexual.  There is a third gender among humans: male, female, and my gender, homosexual.  We truly are different from heterosexual males and females, and we are born as such.  God created us as homosexuals.  Churches must now change their teaching or rightly be accused of lying to members, and causing tremendous, terrible, and widespread harm.

Readers of this article may also be interested in my easy-to-read, nine-page paper titled, “The Bible Does NOT, ANYWHERE Condemn The Loving Togetherness and Sexual Union of Ordinary Homosexuals and Bisexuals.”  It is found on this site and at https://a-fresh-look-at-homosexuality-in-the-bible.com/NoCondemnations.  

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