SCENEprofiles Interview with 
Justin Tanis
Author of 
Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith 

JETanis@aol.com  
JETjrnyr@aol.com 

Read Justin's article Freedom, Glorious Freedom?

Justin: "I see leather as part of the spiritual experience in the same way that I see breathing, eating, rejoicing, and mourning as part of the spiritual experience, which is to say that all is spiritual. If we reserve our spiritual selves (if we could even separate that out) just for 'spiritual moments,' we miss out on all that is holy all around us, all the time.

"With that as the context, what I am saying in the quote you have above is that there are certain things that can bring us into awareness of all that is holy and expand what we comprehend. There are vast riches and spiritual resources from the world's religions that can help awaken us to spirituality and one common thread from those resources is connecting us with a sense that there is something beyond us. The realization that we are a part of something much larger than we are alone. If you've had the experience (and I hope you have!) of sitting out in a field under the night sky holding someone you love, then perhaps you have felt a sense of just how small you are in comparison with the infinite depths of the universe and how tiny we are in the midst of the Milky Way galaxy. And yet, at the same time, you have a sense of deep connectedness with another person and with the earth itself, and a sense of your importance to yourself and to that other person.

"And in the same way, my experiences with leather have provided me with a way of experiencing myself as a small part of something much larger and have grounded me in my body and in a sense of being cherished and challenged. In scenes, I have both stumbled upon and intentionally gone to places where I see myself floating amongst the stars, feeling that the Universe as so much larger than I am and at the same time feeling everything that is happening to my body, feeling a physical and emotional intensity which stretches my sense of consciousness even while it grounds me in my body and connects me with another person(s). My experiences in my early days of learning also made me feel connected with people past and present who are part of the leather community and I saw myself as a small part of that-new, making a ton of mistakes, grasping for answers and for footing-but at the same time connected. The connectedness gave me hope in the midst of my stumblings and learnings.

"Leather provides a way for some of us (and I limit this because it is not everyone's experience) to bring those spiritual practices into our lives. It reminds us to look around us and see what is holy, and it can provide structure that supports us in living in ways that are compatible with our spiritual beliefs. One thing that is common to most religions on our planet is something that compares to the Golden Rule-that we should treat others as we wish to be treated by them. And I've always thought that was an important spiritual principle. But when I served a Master for whom that was a requirement, where I was expected to fulfill this principle on a daily basis and was held accountable for my actions, I began to live it in a whole new way. Every encounter I had with every person was determined and judged based on that principle and so I began to think how I would want to be treated if I were the store clerk, the mechanic, my boss, a lover, the Master and so on. I began to genuinely live my way into fulfilling that principle to the best of my ability. So leather gave me a way to embody a spiritual principle in a concrete, real life way and to see God's presence in the lives and faces of people that I encountered in every day life. Which helped me to experience a sense of the holy in everyone and everything, bringing us back to where we started with this question."

Justin: "Yes, I am referring in the quote above to my experiences being owned by a Master, serving as his boy. Spending time thinking through exactly how to create a situation in which the Master is comfortable, has everything that he may need, and can experience pleasure requires me to put aside my self-centered desires and devote my energy to someone else's needs and desires. In a world where people still say 'you gotta look out for #1' and the like, it is a radical thing to put someone else's needs ahead of our own and I have found it to be the most spiritually grounding and rewarding experience of my life. I was at IML one year, serving a Top, and spent about three or four hours holding, and replenishing as needed, a bottle of water and a glass of beer. That's all I did. And that is one of the moments of my life that I remember as truly and utterly content, which may sound mundane or even boring to some people, but was very fulfilling to me.

"Service is its own joy, which is difficult to explain, I think, to people for whom it is not that joy. It is a puzzle to solve, a challenge to do gracefully, a way of easing a Master's path, a delight to do well, a way to completely love with my whole body, spirit, and mind. It is the most wonderful thing I can do with my time, my life, my self. When I don't have that opportunity, something feels lacking in my life and, like now, I go in search of people to whom I can give that gift of myself, both in a leather context and more broadly through volunteer work and community service.

"My philosophical approach to BDSM? It should be life-giving, life-affirming, life-enhancing. At its best, it calls us to be our highest, deepest, most loving, compassionate, alive selves. Walt Whitman wrote of 'life immense in passion, pulse and power.' That is what I strive for and SM is part of what makes life like that for me. It is also important to me that we claim the goodness of our bodies and our right to explore, to stretch, to experience everything that we can in our bodies. The same is true of our minds and spirits. And in all of those areas, BDSM can provide us with channels to do that exploration and liberation of our selves.

"I also believe that we need to honor those who have created the opportunities and communities that we now have. There are elders in our community who have been speaking of the need to affirm values, ensure the safety of our community, live with respect for one another… we need to listen. We need to recognize their extraordinary generosity in sharing their ideas, visions and dreams for our future; I fear that too often we take them for granted without giving back to them, at the very least, our respect. I have been so blessed to have the opportunity to learn from mentors in this community-they have shaped who I am and certainly how I see leather and life, and so the ideas that I share here are also the things that I have learned and cherish from them."

Sadie: As a submissive, do you ever have challenges with reconciling this with being a minister? I see the serving part in the role, but it can be difficult to be a leader and a submissive at the same time. This was certainly true for me, at least on the public level.

Justin: "No, I don't think there is a conflict or challenge between the two. I agree with you about the service aspect; certainly the motivation for this can arise from the same place. But submission is not at all the same thing as being a doormat. My service to a Master, to God, to myself, should include the greatest competence that I can muster for every task. I should give my very best leadership, public speaking, facilitating, caring self to life, to God, to a Master who might own me. As an introvert, I actually find it easier to be a leader when I know that I am doing it for a Master. Focusing on doing it for him makes it easier for me to step forward in public in a strong way. Submission, for me, means bringing all that I am and all that I can do to someone's, or God's, service; it is about putting that power to use according to the will and authority of the Master, not about not having power."

Justin: "People of Leather Among You is probably the largest affinity group within Metropolitan Community Churches. Our founder, Troy Perry, was interviewed in the 2001 Folsom Street Fair program and has a chapter in Mark Thompson's wonderful book Leatherfolk if your readers would like more background about that. There have been leatherfolk in MCC throughout our history and in many of our churches. One of MCC's greatest strengths is that we have people from many different spiritual perspectives-from radical to very conservative-so we have a wide range of people who will have their own spiritual reasons for being part of a Christian church. I would venture a guess that MCC speaks to this particular group of people because it is in MCC that they are free to pursue a spirituality that feels right to them without (or with less) of a judgment than they would experience in other communities of faith and because their personal spiritual practice is strengthened through participation in a community."

Justin: "Although I've organized programs on leather and spirituality at other events, this is the first time that I was invited to speak on that topic. I'm not sure if I can say definitively what the most common concerns are, but some of the ones that have arisen are: what is consent, what is the difference between violence and consensually given and received pain, what is the spiritual significance of dominance and submission, and I had several people ask questions about the sexuality of crucifixion, which frankly had not occurred to me.

"What I spoke about at that event was some of what I've addressed above-the leather has been for me an avenue of spiritual awakening and spiritual growth. It is where I learned to embody my spiritual principles in a new and vibrant way, which awakened a different level of faith within me."

Justin: "Do we find or are we found? It seems to me that my life is a continual discovery of the Divine, so I have not found but am finding God. If that sense ever stopped, I think that would mean the end of life. If God is everywhere, as I believe, then I think what you are asking is how did I begin to see God or experience God in that way. But, of course, I don't know because it began before I have memories and perhaps it was even stronger then because I wasn't distracted with all of the things that adults get distracted with that help us to close our eyes to God's presence.

"My experience of faith becoming real for me, not just something that I inherited from my family, probably came about through my connection late in high school and early in college with the peace movement. I was part of a group who went and prayed outside of a nuclear weapons manufacturing plant. Getting down on my knees on that sidewalk brought me to an awareness of God's presence embodied within me that I hadn't had before and showed me the spiritual significance of taking our bodies to places where we need to witness to the power of life. And that experience also made me think very consciously of the lives around this planet that were, and very much are, in jeopardy because of the weapons of mass destruction produced by the US and a number of other countries. And I think you can see the echoes of that embodied faith and sense of connection with a world broader than my own self in the things that I said above about submission and sexuality.

"When I need to remind myself of God's presence and re-connect with my spiritual self, I go out into nature and feel the presence of earth, wind, sun, and water. That can help me be prepared to see God again in the city, in the faces of people, in my own self."

Justin: "I finished my doctorate in May 2002. The school was extremely supportive of having someone out and visible on campus and I found it a very rewarding experience.

"My spiritual philosophy, I think, has been mostly described already. Central to my spirituality are love and grace … my faith calls me to give and receive love, to give and receive grace, and to move through the world with compassion."

Justin: "People over the last two millennia have found resources for liberation in the message of Christianity. People have also found ways of oppressing others using the language and dogma of Christianity. The clearest explanation that I've seen of the liberating principles of Christianity is found in Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited, which he wrote in the 1950’s and is profoundly true today. If this is something your readers want to learn more about, I would highly recommend that they start with this book. People may also want to read Bob Goss' books, Jesus Acted Up and Queering Christ, which explore this topic from a GLBT perspective.

"Over and over in the Bible there are stories of liberation and passages that emphasize the saving grace of God and God's deep love for humanity. Jesus' teachings call us to a radical new world where the first are last and the last are first, where people are judged by the love and care that they give to others, not by who they love. If we followed the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, our world would be a dramatically different place.

"For leatherfolk, there are stories that emphasize our values of service, respect, and love. The story of the Good Samaritan-a man walking down the road who stops and helps an injured stranger when the 'upright' citizens of the community walked on by-provides a model for us of selfless service, of reaching out to someone in need, simply because he was in need. The story of the Prodigal Son-a daddy who lovingly welcomes his boy home, regardless of whatever foolish thing he might have done-speaks to us about the kind of unconditional love we can have for one another. The story of the unnamed woman who bathes Jesus' feet-using her very body and all of her resources for the comfort of another-shows the embodied love and passion that we can bring to another human being."

Justin: "The various writers of the Bible lived in times that understood sexuality and gender in very different ways than we do now. It is both difficult and unfair to fit modern concepts into passages that were intended to communicate something very different, although there are some parallels we can make. Because it is a fairly lengthy discussion, I would refer folks who are interested in learning more about this to the information available on MCC's webpage, www.mccchurch.org, or in the excellent books on the subject, including Virginia Mollenkott's Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? and Ken Stone's recent book

"The prophet Isaiah talks about the widening of the dominion of God. He says that God will grant to eunuchs and to barren women (both classes of people in ancient times who were defined by their sexuality and gender in ways that are the closest parallel to modern queer people) an everlasting name, better than sons and daughters. Isaiah also prophesies that many peoples will come together on the mountain of God, that peace shall be proclaimed, that the hungry will be fed. Jesus emphasizes that loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves are what is required of us; not what our gender is, how or who we love, what race or nation we belong to. All of these are liberating principles that can lift us beyond homophobic parochialism."

Sadie: I've been reading Mark Thompson’s interview with Purusha Larkin (in Mark’s book LeatherFolk) and Purusha said something I thought you might be able to explain to me. He said "The Judeo-Christian myth is basically a homoerotic myth, and that's why gay people are attracted to it, often very early. This is why so many of them are in the ministry; Jesus was an androgyne consciousness." First I don't understand what "Judeo-Christian myth is basically a homoerotic myth" means. I'm not Christian so that might be part of it. Also I wonder if you agree with his take on things? If so, how come? If not, why not?

Justin: "First of all, I don't think that Judeo-Christian is a particularly helpful term because it furthers the, I believe, incorrect assumption that Christians really understand what it means to have been born out of the Jewish tradition, and it lumps together two religions which have a common heritage but now 2,000+ years of different responses to that heritage, with Judaism, of course, linked much more closely with that heritage. And therefore, the ‘Judeo-Christian myth’ isn't a single myth.

"In this passage, he’s referring to his own experiences of falling in love with Jesus of Nazareth whom he encounters while reading the Bible and realized that that Jesus is quite different than the Jesus that the church often proclaims.

"Some people believe that the love between God the Father and God the Son is a homoerotic union. To my mind, this concept requires us to project too much of human gender and human desire onto God. I believe that God is all genders and experiences all ways of loving, which I think he is also implying with God as an androgyne consciousness. To me, affirming as holy the variety of human desire and the freedom of gender and sexual expression, simply because they are and have been created and blessed by God, is more helpful than trying to make God into something that looks and sounds like we are. But there are many ways of looking at all of these questions; there is no single answer.

"There are many reasons that people choose the ministry. For many centuries, ministry was one of the only accessible ways out of compulsory heterosexuality and queer people of various sorts chose it for that reason. People may choose ministry thinking that their service to God will somehow blot out what they perceive to be the sin of their desires and needs and then come to realize that God loves them as they are, not because of any action but simply by being the person God created them to be."

Justin: "That labels never accurately define a person… I am those things and more than those things and I think that there are other characteristics that are more important for people to know about me. I think it is more important to know that I strive to love with my whole heart, that service is central to my personhood and to my happiness, that integrity is a core value of mine, that, at my best, I do all that I can to look at the world with compassion and hope and that I honor those who have walked this path before me. I am who I am and will be who I will be. And it was good enough for the Divine to speak those words from a burning bush; they are certainly sufficient to express my identity.

"My journey to affirm myself as a man has been a powerful experience for me; I am comfortable with my masculinity and with my body in ways that seemed impossible to achieve earlier in my life.

"Incidentally, I rarely, if ever, use the word Christian to define myself because it has become synonymous with prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I realize, in theory, that to define myself that way might give a broader definition to the word, but I just can't stomach it."

Sadie: A question that came up for me when interviewing another gay leatherman. We were talking about the transgendered community and how it is usually attached to the gay community. He commented that he didn't have any gender issues, and he didn't get what being transgendered has to do with being gay. I don't think he was criticizing the transgendered community so much as not getting this. Can you respond to that?

Justin: "In some ways, gender and sexual orientation are quite distinct. Gender identity is about who we understand ourselves to be and what gender is true for us. Sexual orientation is about our desire and how we relate to others. But there are some important overlapping issues. For starters, little boys don't get called sissy on the playground because they are holding hands with other little boys. They get called sissy because they act in ways the society deems appropriate only for little girls. Dykes have been queer-bashed because men perceive them as too masculine. In addition, trans and gay issues are interlinked, I believe, in that both are about the freedom and the right to live out our God-given identities exactly as we determine them to be. We should have the absolute right to live, love and express ourselves however we wish with consenting adults."

Justin: "Transgendered people have responded to an inward knowledge about ourselves and have faithfully answered that call, regardless of what others have told us we must be. That is a spiritually powerful position. My book explores both what things have been spiritual barriers in knowing and loving ourselves as we are as well as what spiritual resources there are that can help us to grow into our full and healthy selves. The book is titled, Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry and Communities of Faith, and will be published by Pilgrim Press (www.pilgrimpress.com); the book is more accessible and less academic than the title may make it sound. It will be available in May 2003."

Justin: "In my opinion, Rev. Steen was faithful to her calling and yet the church that she has served was not faithful to her. I had hoped that she would be welcomed back; and I am realistic enough to recognize that the chances of that hope being fulfilled were small. But the Berlin wall fell … movements forward do happen.

"Transgendered people, like other queer people, are challenging because we upset the comfortable notions of the status quo. We show that two boxes and sets of labels are never enough to describe the wonderful diversity with which the Creator blessed the world. That frightens some people.

"The mainline churches are having a nervous breakdown around the issue of sexual orientation (and I fear will have a parallel response in terms of gender identity) and the conservative churches have rushed to condemn and harm people who are different, in terms of sexuality and gender, in our society. I think that a central reason for those things is a fear of sexuality and of bodies. People are afraid of the creative and creating power that sexuality can have in our lives. They are afraid of the power of passion and so seek to tame, control or limit it. Queer bodies and lives raise the issue of passion and sex in ways that are unavoidable and therefore threatening. The only way to address it that I see is to continue to affirm the goodness of the body, the wonder of sexuality and the freedom that comes when we define ourselves, rather than let ourselves be defined by others."

Justin: "In addition to what I've outlined above, I also emphasize that no one should be able to define or limit your experience and contact with the Holy, that each person should always be free to connect with the Divine in the ways that are right for him or her. In the same way, we should be free to live in our bodies in the ways that are right for each one of us-we should be free to dress in the ways that make us feel gratified and proud, whether we put on leather or a suit or jeans. We should be free to change or modify our bodies-through tattoos and piercings or with surgery and hormones-and take full responsibility for the outcomes and impact of our choices."

Justin: "Nope. Thanks for asking."

Justin: "You're welcome."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn , Vermont 's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications