We are not concerned with which particular form of genitalia are rubbing against which body part—but with the quality of love, of life-sustaining pleasure and deep interconnection, of praise and wonder and celebration of life, that sexual communion can awaken.

What we don’t welcome: coercion, repression, shame, guilt, abuse, power imbalances, sexuality as an arena of violence, power-over or cruelty.

Traditionally, we haven’t had ‘clergy’ in the same sense that other religions do. We’ve said that all of us are ‘clergy’ — spiritual authorities charged with maintaining and perpetuating our tradition. But as we have grown in the last decades, we do now have some people who take on much more responsibility for personal development, teaching, leading rituals and organizing.

We welcome people of all sexual persuasions in roles of leadership and responsibility. Gay/queer/bi and transgender people have made huge contributions in these areas and are a powerful, creative force in our communities.

Reclaiming, the particular tradition of Paganism that I am involved with, has also done much soul-searching and creative reinterpreting of some of our imagery and mythology, to make our rituals more open and welcoming to all sexual orientations.

For example, Beltane or Mayday is traditionally celebrated as a fertility festival, and it’s easy to depict that as the union of Goddess and God. But now, in our ritual, we honor fertility in all its forms, along with sexuality, creativity, and community, to broaden our understanding of what these qualities might mean.

We will also perform marriages and bless unions for those who want to make a deeper commitment to each other—regardless of gender.

I live in San Francisco, and I wish that everyone who is in conflict around these issues could have experienced the sheer, mad joy that suffused the whole city during those short weeks when our Mayor, Gavin Newsom, ordered the city to register gay marriages. Everybody — gay, straight or just undecided -- was so happy! Love and romance were like a heady perfume in the air, and the city was suffused with a sense of wonder and possibility.

On this issue, as on others, I would challenge us all to take the positions that further compassion, inclusion and love.

Note: There is a short story for children about Mayday called "The Goddess Blesses All Forms of Love" in my book Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Tradition, cowritten with Anne Hill and Diane Baker. (NY, Bantam, 1998)