Spirit in Action

Peterson Toscano's Healing Work: From Ex-gay Survivors to Everyone

Peterson Toscano first appeared on Spirit In Action in 2007, talking about his work to support and heal ex-gay survivors, men who, like him, spent years trying to be cured from being gay, and being seriously, sometimes lethally injured by that treatment. I then observed Peterson as he dove deeply into Biblical study around non-conforming sexual roles, in the Bible, and transforming ways of seeing the lessons of that book.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 02 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat and each week we bring you visits and conversations with people doing healing work for this world, hearing what they're doing and what inspires them and supports them in doing it. Welcome to Spirit in Action. [Music] I am so very pleased to have as my guest today for Spirit in Action the talented, insightful, creative, and joyful Peterson Tuscano. I first got to know Peterson in 2007 when I interviewed him about his work to support and heal ex-gay survivors. The men who, like him, spent years trying to be cured from being gay and ended up being seriously almost lethally injured by that treatment. I observed Peterson as he dove deeply into biblical study around non-conforming sex roles in the Bible and transforming ways of seeing the lessons of that book. Finally, since 2012 I've seen Peterson's dedicated and creative work on climate change and I've been delighted to feature his podcast contents on Spirit in Action quarterly to enlarge his listenership and enrich the ears, hearts, and souls of my listeners. Peterson currently produces programs for Citizens Climate Radio, Climate Changed, Quakers Today, The Seed, and other programs. There's a longer uncut version of the show on northernspiritradio.org and I hope you'll get the full scoop there. Thanks by the way to Andrew Janssen for production assistance on today's show. Right now we go to my in-person interview with Peterson Tuscano on the campus of Haverford College just outside of Philadelphia, PA. Peterson, what a delight to have you here today for Spirit in Action. It's great to see you face-to-face and not just email-to-email or phone-to-phone. We've been doing so much of that for many years now. On Spirit in Action we've been featuring Citizens Climate Radio for five, six years, something like that. Also the work that you're doing with climate changed, the BTS Center, we've occasionally slipped in some other things, bubble and squeak and all that, but it all started back in 2007 in River Falls, Wisconsin when I sat down and interviewed you because Bonnie Tinker said I had to get to know you. You said you were thinking about Bonnie this past week? Yeah Bonnie Tinker, she was an activist for many years. In fact there's a famous Supreme Court case that her family was involved with because they refused to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I think that's the correct case and it went all the way to the Supreme Court as Tinker versus something. So even as like a young person she was engaged in activism. She was an incredible peace activist, anti-war activist. In later in life she formed the really pissed-off grannies during the George W. Bush administration where as little lady grannies they would do pretty amazing and daring feats of activism. My favorite is when they went to a hotel where there's a restaurant but Donald Rumsfeld was also going to speak. So they went in their granny garb with all of these gifts for someone whose birthday they were celebrating but at the key moment they opened up all the gifts and it was all these props to do a citizen's arrest of Donald Rumsfeld with giant handcuffs and posters and things like that. So she was very involved in that. She was very involved with Love Makes a Family to a fight for LGBTQ rights, particularly marriage rights and others. But I loved how she artfully used theater and play in her activism and I learned a lot from her when you know we did a tour together in in Oregon and I just I just found her so delightful and I was thinking about her today because she died tragically at an FGC gathering in Blacksburg, Virginia. She was an avid bike rider and there she was riding on the campus and was struck by a vehicle, a truck and died and it was devastating for those of us there. But I remember she was also a polarizing character because I don't think you can be a good activist if you don't push people's buttons and sometimes it means that people find you really annoying and I think that's part of the job of a profit and an activist. Not that you're trying to be annoying but you just can't help it because you've got this fire that you need to put out in the world and sometimes people get burnt. Do people consider you that way? I don't think so. You know I'm always quite surprised because I'm super active on social media which can be an incredibly toxic place and I never get pushed back which is so weird because I talk about gay stuff, I talk about alternative readings of the Bible and I'm talking about climate change. It's like you're asking for trouble. Yet I don't get it. I'm on TikTok all the time and I just mostly get positive responses. I think it's partly because of tone. I have a disarming tone. I use comedy. I'm self-deprecating at times. I try to be thoughtful about things and whenever I do get some sort of pushback I'm often super curious about what this person is really trying to say. So I'm sure I annoy people, particularly my husband and other people in my life with all kinds of things but I think as an activist my tools are such that they're more disarming than alarming. Are those tools that you grew up with or did you developed? That's a good question. Comedy definitely was always a part of my life. I was a class clown. My mom loves to tell some story about how one day the neighbors across the street were having a party and I was hanging out there. I was in kindergarten and I was there for a long time so my mom finally went over. It was an adult party. It wasn't kids party. Went over to say like I'm sorry if our kids bother you and all the adults are sitting there in the living room and I'm apparently entertaining them and they said no no no it's fun. It's great. He's giving us a great time. I don't have any memory of that but that is in the family lore. Comedy was always really important to me and I think also I'm an introvert. I'm a very extroverted entertainer performer but I'm actually very quiet and you know and reserved in many ways and I think that's an excellent combination for comics often because it gives us a sensitivity to the world that doesn't always come through in comedy. I mean comedy can be harmful. It can be violent. It can make light of very serious situations. It also can shed light on important issues and I think that the shyness, the introversion, mixed with this desire to entertain people has worked as a really good combination for me. My knowledge of the world though was very limited and so as I've grown in understanding systems of oppression and ways that people are being harmed by society that obviously altered my message but the technique of using comedy to help relax people, to help them see an issue in a fresh light that's kind of been the hallmark of the work that I've been doing since 2003 as a performance artist. So when I first interviewed you in 2007 doing time in the Nomo Homo house, did I get that right? Almost doing time in the Homo Nomo halfway house. Halfway house, yes, okay. I didn't think there was any halfway about it but that kind of comedy insight and it's not just comedy laugh at it. It's comedy feel something within me and make a change in my life because I see things differently than good comedy should do that for us of course. I interviewed you about that and other work that you did. I think a re-education of George W. Bush. No president left behind. Yes. You stopped doing those things and of course I loved them. So why did you leave that? It's been a strange thing but when I started doing this play, doing time in the Homo Nomo halfway house, how I survived the X-Gay movement, it really was public witness about trauma and harm and abuse that came from people who thought they were helping me. There were in many ways well-meaning Christians who wanted to have a compassionate approach towards homosexuals as we were most commonly referred to back in those days in the 80s and the 90s. So they set up these programs and treatments to try to cure us so that we could reap the benefits of being straight and in their minds that also meant being closer to God and going to heaven. Although their hearts were in the right place, their theology wasn't and they didn't know what they were doing. They weren't trained therapists. So many of us were terribly harmed, psychologically, emotionally, all kinds of ways. But people didn't know about this that it was happening or if they did, they thought it was a big joke. Oh, how stupid these people think they can change others. These people think they can change. But what was missing was, no, this is something, if you get through it, you're a survivor. It is like abuse. So that's when I began to tell stories about my 17 years in conversion therapy and it's not funny. It's not a funny story but it's ridiculous at the same time. So there's a lot of humor in it. But at that time, I almost like was negotiating with God. I had just become a Quaker right about that time. I had this moment in my little apartment in Hartford, Connecticut where it was like I had this vision and in the vision, it was just like this idea that some people become public figures for a time when they're seeing they're on the news, they're on television, they're invited to things. And it was almost like Spirit was saying, if you want to be this person, you could be in regards to this issue of conversion therapy. And it wasn't like, do you want to be famous today? I think it's about like being famous for being famous. But it was like, you've got a message. If you want, you can be a public person and present it to the public. And I sat there and I literally saw it in my mind go by on stage, on TV, in newspaper articles, as if it had already happened. But the decision was mine. And I basically sat there and I said, yeah, I'm willing. It was as if downloaded into my brain, the next five steps just appeared. And I just like do this, this, this, but I remember thinking, but I only want to do it for five years. Because I was a teacher. Yeah, I was a teacher at a school that I love teaching at. Actually, I was a support teacher for teachers and for students. It was this great creative job at a school called the Watkinson School in Hartford. And I loved it. And I just wanted to get back to it. But I said, I'll do this for five years. And it blew up. Literally, I went all over the world, was on the Tyra Bank show, Montel Williams, New York Times, speaking to thousands and thousands of people. And we launched a whole movement, the XK survivor movement, that really brought these messages out into the public. So we had then people on Good Morning America and The Today Show. And it was really not a lot of people, but it all came out of my show. And then I connected with people through that show and we created a movement. And about seven people stood up and told their stories. And now, when you say conversion therapy, most people know, oh, that's really harmful. And there are laws in states and countries now as a result that ban that practice. But when the five years was up, I was like, I'm done, right? My time's up. And it was about at the end of that time that I began to see how gay men were being very mean and oppressive towards trans women and towards gay men who were kind of effeminate. And I got so angry because I'm thinking, I didn't just spend nearly 20 years in church inspired oppression of people to land in a rainbow clad version of the same thing. What are we thinking here? And that's when I felt the need to look at the Bible and to explore the stories and lives of people in the Bible who don't conform to traditional gender, gender nonconforming Bible characters. So you didn't start that until well after you've come into the rainbow in the life and you you've outed yourself. Because you've been studying the Bible intensively for 17 years or whatever, right? That's right. And after I came out, I couldn't even go near it for many years because I learned it as a tool of destruction to destroy every part of me that was gay and creative and innovative. So I would read a passage in Psalm that says, the Lord loves the righteous, but he apports wickedness. To me, in my brain, it was God loves the heterosexual, but he appores the homosexual. And I had to renew my whole mind. So there was a long time I couldn't even open a Bible. But when I finally did, I looked at stories because that's where the life is in a story. And I looked at the woman with the issue of blood who had this hemorrhaging problem. And she got into her head if she can just touch the hem of Jesus's garment, she'll be okay. She felt so much shame. She wouldn't touch him because she was an unclean woman in the society. And she literally extracted a healing from him. And that story spoke to me because it thought I thought of all those years of going from therapist to therapist and pastor to pastor, trying to cure myself of a social ill and only getting more depressed and confused. And that story really spoke to me. So then it was, yeah, in 2007, I began working on transfigurations, transgressing gender in the Bible, going to then to seminaries and presenting it and to society for biblical literature, and really engage with other scholars about it. And again, it was about five years. I did that. And then you said this emergence of a whole set of young trans non-binary Bible scholars. And I was like, it's time for me to walk away. They've got it covered. And then I thought, good, it's 2012. I can just go back to teaching. What were you teaching, by the way? I was what was called an infusion teacher. I actually worked with the entire ninth grade faculty and students. And I infused the classroom with better teaching practices. So I helped the teachers become better teachers by building on their strengths and introducing new concepts and ideas. And I taught to the students how to be better learners. So it was this very progressive holistic approach. And I loved it. But in 2012, that's when I had an apocalypse, a revelation about climate change. And so I was like, oh, I guess I guess not back to teaching. Well, take five years to fix climate change. I don't know. So that's been since 2012. I've been working almost exclusively on climate change while also bringing in the Bible and bringing in LGBTQ liberation as well. Trying to reorient my mind here because there's some some changes that I hadn't understood. Of course, I've been witness to all of those changes since 2007. I've watched you go through that. I was at FGC gathering when you spoke, sharing a lot of your stuff. The story I remember best is about the person for the Last Supper who you're going to meet this man carrying water. The whole understanding about that one, because that one I think is very easy to translate to people. It's like, wait a minute, that is such he's walking around in high heels. And he's a drag queen or something. And to understand that Jesus said, that's the person who's going to guide you to this holy last place. That just blew my mind. So I remember at FGC, when you spoke about that, and FGC again, folks were not inside this cabal of Quakers, Friends General Conference. Friends General Conference gathering is where we're present at the moment in Philadelphia, I have referred college. It's a Quaker Jamboree basically. Quaker Jamboree sounds good. And so I witnessed that. And of course, I became aware right away about citizens climate radio. You had certainly been doing media stuff producing your shows and so on, configurations, etc. So maybe you were already learning the technology that you use for CCR. Well, here's a funny story. You don't know about my very sordid wild different lives that I've lived. I feel like I've lived many lives. So while I was trying not to be gay, I was living in New York City, which, by the way, is not an easy place to not be gay. Even if you're not gay, it's just, you know, but I was married to a woman. And I was really on this path to be a straight person. And in the middle of all that, it was not going well about into two years in the marriage. We've talked about this before. I felt so overwhelmed. I thought I was going to take my life for about a week of my life. Then it was around 26. I just imagine jumping in front of a subway every morning because it just felt so impossible. And somehow I got reasoned out of that and thinking my family, in particular, how much it would hurt them. But in the middle of all that, we get this opportunity to go to Zambia as missionaries. And it was because a friend of mine who knew me moved to England, he got to know this billionaire who was at a church. And the billionaire was looking to start a radio station in Zambia that would broadcast in shortwave throughout the entire region to about 100 million listeners. He was trying to find someone to run the radio station. And he talked to lots of radio professionals who were Christians, but he found them to be very bland because they were just so professional about what they did. And my friend in the UK said, well, I have a friend who's really creative. He might be a good person for this, but he doesn't know anything about radio. And I didn't. I mean, I loved radio. So I got the job and my wife and I flew to England. And for three months, I was trained by a BBC professional technician in a special, I mean, this guy was a billionaire, I think I was doing this in a special studio that he built just to train me. And I learned how to do everything to create radio programs, went to Zambia, did that for about a year before my life imploded again. But it was through that I learned all of that. And I had for almost forgotten that I had that skill, you know, podcasting was a big thing. And I was doing loads of YouTube videos since 2004. But when I became convinced I needed to do something about climate change, 2012, took a year off to study climate science and climate communications. And I was like, wait, I know how to do radio production. I should maybe do a podcast, which is called climate stew. And in climate stew, it was really the place for me to work out creative ideas and feelings about climate change. And it was really quirky and off the wall. And I had segments from the future. And I had all kinds of crazy characters, the fun things that I do on my show, but I did a radio version. And it was around climate change. And I began looking asking like, what are queer responses to climate change? And asking these strange questions, nobody listened to the show. I mean, every episode maybe had 20 downloads, half of them were me listening to it over and over again. But it gave me a chance to work out some feelings and ideas. Somebody from Citizens' Climate Lobby heard this show. And they asked me if I would do a show for them, for the organization, because I was a volunteer for the organization. And that's when I started doing Citizens' Climate Radio. And that just cracked open this whole of the world of podcast and radio production, which is now what I do exclusively. I don't perform live anymore, except for two or three shows a year I just kind of do for charity or a special event. But it's all about helping get other voices out through radio and through podcasts. Wow, that's an amazing little transition. So as you've gone from one area of concern to another, I'm pretty clear that when you left the born-again Christian universe, when you left that, there were probably people who did a lot of praying for your soul, right? They were concerned about where you went. And by the way, one of the things that I think I realized that a good many liberals or Quakers even don't realize that Christian community that you were in was intensive and nurturing and wonderful. Very much so. And the considerably less tight bound community of Quakers can actually believe you missing something that was back then when you had people admittedly, in your case, destroying part of you. But at the same time, they were trying to love you as best as they could. I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on that because I really think that the way I think of it is when you're just loving a small group of people, people who look like you, act like you, whatever, you can reach your arms around it. But as your arms get bigger and bigger to try and embrace the entire world, the arms wide open can also be not connected at all. It can feel empty and missing in that hug that we need. So I think that that happens amongst liberals a lot, whereas conservatives can be really concentrated in their love. Anyway, I'm wondering about your perspective having lived in those two universes. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. For one, I've worked really hard not to be to not to be angry and judgmental in a negative way towards the people of my past. For one, because I was part of that world and I did things that now I look back and I shudder. Like I remember I went to Times Square Church in New York City, pastor David Wilkerson, a very famous Pentecostal minister, he put a call out. He said, "There are abortion clinics in this city and here are two addresses I call on the soldiers of God in this congregation to stand in witness and to plead with the women going into those places to not go because they're going to have the blood on their lives for the rest of their lives." Like this very powerful and very horrible message of shame. I was 22 and the next morning I was out there 630 in the morning because they would open up really early so that people can get in early with signs with other people and sometimes just by myself. I thought at the time I was doing something not only holy and righteous but compassionate that I was trying to help someone for making a horrible mistake that they would regret that would have potentially eternal consequences. It was such a violent cruel act but when I look back at my heart my motivation was so much about love and caring and that's how these things could get really mixed up. If people were genuinely angry and hateful that burns out fast but it's really hard when someone really believes they're in the right and they're doing it for the right reason they love the country they love the truth they love the Bible they love the people and they're trying to turn them away from something evil. That's hard to convince them that what they're doing is harming other people and I will never forget that I was that person and that I did not feel hate in my heart. What I was doing was violent and cruel and mean but it didn't feel that way so I remember that whenever I encounter conservatives who are anti-gay or promoting nationalism or all that often these are people who believe they're doing the right thing. Now leaders you know leaders can be very cynical and just kind of use ideas for their own purposes but the people the followers often are sincere. I definitely have felt like an alien in a strange or in a strange world among Quakers because it's not as warm and fuzzy always you know we're very careful about people's boundaries and there's a coolness to Quakers that I didn't find with evangelicals that have like had a much more bigger hospitality if you were within the group obviously there are insiders and outsiders but in those conservative worlds I also was never encouraged in any way to do any serious critical thinking or to raise any objections to anything that was being said and that is one of the powerful things about Quakers is we are very much encouraged to think deeply about things and if we see something wrong to without fear stand up and say I don't think this is correct even if it's different from what everyone in the room has to say and that has been liberating for me. Actually I do see that substantially the way that you see it but I've also seen Quakers be knee jerk there's a Quaker I know I've interviewed her about consistent life her concern is that yeah we as Quakers of course anti-war death penalty we don't support death penalty so many of us are vegetarian they're vegan because we're concerned about life how can we not be concerned about abortion and so she presents that and this is not in terms of this is a shame you've done a horrible thing like abortion but I was at an FGC gathering where she had a display she'd paid for to raise this up and it's consistent life it's holding all these tenants that Quakers are concerned for and people got together a demonstration against her because she shouldn't be able to raise that up and so I'm just saying sometimes we fail on Quaker front to do the deep listening we do a bit knee jerk and it is when we see people getting hurt it's hard not to have that rough reaction. Right I'm glad you brought up that story though because it reminds me of a new project that I've been working on I've met three young conservatives Republicans who are really concerned about climate change through my work with citizens climate lobby it's a bipartisan organization so there are progressives and there are conservatives and I went to the conservative conference just to cover it for citizens climate radio and there I met these very passionate conservatives young conservatives who are very concerned about climate change and looking for practical solutions I learned very quickly there's a lot of topics we cannot talk about in fact what we somehow Malcolm X got mentioned in the conversation don't even know how and this one young conservative from Utah she says oh my gosh I love Malcolm X I was like really I'm a little I just have to say I'm a little surprised what exactly is it about Malcolm X she says well you know Malcolm X he was very pro-gun and I'm pro-gun too I'm like okay it's not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Malcolm X but okay but so I got to know these young people and they wanted to do a podcast about climate change speaking to other young conservatives but they didn't know anything about podcasting they've never done any of it and so they asked for some help just technical advice and training so I mentored them on how to do this their solutions to climate change are totally different from mine and their motivations are completely different but we care about the same thing and it's okay to care about the same thing for different reasons one of them is a very very devout catholic who's very pro-life she's you know anti-death penalty like it's very consistent in her life and for her addressing climate change is for her a matter of life it's a pro-life stance because people are being harmed and killed because of climate change and we can protect lives and I was like if that is your motivation and you got a clear message you're going to reach people who also feel that way so I feel no trouble helping them and assisting them even though many of our political beliefs are very different we're working together for the same thing recognizing there's different ways of getting there and we need everyone engaged particularly conservatives that eloquent voice you're listening to there is peterson tescano his website peterson tescano.com you got any question about spelling just come via northern spirit radio.org you can spell northern spirit radio correctly that's one thing you will not get wrong with so many other names peterson tescano is here for spirit and action because and we've had this collaboration of energy particularly about climate change over the last six seven years at the very minimum and probably before that as well this is spirit in action northern spirit radio production we've been doing this for 19 years now and it's work that comes straight from my heart it fulfills my life and I hope you can help support me in raising up voices of people doing world healing work as peterson tescano is and on my website you'll find my interview with him back from 2007 and other times when i've recorded his voice and shared his messages and so many other wonderful people both for spirit and action and for song of the soul so come to the site please post a comment when you visit please share with your friends and neighbors and people you don't even know yet just share and get the word out because we want to raise up as many good voices of world healing as we can possibly do on my site you can also donate you can donate by sending such a check you can there by paypal on our site do whichever way you can but mainly what i'd like to see you do is in some way make our work sustainable and you can make that work sustainable also by supporting the local community radio stations right now there's some 35 stations across the us that carry our programs please reach out and support them from your hands from your wallet together we've got to do this work many voices together make for strong work so please do join us in that work and we're getting back to talking to peterson who's sitting with us here today at the friends general conference gathering being held at haverford college this is the first day of this gathering here and things are just being ironed out which room we're in getting people out there but we do these interviews at the friends general conference gathering yearly six of them this year so and i have a word to say about northern spirit radio because i that was a very good plug i was reaching for my wallet actually as you were speaking you were speaking so so movingly about it but what i i have personally love about northern spirit radio and spirit in action is that you provide a platform for people to get their messages out to people who may not be looking for that message like i do podcast and when you do a podcast your audience is looking for you and they are specifically typing in i want to listen to this podcast they subscribe to a certain one but there's a lot of people who may want to hear one of my shows but they don't even know it exists so by being on those 35 radio stations when you let me rebroadcast an episode of citizen climate radio or climate change podcast or Quakers today it gives me a reach that i could not possibly have and there's no way to calculate how many people have found my work and my podcast through that but there's got to be because people turn it on anywhere under their car at home and those are people i could never reach so your ministry your work is so important and has been so valuable to me in getting my workout and the people i create podcasts for they're so grateful because it's something i could say well we can maybe even reach some more people it is a labor of love you're doing and i'm going to take up your offer and double my efforts of letting people know what you're doing and how they can support you thank you so much Peterson there's something that came to my mind you went as a missionary again this is still in your born-again Christian phase you're having problems thinking about yourself as gay and trying to extirpate that from your system and you go as a missionary to Africa now my experience of having traveled to Rwanda and to the Congo and Kenya and so on is that these are not places where gays are accepted well i have a feeling that you're going there might have even up the pressure on you even more i think there was more tolerance acceptance in the united states than in some of those societies at least at that point am i wrong well definitely living in New York City i felt i needed to be in a different location because it was not working me trying not to be gay and living in New York City and of course i was married to a woman and felt terrible about infidelity and in times that i was unfaithful to her and that's never good for any marriage but it wasn't just infidelity it was the more i suppressed these desires the more unmanageable they became and i would say the more they became just out of control you know that's the thing there may be things we don't like about ourselves and maybe things that we have to change about ourselves but things that are good about us are just natural if we deny them not only will they potentially become silenced they may morph into like a monster and you know so that you start feeling under out of control and i remember the in the book of uh fusions or the glations where it talks about the fruit of the holy spirit and one of them is self-control and i just felt like the more i press down on those things the less control i had and i don't think it's about like if you're gay or straight or whatever you have to have sex all the time it's not about that it's about integrating who you are with all the different parts and that was psychologically destructive when i refused to do that and i was aided and abetted in that so i believe when i went to Zambia i thought okay great this is a place where it's totally illegal to be gay i have all these constrictions that will keep me on the straight and narrow path but it doesn't work their way as one of my pastures would always say wherever you go there you are and you can't run away from your problems or your questions you've got to face those or else they get bigger and they get misshapen that makes sense to me peterson let's get back to citizens climate radio again 2012 you start making this transition in this direction you're invited by someone from citizens climate lobby and so you start doing this show and again you've passed me contacts and guests of people who've been doing various aspects of this work and it's been so beautiful to see all the fruitful places where you find this growing where you're nurturing it of course with your work you eventually got connected with some people the bts center and this was just last few years this has come on to the scene they're from up in main you're not from main how why what where how did that connection happen because you're putting no small amount of labor into that work yeah well the pandemic had lots of negative aspects to it but some real positive ones it got us to be creative and inventive on how we communicate the bts center used to be the bangor theological seminary and after a hundred years of struggling to stay open they finally shut down they sold up everything and ended up with a ton of money which they then put into an endowment and created the bts center and shortly after that they discerned that their primary objective was to help promote spiritual leadership for climate changed world when the pandemic hit they had to cancel all of their programming that they had in person and begin to do online things and there's an amazing book called rooted in rising which is about religious spiritual approaches to climate change and I have an essay in that anthology and because of that they did a book study of the book and they had me come on and speak about my little essay that I did which I compared the struggle to address the HIV AIDS crisis to the struggle we have today to address climate change and some of the same sort of issues at play a government that refuses to act some people suffering people are afraid and a need for real creativity and they really like that essay and they like my presentation and then from there I just started doing more things for them I do a presentation called a queer response to climate change what would Walt Whitman do and these of course I had to adapt for the internet because I only ever did these in person I did a workshop for them about pursuing our passions in a time of climate change where my messages don't drop everything and take on climate change embrace everything you've been already concerned about and see how those are potentially tools to help us address climate change or passions that need to be pursued even more because in a climate change world those things are affected more so I use the example of LGBTQ youth homelessness and on the streets in America 40 percent of homeless youth are queer kids so they're already vulnerable on nice days they won't go to shelters because they're discriminated against what happens with the extreme heat events that we're getting the extreme weather events what happens to these kids suddenly my concern for them is even more important in a climate change world so I do those things and then they decided they wanted to do a podcast and I said I don't want to be a host on a podcast I'm on enough people I've heard my voice enough but I'll definitely help you produce it and boy they're really committed to excellence incredible guests they had Margaret Wheatley who's a really powerful voice of you know helping people just see the world in fresh new ways and this upcoming season they're going to have very alternative voices that they had not had before you know people from Catholic traditions from even evangelical traditions all people who are concerned about climate change I'm trying to promote spiritual leadership and they're just really great and I'm just grateful again that you will air these episodes as well on spirit and action well I'm grateful for them and as I've said so many times on this program people tell me I have a radio voice I also say I have a radio face which makes it good to be doing radio programs but the fact that I have a voice that works okay for radio is a positive thing but it's really not about me and that's I'm very clear and so many evangelical person the people that we know who are big religious people so much it looks like it's about them I don't want it to be about me I'm very happy to pass this on to other people except I still want to do this work I'm this is work I love I'm 70 so I can be retired theoretically right but who wants to be retired I'm excited there's one complaint I have to hand to the BTS Center of People in the program climate changed and that is that that D at the end of changed is so hard to get in there and it would be very easy for people to miss it so I think it has to be renamed climate change ed climate we just pronounced it that way climate change ed podcast yeah also with citizens climate lobby they love an apostrophe its citizens apostrophe s and I was like please don't give me an apostrophe in a name of a title that people are going to search it's just not going to happen it's an apostrophe would be a catastrophe it would be that's why with Quakers Today podcast I was like I want a very simple straightforward title Quakers Today well let's talk a little bit about Quakers Today this is again I said climate changed podcast citizens climate radio you're busy person and bubble and squeak and all of the rest you add in more stuff so how can you do that and I mean I know part of it was that back during COVID you and Glenn you went to South Africa where he's from originally husband is from there yeah we live there for 18 months so you transition there I guess you can work from whichever computers in front of you but it still seems to me like this is incredible amount of work because you do it to a level of technical competency that makes me feel very inferior and so I'm hoping you're going to apologize to me for that damage you're doing it's not at all I appreciate your work so much but I really think that you put so much time energy and creativity in the work you do I'm amazed not you do one thing that's changed in the past two years is I now insist for all my clients to hire pay for interns to work with me not so much to help me I mean it definitely does help me but also to mentor them in how to do this kind of work it started with citizens climate lobby which still is unable to pay their interns and I'm hoping they'll get a grant or something for that but they have lots of people who want to intern for them in the various things they do they do amazing legislative stuff to put a price on carbon and they asked one time would you want an intern I said I'll consider it I looked at the applications and I chose three I said can I have three because they were just so interesting one was a conservative and I wanted to get that voice onto the show and it's been such a lovely thing because this kind of work is very lonely often you know I get to speak to a guest but that's just 30 minutes sometimes I will spend seven hours just listening to their voice and editing it it gets lonely so I've benefited by having some peers who can also then give me some fresh ideas I get to mentor people and they get to assist me with things so that I can actually do more what I really try to do and I have interns now for Quakers today climate change I also work with Pendle Hill with their podcast the seed I help them with production for that all of them have these interns that now are learning these skills and in some cases after six months they could research record produce an entire episode on their own so they're learning really good skills and many of them are actually not interested in going into podcasting but they say it's helped them so much to improve their communication skills and their writing particularly around climate change which is not an easy thing to talk about and and so I feel like in this part of my life it is very much about teamwork and collaboration and mentoring so that this work can carry on when I'm no longer around but also that the work gets multiplied and other people can start using these skills in lots of ways making short videos audio clips because we do live in a world where people consume a lot of content and a lot of it's junk so why not get more people making good stuff would you be willing if all things considered wanted to take a ten minute bit from your podcast would you be willing to let them broadcast ten minutes of you because you know they've got all kinds of people jumping in with this from that why not yours I mean ten minutes of citizens climate radio if they just put it on there I think would be perfect and there's so many years out there that need to hear that people need to hear really helpful messages about climate change because it is a very difficult issue to wrap our heads around not the science of it not accepting the reality of it but figuring out what the heck do I do with it so yeah I'm scared and I'm overwhelmed and this is real but now what that's what people are looking for because I genuinely believe that we're in a time of great crisis and catastrophe and we're in a time of great purpose where people young and old can really embrace their purpose in the world and many people have already and they can then do it in a bigger way because climate change is a multiplier it's a threat multiplier I hope it's an empathy multiplier as well and so I'm hoping that for people listening that they're not thinking oh climate change oh so solar panels you know oh I'll get it a Prius I'm like I don't care about those things I care that your heart is connected with your community and we recognize we are in hard times and hard times are coming people are being displaced from their homes they need someone to be able to take them in I became a volunteer with the Red Cross because I wanted something practical to do because these things are just going to happen more and more and you listening you have some skills it might be camping or canning or growing or caring for people or just being a great host those are all unbelievably valuable skills in a climate changed world so you've got a part to play in this and you don't have to learn a whole new set of tricks you don't have to drop what you're doing what you're doing is probably very very much needed in our world today I want to step back before we finish this hour together Peterson I want to grab and tie off a couple threads from what you talked about before one was I assume you've been exposed to the idea John Shelby Spong is the one who opened my mind to this the possibility that Paul the apostle that he was a self-hating gay you were immersed in the bible you studied it in depth but one of the things that has been proposed I guess back in 1930s first time was that he was a self-hating gay and so that that was the thorn in his side and that his implications that the best way for men to be was to be celibate but if not then marry a woman that sounds exactly like it could come from a gay man who's trying not to be gay have you been exposed to that idea before absolutely does it fit with you I mean you actually lived part of that message yeah it's so hard to know what I love about that Romans passage where he talks about the thorn in the flesh is that everyone can relate to it I mean everyone has some thorn in their flesh this thing that you're not happy with that you wish it wasn't there that you know they call it the shadow side there's lots of ways of saying this so in a way it's a very powerful passage because it can relate to everybody and definitely as a person struggling trying not to be gay I was like oh my gosh it has to be you know it's so obvious I've this thorn in my flesh what I want to do I don't do the thing that I don't want to do that's what I do it's classic but it's also works with addiction it works with a lot lots of things one thing I think is really interesting Romans one is often used to condemn gay people because it has this litany of things that Paul is railing against and my husband who teaches creative writing who's a really good writer he doesn't know the bible very well but he heard some of us talking about this Romans one passage that's often used as a clobber passage against gays and he said let me have a look at it I was like okay big shot it looks at Romans one and he immediately about 10 minutes later says oh I figured out the problem I was like oh dude did you you just figured out the problem well I can't help a glens brilliant yeah he says yeah it's just that he doesn't have control over his language it just needs some editing it's really unclear what he's saying and so as a result it's ambiguous and so it's being misinterpreted and when you look at the text that way you realize oh yeah this is a very poorly written first draft and that it is bad it's just the language is just bad and it's not coherent and as a result it can be interpreted lots of different ways who knows what he was trying to say but he had no control over his language if he was gay if he was attracted to men he lived in a strange time because this was the it was Rome but it was a Grecian culture with a lot of the things with the the naked running in the gymnasium and there was the baths and and there would be lots of temptations for men who were attracted to men or who were for whatever reason had some hatred of their body of their sexuality he could have very well been someone who was sexually abused as well and some of those same things you know I often hear people accusing homophobes of being secretly homophobic themselves but there are a lot of men who have been sexually abused and don't know what to do with it and they displace that on gay people because it's the closest thing in their mind to what they experience if they were abused by a man again I think Quakers bring this to the table often love and compassion and seeing that of God and everyone and recognizing there's so much more to this story than that and that's what makes the Bible so great too and these stories are very small there's lots left out so it gives room for a lot of imagination and reflection ultimately we're not reading the Bible the Bible is reading us it's so beautiful the way that you deal that obviously and this was the last thing I wanted to tie off the threat I wanted to tie off is there was the period where you were immersed in the Bible and so animated with the love around you and wanting to be that thing for the world then the period where you couldn't even look at the Bible because it reminded you of the hurt the part of you that felt you were unworthy and needed to be killed it didn't know that God loved you as you were right at that moment and you set about with your programs to provide a road to healing for people for gays particular who had been struggling with this you were helping them heal you said after five years you stopped was that because finally you had been healing up other people and you had been healed enough because then you went to the Bible again it's an interesting thing because actually as I was performing the homo no mo halfway house and talking about the experience it actually became harder and harder to do in part because I believe I was I don't know if it was so much healed but so much more aware of the trauma the harm and I found myself being re-traumatized so I actually was on morning edition once Lisa Spiegel interviewed me about conversion therapy and she you know was I think that's her name she did a lot of psychological kind of pieces she sat me down and she wanted me to like reimagine certain situations in my life and it was utterly traumatizing in a way I don't think it would have been five years before because I was so bound up and so unaware but I had grown so like I guess I become so much closer to it and understood it that it made it harder to relive it every night on stage or in an interview so these days I don't talk about it much because I'm much more sensitive than I had been is that healing I guess it is but it wasn't the art that did it it was actually therapy I know that art is therapeutic but for me it didn't replace therapy and it was really important to see trained therapists who really helped me to understand these situations who you know we're experts in helping people and art definitely helped me to make sense of some of it but it was the therapy that really brought the healing and the clarity. Last thing I wanted to ask you about Peterson was five years dealing with this first issue the healing related to accepting ourselves for the sexual people we are five years working on the Bible and finding the alternate voices in the Bible but now it's been 12 years for climate radio and I thought everything was supposed to be in five years or five years too no you know some issues they just it's so important for people who are involved in any kind of passion to know when to stop right because it makes room for other people even if you're the best one well how is anyone going to get better if you don't step aside and it's not that you are giving up on that thing I still care very much about trans issues that's what really motivated me to do the Bible stuff and I do a lot of work around trans issues the trans justice funding project is one of my favorites and I always give money to it raise money for it because they provide money for trans organizations the trans justice funding project and similarly the Bible it comes with me all that comes with me to the climate work so when I'm doing climate work I'm also talking about the lives of LGBTQ people the contributions we can make and the the vulnerabilities that we have I use the Bible to tell stories that can connect to climate change so I don't leave those things with climate change though I have a feeling this is an issue there's no doubt one way or another I'm going to be engaged with this work for the rest of my life because this one's not going away anytime soon and even if public perception changes and we immediately go green which will be it is happening and it's a huge task the effects of climate change are baked in and so we're looking at a generation or two of experiencing freaky or wilder more dangerous extreme weather events and with that needs to come much more community cohesion and love compassion preparation so on a small scale in my community on a larger scale speaking to a larger audience one way or another I can't imagine living on the planet and not being engaged somehow likely in South Africa where we're considering moving permanently oh you're you're gonna move and we're gonna have to talk about six times and again I'm going to be talking to Glenn later this week about some of his writing some of this I'm so grateful to hear of more of the depth of your story of course I knew major pieces of it I'm so wonderful sitting here with you today feeling the size of your love for those close to you and ever bigger circles around the world and including the whole globe so thank you so much for doing that and joining me here today for spirit and action it's been such a pleasure thank you so much more again links for Peterson Tuscano are on my site Peterson Tuscano com has links to everything including the Quakers today dot org cclusa dot org slash radio that's where the citizens climate radio podcasts and climate change podcast dot org we'll see you all next week for spirit in action the theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson check out all things spirit in action on northern spirit radio dot o-r-g guests link stations and a place for your feedback suggestions and support thanks for listening I'm Mark helps me and I hope you find deep roots to support you to grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action. with every voice every song we will move this world home and our lives will feel the echo of our evening