Edwin Clark (Toby) Johnson, Ph.D., Catholic monk turned activist,
psychotherapist and spiritual writer, was born in 1945 in San Antonio Texas.
Johnson has been partners with Clifton D. (Kip) Dollar since 1984. Kip, born in
San Antonio in 1959, is younger than Toby by 14 years, a number that's been
significant and "magical" for both of them; the age difference, both believe,
have kept their relationship strong, varied, and vital. Together they operated
the gay and lesbian community bookstore in Austin Texas, a gay bed &
breakfast in Conifer, Colorado, called The House at Peregrine's Perspective, and
a second B & B in Wimberley Texas, called Casa Peregrino. They have been
champions of long-term relationships. Kip and Toby were among the couples
featured in Merle Yost's "When Love Lasts Forever: Male Couples Celebrate
Commitment."
Toby Johnson entered religious life after high school, first as a Marianist
and then as a Servite. After leaving seminary in 1970, he moved to San Francisco
and lived in the Bay Area throughout the 1970s. While a student at the
California Institute of Integral Studies from which he received a master's in
Comparative Religion and a doctorate in Counseling Psychology, Johnson was on
staff at the Mann Ranch Seminars, a Jungian-oriented summer retreat program.
There he befriended religion scholar Joseph Campbell and came to regard himself
"an apostle of Campbell's vision to the gay community."
First as a peer-counselor and then licensed professional, Johnson worked as a
gay-oriented psychotherapist in San Francisco in the mid-70s. As a member of the
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance ("Dykes And Faggots Organized to Defeat
Institutionalized Liberalism") and spokesperson for the Gay Mental Health Task
Force of San Francisco's Health Department, he was instrumental in the adoption
of a Gay Client's Bill of Rights, guaranteeing access to gay or gay-sensitive
health care providers--a notion that, subsequently, had major effects in
AIDS-related services.
In the late-70s, he teamed with Harvard-trained sociologist Toby Marotta in
producing Marotta's books, The Politics of Homosexuality and Sons
of Harvard: Gay Men in the Class of '67, and in working in a
federally-funded ethnographic study of gay teenage prostutition.
In 1981, Johnson returned to his hometown where he practiced as an openly gay
therapist and served as co-chair of the San Antonio Gay Alliance. Toby and
partner Kip Dollar organized Gay Pride celebrations, worked with fledgling AIDS
Foundations, and helped found gay business societies in both San Antonio and
Austin. From 1988 to 1994, Johnson and Dollar ran Liberty Books, the lesbian and
gay community bookstore in Austin. They were the first male couple registered as
domestic partners in Travis County, Texas.
Johnson is author of three autobiographical accounts of spiritual
development: The Myth of the Great Secret: A Search for Meaning in the Face
of Emptiness about his discovering a modern understanding of religion;
In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld about his experiences--and
interpretation of events as a religion scholar--in the study of teenage
prostitution; and The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of
Joseph Campbell Irevised edition) which added substantial anecdotal
material about his mentor.
Toby Johnson is author of three gay novels: Plague: A Novel About
Healing, Secret Matter, and Getting Life in Perspective.
Secret Matter, a sci-fi, romantic comedy about truth-telling and gay
identity featuring a retelling of the Genesis myth with a gay-positive outcome,
won a Lambda Literary Award in 1990 and in 1999 was a nominee to the Gay Lesbian
Science-Fiction Hall of Fame, the first year of the award.
He is also author of Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the
Transformation of Human Consciousness and Gay Perspective: Things Our
Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe. From 1996
to 2003, he was Editor and Publisher of White Crane: A Quarterly Journal of Gay
Men's Spirituality, Johnson's central idea is that as outsiders with
non-gender-polarized perspective homosexuals play an integral role in the
evolution of consciousness--especially regarding the understanding of religion
as myth and metaphor--and that for many homosexuals gay identity is a
transformative ecological, spiritual, and even mystical vocation.
Published Writing:
The Myth of the Great Secret: A Search for Meaning
in the Face of Emptiness (Morrow, 1982)
In Search of God in the
Sexual Underworld (Morrow, 1983)
The Myth of the Great Secret: An
Appreciation of Joseph Campbell (second edition, Celestial Arts,
1992)
Plague: A Novel About Healing (Alyson, 1987)
Secret
Matter (Lavender Press, 1990)
Getting Life in Perspective
(Lavender Press, 1991)
Gay Spirituality (Alyson, 2001)
Gay
Perspective (Alyson 2003)
With Toby Marotta:
The Politics of
Homosexuality (Houghton Mifflin, 1981)
Sons of Harvard: Gay Men in
the Class of '67 (Morrow, 1982)
(This biographical statement was provided by Toby Johnson. Photo credit: Tim Leary.)