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Liberation 2010: We Are More Alike Than Different - A Conversation with Mark Anthony Lord
by Sydney L. Murray
2010 marks a new decade that I believe will be filled with untold progress and promise of what so many of us are creating in our world. It’s a world where we reach out to others in need, where there is no judgment against those who may be different, and where we each commit to being the very best person we can be on a daily basis. We must face our fears, embrace those we love, and never stop living the life we are here on this beautiful Earth to live.
I recently had the chance to speak to Mark Anthony Lord, an inspiring person who has created Liberation 2010. A spiritual conference for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, as well as for their allies and friends, Liberation 2010 will create a space for everyone to come together and freely express the greatness that lives within each of us.
Vision Magazine: What was your inspiration to create the Liberation 2010 conference?
Mark Anthony Lord: When I was finishing ministry school, I had two choices in my mind and my heart: move to Chicago and open the Bodhi Spiritual Center or work in the LGBT world. Through my prayer work and meditation, it became clear that I was supposed to move to Chicago and open the Bodhi Spiritual Center—which I did six years ago. I put the vision of working in the LGBT world on the shelf. About a year and a half ago, it kind of popped off the shelf and landed back in my heart. I can’t deny this thing in me that wants to do this work. My relationship with what I call God and healing my shame around being gay and my own homophobia opened me up to a spiritual life that is so phenomenal. That’s the journey that I’m on and I have the sense that so many LGBT people are on that journey too. It’s a sexy, colorful community. We’re also destructive [and] addicted. Underneath it all, I think we’re very spiritual people. So the vision of the conference came to me as a way to bring this fragmented, beautiful tribe back together for three days and co-create a phenomenal, joyous experience for our sexuality and our spirituality.
VM: Tell me more about the Bodhi Spiritual Center.
MAL: We average about 350 people on a Sunday, but we have a lot more. It’s a pretty loose group of people. We don’t do guilt or obligations. People come when they’re inspired to come. It’s really dynamic and very creative. The Web site is bodhispiritualcenter.org.
What’s beautiful about this community is that it’s so diverse. I think it’s a little microcosm of the new consciousness of what we’re becoming. Sunday mornings in America are the most segregated times of the week in our country. In our community, it’s the opposite. If you look at the audience on Sunday, you see black, white, gay, straight, young and old—all of the people who are ready for a new consciousness.
This is the place where you come and be who you are. We’re not here to judge; we’re here to help reveal who you are. A lot of religions have rules on how to be good, but they’re operating from the external form. Then there’s the guilt and all this “I can’t be good, but I’m tying to be good.” What we teach is that when you’re free of all the layers of guilt, shame and trying to be good, your own inherent goodness will rise up and you’ll start living from that source.
VM: Tell me a little bit about your background. I know you trained to be a minister, but who else is Mark Anthony Lord?
MAL: I am an irreverent reverend. I was raised Catholic. I was a little gay boy who was very artistic and I loved to sing and dance. I was kind of all of the stereotypes and the one who was picked on in the playground. It was a very scary childhood and I think that a lot of LGBT people have post-traumatic stress syndrome. At least I can speak to that in the sense that every day when I was at school, I was afraid of being picked on, laughed at, and possibly beaten up—so you get that hyper-vigilant part of you that is always on guard.
Fortunately, I had a family that was blue collar and very loving. They didn’t know anything about homosexuality—but they didn’t have any judgment about it either. I was accepted for who I was.
When I was about 22 or 23, I started getting into a lot of sex and drugs and had to get into a 12-step recovery. That was when my life really started turning around because I needed a higher power. The 12-steps teach that it’s a spiritual disease and you need a spiritual solution. So I sat there at 25 thinking, I’m going to die if I don’t do something. That’s when my work began of redefining what my higher power was and healing the baggage of growing up Catholic and feeling guilty. I started to read every book, from Shirley MacLaine’s Out On a Limb, to [books by] Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra—everything I could get my hands on.
When I look at my life, I think that there has to be a higher plan. I was raised in Detroit, where if you graduated high school, that was good enough; you just went and worked in a factory. I think that going beyond all that to getting a graduate degree is a gift of being gay—at least for me. It caused me to explore a sense of belonging and wholeness outside of that system I was living in.
VM: Where do you think we stand today regarding the LGBT population in the United States?
MAL: I think that there is a lot more acceptance than what we see on the news. The polls will say that a lot of people really don’t care. It’s really the fundamentalists, the religious right, and the politicians. If you really sit down with people, a lot of us want to just let people live and be who they are. There is enormous sexual shame in America—the puritanical vein that runs through our sexuality. Live and let live is a great step, but the next level is getting to a place of appreciation, curiosity, and support. It’s one thing to say, “Transgenders are fine and I don’t care if you’re transgender,” but it’s another thing to say, “Tell me about it, I’m curious.” We keep our curiosity at bay because we don’t want to offend. We’re so trained to be politically correct, but our curiosity is where we’re going to delve into each other’s stories and create a better sense of connection.
VM: Why do you think that there is so much fear surrounding the LGBT sector of our society?
MAL: Our systems are homophobic: our school system, our government, and our church system. Since the 80s, churches have been coming out and being gay-affirming—but it’s not been even 50 years of people really starting to have this conversation.
Here’s the deeper thing. Fear. All homophobia is fear. That’s all it is. Homophobia is an idea and fear found something to attach to. It’s women, it’s minorities—anything that fear can tag onto so that people can project their own fears outside themselves and point at someone else. Then they feel okay in the moment. It’s a false security, because they’re just projecting their own sense of unworthiness. Currently, what’s risen up in consciousness is that it’s time to address homophobia. That’s why we’re having marriage laws and facing those issues.
VM: How do you think we can begin to address the discriminatory practices and attitudes towards the LGBT population?
MAL: This is where the conference is so important; it’s about bringing the LGBT people together to provide a space with love. If you have a sense inside that there is something wrong with you for being a woman, and if I make a negative comment about women, you’re going to get triggered. But if you don’t have that belief and you have a sense of wholeness, when someone makes a comment, you may not like it, but you’ll be able to help out and educate—or if you’re really spiritually sound, you’ll realize that this person is just afraid right now.
The focus of the conference is getting LGBT population, family and friends together. [It’s] getting to that sense of wholeness, that vibration of love and inclusion so that when we go back out into the world, we don’t react and attack back, but we educate and include. When Martin Luther King and his followers went out and marched, they would pray for the people they were marching against. He knew that they were trapped in racism—they were trapped in hell. He knew he was one with them. That’s the kind of consciousness I want to develop. At Liberation, we’ll be doing a lot of forgiveness work. We’ll have an afternoon experience when everyone is going to co-create a declaration to the world from us. We’re done playing the attack game. That consciousness really starts to create change. LGBT people everywhere are going to start feeling better about themselves and that’s going to ripple into families, churches, and friends. We’re not like any other minority. We’re every race, we’re every age, and we’re in every village. It’s unique in that you can’t detect it because it’s everywhere.
VM: Do you believe the world is changing for the better?
MAL: I look at it from two different vantage points. The first is, yes, we’re evolving. Each time one person shifts in their consciousness and expands in love, we’re getting better. At one point in history, women were not even allowed to vote. Their husbands could beat them and the courts would say that she’s his property. So we can say that we’ve come a long way and that humanity is waking up.
If we wait for the world “out there” to change, our lives are going to come and go. Ultimately, the evolution of humanity is going to take place within individuals. It’s when you and I say, “I’m not going to be a victim to the world’s beliefs. I’m done playing the game. I’m stepping off the roller-coaster ride. I’m not buying a ticket. I’m going to be the consciousness that says that I’m responsible for my life and for creating a loving world.” When we step off the ride, that’s the shift that is really needed and I do think that it’s happening.
VM: How do you think the political realm affects the LGBT community?
MAL: It certainly is very strong in that [the politicians] are the ones who are going to ultimately help make the decisions about gay marriage. But very few politicians have been coming out strong for it. I heard on NPR [National Public Radio] that this is the first time that voting for equal rights is being done by the people. That didn’t happen with rights for blacks or women, because the popular vote will always lose. So we count on our government to take care of the minority, to help them move forward and secure equal rights. Why is it going to the popular vote on this issue? If that would have happened in the 60s, do you think that blacks and whites would have ever been able to marry?
I think that a lot of politicians are being wimpy. I assume that they’re playing the game and taking care of their jobs, as opposed to upholding the laws and helping people move forward in consciousness. But I have complete faith that ultimately, all gay people will have the right to marry.
VM: What can people expect from Liberation 2010?
MAL: People can expect to really open up, fall in love with themselves and meet other people that are on the same path. We’ve got phenomenal keynote speakers: August Gold from New York, Byron Katie, Gay Hendricks, and Malidoma Somé, an African shaman who is in America now. He wrote a dissertation about how in his tribe, gay people were revered. They were considered the twin spirits and the gatekeepers to the spiritual world.
We have amazing musicians—all gay artists who are spiritual singers. We’re going to have a big dance Thursday night, a concert Friday night, workshops all day Saturday, and an awesome gala with a phenomenal gay entertainer. So it’s going to be like a big love fest. I want to invite all people to come to this conference. I have no doubt that it’s going to be phenomenal.
For more information on Liberation 2010 at the JW Marriott in Los Angeles April 8-11, 2010, visit liberation2010.com or e-mail info@liberation2010.com.