God's in His Heaven

DEPICTION OF homosexuality has always had a subtle power that both offends and appeals to us. The etiquette of today's moral liberalism forbids any judgements against gays and lesbians, but prejudice and fear linger. These doubts are more than relies from a barbaric and intolerant past, but the expression of an all-too-real hostility among the majority of people who cannot help but see homosexual love as aberrent behavior. Still, there is an attraction to homosexuality--most who share in it would call it perverse, while admitting to it nonetheless--the thought of what the other way must feel like, the curious reviling of the opposite sex and almost narcissistic indulgence in the flesh of your own: it can grate on libidos and unhinge nagging emotions of doubt and longing. Straight is cool, of course, but the other path has yet to be explored.

The mystery takes on a different hue for homosexuals, but remains a mystery nonetheless. Many can take their preference without a pang of remorse and guilt; they only have to fear the repression and condescension from a society that targets them for debasement. But many cannot evade the question of why they are what they are. Emotional trauma over the stark facts has always led a few to suicide; others have been instilled with a morbid sense of shame and self-hatred. Moral revisionists will no doubt blame such personal tragedies on the evil influence of society and public opinion in defining attitues and constricting freedom of sexual behavior. Changes in the way society sees gays and lesbians have accompanied the more cosmopolitan viewpoint of a permissive society, but as long as a certain queeziness and homophobia remain its basic response to homosexuality, the question--"Why me?"--will persist in the consciences of many of society's so-called deviants.

The futility of intense soul-searching ultimately turns this guilt to the question of religion--did God create homosexuals as they are? But such an attempt must overcome a hoary stumbling-block of philosophical disputation--the problem of free will versus necessity. A view that sees sexual preferences as determined by the omnipotent creator absolves the guilt and blame attached to homosexuality: all human flesh then fits into the natural order of His creation. But this theological determinism deprives us of our moral worth as human beings--for we have no hand in the choice. Such a different conception of God and the universe removes any chance for the play of earthly powers to intervene in the lives of rational self-willed human beings.

This dilemma seems to be a preoccupation for Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange, his most famous novel written nearly 20 years ago, involves a furious debate on free will that rages behind the grim plot of a state-financed venture to save the soul of an ultra-violent gangleader. In his latest work, Earthly Powers, Burgess continues this debate through the fictional portrayal of a homosexual author obsessed with the question of human will and its relation to religion. Whereas the earlier book depended on its tersely futuristic narrative and frighteningly gruesome story-line for its remarkable success, the moral discussion of Earthly Powers is discursive, slow-moving and profoundly long-winded. But stomaching the more than 600 pages of Burgess's angst unveils a fascinating chronicle of homosexuality, religion and the human condition in this our twentieth century.

Burgess's pert narrator, 81-year-old Kenneth Toomey, is a bestselling novelist and celebrated homosexual, who relates the semen-drenched odyssey of his life--an odyssey which spans more than 60 years, four continents, two World Wars, numerous gay relationships, friendships with the likes of James Joyce and John Maynard Keynes, and the writing of countless novels, plays and screenplays. He had a Pope for an intimate friend and brother-in-law, a beautiful younger sister turned into a cyclops and a lesbian by a stint in a Manhattan art studio, and a grand-niece (or was she a great niece, the 81-year-old was never quite sure) who died in a Jonestown-style massacre of a Children of God cult in California. Catholic exorcism, a medical expedition through British-occupied South India, a head-to-head encounter with the Nazis and their concentration camp abominations are a sample of Toomey's sorties into the world outside his novels and his bedroom.

The thread of Burgess's moral dilemma runs through all episodes and discussions in the book. He sometimes treats the issue overtly as when the intellectuals and churchmen who wander through Toomey's narrative subject the doctrine of free will and the homosexual's place in the kingdom of God to ponderous scrutiny. How can homosexuals and a conception of God coexist in harmony? This is the question the many homosexuals Toomey encounters--antagonists and lovers alike--are continually fretting over. And yet, Burgess's most absorbing and ponderous moral statements do not come from such often-babbling and never conclusive two-cigarette musings by such characters, but rather they come from his dramatic portrayal of the overall human depravity that has marked the twentieth century. He questions whether free will and moral worth can have any real meaning at all in the face of such horrors as the Nazi extermination of the Jews. The spiritual bankruptcy that has turned Toomey's great-niece and 1400 other flower-children into drones eager to be manipulated by a murderous peace-and-granola martinet is a similarly graphic example of the same twentieth-century morality that allowed the Nazi tragedy to take place.

THE INDIVIDUAL WEIGHT of these images and arguments are magnified through Burgess's skillful weaving of the religious and the blasphemous into the tapestry of Toomey's narrative. It proceeds almost as a stream-of-consciousness, rambling through the described decades and countries, but always preserving and highlighting the important contrast between the narrator's prurience and the sanctimonious nature of orthodox religion. Burgess seems to have no purpose other than to offend with the orgies of ejaculation and sodomy that mark parts of Toomey's life; and indeed, fornication emerges throughout the novel as a sort of leitmotif underlying both Toomey's personality and the author's sense of priority. (Burgess could not expect too many readers to know that Mahalingam--the surname of a character who appears in India--means "great penis" in many of the subcontinent's languages. Nonetheless, here it is.)

Still, consistent teleological revelations run throughout the narrative. There is no disjunction in the character of a man who is woken up by his catamite to have an audience with an archbishop. The search for a God who can explain homosexuality while maintaining the propriety accorded to ordinary Christian virtues is carried on all around Toomey. Although he values his sexual freedom and grudgingly places some weight on the Catholic theology he grew up with, Toomey never allows himself to be as obsessed with the reconciliation of faith and fellatio that hounds his homosexual friends and lovers. He recognizes that he did not choose to be what he is, but manages to leave God and morality out of his sexual behavior. Instead, he indulges in a religious pragmatism that governs his behavior in the areas that concern other people. Throughout all, he manages to preserve both his faith and his honor as a human being.

The moral of Burgess's novel is complex, arising as much out of its ponderous style as its weighty discussions. He presents an allegory for the twentieth century human being torn between the earthly powers liberated in the modern world and the spiritual claims to morality that have comprised much of his heritage