Following World War II when the prisoner of war camps were liberated the Allied forces discovered a phenomenon which was at best perplexing and at worst, seemingly treasonous. Many prisoners seemed to have surrendered more than their bodies to the enemy. They appeared to have forgiven and even defended their captors and in some cases, taken on, in horrifying ways, many of the characteristics of their captors. The phenomenon was initially observed and coined eponymously in Stockholm, Sweden when hostages in a bank robbery began defending their kidnappers and refused to testify against them in trial.

We have now come to understand post traumatic stress disorder as a consequence of terrible life experiences, plane crashes, rape and other traumas to the psyche. This peculiar war phenomenon became known as the Stockholm Syndrome, most famously demonstrated in recent times in the kidnapping and captivity of Patty Hearst who went from Bay Area debutante to automatic weapon-toting, bank-robbing revolutionary under the influence of the Symbionese Liberation Army who had locked her for weeks in a closet and subjected her to rape, verbal abuse and physical deprivation. In a primal attempt at self-preservation and survival, Ms. Hearst became a mirror of her captors, dressing, acting and talking in a parrotic manner so as to say, "See? I'm just like you. So spare me, don't kill me."

It is my suggestion that a variation on this same syndrome can now be seen in the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement and to disastrous effect for all concerned expressed most commonly in the form of "See? We're just like you (we want to be married and have children and we work hard and have mortgages) except for what we do in bed. So don't kill us." This has deep implications for modern gay politics, which extend to psychology, sociology and spirituality. I call it the Sexual Stockholm Syndrome.

In Native American culture, being same-sex-oriented, or "two-spirited," was considered a privileged spiritual state. In many instances, to be a shaman, one had to be two-spirited. Genocidal contact with Western culture and Christianity has made this less prevalent -- or at least observable -- today (genocide has a remarkably efficient chilling effect), but the precedent and the culture is there for all to see.

To have a two-spirited child was considered to be a blessing on a family and the tribe. Children were often identified at infancy, though someone could take on the two-spirit mantle through vision quest or dreams. Many of the greatest chiefs of the great North American nations had "berdache" wives. Berdache were held in the highest esteem, consulted on all matters of importance to the tribe, were taken on hunting and war parties because they were thought to lend a certain civility to the proceedings. In fact, it was this social role that was the mainstay of the two-spirit, berdache existence. Their sexuality (not to mention the sexuality of the men who visited them and sought counsel and comfort from them) was of little if any interest to most, though often a subject of good-natured, often ceremonialized, teasing.

In the Native tradition as late as the late 19th Century, this was the role of the berdache, the "winkte," the "lhamana," the "tennewyppe" (Lakota, Zuni and Shoshone respectively) -- to "flesh out" the connections between seemingly disparate ideas, cultures, people. As two-spirited people, berdache were unique in their position to be mediators in all the manifestations that role can take. That great tradition of our people, same-sex people, once again wiped out by the European hegemony, can only be reclaimed by us. It should come as no surprise, then, that we may have lost the real spiritual connection that occurs between two men (or two women) when connecting erotically, and that we might somehow have come to believe that the erotic is, by definition, separate from the spiritual. Instinctively, if not from experience, we all know how false this is. Same-sex oriented people have always known this.

In the world of bodies, we are separate; in the world of spirit, we are one. We heal the separation between the two by shifting our awareness from "body identification" to "spirit identification." This heals the body as well as the mind. This opens your body, connects it to its spiritual roots and takes you to the other side, where spirit resides. But we must be open to that experience. We must bring the openness -- the spirit -- to the experience.

While it would have been considered unusual in either classical Greek or Native American culture for two men of equal social or economic standing to form a romantic relationship, perhaps such equal relationships show the growth that we of the 20th Century are bringing to the table. Wiping away seemingly arbitrary distinctions between social caste and economics, we are forming romantic, erotic relationships with whomever our hearts desire. Perhaps humanity moves up a karmic ladder of chakras just as individuals can in their own lives and bodies, sloughing off old restrictions like old snake skins to reveal something the same yet different, an old form with new meaning.

This difference, this diversity in sexuality to begin with (but in fact representing a similarity among people, the detection of which is a two-spirited gift, to see commonality where others see disparity) is the critical element of this syndrome. The real value of same-sex relations is in the diversity it brings to culture at large and individuals specifically. This requires a sex-positive attitude which is egregiously lacking in our culture, but it is this argument which might actually bring about the necessary changes which that culture so desperately needs, though it may be loathe to accept.

But as long as we argue that "We're just like you except for what we do in the bedroom" we will suffer as those prisoners of war suffered, as Patty Hearst suffered, from the debilitation of a Sexual Stockholm Syndrome. I suspect the symptoms of the Sexual Stockholm Syndrome, among gay people, to include hyper-masculinization, sexual objectification (most often expressed in the form of what is often called "promiscuity"), an obsession with youth, an inclination to separatism and other hetero-imitative behaviors, institutions and language such as "top" and "bottom". And while I fully support transsexuals in their quest for a medical solution to their physical conundrum and for transsexuals to seek literal and figural "redress" for their plight in this society, it is, nonetheless, the continuing extremity of the limiting binary view of sex and gender that forces them to seek the physical mutilation the medical solution provides.

And it is not only a critical issue for gay, lesbian, transgender and transsexual people. For the larger "oppressing" culture it weakens family structure, obliges furtive sexual activities and imposes a lack of true spiritual depth most visible in the consumerist culture that looms over us all and the decreasing respect for arid, sterile, institutional religions that function more as political enforcers of conformity and compliance than as sources of spiritual nourishment and growth.

Deprivation of a meaningful social role, or more to the point, the acknowledgment of the meaningful social role which same-sex oriented people have historically played in society, deranges individuals who see the world as something other than a binary split of male and female. It is the either/or way of thinking that has supplanted the both/and way of looking at individuals that leads to social disruption, discord and dysphoria in every individual who succumbs to this kind of thinking. In the shadow of the Stonewall riots we lost this diversity and acceptance of a varied erotic life. People had to choose sides, gay or straight, and those who were caught in the middle were stigmatized and despised by both sides.

Before Stonewall there was something of a tacit understanding that men sometimes went with men. Those men weren't themselves considered to be "that way." Many were captains of industry and barons of financial empires. The generally effeminate men they went with were called "fairies" and were seen as cut from a different cloth. But the "men" themselves were from the "boys will be boys" old school and unless they scared the horses, most people and the tabloids looked the other way. Not unlike their distant Native American cousins, the fairies were seen to be performing a kind of social role. Perhaps that was one of sexual release that meant Daddy would continue to be around the household to support the little woman and their progeny. Or perhaps it was a way for them to simply blow off steam, "just having some fun." The point is that not much was made of it all, despite the well-known existence of drag balls and "secret" meeting places where uptown men went with downtown men dressed as women.

Of course there was considerable harrassment of the 'fairies' themselves. Bar raids and payoffs were the norm for them until Stonewall. It was after Stonewall that we had to choose sides -- either/or time again -- and while that was important politically, spiritually and psychologically it had disastrous results for all concerned. It effectively enabled us to avoid looking at why some men sometimes want to be with other men, which would have gone a long way towards an understanding of why some men always want to be with other men.

Instead it was explained away with the big lie that homosexuality was a perversity, when in fact, it is a natural state of affairs for a majority of individuals. For, if Kinsey was right with his sexual scale of 0 to 6, with 0 being totally heterosexual and 6 being totally homosexual, then that means there is a preponderance of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s who occasionally or frequently look to members of their own gender for sexual solace, enjoyment and release. In fact, the result of the bifurcation of erotic life was the diminishment of the dialogue into matters of mere sexuality and enabling of the denial of the spiritual meanings of erotic connection and diversity.

As Harry Hay puts it so succinctly: The bedroom is the only place homosexual people are like non-homosexual people. It's everywhere else we are different. Even using terms like "homosexual" and "heterosexual" divides the world into an either/or system that fails to understand the nuances of human sexuality and experience. Modern gay people grasp hungrily at the Native American Two-Spirit idea as a vindication of their condition and preference -- construing it as an explanation of transgender and transvestitism or justification of some sense that they might embody both male and female in their physical form. Will Roscoe has brilliantly revealed this tradition and we now understand that these individuals were perceived not seen as some amalgam of male and female, but were seen as "non-male, non-female." This is very different from a physical vessel containing both. We have little if any vocabulary for understanding the true nature of the culture from which they seek to find solace. While it is true that the berdache often cross-dressed and in fact had sexual relations with the "men" of the tribe, their life was defined not by their sexual activity, but by the social roles they embodied and were seen to have innately within their being, the sexual aspects being seen as one relatively unimportant custom of its expression.

If their role was purely sexual in nature, who and what were the "men" who had sexual relations with them? It was through the offices of their social value to the society that berdache were honored and accepted by their societies. Their ability to mediate, take the middle ground, see similarities and connections instead of differences and disconnects, demonstrated in many aspects of the day-to-day life from healing to teaching, from counseling to cultural maintenance and development, to even childcare and education that made them indispensable and honored members of their society.

While it would be difficult to measure statistically because of fear of exposure, it is my contention that what are now called "gay people" still function in this same mediating manner in cultures everywhere, not least of which in the United States. Artists, priests, therapists, teachers, designers and cultural arbiters, to name just a few obvious examples, are frequently weighted with the presence of same-sex oriented people. It is the deprivation of acknowledgment of that role and the demonization of natural sexuality among people by erotophobic religious groups that has resulted in the depraved and troubled society in which we find ourselves living. Typical of the "big lie" strategy of oppression we have been told that it is this very thing that has brought about the problems which are so evident, diverting attention from the real source and continuing the denial of what we must do to overcome it.

Gay people must begin to embrace and celebrate the differences which we embody, if only in the declaration of who we choose to love, though it is so much more than that. This requires the bravery of a soldier and facing the fear of being different and demanding our birthright. The Sexual Stockholm Syndrome is a degrading, demeaning and dangerous complex which threatens to continue to separate us from our true natures and to condemn our culture to banality and isolation. Harry Hay once wrote that the greatest sexual abuse ever perpetrated on human beings is the maniacal social imperative to be heterosexual forced on homosexual people. He goes on to admonish us that until we are able to stand in our own light and define ourselves in our own terms --separate and distinct from the heterosexual constraints--we will never succeed to convincing the greater culture that we have any value to them.