GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

JANUARY 15, 1999

Evenings Out

THE

A message from OURNALS

the ancients

Book's orphan lesbian Messiah has the religious right steaming

by Doreen Cudnik

Although he is considered a visionary by some fans of his work, when Cincinnati native R.T. Stone set out to write a book dealing with issues like personal empowerment, global consciousness, environmental responsibility and the advantages of a vegetarian lifestyle, he hardly expected to do battle with the right wing.

But that is exactly what happened when his book The Journals: A Message from the Council of Ancients, Book I began experiencing word-of-mouth success, thanks in part to the Internet.

The novel, which Stone has called a work of "visionary fiction,” tells the story of a wealthy Cincinnati businessman who dismisses "all that New Age crap." A crisis in the life of the businessman-also named R.T. Stone-leads him to the Council of Ancients, a group of celestial lightbeings who help him to re-examine his previously held assumptions about the world. The Council also commissions "Stoney" to write an addendum to the Bible.

Last summer, the book climbed to num-

R.T. Stone

3

ber one on the fiction bestseller list for the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana tri-state area surrounding Cincinnati.

In 1998, the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family labeled the book an "Internet danger” and issued a "parental warning" during a broadcast to 1,300 radio stations. Also last year, a radio station in Indianapolis pulled a paid advertisement for The Journals after listeners complained that the book was "promoting homosexuality.”

The issue that seemed to anger Christian conservatives most was the main character of the book, Allison Pippin, a

young, orphaned lesbian whom Stone portrays as the next messiah. A Cincinnati gay bookstore put a sign in their window proclaiming, "The new Messiah is here, and boy are you going to love her."

The idea for the Allison character came after Stone read a book titled Life as a Mediterranean Peasant, which he says led him to believe that some of Jesus' apostles may have been gay.

"I thought, how would these.pious religious fanatics react if I had a very human, very real, female Messiah? If people are looking for answers and people are looking for salvation, I thought, why not give them the opposite of the Euro-male white prototype of the Messiah? Why not give them a girl, an orphan, a redhead, and a lesbian and see if they can handle that," Stone said.

As a result, Stone has become the recipient of frequent condemning correspondence from conservative Christians. One woman wrote: "I will definitely keep Mr. Stone in my prayers. As a born-again Christian, I feel it is my duty to pray for someone who is as misled and lost as he. My prayer is for it to stop

by whatever means my Lord deems necessary."

In addition to the lesbian Messiah, another point of contention for Christian conservatives seem to have been "The Twelve Truths"-a summary list of some of the main messages that are revealed in The Journals. Stone intended the "Truths" as discussion points, and encourages readers to “question their validity and perhaps discover a few truths of your own."

No doubt, the "truths" giving Christian conservatives the most headaches are Number 6, which says "sex should be celebrated and encouraged, not stigmatized... as long as it is consensual with all participants"; Number 8, which states “experiencing an orgasm with someone you love is one of the closest things to God that you can find in human existence"; and Number 11, which begins "if it weren't for women, humankind would have destroyed itself already . . .'

Stone finds it fascinating that anyone could find a reason to object to any of the Truths, especially Number 7, which discusses finding and holding on to a soulmate.

"The ability to love should be the most cherished miracle in our society," Stone said. "Gender shouldn't matter. Sexual orientation shouldn't matter. If you find your soulmate-whether it's male and female, female and female, or male and male-we should celebrate that, because that's the greatest miracle in life."

While the ongoing controversy over the book has taken its toll, Stone added that it does have a positive side.

"When people at book signings hear about it, they are livid, and they go out and

A Message from the Council of Ancients

BOOK I

tell people," Stone said. “And what happens is it tends to motivate people who are against censorship and against injustice overall."

So how did a white, heterosexual, regular guy from Cincinnati's Eastgate neighborhood come to write a book that has readers

"Experiencing an orgasm with someone you love is one of the closest things to God that you can find in human existence."

and reviewers alike comparing him to James Redfield and Winston Groom (the authors of The Celestine Prophecy and Forrest Gump, respectively)?

"I think I was born to do it," Stone says of writing his book. “In terms of this particular novel, I wrote it because I had to. I always saw a lot of hypocrisy in the world. Even when I was a kid, I'd see my parents say one thing, but their actions spoke another. I was constantly trying to reconcile why people acted one way and said other things."

When Stone was 17, his father disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and to cope with the loss itself as well as the paranormal circumstances, he began to read and research "a lot of spiritual things."

"The more you read legitimate works, the more you discover and then of course

R.T. Stone

the more questions that come up," Stone recalled.

Stone doesn't just talk the talk. He has contributed nearly $20,000 from sales of The Journals to AIDS service organizations, battered women's shelters, orphanages, homeless shelters and environmental groups in the cities he has visited.

Stone will be in the Cleveland area on Thursday, January 21 from 7-9 pm at the suburban Mayfield Adult Community Education Center, 6116 Wilson Mills Road. Admission is $5 for Mayfield residents and $7 for non-residents. Five percent of the profits from sales of The Journals at this event will benefit Providence House, a shelter for abused women and children.

While he is currently at work on Book II of The Journals, Stone is happy about the success of Book I, and gratefully accepts whatever part his work might play in changing the world.

"I know the book has touched a lot of people already," Stone said. "It's changed people and empowered people. My hope is that more and more people awaken to find their true spirit. I hope that people who read it feel empowered, that they become more aware, that they become emboldened to make a change, that a spark in their heart is ignited, and they really want to go out and inspire others and leave the world a positive place. And if I could do that, I think that would be cool."