When I began practicing, heterosexism was still prevalent in Wiccan coven practice. My first coven had a High Priestess and High Priest and members were essentially broken into male-female working pairs. They practiced in the Alexandrian style and initiations had to be by the opposite sex. Janet and Stewart Farrar’s writing were accepting of homosexuals, noting that there were same-sex covens, but to my mind at least still implied that homosexuals should work as heterosexuals in the circle.
This mindset was still far better than the prevailing attitudes of many BTW covens in the three decades previous. Not surprisingly for a man of his age and time, Gerald Gardner was virulently homophobic and held negative views about gay men and lesbians. He stated emphatically on several occasions that homosexuality was antithetical with witchcraft and that it was not possible for gay men or lesbians to be witches, For Gardner, homosexuality was “a disgusting perversion and a flagrant transgression of natural law, negating the life force and the fertility aspect represented by the God and Goddess.” This was echoed by many of followers such as his High Priestess Eleanor Bone who observed that homosexuals lacked the aura that denoted witches.
This attitude transferred to the majority of Gerdnerian practitioners and continued through the seventies and into the eighties. It is interesting to note that Patricia Crowther initiated Leo Louis Martello though he was a vocal gay activist. They remained close friends and were still in contact when I knew Martello in the late 1980s.
This is the environment in which Eddie was attempting to receive training. We know at least one coven denied him initiation due to his homosexuality. His denial of Lady Gwen Thompson’s advances likely led to his expulsion from her New Haven Celtic Coven.
By the late 60s early 70s influenced by American witches, a growing progressive environmentalist philosophy took root in the Craft. Many Wiccans were also involved in the nuclear disarmament movement. Despite these influences of progressive politics the vast majority of Wiccans, especially in England, remained opposed to homosexuality and in many cases abortion.
John Scone, editor of the pagan periodical The Wiccan, espoused the view that single men should be required to prove their ‘heterosexual attainment’ prior to being accepted into a coven. He gave Martello the derogatory nickname “Marshmallow”. Doreen Valiente initially accepted this accepted view, but would come to the realization that the Goddess did not exclude anyone from her love and worship.
In 1978 Arthur Evans published Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture which had a strong impact on the development of the Radical Fairies a movement of queer eclectic, expressive neo-pagan spirituality. Scott Cunningham often wrote of feeling excluded from traditional practice and initiatory Wiccan lineages due to his sexuality. This led him to develop a mostly solitary practice. His 1988 book Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner was a watershed moment in American practice. When feminist witch Starhawk published her revised edition of A Spiral Dance in 1989, it was still radical for her to assert that it was not appropriate to think of the universal energy represented by the God and Goddess as purely male/female.
This environment speaks to just how radical Eddie’s founding of the Knossos Lodge and Minoan tradition was. We continue to benefit from the current he initiated. There are more Brothers and working Groves than ever before. May the Gods preserve the Brotherhood!