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All the while he was growing more and
more attracted to male classmates, and his
crushes felt good, but there was a growing dis
cord between his inner and outer lives.
Wario says: “I could see no possible way to
actuate this. I didn’t see how I could live my
life as a gay man— there was nothing like that
in my culture anywhere, not at all, no
resources whatsoever.”
All he had heard about homosexuality in
his country was that “it was an evil, decadent
thing that Western tourists did in hotels.”
After graduation Wario taught at a
Catholic high school in Kenya for a few years
and clung to the hope that he would somehow
outgrow his tendencies. Instead, he fell wildly
in love with another man. Although it was
unrequited, his deep emotional involvement
signaled to Wario that he had reached the
point of no return.
When an opportunity arose in 1986 to
attend college in the United States, Wario
grabbed it like a drowning man grasping at a
life raft.
But during his last months in Kenya he was
wracked with fear and doubt. Though he had
always wanted to return to the States, he won
dered if homosexuality “was some illness I
picked up as a boy in the U .S .”
Which led him to hope that the United
States might also be where he could be cured.
T
he good news about his years at York C ol
lege— a small, conservative liberal arts
school in York, Penn.— was that he was able
to live with a family who provided him a lov
ing home and connections to his family back
in Kenya. The bad news was that this family
was part of the same church that was sponsor
ing Wario’s father’s work, which meant he was
still stuck in a strict religious environment and
any transgressions might be reported to his
parents.
r ' 1 1 i
f** : I It:
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I gjr
1
f < ’l l &
Kahunya Wario, age 10, sits on the arm of his mother’s chair in a family portrait just
before they returned to Kenya in 1975. The couple in the background are the people
w ith whom he lived during his college years.
" I wondered if hom osexuality was some illness I picked up
as a boy in the U.S., and then I began to hope it was also
where I m ight fin d a cure.
So he hid his sexual confusion. At 22,
Wario became a freshman in college and did
everything he could to fit in, be the pier-
feet eldest son and maintain his
good family name. He also
searched for a solution to his
secret problem.
“1 needed to get a
cure. I intensified my
church activities, I
prayed and fasted
and did everything
1 could to purify
myself,” Wario
remembers with
a shudder. “ I
made all these
promises
to
God: I’ll be a
missionary, I’ll
do anything to
be cured!”
Before long
he wrote away
for a pamphlet
from a ministry
promising to turn
gays straight, and
Two years after
high school, Kahunya
rWario (right) in 1986 with
two of his students
he scrutinized it a long time, thinking at first
this was his salvation. But Wario couldn’t
bring himself to contact the organization and
responded instead to inner guidance.
“This was the goddess talking to me, telling
me that I was OK,” he says.
Though forced to live in the closet, Wario
began slowly and secretly to explore the entic
ing, exotic facets of Western culture— such as
he could find in rural Pennsylvania.
In 1988, a gay man spxike to his human
sexuality class, which prompted Wario to
come out to his teacher, who assured him he
was just fine, that he was not, as he feared, bio
logically defective. Through her Wario met
other queers and discovered a metaphysical
bookstore run by a gay couple.
Though encouraged by these develop
ments, Wario still had misgivings.
“If this was going to be a viable lifestyle for
me, I needed some validation from someone
in the church, so I came out to my college
chaplain,” he explains.
To Wario’s astonishment, the chaplain was
able to direct him to writings by people in the
church who had positive things to say about
sexual minorities.
A
fter college, Wario knocked around
from place to place, even toured Europe
with the saccharine singing group Up With
People, but eventually made his way back to
the States, the only place he had found where
it seemed possible to live the life of freedom he
imagined for himself.
He returned to York, but he moved away
from his overprotective American family and
away from the evangelical church. Though he
was making peace with his sexuality, he hun
gered for a more inclusive spiritual path. Even
while in Kenya he had been exploring other
ideas that he found in his father’s books.
“The route out is reading; I read endless
books,” he says, acknowledging that he’s
always had a rebellious, irreverent streak.
“Church was my world view,” Wario
explains, adding that he eventually realized a
lot of the moral condemnation he had experi
enced was politically motivated. That helped
lead him to more mystical pursuits and to a
fascination with the New Age movement.
One of the books that affected him the
most is Handbook to Higher Consciousness by
Ken Keyes. He knew he wanted to meet
Keyes, who at the time ran a metaphysical
institute on the other side of the country—
which is how Wario found himself in 1993 in
Coos Bay, Ore.
“ 1 was as far away from my background as 1
could be,” he says, recalling his own amaze
ment at where his
journey was taking
him.
Though he was
the only gay person
among the institute’s
25 staff members,
Wario felt welcomed
and stayed on for sev
eral years, expanding
his own ideas and
helping Keyes with
his workshops, which
promoted the philos
ophy that each person
creates his own reali
"I mode a ll
ty
“What I was look
these promises
ing for was a spiritual
community, and 1
to God: I'll be
found that there,”
a missionary,
Wario says.
To his parents, he
I'll do anything
said only that he was
“pursuing his spiritual
to be cured!"
growth.”
Then one fateful day in 1995, Wario read a
newsletter from the Breitenbush Community
that promoted an upcoming national gather
ing of something called the Radical Faeries.
Intrigued, Wario battled a February snow
storm to wend his way to that remote retreat
center in central Oregon, and what he discov
ered there changed his life forever.
Wario says he was completely blown away
by the revelation of this group of gay men who
had managed to integrate a rich, vibrant spiri
tuality into their lives.
“1 couldn’t believe that anything like this
could exist— it was wonderful and frightening
at the same time," he says. “It was an all-out
celebration of being gay— from every perspec
tive— I was in absolute awe of those 165 gay
men from all over the world."
Totally beguiled, Wario knew immediately
he had found his true family.
“This was the first time my sexuality and
my spirituality came together,” he recalls,
adding that he returned to Coos Bay a differ
ent person. (For more on Kahunya Wario’s
experiences with the Radical Faeries, see the
article on Page 35 of this issue.)
Continued on Page 27
PHOTO BY MARGO GIRARD
january 7.2000 » Jut Mit