Kashi Ashram Atlanta Center for Meditation, Service and Community Presents

GLBT Rights Advocate and Spiritual Teacher Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

Friday April 2, 2004 at 7:30pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Ganesh Giri via phone at 404-000-0000 or 404-386-9878 (cell).

(New York, March 2004) – “The soul has no gender. This is a human rights issue, plain and simple. It’s love touching love, it’s a human being reaching out and saying, ‘I am a human being and I have the right to be married like anyone else.’ As a spiritual teacher I’ll be damned if I won’t give everything for this cause. Hate breeds hate, and silence is letting hate run wild.” - Ma Jaya

Human rights activist Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati returns to Atlanta Friday, April 2 at 7:30pm to speak at the Kashi Atlanta Yoga Studio. The outspoken advocate of the GLBT community will lecture and lead a meditation at Atlanta’s most prominent yoga studio. Ma Jaya is in Atlanta to once again be honored by Morehouse College. Saturday, April 3rd, her oil portrait will be unveiled and placed in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. The honor recognizes Ma Jaya’s work as an interfaith teacher who supports diverse interreligious dialogue and service. In 2002, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati was inducted into the Morehouse College, Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers.

As a Trustee of the Parliament of the World’s Religions – Ma was interviewed just two weeks ago on radio station WNYU, in New York City, on her views of the same-sex debate. As an interfaith spiritual leader who has worked with the GLBT population for more than three decades, she vehemently spoke in support of the gay and lesbian community, and as she says “everyone in between”, to be accepted and acknowledged with the same rights as anyone else.

Ma Jaya has conducted same-sex spiritual marriages for more than thirty years. The call for Ma’s blessing was especially prevalent in the early 80’s when people with AIDS requested to be married to their lovers prior to their death. Ma’s work in that community spawned a dedication to the GLBT population that has yet to be matched. Known as “the Mother Teresa of the West”, Ma has taken her humanitarian work as an AIDS activist to the streets of New York, Los Angles, Chicago, Miami, and Atlanta. She also helps support a home for 700 children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in Uganda.

The same-sex debate has been viewed as a moral dilemma by some, and a human rights issue by others. It has wracked the nation’s conscience and created a painful divide in the diverse rich cultural setting of a country, which is, oddly enough, seen as fostering the most freedom of any nation in the world. Ma Jaya seeks to heal through love, service, acceptance, kindness and a strong voice of advocacy.

Ma Jaya’s profound teaching of direct truth is based on a foundation of service humanity and especially to those who have been forgotten by society. She is known for her work with the poor, the dying and those living with life challenging illnesses. That idea of serving unconditionally without discrimination serves as an example of her mission to , “Feed Everyone, hold back nothing.” The premise is very much the model for her work in the gay and lesbian community.

The Following excerpts are taken from Ma Jaya’s interview in New York City two weeks ago:

“There is so much pain. I don’t say are you gay? Are you straight? I say - are you willing to take care of the poor, are you wiling to touch the dying? Are we going to give food away to the poor and first ask them – who they slept with last night - that’s nobody’s business.” - Ma Jaya

“It’s not so much that I got involved it’s the fact that as a spiritual teacher I never saw the difference between two lovers who are gay and two lovers who are straight. I just saw the heart, which in my teaching has no gender. If two people who are in love wish to make this partnership, this magnificent moment legal, what is the big deal?” - Ma Jaya

“I see no difference between love between a man and a man, and a woman and a woman or anybody who is not harming another human being. Why is the religious right so afraid of other people who want to live like anyone else. I don’t understand it.” - Ma Jaya

“I performed my first spiritual wedding about 30 years ago - and I’ve done hundreds since. Some of the most potent moments in my life were also some of the saddest I’ve had, simply because soon after they died of AIDS. Many times partners wanted to be married to the person that they were about to lose. I have seen so much pain in the eyes of my students who only want to live and breath the air that everyone else does, who only want the same rights as everyone else. Whey shouldn’t they have them.” - Ma Jaya

“The humanity in every human being is being served in acceptance. There is too much death and too much pain in this world . Why in god’s name do would we want to inflict more pain by saying, ‘ hey you know what, you are a lesser human being, you’re not worthy.’” Ma Jaya

For more information about the Kashi Rainbow please email Dhumavati@kashi.org