Dear Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa,
I am writing this as a respectful challenge and an invitation to respond. I am not trying to condemn an entire religious tradition, and I am not presenting every allegation made by former members as proven fact. I am asking whether the principles of love, freedom and compassion can be applied consistently to the lives of real people.
My central concerns are LGBTQ rights, family estrangement, children’s safety and the use of religious discipline.
I keep coming back to one simple thought:
Family members abandoning each other in the name of God is absolutely insane.
If a person leaves a religious organisation, questions a guru, drinks alcohol, fails to complete chanting rounds, or comes out as LGBTQ, that should not make them unworthy of love. A spiritual movement should help people become more compassionate, not teach them to abandon their children, siblings or parents.
Love means freedom
Your own teaching gives us a useful starting point. In a discussion of religious fanaticism, you describe fanaticism as force and religion as love for God. You also state that “love means freedom, not force.” Science of Identity Foundation
That is a powerful principle.
If love means freedom, then people must be free to question, disagree, leave, return, reduce their chanting, drink alcohol, identify as LGBTQ, marry outside the movement or maintain contact with relatives who have left.
If surrender to God is voluntary, then surrender cannot be produced through threats of hell, social exclusion or family rejection.
The Bhagavad-gītā says:
“Deliberate on this fully, and then do what you wish to do.”
— Bhagavad-gītā 18.63
This is not the language of mindless obedience. It is the language of reflection, responsibility and conscience. Bhagavad-gītā 18.63
A person should be allowed to think carefully, make a decision and remain loved even when that decision is not the one their community wanted.
LGBTQ devotees
I do not want to pretend that ancient Sanskrit texts used the modern acronym LGBTQ. They did not. We should not force modern categories into ancient texts as though the historical meanings were identical.
But Vaishnava traditions have never been as simple as a rigid male-female binary.
The Bhagavad-gītā teaches that spiritual access is not restricted by social status, birth or conventional respectability. It says that those who take shelter in the divine can attain the supreme destination. Bhagavad-gītā 9.32
The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam similarly describes devotion as available across social and cultural boundaries. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.4.18
Gaudiya devotional practice has also included forms of sakhī-bhāva, in which male-born devotees adopt the devotional identity of female companions of Krishna. Scholars describe this as a form of devotional gender fluidity, while cautioning that it is not identical to every modern transgender identity. Project Sakhī, Université du Québec Journal of Dharma
The Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Association has spent years collecting Vaishnava and Hindu references concerning same-sex relationships, third-gender identities, gender transformation and gender-nonconforming devotees. GALVA references GALVA positive perspectives
This does not prove that every Vaishnava community historically welcomed LGBTQ people. It does show that exclusion is not the only possible interpretation of the tradition.
An LGBTQ person should not be told that their identity makes them spiritually defective. A parent should not be encouraged to reject a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender child. A devotee should not have to choose between spiritual belonging and honesty about their own life.
A person may hold a conservative theological view about sexual conduct. But that view does not require:
- conversion practices;
- humiliating counselling;
- forced heterosexual marriage;
- expulsion from spiritual life;
- family abandonment;
- or treating LGBTQ people as spiritually contaminated.
A person should not have to choose between God and their child.
Bhaktivedanta’s complicated legacy
The historical record concerning A.C. Bhaktivedanta is mixed.
There are documented statements in which he condemned homosexual relationships. Those statements should not be hidden or rewritten.
At the same time, a Vaishnava source preserves an account of a private, unrecorded conversation in which he reportedly responded to a gay male disciple by saying:
“Just find a nice boy then, and settle down!”
This anecdote cannot be treated as a definitive institutional policy. It was reported later, and there is no contemporaneous recording. But it complicates the assumption that every pastoral interaction followed the harshest public formulation.
The comment should also be considered in its historical setting. It reportedly arose during a period when gay men were heavily stigmatised, same-sex relationships were widely condemned by Christian institutions, and the HIV/AIDS crisis was beginning to generate fear, illness and social exclusion.
We cannot prove exactly what Bhaktivedanta intended. It is possible, however, that the remark was an attempt to respond pragmatically to a devotee who was already excluded and struggling to find a safe place within the religious community.
That would not make it a modern declaration of LGBTQ equality. It would suggest that pastoral care can sometimes be more humane than formal doctrine.
The social and medical circumstances are different today. LGBTQ people are not diseased, dangerous or morally contagious. The contemporary response should not be determined by the fears of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Your own teaching says that spiritual wisdom must be presented according to “time, place, and circumstance.” Science of Identity Foundation
That principle matters here. The relevant circumstances today include modern medical knowledge, the legal recognition of LGBTQ people, the reality of same-sex families and the documented harm caused by rejection and conversion practices.
The question is not whether every historical teaching was progressive. The question is what contemporary spiritual responsibility requires now.
Family estrangement
Family estrangement is one of the clearest tests of whether a community is actually producing love.
Families may disagree for many reasons. People may need boundaries. But religious authority becomes dangerous when members are encouraged to cut off relatives because those relatives leave, question leadership, drink alcohol, fail to complete prescribed rounds or enter an LGBTQ relationship.
A person can reject an organisation without becoming an enemy.
A person can stop chanting without becoming spiritually worthless.
A parent can disagree with a child without abandoning them.
The Bhagavad-gītā describes the wise as seeing with equal vision across bodily and social differences. Bhagavad-gītā 5.18 That principle should include people who leave, people who disagree and people whose bodies or relationships do not conform to the community’s expectations.
I believe family members abandoning each other in the name of God is not a sign of spiritual strength. It is a sign that fear has begun to replace love.
Alcohol and chanting
I understand why a spiritual community may recommend avoiding alcohol. Abstinence can be a meaningful religious practice, and addiction can cause real harm.
But there is a difference between saying, “This is the discipline we practise,” and saying, “Anyone who drinks is impure, dangerous or unworthy of family contact.”
People struggling with alcohol should be offered practical help, treatment and compassion. They should not automatically be shamed or spiritually exiled.
The same applies to chanting rounds.
Chanting can be beautiful. It can create peace, concentration and devotion. But it must remain an offering made freely.
If members are expected to complete a prescribed number of rounds, that expectation should be transparent. Is it a personal practice, an initiation commitment, a condition of residence or a test of loyalty?
No one should be publicly shamed for missing rounds because of illness, work, parenting, disability or emotional distress. Children should not be burdened with adult spiritual expectations they cannot understand.
The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes devotional service as “unmotivated and uninterrupted.” Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.2.6 Devotion may be steady, but it cannot be genuine if it is extracted through fear.
Children
Children cannot give adult-level consent to a religious authority structure. They depend on adults for food, education, healthcare, shelter and emotional safety.
Any school, convent, residence, retreat or youth programme connected with a religious organisation should have:
- independent safeguarding procedures;
- trained and screened staff;
- clear limits on adult authority;
- confidential external reporting;
- protection from retaliation;
- access to parents and trusted adults;
- independent medical and psychological care;
- preserved records;
- and no requirement that complaints be handled only internally.
A child should never have to choose between telling the truth and protecting a religious institution.
The organisation should explain what safeguards exist today and how former students can report concerns about past programmes. Closure does not resolve history. Former students still deserve to be heard, and present-day children still deserve protection.
A changed movement
I accept that the spiritual movement of the 1970s may have been very different from the institutions, schools, businesses and networks that developed later.
A teacher may begin with a sincere spiritual project and later become surrounded by administrators, lawyers, financiers, political advisers and intensely loyal followers. A spiritual leader may become increasingly isolated from ordinary members and may no longer know exactly what is being done in the organisation’s name.
It is possible for people to become trapped by fear, dependency, illness, secrecy, drugs or political machinery larger than themselves. It is also possible that outside actors attempted to exploit a religious network for political or financial purposes.
Those possibilities deserve investigation. They should not be used to dismiss former members or excuse harm.
Compassion means recognising that people can be manipulated.
Accountability means asking what they knew, what they controlled and what they could have prevented.
Clemency means allowing people to tell the truth and change without demanding that survivors remain silent.
What I am asking for
I respectfully ask the spiritual leadership and affiliated organisations to:
- Publish a clear LGBTQ equality and anti-discrimination policy.
- State that family members must not be pressured to abandon relatives who leave, drink alcohol, question doctrine or identify as LGBTQ.
- Clarify whether chanting requirements are voluntary and confirm that missed rounds will not result in social or familial punishment.
- Publish current child-safeguarding policies and independent complaint procedures.
- Establish an external process for former students and members to report harm.
- Preserve records relating to former schools, residences and youth programmes.
- Publish audited financial information for relevant charities, schools and affiliated entities.
- Invite independent experts in child protection, LGBTQ rights and religious trauma to review current practice.
- Meet former members without requiring them to apologise, reconcile or affirm the organisation before being heard.
- Respond to these concerns substantively rather than treating them as an attack on Hinduism or Vaishnavism.
I am not asking for revenge. I am asking for love to be applied in ordinary life.
May LGBTQ people be treated with dignity.
May children be protected before institutions.
May families remain connected across disagreement.
May people be free to practise, question, leave or return without fear.
May spiritual discipline produce compassion rather than abandonment.
May love be demonstrated not merely as a slogan, but as freedom from coercion.
Om Tat Sat.
With humility, Lotus Frosting
Terra Umi 
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