“Everyone is actually queer; people are just afraid to not be invited to the next birthday party.” 

When Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, Buddhist lama and film director, dropped this line during a casual interview, it wasn’t just another hot take from a spiritual teacher. It was a complete bomb thrown at thousands of years of religious gatekeeping, wrapped in the kind of humor that makes you laugh and then immediately question everything you thought you knew about yourself.

This isn’t your typical feel-good religious acceptance story. This is something way more radical, way more interesting, and, honestly, way more necessary for our generation. Because while most religious leaders are still tiptoeing around LGBTQ+ issues with carefully worded statements about “love” and “acceptance,” Rinpoche is out here saying that being queer might actually be a spiritual advantage. And he’s not saying it to be trendy or to get young people to like Buddhism. He’s saying it because it’s what the teachings have always meant, if you actually pay attention.

The whole thing started in 2015 when Rinpoche was teaching a group of young people in Bhutan. Someone asked him what Buddhism says about homosexuality, probably expecting the usual religious runaround. Instead, Rinpoche basically said sexual orientation has nothing to do with enlightenment, and then casually added: “Probably lesbians will get enlightened first.” The audience laughed, but it wasn’t just a joke. It was a philosophical earthquake disguised as a punchline.

Think about what that means for a second. Here’s a respected Tibetan Buddhist master, teaching in one of the most conservative Buddhist countries in the world, telling a room full of young people that queer identities aren’t just acceptable but might actually be spiritually beneficial. It’s like if the Pope suddenly announced that being gay was a fast track to heaven, except way cooler and with better philosophical backing.

But here’s what makes Rinpoche’s position so different from the usual religious lip service: he’s not asking anyone to “tolerate” LGBTQ+ people. He actually hates that word. “Tolerance is not a good thing,” he says, because tolerance implies you’re doing someone a favor by putting up with them. Instead, he talks about respect, reverence, honor. He’s saying queer identities deserve chomdän, the Tibetan word for the kind of respect you’d give to something sacred.

This isn’t just progressive politics dressed up in Buddhist robes. This is Buddhism being Buddhism, which has always been about seeing through the illusions that keep us trapped. And one of the biggest illusions? That there’s a “normal” way to be human that everyone else is deviating from. Rinpoche is pointing out that the whole concept of “normal” is basically a collective delusion that we maintain because we’re all terrified of being left out.

The Buddhist tradition he teaches, Vajrayana, is already pretty queer when you think about it. It’s full of gender-bending deities, gods and goddesses merging into each other, and the idea that everything we think is solid and permanent is actually fluid and changeable. The tantric approach says you don’t have to suppress your desires or pretend to be someone you’re not to reach enlightenment. You work with whatever you’ve got, including your sexuality, your gender expression, your weirdness, all of it.

When someone once asked Rinpoche if he himself was gay, he smiled and said, “I have a tendency.” It’s the perfect non-answer that’s also somehow the perfect answer. He’s not playing identity politics or trying to claim queer credentials. He’s showing that the whole question is kind of beside the point. Sexual orientation becomes like food preference, he says. “Some people like cottage cheese, some like Swiss, and some like both. And why not? It’s just taste.”

This casual approach to something that causes so much cultural panic is actually genius. By refusing to make sexuality into this huge moral battleground, Rinpoche deflates the whole drama around it. He’s basically saying, “Why are we even fighting about this?” while simultaneously affirming that queer identities are completely natural and valid.

The humor is crucial here. Rinpoche uses comedy like a surgical instrument, cutting through layers of conditioning and dogma with a well-timed joke. When he says “probably lesbians will get enlightened first,” he’s not just being funny. He’s using humor to create a space where people can think differently, where the usual rules don’t apply, where new possibilities can emerge.

This connects to something deeper about what it means to be authentic in a world that’s constantly telling you to perform a certain version of yourself. Rinpoche’s statement about everyone being queer isn’t just about sexuality. It’s about the ways we all hide parts of ourselves, the ways we all conform to expectations that don’t really fit us, the ways we all sacrifice honesty for social acceptance.

The “next birthday party” line hits different when you think about it this way. We’re all walking around trying to be the version of ourselves that gets invited to things, that gets accepted, that gets loved. But what if that whole performance is keeping us from actually knowing who we are? What if the things we’re most afraid to show about ourselves are actually the most spiritually valuable?

For young people especially, this message is revolutionary. We’re growing up in a world where identity categories are already being questioned and expanded, where the old binaries are breaking down, where authenticity is becoming more important than conformity. Rinpoche’s teachings offer a spiritual framework that not only supports this evolution but suggests it’s exactly what’s needed for genuine awakening.

The traditional Buddhist idea is that everyone has buddha-nature, the potential for enlightenment, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. Rinpoche is just applying this consistently, without the cultural baggage that usually comes with religious teaching. He’s separating the wisdom from the historical prejudices, the eternal truths from the temporary social conventions.

This is what makes his approach so powerful for our generation. We don’t need religion to tell us what’s wrong with us or how we need to change to be acceptable. We need spiritual teachings that meet us where we are, that work with our reality, that help us understand how our experiences, including our queerness, can be paths to greater wisdom and compassion.

Rinpoche suggests that the people who have always been told they’re too different, too strange, too queer for spiritual life might actually be the ones who are most prepared for the kind of radical self-inquiry that enlightenment requires. They’ve already had to question everything, to look beyond surface appearances, to find truth beneath social conditioning.

Maybe this is why he suggests that lesbians will get enlightened first. Not because of their sexuality specifically, but because they’ve already done the work of seeing through illusions, of refusing to accept limitations, of being authentic in a world that punishes authenticity. They’ve already practiced the kind of courage that spiritual awakening demands.

This isn’t just about Buddhism or just about LGBTQ+ rights. This is about what it means to be human in a world that’s constantly trying to put us in boxes, to make us smaller, to convince us that our differences are problems to be solved rather than gifts to be celebrated. Rinpoche is offering a different vision, one where our queerness, our weirdness, our refusal to fit in becomes not just acceptable but sacred.

And maybe that’s exactly what our generation needs to hear: that the things that make us different might actually be the things that make us free.

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Anyone Can Attain Enlightenment
Engaged Buddhism: The Bodhisattva Path to Gender Equality in Thailand
A Sangha for Peace and Inclusivity: Intersectionality in Gender Work in Japan