|
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as
with womankind: it is abomination.
|
|
Leviticus 18:22
|
The ancients seem to have accepted homosexuality without too
much concern. Plato recounts a myth that sets both male and
female homosexuality firmly within the realm of normality.
Zeus himself kept a catamite (young male lover), his cup-bearer
Ganymede. And no one thought less of Alexander the Great because
of his male lover, nor found it odd that one of his best fighting
units was composed exclusively of homosexual couples.
Christianity brought new attitudes, more extreme than those
of its parent religion, Judaism. Homosexual sex was now an outrage.
The Church's view on this matter was founded in the scripture
cited above "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind:
it is abomination". This however was not thought to be
a strong enough indictment, so the early Church reconstrued
the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. To the Jews, Sodom had traditionally
been identified with shortcomings such as irreligiousness, pride,
and adultery. It was these wrongdoings that they thought had
incurred the wrath of God. Only later, when they came to be
outraged by liberal Hellenistic and Roman attitudes to sex,
did they start to associate the cities of the plain with misdeeds
such as fornication and homosexuality.
It was Philo of Alexandria, living in the first century AD,
who seems to have first interpreted the story as one principally
about homosexuality, and this was the version that the Church
Fathers preferred. So it
is that, to this day, anal intercourse and sometimes other sexual
practices are referred to as sodomy, and practising
male homosexuals as sodomites or sods. (Several
American states still regard sodomy as encompassing any form
of intercourse other than that carried out using the missionary
position).
As the Roman Empire crumbled, the Church succeeded in replacing
traditional sexual liberality. Homosexuals were soon being punished
by forcible castration and public display.
A law passed under the Christian Emperor Valentinian in 390
prescribed death by burning as the penalty for homosexuality,
and this was confirmed by the Code of Justinian in the sixth
century. Through Gratian's Decretum the death
penalty was adopted by European nations, for example under Edward
I in England and Louis IX in France. Alfonso X of Castile favoured
castration followed by hanging upside down until dead, but at
the end of the fifteenth century Ferdinand and Isabella changed
this to the more traditional burning.
According to the Golden Legend all sodomites throughout
the whole world had been divinely exterminated in preparation
for Jesus Christ's arrival , but somehow the practice had
become popular again. In Europe, homosexuals were burned to
death like heretics throughout the Middle Ages — the non-clerical
ones at least. The French continued to burn homosexuals as late
as 1725.
For centuries heresy and homosexuality went together in the
Christian mind, twin evils both deserving of death. Virtually
all non-Christians were believed to practice homosexuality,
and virtually all heretical groups were accused of it as well,
whether or not there was any evidence. One such heretical group
is particularly notable in this respect, the Bulgarians
a group of Gnostic Dualists related to the Cathars.
They flourished in the eleventh century, and as the name suggests
were based in Bulgaria. In Old French a Bulgarian was a boulgre,
modern French bougre. In English the word adopted another
spelling — bugger. Historically it was applied
to a succession of heretical groups, each of which was accused
of sodomy. So it is that under the headword bugger
the Oxford English Dictionary gives two definitions: the first
obsolete "A heretic ...", the second current, "One
who commits buggery; a sodomite ...". (If the Bulgars really
did practice anal intercourse, it was almost certainly with
their wives and for contraceptive reasons. Anal intercourse
between man and wife was a common form of contraception throughout
Christendom for many centuries.)
Homosexuality has always been particularly common in single
sex institutions (such as prisons, mental asylums, sailing ships
and boarding schools) and no less so in religious ones (monasteries,
nunneries, seminaries, etc.). Medieval Church commentators freely
admitted that homosexuality was common among clergy.
St Peter Damian was particularly worried by priests who engaged
in homosexual activity with each other, then confessed to each
other and gave each other light penance.
He was also critical of the practice of soliciting male penitents
who revealed their homosexual inclinations during confession.
As for other crimes, clerics tended to get off lightly, if they
were charged at all. While other offenders were executed, clerics
could expect a mild punishment, even though they provided a
high proportion of offenders.
Despite the prevalence of homosexuality in their own ranks,
Churches have, until the last few years, consistently expressed
abhorrence at homosexual practices. Now, for the first time,
some of the traditional views have been softened, and homosexuality
is accepted by the Church of England, for example, merely as
"falling short of the Christian ideal". In the Republic
of Ireland homosexual acts such as kissing could until the 1990s
incur two years in prison with or without hard labour. Buggery
was punishable by penal servitude for life.
Christian attitudes to homosexuals still reverberate. The Church
enjoys exemptions from laws on sexual orientation in many countries
so that it can continue to discriminate. Every major natural
disaster is still accompanied by sermons from pulpits asserting
that the disaster is God's punishment for unchristian sexual
activity. Many senior Churchmen have declared as a fact that
the AIDS epidemic is a punishment from God for homosexual activity.
The Church has traditionally held views on transvestism similar
to those on homosexuality. In support it has been able to cite
Deuteronomy 22:5:
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all
that do so are abomination to the L ord thy God.
So it was that one of the main accusations against Joan of
Arc, which ensured her death at the stake, was that she insisted
on wearing men's clothes. This was also one of the reasons
the Church so disapproved of theatre. Having forced women of
the stage acting troops had no choice but for men to play women's
parts, and right-thinking Christians found this nearly as bad
as seeing real women on stage.
Women were prosecuted in the early twentieth century for wearing
trouser suits — their sentences were less severe, but only
because the Church was no longer able to enforce its views as
strictly as it could in the Middle Ages.
|
