Christian
homophobes have been up in arms over the gay reaction to the Rev. Pat—I mean “Patriarch
Phil”—Robertson
story concerning the issue of marriage for homosexuals in the U. S., and other civil
rights, most recently in Russia and Uganda and now Nigeria. So I guess it’s time to remind them of a few
realities.
Here it is: Homosexuals do
NOT have a history of persecuting Christians—not according to any scholarly histories,
at any rate. There is no homosexual
bible that says that Christians are evil, and commands that they be ostracized,
deprived of rights, and mutilated and killed. But you have only to read “Exodus,”
“Leviticus” and “Deuteronomy” and “Corinthians” and “Romans,” and listen to fundamentalist
preachers like “Patriarch” Pat Robertson to realize that “authorities" such as these have caused a lot of damage, as demonstrated by the remarks of “Patriarch”Phil Robertson and our opportunist politicians, as well as the gross
and disgusting comments online, and the bigoted, irrational conversations that we
hear daily all around us.
Christians, obviously, DO have a history of
persecuting, torturing, mutilating, and burning homosexuals alive, through vigilante-type mob violence and through
their church-state mechanisms. And THIS is the source of the homosexual
sense of outrage. Most Westerners have
heard of the Inquisition in Catholic countries (where church and state
co-operated to crush homosexuals as well as heretics and witches), but they are
unaware that Protestant countries, starting with the “Reformation,” had the same mechanism under different
names. This is on the record in the
historical (national, provincial, municipal, diocesan, parish) archives of
Protestant England, Holland, Germany and Scotland. And Switzerland. (See the NOTE at the end of this essay.)
In fact, the English form of legalized mob torture, the “pillory,” was so violent and merciless, when applied to gays, that it shocked even homophobic Christians of other nations, like France. Look it up.
In fact, the English form of legalized mob torture, the “pillory,” was so violent and merciless, when applied to gays, that it shocked even homophobic Christians of other nations, like France. Look it up.
Contemporary Christians should do a little research on how
the proto-ecumenical church councils of Elvira and Ancyra, in the 4th century,
excluded homosexuals from the rites of the church. How Augustine, bishop of Hippo condemned all sexuality, especially homosexuality; and how influential church
“fathers” Basil and Gregory called for ever more severe punishments against
homosexuals, and how starting with the Emperor Valentinian, and his successor
Theodosius, it was official imperial policy to pursue “sodomites,” and to
torture, mutilate, and burn them alive. And
this became the policy of most Christian countries into the 18th century.
Among other examples,
in the 11th century, “Saint” Peter Damian viciously attacked gays in
his Liber Gomorrhianus, claiming that
they undermined society itself and required brutal suppression. In the 13th century, “Saint”
Thomas Aquinas added the argument that homo-sexuality was a “sin against
nature”—and then defined nature and natural law not, the way scientists do, as what routinely happens in
the observable world, but as “what God wants his creatures to do”—as defined by
Catholic theology, of course. The church
insisted that the vicious behavior of
“sodomites” required vicious punishments, and human cruelty did the
rest.
The Greek Orthodox Church, led at one time by (but not limited to) Archbishop
and would-be Patriarch of Constantinople, John Chryso-stomos, violently
condemned homosexuals, echoing the words of Saul/Paul of Tarsus, and it
co-operated submissively with the Emperor Justinian while he committed horrific
atrocities of torture and mutilation against those accused of “sodomy” in a
campaign to shore up his crumbling authority—Look up Justinian I, and the Byzantine
bishops Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander
of Diospolis—but modern homophobic Christians don’t care anything about all that, and this policy is cynically continued in our time by the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
More recently, the governments of ostensibly Christian Russia and Jamaica and Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have instituted or intensified the persecution of gays, in the name of “God’s law.” And this legalized persecution has led to street gangs that beat and mutilate, rape and kill homosexuals, a persecution abetted by the government, the police and the courts—see the weekly news stories out of Russia, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe as well as the few American stories that seep through the media filters in our own dear country.
Two
historically significant items of the 20th century—the British
government’s persecution, castration, and murder of Dr. Alan Turing (the mathematics
and computer genius who contributed more than any other single man to the Allied
victory in World War II by deciphering the Nazi “Enigma” military code), and
the brutal New York City Police assaults that eventually provoked the 1969 Stonewall Inn
riots—seem to be outside the knowledge
of most Christians. And I guess they
never heard of Harvey Milk. They might Google Robert Hillsborough, Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena, among others. They should do a little reading and reduce their
ignorance of the world. Maybe then they
would understand the response of gay organizations to Duck-head Phil and the other
homophobes like him in this country and abroad.
NOTE: My information for the contents of this essay/article came from a great variety of blogs, web pages, and Wikipedia articles, too many and too scattered in past time for me to cite now. But I recently came across a pamphlet that contains many of the facts that I include in this essay. It was originally published in 1974 and republished in 2012 as a PDF document, Religious Roots of the Taboo on Homosexuality, by John Lauritsen, and is easily found through a Google search. It appears as
http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/RELROOTS.PDF
and is well worth reading. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in an accurate and reasoned account of the horrifically cruel persecutions of homosexual males throughout the history of Christian Europe and America. My only complaint is that the body of the text lacks formal notes on the sources, although there is an impressive bibliography.
NOTE: My information for the contents of this essay/article came from a great variety of blogs, web pages, and Wikipedia articles, too many and too scattered in past time for me to cite now. But I recently came across a pamphlet that contains many of the facts that I include in this essay. It was originally published in 1974 and republished in 2012 as a PDF document, Religious Roots of the Taboo on Homosexuality, by John Lauritsen, and is easily found through a Google search. It appears as
http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/RELROOTS.PDF
and is well worth reading. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in an accurate and reasoned account of the horrifically cruel persecutions of homosexual males throughout the history of Christian Europe and America. My only complaint is that the body of the text lacks formal notes on the sources, although there is an impressive bibliography.
http://minimosymaximos.blogspot.com/2013/04/el-retorno-homoerotico-de-platon.htm
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/
