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The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement
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Zoophilie, homosexualité, rite du passage et initiation masculine dans la Grèce contemporaine
. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994.
Davidovich, Boris.
Serbian Diaries
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Durandin, Catherine.
Roumanie, un piège?
St-Claude-de-Diray: Ed. Hesse, 2000.
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Public Scandals: Sexual Orientation and Criminal Law in Romania
. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1998.
Krekic, Barisa. “Abominandum Crimen: Punishment of Homosexuals in Renaissance Dubrovnik,”
Viator
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. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994.
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—Communism; Europe, Central & Eastern; Greece, Ancient; Orthodoxy; Police; Russia; Treason.
BIBLE, the
As a “religion of the Book,” Christianity forms the core of its dogma and beliefs from the teachings of the Bible. Despite being presented as a single volume, the Bible is actually made up of several books, divided between the Old Testament and New Testament. The New Testament relates the coming of Jesus, who is considered the Son of God sent to Earth to save humanity from sin, a decisive part of the Divine revelation. This essential event notwithstanding, the Old Testament is still quite valid: in fact, the arrival of the Son of God is the crowning moment up to which the Old Testament builds. Thus, the Old Testament is used by both Christianity and
Judaism
(which recognizes neither the New Testament nor Jesus as the prophesied Savior, and therefore refers to the Old Testament as part of its Hebrew Bible). All of the various denominations of Christian churches rely heavily on the Bible, considered to be the word of God, to justify their faith and doctrines.
Old Testament
Homosexuality is very clearly condemned in many of the books of the Old Testament. The churches extrapolate norms for modern society (really, for any society, no matter where it is situated in time and place) from these texts, despite the fact that they are historically and culturally tied to very specific temporal and geographic points: the
Middle East
mainly, and more specifically within the various Jewish locales of that region, set among a people the Bible calls Israel. The period of time covered by these texts is extremely long, stretching over a millennium, from the eleventh to second centuries BCE. No single unifying style can be identified (it includes collections of laws as well as narratives, prophecies, and even poetry), nor a single language (Hebrew being the most common, but Aramaic and Greek can also be found). There are some close relationships between characters of the same sex which may evoke suspicion despite never being presented in a negative way (the powerful love between David and Jonathan, for example), but, otherwise, homosexual practices are condemned on many occasions
The first of these condemnations is also the most well-known. It is found in the book of Genesis (the opening book and the oldest part of the Bible) and tells the tale of
Sodom and Gomorrah
. In several verses (Gn 19:1–29), the Old Testament describes how two angels (who are also referred to as two men) come to Sodom to visit Lot and his family. Residents of the city appear because, as the Old Testament describes, they desire to “know” the two visitors; Lot is required to protect his guests. The next day, God rains down “brimstone and fire” (Gn 19:24) upon Sodom, as well as upon the city of Gomorrah. The term “sodomite” originates from this story—literally meaning “citizen of Sodom.” This little word incurs a heavy religious, moral, and social reprobation; so heavy, in fact, that anyone to whom the word applies is theoretically doomed to be burned at the stake. The punishment by fire, threatened and imposed over the ages, takes its justification directly from this divine punishment as set out in the Old Testament; fire being symbolic of purification. Brimstone, too, is a disinfectant, but it also represents sterility (see Jb 18:15), which is also a common homophobic argument to justify labeling homosexual unions as a
perversion
. Fire and brimstone together are of course associated with hell, which evokes imagery of flames and the smell of noxious fumes. It should also be noted that this episode from Genesis describes homosexual relations only metaphorically, through the verb “to know.” This metaphor is common in the Bible, used most often to describe heterosexual relations (see Gn 4:1). Thus, the term itself is neutral and only takes on a negative connotation when describing relations between members of the same sex. More specifically, here it refers to relations between men; the city of Gomorrah is described several times in close connection to Sodom, but relations between women are never mentioned. Today, and since the nineteenth century, the word “gomorrahan” is used as a sort of female equivalent to sodomite, meaning lesbian. The Old Testament never specifies what perversion reigned in Gomorrah, and there is never any mention of relations between women. It seems that the modern meaning of the word gomorrahan was deduced simply through the close proximity of the two biblical cities, by way of symmetry. Despite being a more literary word, the term gomorrahan nonetheless has taken on all the negative connotations associated with sodomite. The two words can be included in any homophobic reprobation invoking the book of Genesis and this specific biblical story.
While the first biblical mention of sexual relations between men required the guise of a metaphor, those that follow (from the book of Leviticus) are much more explicit and literal, and much more violently homophobic. This difference in how the same subject is treated is not due to a difference in stance (male homosexuality is condemned in both cases), but a difference between the books themselves. Genesis tells a story, literary trappings and all, while Leviticus takes a more direct approach by clearly laying out what is permitted and what is not. As such, the book of Leviticus is really a collection of biblical laws and cultural mores (the Levites are the members of the tribe of Levi, charged with ministering to the priests responsible for keeping the temple). The book itself was composed relatively recently (between the fifth and fourth centuries BCE) and, logically, the ritual law set out therein is seldom cited in the rest of the Bible or in church tradition. Nonetheless, its moral laws of holiness, of purification, and of sacrifice serve as background for many passages in the New Testament and have influenced the image the church has built up for itself. (An introduction to Leviticus from a 1980 publication of the Old Testament by Le Cerf states that holiness is one of the principal concepts of that book, and of all the Old Testament; it is closely related to the concept of purity.) This holiness implies a moral obligation for the faithful, because one’s personal holiness reflects that of God. It is in this context that the laws of holiness condemn, twice, homosexual relations as being impure: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Lv 18:22), and “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Lv 20:13). The style of each verse identifies the nature of the text: the use of the singular second person “thou” clearly identifies the first verse as legislative; the second extract proposes a punishment for the crime. Note here not only the explicit condemnation of homosexual acts, but also more seriously, the condemnation of those who practice these acts. The fact that these verses are part of a code of holiness for Jewish people (and more specifically, those who have dealings with pagans) does nothing to diminish the violence of a death sentence. This homophobic call to violence is even more noteworthy given that it was also taken up by the Catholic Church and enforced for many centuries; trial by fire for homosexuals is simply another facet of this violence invoked under Biblical decree.
New Testament
The New Testament is the part of the Bible written after the coming of Jesus. It describes the life of Christ (in the Gospels), the first acts of the disciples, and the early church (in the Acts of the Apostles). It also establishes the fundamentals of the new Christian theology (see the Book of Revelations and the Epistles, particularly those of St
Paul
). The Christian church acknowledges the Jewish writings of the Old Testament, but logically, the New Testament is referred to far more frequently, given that it was composed after the coming of Christ. The church relies heavily on this word of God for its legitimacy and a large part of its doctrine. Before examining homophobia in the New Testament, it is important to point out that the Gospels contain no explicit condemnation or even negative mention of homosexual acts or those who practice them. Other than a few tenuous hints from which one might extrapolate (Jesus, unmarried, lived with a group of men, apparently also unmarried; the Gospel of John (13:23) mentions a disciple “whom Jesus loved”), there is never any question of homosexuality in the Gospels. Therefore, the church does not derive its homophobia from the Gospels or even from the teachings of Jesus. In fact, it should be noted that Jesus was particularly
tolerant
toward those of a marginal or often-denounced sexuality (he was friendly with prostitutes as well as an eunuch). But the church can easily find condemnation in other writings of the New Testament, in particular the Epistles of Paul.
These writings show that one of Paul’s central preoccupations was purity, necessary to one’s conversion to the law of Christ. In this context, homosexuality is impure because it represents the persistence of pagan laws. Those who practice it will never attain the kingdom of God; they are spiritually dead. In this light, it is easily understandable how Western history is rife with evidence of capital punishment for this type of crime; Paul, an essential reference within church theology, had declared that those who practice the
vice
of homosexuality had already lost their (true) life. The First Epistle to the Corinthians explains that “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10). It should be noted that the expression “effeminate and abusers of themselves with mankind” (King James Version) is a little more euphemistic than the original Greek, in which a more literal translation would be “effeminates and pederasts.” For “pederast,” the Vulgate’s Latin uses a less restrictive and less culturally specific expression,
masculorum concubitores
, which means literally, “men who sleep with men.” A brief look at the original text shows that, even today, expressions for homosexuality are euphemized by translators, indicating a puritanical tendency in work that should be completely scientific.
Coming back to Paul’s proposed list of vices, the apostle confuses and assimilates homosexuality with more consequential disturbances, such as instances of theft or lying. It follows that, within the doctrine of the church, homosexuals were confused with common
criminals
and sentenced to
prison
or death. In another Epistle, addressed to one if his disciples (First Letter to Timothy), Paul justifies the strictness of the law by the vices of the “lawless and disobedient.” Here again, the
masculorum concubitores
find themselves mixed in with all sorts of criminals, among “murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, manslayers, whoremongers” and “menstealers, liars, perjured persons” (1 Tim 1:9-10). History shows that sodomites were indeed punished along with other criminals, based on this treatment of homosexuality as a crime.
One more passage from an Epistle of Paul deserves to be cited and analyzed in detail, not only because it condemns homosexuals without equating them with common criminals, but also because it mentions female homosexuality. It is found in the Letter to the Romans:
God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was met. (Rom 1:26-27)
In this passage, homosexuality is still considered a sign of impurity in those who reject the word of God. It is also a mark of divine and just punishment, according to the formula “that recompense of their error which was met.” Homosexuality should then be understood as a chastisement deserved by those who do not know God; referring, again, to the practice of ancient paganism. Greek mores and beliefs had already been stigmatized in the two previous Letters. Here, anyone who refuses the word of God is targeted by this reprisal. Considering homosexuality as a heavy punishment for the rejection of God shows just how much the subject troubled Paul; his denunciation was no less strong.
In general, the church and Christian society have always justified homophobic violence by citing these texts. They have been taken literally, and certain passages are still regularly invoked today. The expression “vile affection” is doubly pejorative: not only is the adjective strongly negative, but the term “affection” is as well, given that the “affection” refers to the affections of those who choose to be ruled by love of their bodies and not of God. Men and women alike are capable of this depravity—this being the only instance where female homosexual love gained sufficient importance to be mentioned explicitly. Finally, the expression “
against nature
” should also be noted, as it has been used repeatedly as justification for all sorts of homophobic persecution.
—
Thierry Revol