A term often used in Christian condemnation of debauchery was “fornication.” To Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth-century Italian priest considered by many Catholics to be the Church’s greatest theologian, fornication was first and foremost adultery, but it could also be considered anything that “offends nature,” according to the concept of “natural law” specific to this philosophy. It is interesting to inquire as to how the connection that was said to exist between a definition of debauchery that was essentially heterosexual, and male homosexuality, came to be; it was believed that there was a continuum between the two. “The effeminates throughout the realm ruled supreme, and carried on their debauchery without restraint,” the monk and historian Orderic Vitalis wrote in the twelfth century. Debauchery was thus characterized as a way of life particular to homosexuals (such as
Henri III
’s court
favorites
), or that which implicated the heterosexual world itself.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, two phenomena brought a new tone to the association between debauchery and homosexuality. For one, around 1600, “libertinism” first appeared, a trend in which the old Epicureanism (which had originated around 300 BCE) was reborn in an environment that was as free from religious beliefs as it was from traditional decrees. While libertinism was purely philosophical in origin, its definition evolved over time to the point that it became a synonym for debauchery. And since certain famous homosexuals of the period were associated with libertinism (such as the French writer Théophile de
Viau
), this gave rise to accusations that linked libertinism with sodomy. As a result, terms like “debauchee” and “sodomite” became increasingly interchangeable. This convergence remained in place during the period of the Ancien Régime in France (i.e. until the end of the eighteenth century), where the term “sodomy” had not yet taken on the meaning it has today, but rather suggested an image of debauchery as something essentially strange, if not monstrous, and at any rate at odds with normal conduct.
Seventeenth-century France—and England—were notable for a common practice among the aristocracy: a form of male companionship, often against the law and occasionally homosexual, which was specifically defined as “debauchery.” The French writer Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, in his
L’Histoire amoureuse des Gaules
(
The Amorous History of the Gauls
), claimed that these relationships resulted from a belief that the women of the Court had become too “easy.” Between the years 1680 and 1682, there were numerous controversial affairs, one implicating the son of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a minister in the French government, and another involving the son of Louis XIV himself, the Count of Vermandois, who had joined an openly homosexual brotherhood, which resulted in his public flogging (in the presence of his father) and subsequent exile. Also associated with this phenomenon was the overindulgence in food and drink, as well as the frequenting of brothels, both female and male.
In the eighteenth century, it became commonplace to believe that a person was “not born debauched,” but instead became so by way of a bad influence. Thus, according to writer Maurice Lever, when
police
arrested a young male prostitute, one of their first questions they asked was, “Who debauched you the first time?” In Abbé Prévost’s novel
Manon Lescaut
, there is an ambiguous passage where the protagonist Des Grieux describes “an abbot who patted me on the cheek, saying that I was a handsome boy, but that I should be on my guard in Paris, where young men were easily debauched.” Debauchery then necessarily took on a homosexual connotation, such as in the case of an old rake trying to snare a young man. Conversely, it would seem that homosexuality could only lead to debauchery. To the Baron D’Holbach, “these friendships … are founded in nothing but
vice
and debauchery” (
La Morale universelle
, 1776, 5, 5). Both Rousseau and Voltaire had roughly the same opinion, expressing incomprehension and repugnance for a moral world that they perceived as habitually stepping beyond what they referred to as “nature.” Philosopher Denis Diderot had a different opinion; he believed that a “debauchery of wine” from time to time never did any harm, and in his book
Entretiens sur le fils naturel
(
Conversations on the Natural Son
), he did not include homosexuality in his list of humanity’s most pernicious behaviors. Regardless, the general discourse on debauchery expanded considerably in the eighteenth century. The word appeared many times in the works of Pierre de Marivaux, Rétif de la Bretonne, the Baron de Montesquieu, and the Marquis de Sade, among others. So strongly was the notion integrated into common usage that almost all mention of homosexuality on its own completely vanished, relegated to anecdotes of debauchery. The obsession with debauchery—like that of
perversion
—was part of a profound questioning of the values of civilization, such as the role of luxury in society, the importance of public action, and the respective responsibilities of men and women.
What was profoundly troubling about debauchery, however, was that it was not usually a solitary activity. One way or another, it implied an intimate relationship with another that was outside the parameters of conjugal faith as sanctioned by religion and society. Like modern “swinging,” debauchery removed the barriers between the sexes, or to be exact, the barriers between the roles that each sex must play in a well-adjusted society. Given this, it is easy to understand its association with homosexuality. Debauchery as described could thus be an affair between men, a different kind of sociality. And while women could be accused of debauchery (as they had been since Biblical times), in the collective understanding debauchery was always perceived as an essentially male impulse; under these conditions, the debauched woman was imagined to be strong, masculine, and potentially lesbian. Consequently, in descriptions of debauchery, the homosexual always played a part, as did the Jew (in César de St-Réal’s
Dom Carlos
, for example, or Lesage’s
Gil Blas
). In this way, debauchery was distanced from society, situated as a place of fundamental otherness. But this characterization might have been the result of envy as much as it was a condemnation. In those who stigmatized homosexuals, one might find an element of jealousy which vacillated between real homosexual desire and a simple longing for male companionship beyond the social norm. In the same way as for the Jew, it is easy to attribute to the homosexual that which one does not have: in this case, the possibility of “having access to numerous partners without being obliged to resort to the path of sentiment,” to use philosopher Elisabeth Badinter’s phrasing from her 1992 book
X Y, de l’identité masculine
(
XY: On Masculine Identity
). Like homosexuality, debauchery was a breach of the male condition. The obsessive dread of debauchery, which Madame de Sévigné, the seventeenth-century French woman of letters, curiously said caused “more harm to men than to women,” was closely linked to the obsessive dread of male homosexuality, bound together by a fear of
sterility
(both physical and social), and an inanity vis-à-vis God. To this effect, the Comte de Mirabeau once said (not without double meaning), that “debauchery does not children make.”
If, during the eighteenth century, there was a strong link between homosexuality and debauchery, this was much less the case in the nineteenth century when, in the new medical discourse, homosexuals were now considered ill, and not simply a debauched person who chose his lifestyle. It should also be noted that there was a distinction made between inversion, which was considered to be a pathological condition (be it psychological, anatomical, or endocrinological in origin, depending on the various competing theories) and “perversion,” which was seen as an acquired or voluntary behavior. Around the latter concept, some of the obsessive fears characteristic of debauchery recurred, such as the potential
contagion
of homosexual practices. These fears inspired many awareness campaigns designed to warn youths of the risks inherent in perversion, which also advised them to be on guard against certain categories of people, such as military conscripts or vagabonds.
Furthermore, the nineteenth century was still sensitive to the social disturbance caused by homosexual companionship, insofar as it was connected to the suspicion of collusion between decadent noblemen and penniless knaves. Like sycophancy, homosexuality was seen as a shady way to undertake certain social maneuverings, or a means to attain a social freedom that was both enviable and morally reprehensible. In the works of Proust, it can be seen clearly how certain characters (such as the couple of Charlus and Jupien, and also Odette or Albertine) evolve within worlds that are opaque, parallel, and impenetrable to the common mortal, representing for the narrator both a mystery and a profound destabilization of the social, psychological, and affective laws he attempts to establish. These worlds are summed up by the narrator in a single word: vice. The manner in which he describes them—as an intrigued voyeur, constantly at the edge but never fully involved—shows just how ambiguous the status of debauchery was in modern society.
At first glance, it would seem that the degrading association of homosexuality with debauchery is no longer as common, especially in light of the gay liberation movements of the 1970s. However, two recent events demonstrate the persistence of this link. First, the
AIDS
epidemic; in many countries, including the United States, religious fundamentalists presented the disease as God’s chastisement of homosexual debauchery. For them, this so-called “gay cancer” seemed to be fate’s response to the uncomfortable demands made by gay activist movements. This position was accompanied by their claim that there was a distinction between victims: the “innocent” (such as blood transfusion recipients) and the “guilty” (such as homosexuals and intravenous drug users). Second, the issue of gay parenthood; various debates on the subject led gay rights opponents to return to the notion that children and the gay “lifestyle” are incompatible. Looming large over this belief is the fear that children adopted by gays and lesbians will become homosexual themselves, as well as the fear that they may end up in the hands of pedophiles. It would seem that even while homosexuals make their claim for social integration, they must continue to pay for the outdated attitudes toward debauchery that societies have maintained for centuries.
—Gilles Siouffi
Aron, Jean-Paul, and Roger Kempf.
Le Pénis et la démoralisation de l’Occident
. Paris: Grasset, 1978. New edition: Le Livre de Poche, 1999.
Boswell, John.
Christianisme, tolérance sociale et homosexualité
. Paris: Gallimard, 1985. [Published in the US as
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980.]
Coffignon, Ali.
La Corruption à Paris
. Paris: Librairie illustrée, 1888.
Godard, Didier.
L’Autre Faust. L’Homosexualité masculine pendant la Renaissance
. Montblanc: H & O Editions, 2001.
———.
Le Goût de Monsieur, l’homosexualité masculine au XVIIe siècle
. Montblanc: H & O Editions, 2002.
Hahn, Pierre.
Nos Ancêtres les pervers. La vie des homosexuels sous le Second Empire
. Paris: O. Orban, 1979.
Kimmel, Michael, and Michael Messner, eds.
Men’s lives
. Fifth edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.
Lever, Maurice.
Les Bûchers de Sodome
. Paris: Fayard, 1985.
Raynaud, Ernest.
La Police des moeurs
. Paris: Malfère, 1934.
Servez, Pierre.
Le Mal du siècle
. Givors: André Martel, 1955.
Spencer, Colin.
Histoire de l’homosexualité de l’Antiquité à nos jours
. Paris: Le Pré aux Clercs, 1998. [Published in the US as
Homosexuality in History
. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.]
—AIDS; Against Nature; Contagion; Damien, Peter; Decadence; Degeneracy; Favorites; Henri III; Literature; Medicine; Paul; Philosophy; Sodom and Gomorrah; Sterility; Theology; Viau, Théophile de; Vice.
DECADENCE
The association between decadence and homosexuality (by which evidence of the latter presumes the former) constitutes a narrative construction whose objective is either to discredit homosexuality by showing that it corrupts society, or to discredit another society by showing that it has a homosexual component. This narrative can either be constative, with the intention of reassuring a culture of the positive aspects of its homophobic values, or normative, where decadence is interpreted as the result of a transgression of prescribed norms, and calls for a reform of the society in which “dangerous” homosexuals lurk.
Part of the approach used by homophobes to characterize homosexuality as decadent is to emphasize its fecundity by, on one hand, associating homosexuality with a weakening of the people and, on the other, with a negative secondary stage of life.
Concerning the weakening of the people, from a qualitative viewpoint, those who link homosexuality to decadence often refer to evidence from Antiquity. This is the classic explanation for the fall of Rome, throughout the accounts and interpretations of Christian authors who, more or less consciously, condemned the regime because of its persecution of
Christianity
. Nevertheless, this interpretation is still open to debate. For instance, eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria, in his chapter “Of Crimes of Difficult Proof” from his treatise
On Crimes and Punishments
—where he discusses adultery, sodomy, and infanticide—he states that “[t]he generality of men want that vigor of mind and resolution which are as necessary for great crimes as for great virtues, [and] that great crimes do not always produce the destruction of a nation.” Eighteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham also refers to Antiquity when he argues that, if homosexuality causes weakening, then the only victim should be the homosexual. However, there is no physiological proof that this is indeed the case, and on the contrary, the soldiers of ancient Greece and Rome, who were practitioners of homosexuality, had an incontestable vigor that undermines this hypothesis.