Paul's Writings Underpin Western Thought

[Angrboda]

As noted previously, one has to take the bad with the good, and among Paul's other contributions regarding shame related to the body and natural instinct, one has to count his contribution to anti-homosexual prejudice among the negatives. Little about any inherent dignity of human life in his condemnation of homosexuality. As well, in considering his views on women, while there is implicit support for the idea that he had a positive view of women and their role in the church, it must be remembered that it was the misogynistic passages in his writing which stood out and formed the locus of anti-women attitudes throughout the middle ages and into our modern era. Having an implicitly laudatory attitude is small consolation if the more explicit effects of one's writings are grossly oppressive. (On a personal note, although I'm not making an explicit argument for it, Paul's concentration on faith versus works perpetuates a religious view which seems to encourage hypocrisy as well as perpetuating a religion that basically rests upon a supposed thought crime. The enormous amount of devastation that Christianity has left in its wake, both in terms of death and oppression related to people being seen as "believing the wrong things" is enormous.)

In Republican Rome, the poorly attested Lex Scantinia penalized an adult male for committing a sex crime (stuprum) against an underage male citizen (ingenuus). It is unclear whether the penalty was death or a fine. The law may also have been used to prosecute adult male citizens who willingly took a pathic role in same-sex acts, but prosecutions are rarely recorded and the provisions of the law are vague; as John Boswell has noted, "if there was a law against homosexual relations, no one in Cicero's day knew anything about it." When the Roman Empire came under Christian rule, all male homosexual activity was increasingly repressed, often on pain of death. In 342 CE, the Christian emperors Constantius and Constans declared same-sex marriage to be illegal. Shortly after, in the year 390 CE, emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius declared homosexual sex to be illegal and those who were guilty of it were condemned to be publicly burned alive. Emperor Justinian I (527–565 CE) made homosexuals a scapegoat for problems such as "famines, earthquakes, and pestilences."

Laws and codes prohibiting homosexual practice were in force in Europe from the fourth to the twentieth centuries, and Muslim countries have had similar laws from the beginnings of Islam in the seventh century up to and including the present day. Abbasid Baghdad, under the Caliph Al-Hadi (785–786 CE), punished homosexuality with death.

Wikipedia || Violence against LGBT people

(As a side note, the fact that same-sex marriages had to be explicitly outlawed seems to strongly suggest that same-sex marriages were in fact a reality at the time. The idea that they would make a law outlawing a practice that did not occur is absurd. And thus, Steve's contention that same-sex marriage does not exist in history in another thread would seem to be an exaggeration, at best.)