Good reading for Christian Homophobes

[King_Charles]

Oh, they'll deny it, whether it is true or not.

Anyone will attest I am am definitely not a homophobes, but sadly Prof. Boswell's study isn't really taken seriously by historians of any persuasion. The rites referred to are the rites of adelphopoiesis or, in the west, ordo ad fratres faciendum that were rites held in the church as a replacement for the old blood-brother rites that were banned by the Church because of their pagan overtones. These rites had a huge amount of importance in those times as they allowed individuals to be "adopted" into other families, particularly as an individual with no surviving family was a complete anomaly unless he was a madman, saint or both.

While it is nice to speculate that some of these unions may have, on a local level, been homosexual couples that lived quite happily in certain more tolerant communities, the idea that homosexuality was widely accepted is rubbished by the huge amount of ethical, and sometimes legal condemnation of sodomy in the sources, as well as just "being effeminate" in some.

"[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they should use one another in this way" (Confessions 3:8:15 [A.D. 400]).

Depressingly enough it was actually a Christian emperor, Theodosius, under the direction of St. Ambrose that first decreed the death penalty for homosexual activity in the Roman Empire as early as 390 A.D.

No-one would be happier than me to be proved I was wrong on this point, as I passionately believe that same-sex unions should be permitted in the Church, but to argue that there is a precedent for it is specious at best. Just because you want something to be true, it does not make it so, and most especially in matters such as this, where we are not dealing in hard science, one needs to guard against making arguments for things that the weight of evidence is against, just because you want something to be true because you find it comforting. It is a very easy trap to fall into even for the most fair-minded individual, but it distorts the truth.

The story of Prof. Boswell just makes me think of this because he spent his life trying to change the Church's view on homosexuality (he was a both practicing Roman Catholic and an "out" homosexual right up until his death), and he did do, in my opinion, quite a lot for gay rights in that area. But his scholarship is just so heavily slanted in favour of his argument it barely amounts to scholarship... I respect him for what he set out to try and do, but, you can't censor out 2000 years of homophobia unfortunately.

(Yes I am aware of the irony of my coming out with this line of reasoning on an atheist forum, and I'm sure this is going to be pointed out with great veracity in the next few posts... )

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That's not what this thread is about, Drich. For fuck's sake. You are arguing that sex before marriage is a sin. Nothing more, nothing less. We are talking about homosexuality as a separate sin. If you can't show that it is, you haven't a leg to stand on.

Absolutely agree with this! Back when I was still toeing the Vatican line I used to get into heated exchanges with people over this very point, who seemed to consider opposite sex fornication less of a sin than same sex fornication. In fact, I used to point out that according to the Aquinas's definition, even martial sex with contraceptives, or mastuirbation, are just as bad as they involve sex without the possibility of creating life. Being a dutiful catholic, I used to go to confession every time I masturbated, otherwise I realised I would be a complete hypocrite if I signed up to the Vatican's condemnation of homosexuality, which still rested on Aquinas' reasoning. (Yeah, I was a little odd as a teenager, can't believe I never got propositioned in the confessional in retrospect... )

[As an aside, this is exactly why the Vatican refuses to budge on contraception, they realise that once it is morally OK to divorce pleasure from the procreative aspects of sex, then the whole edifice of Catholic teaching on sexual morality crumbles, and everything becomes permissable other than hurting other people. Say what you like about the Catholic Church, but at least they are smart people who understand and think through their philosophy of morality, unlike most bible bashers...]

Also: having read more of this thread, I might agree with you on the point that celibate "homosexual" relations might have been accepted under this union. I put "homosexual" in inverted commas as there was a far greater emphasis on intense, loving friendship in Roman times, that was nothing to do with sex... and I'm not sure the modern definition of homosexuality really covers this in the same way as the bond is quite explicitly non-sexual, and someone could be married and have more than one "brother" as well through these rituals.