HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE EARLY CHRISTIANS

"Homosexuality," Plato wrote, "is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love, all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce." This attitude of Plato's was characteristic of the ancient world.

Western attitudes toward law, religion, literature and government are dependent upon Roman attitudes. Why then are our attitudes toward homosexuality and sexual tolerance so different from the Romans? Romans were indifferent to questions of gender and gender orientation. Romans did not consider sexuality or sexual preference a matter of much interest, nor did they treat either in an analytical way.

One imperial writer made a comment on the subject in a general way "Zeus came as an eagle to god­like Ganymede and as a swan to the fair­haired mother of Helen. One person prefers one gender, another the other, I like both." Plutarch wrote "No sensible person can imagine that the sexes differ in matters of love as they do in matters of clothing. The intelligent lover of beauty will be attracted to beauty in whichever gender he finds it." Roman law and social strictures made absolutely no restrictions on the basis of gender. Some claim that there were laws against homosexual relations in Rome. This was not the case. But it is also a mistake to say that unbridled hedonism ruled. Romans had a complex set of moral strictures designed to protect children from abuse or any citizen from force or duress in sexual relations. Romans were sensitive to issues of love and caring, but individual sexual choice was completely unlimited. Male prostitution was so common that the taxes on it were a major source of revenue for the imperial treasury. It was so profitable that even in later periods when a certain intolerance crept in, the emperors could not bring themselves to end the practice and its attendant revenue.

Gay marriages were legal and frequent in Rome. Even emperors often married other males. There was total acceptance on the part of the populace of this sort of homosexual attitude and behavior. Popular Roman literature contained many gay love stories. There was absolutely no conscious effort in the Roman world, the world in which Christianity was born, to claim that homosexuality was abnormal or undesirable. No one in the early Roman world seemed to feel that the fact that someone preferred his own gender was any more significant than the fact that someone preferred blue eyes or blond hair. Neither gay nor straight people seemed to associate certain characteristics with sexual preference. Gay men were not thought to be less masculine than straight men. Gay people were not thought to be any better or worse than straight people, an attitude which differed both from that of the society that preceded it, the Greeks thought gay people were inherently better than straight people, and from the society which followed it that gay people were inferior to others.

If this was the social structure from which Western culture was derived, where did the negative ideas regarding homosexuality come from? The most obvious answer to this question, and the one which has most generally been given in the past, is that Christianity is responsible for the change. When Christianity appears on the scene the tolerance spoken of earlier disappears and the general acceptance of homosexuality becomes much less common.

Modern christians falsley believe that the Bible has something to do with their attitudes toward gay people. There is no place in the writings of the Early or High Middle Ages where the Bible seems to be the origin of these prejudices against gay people. Where any reason is given for the new hostility other sources not the Bible are cited. The Bible should be the last place to look for the growing hostility but so many people believe that the Bible is involved that its teachings on the subject matter must be addressed.

Most serious biblical scholars now recognize that the story of Sodom was not intended as any sort of comment on homosexuality. It certainly was not interpreted as a prohibition of homosexuality by early Christian writers. The story refers to the sin of inhospitality rather than to sexual failing. Almost all medieval scholars felt the story of Sodom was a story about hospitality. This is the most obvious interpretation and also the one given to it in most other biblical passages. It is striking that although Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in about two dozen different places (other than Genesis 19 where the story is first told), none associate homosexuality with the Sodomites.

Passages that could be miscontrued against homosexuality are Deuteronomy 23:17 and Kings 14:24, and doubtless the best known Leviticus 18:20 and 20:13, where "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman" is in reality describing ritual impurity for Jews. None of these was cited by early Christians against homosexual behavior. Early Christians had no desire to impose the levitical law on themselves or anyone else. Most non­Jewish Christians were in fact appalled by most of the Jewish laws and were not about to put themselves under what they considered the bondage of the old law. St. Paul says again and again that we must not fall back on the bondage of the old law and in fact goes so far as to claim that if we are circumcised (the cornerstone of the old law), Christ will profit us nothing. The early Christians were not to bind themselves to the strictures of the old law. The Council of Jerusalem, held around 50 A.D. and recorded in Acts 15, in fact took up this issue specifically and decided that Christians would not be bound by any of the strictures of the old law except for which they list - none of which is related to homosexuality!

In the New Testament we find no citations of Old Testament strictures. We do find three places, I Corinthians 6:9, I Timothy 1:10 and Romans 1:26­27, which might be relevant. The Greek word malakos in I Cor. 6:9 and I Tim. 1 :10, which Scholars in the 20th century have deemed to refer to some sort of homosexual behavior, was universally used by Christian writers to refer to masturbation until about the 15th or 16th century. Beginning in the 15th century many people were bothered by the idea that masturbators were excluded from the kingdom of heaven. They did not however seem to be too upset by the idea of excluding homosexuals, so malakos was retranslated to refer to homosexuality instead of masturbation. The texts and words remained the same, but translators just changed their ideas about who should be excluded from the kingdom of heaven.

The remaining passage - Romans 1:26-7 - does not suffer by and large from mistranslation, although you can easily be misled by the phrase "against nature." This phrase was also interpreted differently by the early church. St. John Chrysostom says that St. Paul deprives the people he is discussing of any excuse. Observing of their women that "they changed the natural use. No one can claim, Paul points out, that she came to this because she was precluded from lawful intercourse or that because she was unable to satisfy her desire....Only those possessing something can change it. He points the same thing out about men but in a different way? saying they 'left the natural use of women.' Likewise, he casts aside with these words every excuse, charging that they not only had legitimate enjoyment and abandoned it, going after another but that by spurning the natural, they pursued the unnatural." What Chrysostom is getting at, and he expounds on it at great length, is the idea that St. Paul was not writing about gay people but about heterosexual people, probably married who abandoned the pleasure they were entitled to by virtue of their own natures for one to which they were not entitled. This is reflected in the canons imposing penances for homosexual activity, which through the 16th century were chiefly directed toward married persons. That is a married straight man having sex with another man. Little is said of single people.

The most significant element of the passage is it introduced into Christian thought the notion that homosexual relations were "against nature." What Paul seems to have meant was 'unusual' not 'against' natural law as it is so often interpreted. The concept of natural law was not fully developed until almost 1,200 years later. All that Paul meant to say was that it was unusual that people should have this sort of sexual desire. This is made clear by the fact that in the same epistle in the 11th chapter, God Himself is in fact described as acting "against nature" in saving the Gentiles. It is therefore inconceivable that this phrase connotes moral turpitude.

Why doesn't the New Testament indicate something about the attitude of early Christians toward homosexuality? In the New Testament Jesus, St. Paul, and the other writers are responding to questions regarding social and moral problems posed to them by a predominantly heterosexual society. People asked them questions about divorce, widows, property, etc. and they answered these questions. Jesus does not appear to be giving detailed guidelines on all aspects of human life, but rather to be offering general principles. There is almost no comment anywhere in the Bible about loving your children; there are few comments about friendship; and there is not a single comment about what we know as "romantic love," although this is the basis of modern Christian marriage.

Todays primary reasoning for hostility toward homosexuality is the general opposition to non-procreative sexuality. Early Christians were hostile toward any form of sexuality which was not potentially procreative. This cannot, however, be shown to stem from Christian principles. There is not a word within the Old Testament or the New about non-procreative sexuality among married persons, most Jewish commentators have agreed that anything was licit between husband and wife. It is a well established principle that there is a class­related prejudice against non-procreative sexual acts among lower class Christians as among any lower class group of society. The theologians explicit rejection of all non-procreative sexuality, does not relate directly toward gay people. The theologians of the early church were attempting to impress on all Christians that they had to see every act of heterosexual intercourse as the potential creation of a child. No effective means of birth control was known (except for abstinence), not even the rhythm method. The only way to avoid having children was to kill or abandon them. Theologians therefore wished to persuade Christian parents that they had to be responsible for the creation of a child every time they had sexual pleasure. The only other alternatives in their world were morally unacceptable. Now the original aim of this approach, it appears, was to protect children. It was not to attack homosexuality. It was a very long time before this notion spilled over into homosexuality, but it eventually did.

As late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there appears to be no conflict between a Christian life and homosexuality. Gay life is everywhere in the art, poetry, music, history, etc. of the 11th and 12th centuries. The most popular literature of the day is about same­sex lovers of one sort or another. Clerics were at the forefront of this revival of the gay culture. St. Aelred, for instance, writes of his youth as a time when he thought of nothing but loving and being loved by men. He became a Cistercian abbot, and incorporated his love for men into his Christian life by encouraging monks to love each other, not just generally, but individually and passionately. He cited the example of Jesus and St. John as guidance for this. 'Jesus himself," he said, "in everything like us, patient and compassionate with others in every matter, Transfigured this sort of love through the expression of his own love. For he allowed only one - not all- to recline on his breast as a sign of his special love; and the closer they were, the more copiously did the secrets of their heavenly marriage impart the sweet smell of their spiritual chrism to their love."

After the twelfth century Christian tolerance and acceptance of gay love seems to disappear quite rapidity. The writings of St. Aelred disappeared because they were locked up and forgotten. Beginning about 1150, for unknown reasons, there was a great upsurge of intolerance towards gay people and violent outbursts against Jews, Muslims, and witches. Women were suddenly excluded from power structures to which they had previously had access. There was suspicion of everyone. In 1180 the Jews were expelled from France.

The change was rapid. In England in the 12th century there were no laws against Jews and they occupied prominent positions, but by the end of the 13th century, sleeping with a Jew was equated with sleeping with an animal or with murder, and in France Jews were to be killed on the spot if they questioned the Christian faith. During this time there were many diatribes against gay people as well, suggesting that they molest children, violate natural law, are bestial and bring harm to nations which tolerate them. Within a single century between the period of 1250 and 1350, almost every European state passed civil laws demanding death for a single homosexual act. This reaction affected Christian theology a great deal. Throughout the 12th century homosexual relations had at worst been comparable to heterosexual fornication by married people and at best not sinful at all. During the 13th century writers like Thomas Aquinas portray homosexuality as one of the very worst sins, second only to murder.

St. Thomas tried to show that homosexuality was opposed to nature in some way, the most familiar objection being that nature created sexuality for procreation and using it for any other purpose would violate nature. Aquinas was much too smart for this argument and tried other reasoning. In the Summa Contra Gentiles he asks, "Is it sinful to walk on your hands when nature intended them for something else?" No, indeed it is not sinful" so he shifted ground. This is obviously not the reason that homosexuality is sinful; he looks for another. First he tried arguing that homosexuality must be sinful because it impedes the reproduction of the human race. But this argument also failed for Aquinas noted in the Summa Theologica, "a duty may be of two sorts: it may be enjoined on the individual as a duty which cannot be ignored without sin, or it may be enjoined upon a group. In the latter cases no one individual is obligated to fulfill the duty. The commandment regarding procreation applies to the human race as a whole! Which is obligated to increase physically. It is therefore sufficient for the race if some people undertake to reproduce physically." Aquinas admitted in the Summa Theologica that homosexuality was absolutely natural to certain individuals and therefore inculpable. In what sense, then, could he argue that it was unnatural? He concedes that the term "natural" in fact has no moral significance, but it is simply a term applied to things which are strongly disapproved of. "Homosexuality," he says, "is called 'the unnatural vice' by the common people, and hence it may be said to be unnatural." This was not an invention of Aquinas'. It was a response to popular prejudices of the time. It did not derive its authority from the Bible or from any previous tradition of Christian morality, but it eventually became part of Catholic theological thought. These attitudes have remained basically unchanged because there has been no popular support for change in the matter. The public has continued to feel hostility to gay people and the church has been under no pressure to re­examine the origins of its teachings on homosexuality.

It is possible to change ecclesiastical attitudes toward gay people and their sexuality because the objections to homosexuality are not biblical, they are not consistent, they are not part of Jesus' teaching; and they are not even fundamentally Christian. It is possible because Christianity was indifferent, if not accepting, of gay people and their feelings for a longer period of time than it had been hostile to them. It is possible because the founders of the religion specifically considered love to transcend accidents of biology and to be the end, not the means. It may not be possible to eradicate intolerance from secular society, for intolerance is, to some extent ineradicable; but the church's attitude can and must be changed. It has been different in the past and it can be again. Plato observed of secular society nearly 2,400 years ago that "wherever it has been established that it is shameful to be involved in homosexual relationships, this is due to evil on the part of the legislatures, to despotism on the part of the rulers and to cowardism on the part of the governed."

There is an abundance of ecclesiastical precedent to encourage the church to adopt a more positive attitude. As a gay archbishop wrote in the 12th century, "it is not we who teach God how to love, but He who taught us. He made our natures full of love." A contemporary of his wrote, "Love is not a crime. If it were wrong to love, God would not have bound even the divine to love." These statements came from the Christian community, from Christian faith. That community can and must be reminded of its former beliefs, its former acceptance.