History of Christianity and Homosexuality - Early Christianity

Early Christianity

Main article: Early Christianity See also: History of same-sex unions

Prior to the rise of Christianity, certain "homosexual" practices had existed among certain groups, with some degree of social acceptance in ancient Rome and ancient Greece (e.g. the pederastic relationship of an adult Greek male with a Greek youth, or of a Roman citizen with a slave). It is understood by some that St. Paul was only addressing such practices in Romans 1: 26–27, while traditionalists usually see these verses as condemning all forms of homoeroticism. It should be pointed out that the idea of a male couple who prefer homosexual acts to heterosexual acts and refrain from marriage or sexual acts with women entirely was alien to both Greek and Roman culture. Therefore both in religious and secular writing the references are to act, and not to a "sexual orientation"--which is a modern concept.

However, various other "homosexual" practices in Greece and Rome were vehemently derided and stigmatized (e.g. male effeminacy, the sodomitical penetration of an adult Roman citizen by another citizen, or allowing oneself to be penetrated by a slave, etc.). Plutarch refers to "the intercourse of man with man" as "immorality or assault", adding: "we regard men who take pleasure in passive submission as practicing the lowest kind of vice." Classical antiquity thus bequeathed to nascent Christianity a pagan milieu in which many forms of "homosexual" behavior were regularly reviled and denounced. This cultural condemnation lent itself to a combination with the Judaic prohibitions found in Leviticus 18:22 (see also Leviticus 18) and 20:13, with the latter commanding: "And if a man also lies with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." The Council of Jerusalem, c.50, issued the Apostolic Decree (Acts 15) in regards to new gentile converts, which included a prohibition against "fornication", thus the Apostles presented themselves as effecting (among other things) a separation from pagan sexual morality, though it was not given to the church to use physical force to enact capital punishment (till the advent of Constantine I and Christianity).

Many surviving writings of the Church Fathers about homosexual behavior describe it as sinful. In his fourth homily on Romans, St. John Chrysostom argued in the fourth century that homosexual acts are worse than murder and so degrading that they constitute a kind of punishment in itself, and that enjoyment of such acts actually makes them worse, "for suppose I were to see a person running naked, with his body all besmeared with mire, and yet not covering himself, but exulting in it, I should not rejoice with him, but should rather bewail that he did not even perceive that he was doing shamefully." He also said:

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But nothing can there be more worthless than a man who has pandered himself. For not the soul only, but the body also of one who hath been so treated, is disgraced, and deserves to be driven out everywhere.

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The 16th Canon of the Council of Ancyra (314) prescribed a penance of at least twenty years' duration for those "who have done the irrational" (alogeuesthai). There is some question whether this reference is to homosexual activity or bestiality (or both). The earliest Latin versions, however, translate the word in both senses. In any event, sodomy and bestiality are often condemned side-by-side in Christian writings of this era, usually with reference to these Latin translations.

In the year 342, the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans declared the death penalty for a male who aped the role of a bride. In the year 390, the Christian emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius denounced males "acting the part of a woman", condemning those who were guilty of such acts to be publicly burned. The Christian emperor Justinian (527–565) made those who would now be called "homosexuals" a scape goat for problems such as "famines, earthquakes, and pestilences."

Historian John Boswell disagrees with the wealth of condemnations and does not feel that they are fully characteristic of Early Christianity. He contended that adelphopoiesis, a Christian rite for uniting two persons of the same sex as "spiritual brothers/sisters", amounted to an approved outlet for romantic and indeed sexual love between couples of the same sex. Boswell also drew attention to Saints Sergius and Bacchus, whose icon depicts the two standing together with Jesus between or behind them, a position he identifies with a pronubus or "best man". Critics of Boswell's views have argued that the union created was more like blood brotherhood; and that this icon is a typical example of an icon depicting two saints who were martyred together, with the usual image of Christ that appears on many religious icons, and therefore that there is no indication that it depicts a "wedding". But Saints Sergius and Bacchus were both referred to as erastai in ancient Greek manuscripts, the same word used to describe lovers (Boswell).

Boswell, in his essay The Church and the Homosexual, attributes Christianity's denunciations of "homosexuality" to a supposedly rising intolerance in Europe throughout the 12th century, which he claims was also reflected in other ways. His premise is that when sodomy wasn't being explicitly and "officially" denounced, it was therefore being "tolerated". Historian R. W. Southern disagrees with Boswell's claims and has written that "the only relevant generalization which emerges from the penitential codes down to the eleventh century is that sodomy was treated on about the same level as copulation with animals." Southern further notes that "Boswell thinks that the omission of sodomy from the stringent new code of clerical celibacy issued by the Roman Council of 1059 implies a degree of tolerance. Countering this is the argument that the Council of 1059 had more urgent business on hand; and in any case, sodomy had been condemned by Leo IX at Rheims in 1049." Similarly, Pierre Payer has drawn attention to the fact that Boswell's thesis (as outlined in his Christianity, Homosexuality and Social Tolerance) almost completely ignores the wealth of condemnations found in the pentitential literature prior to the 12th century.