Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

[StephenT]

yes so.I don t know,we don t have homos in Romania,at least not declared ones,maybe a few,altough too few to make a difference.

But I guess my country too will have plenty of them soon,hurray for democracy.

At a rough guess there are about one million gay people in Romania. (Assuming 5% of the population.) Presumably they've had to hide their identity and pretend to be straight through fear of persecution and harassment. If democracy will allow them to live their lives openly in future - then yes, hurray for democracy.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Well this gets into the whole distinction Sun_Wu and RGB are discussing of identity vs. act . Several branches of Mainline Protestantism are fine with both, and Roman Catholicism is accepting of the former insofar as it is an orientation. It's out for traditional Islam, and for Hinduism IRC and I have no idea what the take of the primary sects of Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism would be though I expect any traditional understanding would preclude it.

Some branches of Mainline Protestantism will even do weddings.

 

[unmerged(484524)]

there aren t 5%...because homos are not part of our tradition,and we are and orthodox country.

And no,no huray for democracy,because i don t want my children to grow up sorrounded by unstraight men/women.Why?because i m a good christian,and a patriot.I respect my traditions,respect my land,my milenarry land on wich my straight ancestors spilled their blood.This world is huge,why must there be hommosexuals in every country?Why in Romania.I know my post will be deleted,and maybe i ll be banned for my oppinions,but still i will write this post

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Well this gets into the whole distinction Sun_Wu and RGB are discussing of identity vs. act . Several branches of Mainline Protestantism are fine with both, and Roman Catholicism is accepting of the former insofar as it is an orientation. It's out for traditional Islam, and for Hinduism IRC and I have no idea what the take of the primary sects of Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism would be though I expect any traditional understanding would preclude it.

There was definitely some very interesting medieval Islamic jurisprudence that created third-sex categories for people we wouldn't classify as third-sex today so that they could accommodate some (from today's viewpoint) same-sex activity legally. It's no longer done, the western view has become prevalent and is treated with hostility.

Of course there is nothing in Islam against orientation (if we engage in the pointless distinction game) per se, so any apologia you apply to Catholics automatically extends to all Muslims too. Sexless Queer Muslims are in the same boat as the Catholic counterparts.

And - Joag - thank you. Now I know there are no gays in the millenarian ancestral Orthodox lands of Romania, of course, thank you for the information. I'll tell that to all my gay Romanian acquaintances.

 

[unmerged(484524)]

yeah,same old flame war.People like you made the world what it is today.An war loving,multicultured,pro gay society ,with the ultimate goal of every human being getting richer,no morality,no more patriotism,just good old money.You re right tought,not the gays or other minorities are the problem,people who engourage them like you are...it s like you engourage them just so everybody will think about you as that good old understanding chap who is so open minded.
You re a hipocrite.

I ll await my ban now.

 

[The-Doc]

There was definitely some very interesting medieval Islamic jurisprudence that created third-sex categories for people we wouldn't classify as third-sex today so that they could accommodate some (from today's viewpoint) same-sex activity legally. It's no longer done, the western view has become prevalent and is treated with hostility.

Of course there is nothing in Islam against orientation (if we engage in the pointless distinction game) per se, so any apologia you apply to Catholics automatically extends to all Muslims too. Sexless Queer Muslims are in the same boat as the Catholic counterparts.

Interesting. I've heard of the "third-sex" distinction in the context of Central Asian culture before, but it referred to hermaphrodites or the androgynous. I wonder if this has any connection to the lingering acceptance of homosexual behavior and pederasty in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan. Do you have some more information on this and the traditional/contemporary Islamic view? I'm afraid Middle Eastern domestic life is not an area I've studied much.

 

[Sun_Wu]

there aren t 5%...because homos are not part of our tradition,and we are and orthodox country.

And no,no huray for democracy,because i don t want my children to grow up sorrounded by unstraight men/women.Why?because i m a good christian,and a patriot.I respect my traditions,respect my land,my milenarry land on wich my straight ancestors spilled their blood.This world is huge,why must there be hommosexuals in every country?Why in Romania.I know my post will be deleted,and maybe i ll be banned for my oppinions,but still i will write this post

Homosexuality in males at least is probably caused by something going wrong in the wave of hormones that sexually differentiates the brain

There was definitely some very interesting medieval Islamic jurisprudence that created third-sex categories for people we wouldn't classify as third-sex today so that they could accommodate some (from today's viewpoint) same-sex activity legally. It's no longer done, the western view has become prevalent and is treated with hostility.

Of course there is nothing in Islam against orientation (if we engage in the pointless distinction game) per se, so any apologia you apply to Catholics automatically extends to all Muslims too. Sexless Queer Muslims are in the same boat as the Catholic counterparts.

And - Joag - thank you. Now I know there are no gays in the millenarian ancestral Orthodox lands of Romania, of course, thank you for the information. I'll tell that to all my gay Romanian acquaintances.

They were also rather accepting with pederasty. By pederasty I am referring to older men with pubescent males (it's not paedophilia). In some circles there is the "understanding" that the Koran forbids men from "loving" "men" meaning sex is okay if you don't "love" them and it's also okay if they aren't full grown men yet, see Afghanistan for example. In Catholicism on the other hand sex with boys was traditionally very punished, for example in Spain the punishment was hanging and then burning. Catholicism has no prohibition on men loving men, but rather a prohibition on sex as this is a misuse of the sexual faculties*, sodomy between heterosexuals is also held as mortally sinful and roughly comparable.



*is this correct word?

 

[The-Doc]

*is this correct word?

Yup, Aquinas would be proud.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Interesting. I've heard of the "third-sex" distinction in the context of Central Asian culture before, but it referred to hermaphrodites or the androgynous. I wonder if this has any connection to the lingering acceptance of homosexual behavior and pederasty in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan). Do you have some more information on this and the traditional/contemporary Islamic view? I'm afraid Middle Eastern domestic life is not an area I've studied much.

Specifically, what I meant, there were provisions to classify someone as not-a-man without having any actual hermaphrodite secondary sexual characteristics (so cross-dressing and accepting the gender roles would have been enough in some cases). It was controversial even then but there are a few cases here and there. Islamic legal rulings have a long and varied history, but the authority to make independent judgments was continuously abridged through history. I do not have anything on me right now but I can probably get some from my old HDD, sorry

What we have today in the worst cases is a classic combination of a hostile religious attitude that only mandates punishment for the act while recognizing the desire, combined with the state enforcing this penalty, with the state often being harsher and used as a cover for the religious underpinnings.

The Middle-Eastern/Central Asian pederasty tradition is not part of the third-sex paradigm but part of the recognizing of the desire, really (though the current norm tends very uncomfortably young, granted, probably more so than the medieval norm). You'll hear the exact same arguments from the Muslims regarding Friendship, Divine Love, etc. when bumping into huge reams of medieval homoerotic poetry and prose. It wasn't serious you see, just a literary standard/transcendental stuff you wouldn't understand/blah etc. Kind of Platonic in the sense of "probably hypocritical given what you wrote before".

The fact that the Catholics have the same arguments but lack the volume of contrary literature is an interesting distinction, and one I brought attention to earlier in the thread, and one that Sun tried to argue as not being evidence of cultural silencing.

EDIT: I also read his previous post, total disagreement on his interpretation of Catholic vs. Muslim. They are similar more than they are distinct on this matter conceptually, but practically medieval Catholicism was the more violent. That's all.

yeah,same old flame war.People like you made the world what it is today.

Dude. We didn't start the fire. It's been always burning since the world's been turning.

All in all it's a low-energy-state equilibrium with roughly even geographic/temporal distributions of the modalities, meaning that you're bemoaning biology. Surely you can see that's unproductive?

 

[StephenT]

I have no idea what the take of the primary sects of Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism would be though I expect any traditional understanding would preclude it.

Buddhism seems to be accepting of homosexuality. Of course, that's in the context of a religion that sees all forms of attachment to worldly pleasures to be something best avoided. There are restrictions on "hermaphrodites" becoming ordained as monks or nuns, which some more traditional societies extend to gay people rather than just the physically intersexed.

Tibetan Buddhism is perhaps the most 'traditional' as you would put it: the Dalai Lama is on record as saying that while "mutually agreeable homosexual relations can be of mutual benefit, enjoyable and harmless", they're still not compatible with being a pious Buddhist. A true Buddhist, according to him, should not engage in any form of sexual activity except for penetrative heterosexual sex for the purposes of reproduction. Gay sex, masturbation, and a man and woman having oral sex with each other are all equally wrong, according to him. Even so, his spokesman had this to say in 2007:

"People don’t follow all the principles. Very few people can claim they follow all the principles. For instance, telling a lie. In any religion, if you ask if telling a lie is a sin—say Christian—they will say yes. But you find very few people who don’t at some point tell a lie. Homosexuality is one act, but you can’t say a person who is homosexual is not a Buddhist. Or someone who tells a lie is not a Buddhist. Or someone who kills an insect is not a Buddhist."

Other branches of Buddhism are more accepting. The Taiwanese Buddhist leader Hsing Yun - who has met both the last two Popes in inter-faith exchanges - says, "People often ask me what I think about homosexuality. They wonder, is it right, is it wrong? The answer is, it is neither right nor wrong. It is just something that people do. If people are not harming each other, their private lives are their own business; we should be tolerant of them and not reject them."

In Japan, Buddhism is generally assumed to promote homosexuality, rather than condemn it.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

Homosexuality (or at least homoeroticism) was extremely common in pre-modern Buddhist monasteries, but I don't know what that says about modern lay Buddhists.

 

[The-Doc]

Specifically, what I meant, there were provisions to classify someone as not-a-man without having any actual hermaphrodite secondary sexual characteristics (so cross-dressing and accepting the gender roles would have been enough in some cases). It was controversial even then but there are a few cases here and there. Islamic legal rulings have a long and varied history, but the authority to make independent judgments was continuously abridged through history. I do not have anything on me right now but I can probably get some from my old HDD, sorry

What we have today in the worst cases is a classic combination of a hostile religious attitude that only mandates punishment for the act while recognizing the desire, combined with the state enforcing this penalty, with the state often being harsher and used as a cover for the religious underpinnings.

The Middle-Eastern/Central Asian pederasty tradition is not part of the third-sex paradigm but part of the recognizing of the desire, really (though the current norm tends very uncomfortably young, granted, probably more so than the medieval norm). You'll hear the exact same arguments from the Muslims regarding Friendship, Divine Love, etc. when bumping into huge reams of medieval homoerotic poetry and prose. It wasn't serious you see, just a literary standard/transcendental stuff you wouldn't understand/blah etc. Kind of Platonic in the sense of "probably hypocritical given what you wrote before".

The fact that the Catholics have the same arguments but lack the volume of contrary literature is an interesting distinction, and one I brought attention to earlier in the thread, and one that Sun tried to argue as not being evidence of cultural silencing.

Did the old Islamic take on the third-sex apply to gender expression, sexual behavior or both? Kind of like a pass on prohibited acts for being a "not man" or something like that? Just a guess, but that would fit in with the other accounts I've heard of this distinction in the Mid-East/Central Asia and the Mediterranean. It's like one of those weird parallel developments where you'll find several cultures coming to similar conclusions for reasons rather baffling to us moderns (like rabbits not counting as meat for monks in France and Tibet). A curiosity of antiquity but one that seems to drop off the map by around 1000 AD, at least by my limited reading. Given that gap in perspective I'm a little skeptical of some of the attempts to link it to a modern gay identity.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Did the old Islamic take on the third-sex apply to gender expression, sexual behavior or both? Kind of like a pass on prohibited acts for being a "not man" or something like that? Just a guess, but that would fit in with the other accounts I've heard of this distinction in the Mid-East/Central Asia and the Mediterranean. It's like one of those weird parallel developments where you'll find several cultures coming to similar conclusions for reasons rather baffling to us moderns (like rabbits not counting as meat for monks in France and Tibet). A curiosity of antiquity but one that seems to drop off the map by around 1000 AD, at least by my limited reading. Given that gap in perspective I'm a little skeptical of some of the attempts to link it to a modern gay identity.

Why are you concerned with the modern gay identity? What's it to you, as a scholar? To use your "the capybara is a fish" analogy, though the ancients (or hungry Conquistadores) were quirky and pragmatic, the capybara was always a mammal before the was a conception of a mammal insofar that biological classification is reality. A thing exists, time passes, people come up with different justifications as to why it does, some more inane than others.

There is no link between concepts as you describe them, but no link between concepts is necessary. The concepts are secondary.

The concepts are secondary to such a point where even when you have say 10-11 sources for something and they all share the same overall paradigm on how to treat a human phenomenon, about half of them would visibly deviate from the prescribed ideal, sometimes making excuses, sometimes not, but nonetheless undermining the ideal to start with.

 

[The-Doc]

Why are you concerned with the modern gay identity? What's it to you, as a scholar? To use your "the capybara is a fish" analogy, though the ancients (or hungry Conquistadores) were quirky and pragmatic, the capybara was always a mammal before the was a conception of a mammal. A thing exists, time passes, people come up with different justifications as to why it does, some more inane than others.

People interpret things, whether they're historical documents or capybaras, according to their experience and what is familiar to them. Just saying there is a tendency to backwards project and assume that something fits into our current notions or framework of understanding when it may be something entirely distinct.

So we may be looking at several different things, not just a continuous one.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

People interpret things, whether they're historical documents or capybaras, according to their experience and what is familiar to them. Just saying there is a tendency to backwards project and assume that something fits into our current notions or framework of understanding when it may be something entirely distinct.

So we may be looking at several different things, not just a continuous one.

I think I acknowledged that but pointed out that:

1. My explanation is far simpler, and fits well into the evidence on the whole.
2. Modern religious understandings are equally backwards-projecting anyway.

At this point I'm not certain what the discussion is about Other than Ancestral Romania and joag's impending martyrdom.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Homosexuality (or at least homoeroticism) was extremely common in pre-modern Buddhist monasteries, but I don't know what that says about modern lay Buddhists.

pre-modern Buddhist monasteries were disgusting cesspools of filth, the Tibetans are far better off back under Chinese rule than they were under themselves

I think I acknowledged that but pointed out that:

1. My explanation is far simpler, and fits well into the evidence on the whole.
2. Modern religious understandings are equally backwards-projecting anyway.

At this point I'm not certain what the discussion is about Other than Ancestral Romania and joag's impending martyrdom.

homosexuality has always been there in that there have always people with predominant to exclusive attraction to the same sex, but the concept of a gay identity is a new concept just as there have always been people agitating for more rights for women, but feminism is a new concept and so doesn't belong in a book analyzing the Middle Ages.

there is a substantially better documented proof of Catholicism's beliefs in the Middle Age than of gay identity or feminism.


PS, Doc, 'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

pre-modern Buddhist monasteries were disgusting cesspools of filth, the Tibetans are far better off back under Chinese rule than they were under themselves

I don't know if you're serious but Tibet is hardly the only Buddhist country in the world.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

homosexuality has always been there in that there have always people with predominant to exclusive attraction to the same sex, but the concept of a gay identity is a new concept just as there have always been people agitating for more rights for women, but feminism is a new concept and so doesn't belong in a book analyzing the Middle Ages.

there is a substantially better documented proof of Catholicism's beliefs in the Middle Age than of gay identity or feminism.

from a documentary standpoint:

1. Authorship bias -
2. Survival bias -
3. Writing and application/interpretation isn't the same. "Catholic viewpoints" have changed over time but their application has changed even more, which is more important. You're arguing that there's a 1:1 correspondence.

from a "why bother studying the middle ages at all" standpoint

1. We can still talk women in the past without agreeing that they are vessels of weakness, sin and impurity and need to be treated with a firm hand
2. We can still talk homosexuals in the past without regarding them as sodomites who have fouled the clear spring of friendship, Augustine-like

I'm basically not sure what the problem is. We can full well disagree with the sources and their authors on any number of subjects, based on our vastly wider and deeper collective knowledge, so why not this subject. The call to examine the past from a strictly conservative viewpoint is hardly agenda-free.

 

[Sun_Wu]

from a documentary standpoint:

1. Authorship bias -
2. Survival bias -
3. Writing and application/interpretation isn't the same. "Catholic viewpoints" have changed over time but their application has changed even more, which is more important. You're arguing that there's a 1:1 correspondence.

from a "why bother studying the middle ages at all" standpoint

1. We can still talk women in the past without agreeing that they are vessels of weakness, sin and impurity and need to be treated with a firm hand
2. We can still talk homosexuals in the past without regarding them as sodomites who have fouled the clear spring of friendship, Augustine-like

I'm basically not sure what the problem is. We can full well disagree with the sources and their authors on any number of subjects, based on our vastly wider and deeper collective knowledge, so why not this subject. The call to examine the past from a strictly conservative viewpoint is hardly agenda-free.

I am not arguing there is a 1:1 correspondence

1) Agreed
2) Agreed, but when judging leaders we also need to factor in what was know at the time, too often I see the Occident preaching moral relativity except when they study the past in which case absolutely rigid standards apply.

 

[Arilou]

Buddhism seems to be accepting of homosexuality. Of course, that's in the context of a religion that sees all forms of attachment to worldly pleasures to be something best avoided. There are restrictions on "hermaphrodites" becoming ordained as monks or nuns, which some more traditional societies extend to gay people rather than just the physically intersexed.

Tibetan Buddhism is perhaps the most 'traditional' as you would put it: the Dalai Lama is on record as saying that while "mutually agreeable homosexual relations can be of mutual benefit, enjoyable and harmless", they're still not compatible with being a pious Buddhist. A true Buddhist, according to him, should not engage in any form of sexual activity except for penetrative heterosexual sex for the purposes of reproduction. Gay sex, masturbation, and a man and woman having oral sex with each other are all equally wrong, according to him. Even so, his spokesman had this to say in 2007:

"People don’t follow all the principles. Very few people can claim they follow all the principles. For instance, telling a lie. In any religion, if you ask if telling a lie is a sin—say Christian—they will say yes. But you find very few people who don’t at some point tell a lie. Homosexuality is one act, but you can’t say a person who is homosexual is not a Buddhist. Or someone who tells a lie is not a Buddhist. Or someone who kills an insect is not a Buddhist."

Other branches of Buddhism are more accepting. The Taiwanese Buddhist leader Hsing Yun - who has met both the last two Popes in inter-faith exchanges - says, "People often ask me what I think about homosexuality. They wonder, is it right, is it wrong? The answer is, it is neither right nor wrong. It is just something that people do. If people are not harming each other, their private lives are their own business; we should be tolerant of them and not reject them."

In Japan, Buddhism is generally assumed to promote homosexuality, rather than condemn it.

It should be noted that in addition to various religious reasons, we have to consider a verybasic pressure against homosexuality: IE: You're expected to breed to preserve the family. (which in some cases, like Greece and arguably China, was an actual religious duty (before the synthesis chinese thinkers were really aghast by buddhism and the concept of monastaries precisely for the idea of abstinence and thus not continuing the family line/providing children to honor the ancestors).

I'd argue that "identity" or "orientation" is (from a historical POV) largely if not entirely irrelevant (at least until if/when we get enough sources to get more deeply into people's heads) rather I'd think of it as a demographic segment: There were probably significant number of people who preferred to form romantic and sexual relationships with members of the same gender. However, they'd most likely at the very least have to maintain these in addition to the prescribed heterosexual relations (IE: Marriage) simply for dynastic/family etc. reasons. Those who didn't would most likely use other ways of "weaselling out" of the overbearing dynastic imperative: IE: use other socially acceptable excuses to get out of marrying and having children (of which entering religious orders, etc. would probably be a big one)