Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

[Sun_Wu]

Boswell is almost certainly not the best source for this. Eastern Christianity was as negative as Western, and in the Empire at least its canon law was enforced by a somewhat vicious state apparatus (a lot laxer in Russia where canon law and state law barely intersected).

Further, the Church in late medieval Russia really disliked brother-making. It really complicated their idealised top-down relationship model where other members are auxiliary to the father who in turn in subject to a social superior, and of course had impact on various property laws. Because of high-risk agriculture and the relatively traditional nature of the area though extended families and claimed kinships stuck around for a long time. So I think in the general sense there may have been same-sex romantic relationships in the whole affair somewhere but it's almost certain they would have been disguised.

Boswell's only important in that he brought he subject up, his analysis is pretty weak and somewhat Western-centric, leading to lots of hopeful misunderstandings. It's hard not to sympathise, since being deliberately written out of history for a long time really does suck, but yeah. Wouldn't rely on that book too much.

In the Eastern Roman Empire the lines between Church and State where rather absent (in the rest they were very intertwined, but were still distinct entities) and so were a lot harsher. Didn't the Church become subject to the state with the assumption of the title of Czar by Ivan?

I did not know that about Russia, I have been studying the West and Russia is well, Russia. I have always thoroughly enjoyed the Occident's tremendous capacity for anachronistic thought, for example Boswell's introduction of homosexuality into the Middle Ages. There of course have always been men who have copulated with men and women who have masturbated women, but the concept of homosexuality and heterosexuality as identities simply did not exist. Marriages (among the aristocracy at least) were not based on love, they were based on property and bloodlines and so they simply would not understand the concept of marrying (well the sort of would, but they'd find it absurd). It would be as useful as bull on tits (correct phrase?) and so simply wouldn't happen.

Now to the good part. Boswell in a way was both wrong and right, wrong in that there was no gay "marriage", but right in that there was indeed a thing for two males (or two females) to pledge their love for each other. The major problem is that love back then was a lot more complex thing then it is now, for a book covering love then well I recommend C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves especially the part on Philia, yes it is a bit Christian apologetic, but Christianity had a profound influence during the Middle Ages. For a look at the institution if you will see here or for further reading read The Friend by Alan Bray (note, while the subject is interesting he died before the book could be tidied up and this is a bit of a slog). One is also in a bind about how to extricate the homoerotic from the norm, for example back then it was not uncommon for two males to share a bed, the bed was a place of intimate conversation in addition to sleeping hence the queer English phrase "strange bedfellows". Men wrote familiar letters to each other and some rather esemble love letters, men simply were permitted to express a far greater level of emotion especially to each other. The problem is that people today look back and see two men expressing their love to each other and so they apply what they know about the world which is that love is expressed sexually and this leads to improper conclusions.

I am very sorry that my writing is not very coherent, please forgive me.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

In the Eastern Roman Empire the lines between Church and State where rather absent (in the rest they were very intertwined, but were still distinct entities) and so were a lot harsher. Didn't the Church become subject to the state with the assumption of the title of Czar by Ivan?

Quite. But even then, in Russia the state was not obligated to enforce canon law, and only did so when it felt the need to. So while heretical movements merited state attention, sins and peccadilloes of all sorts were dealt with by church censure (refusal to bless, refusal to allow communion, etc.) which was typically non-violent but of course carried the risk of ostracism and community reaction (and possibly mob justice, though documentation is pretty silent about most things other than adultery).

Medieval Russian law dealt almost entirely with property, freedom/slavery, as well as crimes against life, property, or personal honour (rapes and assaults typically). The Nomocanon was included in the laws but the state did not enforce that until the Muscovite period, and even then sporadically. Morality legislation becoming part of the state's responsibility is an outcome of Westernisation efforts.

There of course have always been men who have copulated with men and women who have masturbated women, but the concept of homosexuality and heterosexuality as identities simply did not exist.

You know, I'm in the somewhat smaller camp of essentialists or fellow travelers, so the prescribed ideals of the period or lack thereof doesn't really bother me. A duck by any other name is still a rose, etc.

While there were differences in understanding, the basics remained the same from antiquity to this day. Antiquity is a bit better than the middle ages because it appears to us (maybe document survival bias) as more literate so we get more examples. As soon as civic literacy increased again and secular knowledge began to be exchanged freely people started talking about the issue once again, and it took barely three hundred years to go from sin to medical condition to basic personality with biological basis, but it still hit upon all the basic classical ideas first.

Now to the good part. Boswell in a way was both wrong and right, wrong in that there was no gay "marriage", but right in that there was indeed a thing for two males (or two females) to pledge their love for each other. The major problem is that love back then was a lot more complex thing then it is now, for a book covering love then well I recommend C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves especially the part on Philia, yes it is a bit Christian apologetic, but Christianity had a profound influence during the Middle Ages. For a look at the institution if you will see here or for further reading read The Friend by Alan Bray (note, while the subject is interesting he died before the book could be tidied up and this is a bit of a slog). One is also in a bind about how to extricate the homoerotic from the norm, for example back then it was not uncommon for two males to share a bed, the bed was a place of intimate conversation in addition to sleeping hence the queer English phrase "strange bedfellows". Men wrote familiar letters to each other and some rather esemble love letters, men simply were permitted to express a far greater level of emotion especially to each other. The problem is that people today look back and see two men expressing their love to each other and so they apply what they know about the world which is that love is expressed sexually and this leads to improper conclusions.

Here's my not-strictly-historical, political objection: the nitpicking about Eros vs. Philia actually gained importance in the later centuries esp. as the reactionaries in the 19th c. (or 16th. in England/Italy, some place started earlier than others) tried to justify their position vs. the ancients. You're right in that we have no way of knowing the romantic from the filial but since the filial argument was used and abused on a massive scale to wash a significant part of the human experience completely out of history (to the completely risible point where an opera about Cinq-Mars, for example, features a leading lady to star opposite the King's mignon because the King's attachment couldn't possibly be inappropriate), I can summon right around zero amounts of sympathy for the "romantic friendships" or "platonic loves" or "strange bedfellows" of the yesteryear being misrepresented.

If the people of yesteryear didn't spend so much effort committing physical and cultural violence and censure against their own contemporaries based on a small difference, they'd be in no danger of being included in any improper conclusions. If they didn't destroy the literature and suppress the information, we'd have more information and literature other than court case proceedings and arrest documentations to go on. They did, though, so we're free to speculate away now.

But this is as you understand me just being unsympathetic. From a historical-accuracy standpoint, I may well disagree with the reinvention of the past if there's some evidence available.

EDIT: Incidentally, thank you for that link! I can confidently tell you that what Boswell speaks about in the Greek/Slavonic tradition is pretty much the same thing as what you have described for England in that article. Clearly not specifically a marriage, but something that was treated very seriously and that the church and state did later have problems with and eventually stopped recognizing.

EDIT #2: I love the fact that the only wiki entry for Alan Bray other than English is in Tajik.

 

[Arilou]

(and possibly mob justice, though documentation is pretty silent about most things other than adultery).

This isn't a medieval issue, but Sweden had homosexuality banned (death penalty for about 300 years or so. (between the reformation and the classification as a disease, basically).

We have, literally, a handful or less, cases involving homosexuality. There's very little in the records. And this wasn't because the swedish state wasn't interested in policing sexuality: It was VERY involved in doing s. (as the incredibly numerous adultery, fornication, beastiality, and in at least one case a man tried and executed for having sex with a huldra) yet there's virtually no persecution of homosexuality by the courts. (something that seems very uncharacteristic for the swedish state)

 

[Sun_Wu]

Quite. But even then, in Russia the state was not obligated to enforce canon law, and only did so when it felt the need to. So while heretical movements merited state attention, sins and peccadilloes of all sorts were dealt with by church censure (refusal to bless, refusal to allow communion, etc.) which was typically non-violent but of course carried the risk of ostracism and community reaction (and possibly mob justice, though documentation is pretty silent about most things other than adultery).

Medieval Russian law dealt almost entirely with property, freedom/slavery, as well as crimes against life, property, or personal honour (rapes and assaults typically). The Nomocanon was included in the laws but the state did not enforce that until the Muscovite period, and even then sporadically. Morality legislation becoming part of the state's responsibility is an outcome of Westernisation efforts.



You know, I'm in the somewhat smaller camp of essentialists or fellow travelers, so the prescribed ideals of the period or lack thereof doesn't really bother me. A duck by any other name is still a rose, etc.

While there were differences in understanding, the basics remained the same from antiquity to this day. Antiquity is a bit better than the middle ages because it appears to us (maybe document survival bias) as more literate so we get more examples. As soon as civic literacy increased again and secular knowledge began to be exchanged freely people started talking about the issue once again, and it took barely three hundred years to go from sin to medical condition to basic personality with biological basis, but it still hit upon all the basic classical ideas first.



Here's my not-strictly-historical, political objection: the nitpicking about Eros vs. Philia actually gained importance in the later centuries esp. as the reactionaries in the 19th c. (or 16th. in England/Italy, some place started earlier than others) tried to justify their position vs. the ancients. You're right in that we have no way of knowing the romantic from the filial but since the filial argument was used and abused on a massive scale to wash a significant part of the human experience completely out of history (to the completely risible point where an opera about Cinq-Mars, for example, features a leading lady to star opposite the King's mignon because the King's attachment couldn't possibly be inappropriate), I can summon right around zero amounts of sympathy for the "romantic friendships" or "platonic loves" or "strange bedfellows" of the yesteryear being misrepresented.

If the people of yesteryear didn't spend so much effort committing physical and cultural violence and censure against their own contemporaries based on a small difference, they'd be in no danger of being included in any improper conclusions. If they didn't destroy the literature and suppress the information, we'd have more information and literature other than court case proceedings and arrest documentations to go on. They did, though, so we're free to speculate away now.

But this is as you understand me just being unsympathetic. From a historical-accuracy standpoint, I may well disagree with the reinvention of the past if there's some evidence available.

EDIT: Incidentally, thank you for that link! I can confidently tell you that what Boswell speaks about in the Greek/Slavonic tradition is pretty much the same thing as what you have described for England in that article. Clearly not specifically a marriage, but something that was treated very seriously and that the church and state did later have problems with and eventually stopped recognizing.

EDIT #2: I love the fact that the only wiki entry for Alan Bray other than English is in Tajik.

Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual are as much identities as anything else

Literacy wasn't very high in Antiquity. Homosexuality is not regarded as a sin and has never been according to orthodox Christian belief, sexual acts between two people of the same sex are a sin (and that is because all inherently sterile sexual acts such as anal and oral sex are sinful). According to the LGBT community there is a lot more to homosexuality than just sex.

Medieval Europe was a rather queer place, men could hug, kiss, sleep in the same bed, and write erotic letters rather publicly so how much gays were being "written out" is rather debatable. For those without a deep understanding of the Middle Ages I can easily understand them thinking the relationships were homosexual if they are from Western society which has largely forgotten nonsexual relationships (parent-child relationship is the exception since it is biologically driven).

The 20th century easily beats the Middle Ages in terms of the quantity of physical and cultural violence, how about the Holocaust, Holodomor, Rwanda, Srebrenica etc.? Please name some specific cases of destruction of literature and suppressing information.

About the Byzantines and SSM, for you a gift http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?print=1&did=1294-viscuso
It was never recognized by the state and it slowly faded out of practice amongst society, the real close would have been the death of Newman.

...
But the last of the known monuments is of far greater interest, because it is a simple stone cross in the burial ground of the fathers of the Oratory of St Philip Neri on the Lickey Hills south of Birmingham. In the upper part is the name, still clearly legible, of the first of the two friends who were laid there together: Ambrose St John, who died on 24 May 1875. The friend whose remains were laid in his grave in 1890 was none other than John Henry Cardinal Newman.

Their burial in the same tomb was Newman?s emphatic wish. In a note written on 23 July 1876, the year following the death of Ambrose St John, he declared: I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Fr Ambrose St John?s grave - and I give this as my last, my imperative will.

Newman seems to have first met Ambrose St John in the spring of 1841. From the first he loved me with an intensity of love, which was unaccountable, Newman later wrote. As far as this world was concerned I was his first and last. After that first meeting in 1841, they would be received into the Catholic Church at almost the same time: St John on 2 October 1845, Newman only a week later on 9 October. Newman?s loss of countless Anglican friends as a result of his being received by Rome created an enduring bond between Newman and St John, which would never be broken. St John?s death devastated Newman; he called the loss the greatest affliction I have had in my life. I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband?s or a wife?s, he wrote, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one?s sorrow greater, than mine.

If evidence were needed that the bond between them was an entirely spiritual one, Newman provided it in the days following St John?s death, recounting a conversation between them before St John lost his speech in those final days. He expressed his hope, Newman wrote, that during his whole priestly life he had not committed one mortal sin. For men of their time and culture that statement is definitive: but they were not afraid to touch and draw close. Remembering their last moments together, Newman wrote: Then he put his arm tenderly round my neck, and drew me close to him, and so kept me a considerable time. I little dreamed, he later wrote, he meant to say that he was going. When I rose to go. . . it was our parting. Their love was no less intense for being spiritual; perhaps more so.

Newman?s burial with Ambrose St John cannot be detached from his understanding of the place of friendship in Christian belief or its long history. In a letter that Pope John Paul II sent to Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham in January 2001 to mark the second centenary of Newman?s birth, Pope John Paul asked for prayers that the time could soon come when the Church can officially and publicly proclaim the exemplary holiness of Cardinal John Henry Newman. It is likely that his relics will then be brought into the Oratory Church in Birmingham to lie by the altar, and the inheritors of Newman?s faith should not separate them now from his final gesture. That gesture was Newman?s last, imperative command: his last wish as a man, but also something more. It was his last sermon.

source


Well that's rather queer, I was personally surprised when I found he had a wiki page at all.

This isn't a medieval issue, but Sweden had homosexuality banned (death penalty for about 300 years or so. (between the reformation and the classification as a disease, basically).

We have, literally, a handful or less, cases involving homosexuality. There's very little in the records. And this wasn't because the swedish state wasn't interested in policing sexuality: It was VERY involved in doing s. (as the incredibly numerous adultery, fornication, beastiality, and in at least one case a man tried and executed for having sex with a huldra) yet there's virtually no persecution of homosexuality by the courts. (something that seems very uncharacteristic for the swedish state)

sodomia imperfecta≠homosexuality

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Literacy wasn't very high in Antiquity. Homosexuality is not regarded as a sin and has never been according to orthodox Christian belief, sexual acts between two people of the same sex are a sin (and that is because all inherently sterile sexual acts such as anal and oral sex are sinful). According to the LGBT community there is a lot more to homosexuality than just sex.

Medieval Europe was a rather queer place, men could hug, kiss, sleep in the same bed, and write erotic letters rather publicly so how much gays were being "written out" is rather debatable. For those without a deep understanding of the Middle Ages I can easily understand them thinking the relationships were homosexual if they are from Western society which has largely forgotten nonsexual relationships (parent-child relationship is the exception since it is biologically driven).

1. Distinction without a difference with the whole sin and sinner rubbish, as usual, and:
2. Your romantic friendships conception does not address the missing homos which is the entire point behind this entire discussion and behind Boswell's entire career.

The 20th century easily beats the Middle Ages in terms of the quantity of physical and cultural violence, how about the Holocaust, Holodomor, Rwanda, Srebrenica etc.? Please name some specific cases of destruction of literature and suppressing information.

About the Byzantines and SSM, for you a gift http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?print=1&did=1294-viscuso
It was never recognized by the state and it slowly faded out of practice amongst society, the real close would have been the death of Newman.

I'm sorry if I'm completely wrong, bu I'm getting a lot of apologia vibes from your contributions, starting with the word "copulated", CS Lewis, and proceeding straight to hating the sin and Cardinal Newman. Some words are just sensitive and the way you're using them sets off alarms.

It is widely known that casual violence was very high in the middle ages. There was no industrial warfare, and it would be silly to argue there was, but casual violence was really rather bad. This isn't even debatable. You cannot compare total body counts for the simple reason that the populations were a lot lower. You can easily compare proportions if you had enough data though.

Likewise you don't need specific cases for literature though lots can be found. You can just compare medieval Troilus to the classical Troilus to get a general gist of how medieval Europeans heterosexualised everything.

I'm not sure what the main vector of your argument is? That there were no homosexuals in the middle ages at all based on some definitional technicality? Or that there was no prosecution and censorship? Or that a literate society taking its roots from a prior one which had a definite conception of romantic same-sex relationships somehow benignly lost all understanding of such, but somehow managed to keep persecuting it at the same time? While of course engaging in vast amounts of perfectly chaste emotional friendships?

My basic position is that while kin-making and other ceremonies were just that, adoptions/kin-making, it would be quite reasonable to assume that the actual homosexuals who did live then also took advantage of such as cover, and that the notion isn't ridiculous given the lack of other evidence. What's yours?

 

[Sun_Wu]

1. Distinction without a difference with the whole sin and sinner rubbish, as usual, and:
2. Your romantic friendships conception does not address the missing homos which is the entire point behind this entire discussion and behind Boswell's entire career.



I'm sorry if I'm completely wrong, bu I'm getting a lot of apologia vibes from your contributions, starting with the word "copulated", CS Lewis, and proceeding straight to hating the sin and Cardinal Newman. Some words are just sensitive and the way you're using them sets off alarms.

It is widely known that casual violence was very high in the middle ages. There was no industrial warfare, and it would be silly to argue there was, but casual violence was really rather bad. This isn't even debatable. You cannot compare total body counts for the simple reason that the populations were a lot lower. You can easily compare proportions if you had enough data though.

Likewise you don't need specific cases for literature though lots can be found. You can just compare medieval Troilus to the classical Troilus to get a general gist of how medieval Europeans heterosexualised everything.

I'm not sure what the main vector of your argument is? That there were no homosexuals in the middle ages at all based on some definitional technicality? Or that there was no prosecution and censorship? Or that a literate society taking its roots from a prior one which had a definite conception of romantic same-sex relationships somehow benignly lost all understanding of such, but somehow managed to keep persecuting it at the same time? While of course engaging in vast amounts of perfectly chaste emotional friendships?

My basic position is that while kin-making and other ceremonies were just that, adoptions/kin-making, it would be quite reasonable to assume that the actual homosexuals who did live then also took advantage of such as cover, and that the notion isn't ridiculous given the lack of other evidence. What's yours?

1) Well Eve Tushnet certainly seems to disagree being a woman who is zealously Catholic, proudly gay and happily celibate.

2) The gays could have simply used a modicum of discretion to themselves. You seem to assume it was done of malice and not out of ignorance, of course there were homosexuals then, they very likely used "romantic friendships" as you call it as a cover.

Would you rather I had used term "fucked"? Asians merely feel no fucking reason to be so goddamned blunt and profane, happy now? I chose CS Lewis since how he described love is reasonably representative of how they might have perceived it then. I brought up Newman simply because he was the last person mentioned in Alan Bray's book The Friend.

Ah, my apologizes, I thought you were talking about war between countries.

I am not well informed on this topic if Troilus so I have no comment on the differences. Personally I would have gone with the Rape of Ganymede and their take on it.

They did not understand the concept and therefore couldn't try to hide it, they were merely oblivious to it. There were a lot of deep chaste friendships, but those kind of relationships were also very likely used as cover for nookie by some. I reject Boswell's assertion that the ceremonies were equivalent to marriage.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

1) Well Eve Tushnet certainly seems to disagree being a woman who is zealously Catholic, proudly gay and happily celibate.

Zealously Catholic seems to be the key issue here, something must give. Can't take fringe views as mainstream, it would be as silly as believing Boswell wholesale.

2) The gays could have simply used a modicum of discretion to themselves. You seem to assume it was done of malice and not out of ignorance, of course there were homosexuals then, they very likely used "romantic friendships" as you call it as a cover.

I'm pretty sure that in an age where the state mandated castration first, then possibly death (thanks Justinian), and your neighbours could tie you to a stake and set you on fire (gay old times in the Swiss confederation!), and "oh and the boys went off and did it together!" was a standard charge added to every political persecution (Templars, Cathars, witches, whoever) - a "modicum of discretion" was probably used and then some. Malice and ignorance are very intimately intertwined. You can directly compare it to anti-Jewish sentiment and mythology of the middle ages for a slightly better documented example of how it works.

Would you rather I had used term "fucked"? Asians merely feel no fucking reason to be so goddamned blunt and profane, happy now? I chose CS Lewis since how he described love is reasonably representative of how they might have perceived it then. I brought up Newman simply because he was the last person mentioned in Alan Bray's book The Friend.

Lost in mistranslation then. "Copulated" has a detached and uneasy semantic load. "Had sex" would be the common, value-neutral English usage. In either case, you insist that the sex existed independently of romantic attachments. That's an impossible case to prove.

They did not understand the concept and therefore couldn't try to hide it, they were merely oblivious to it. There were a lot of deep chaste friendships, but those kind of relationships were also very likely used as cover for nookie by some. I reject Boswell's assertion that the ceremonies were equivalent to marriage.

So the Vikings understood homophobic slurs and male prostitution, the kings and lawmakers understood the whole castration and burning thing, the Europeans bordered a vast literary culture that certainly did talk about it and had pretty sophisticated classifications for the legal and moral aspects of the in-betweens as they saw it (the Muslim world, naturally), the Medieval Europeans inherited a hefty Classical tradition to draw upon, and yet they did not understand the concept?

Colour me bloody skeptical. It just does not seem reasonable.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Zealously Catholic seems to be the key issue here, something must give. Can't take fringe views as mainstream, it would be as silly as believing Boswell wholesale.



I'm pretty sure that in an age where the state mandated castration first, then possibly death (thanks Justinian), and your neighbours could tie you to a stake and set you on fire (gay old times in the Swiss confederation!), and "oh and the boys went off and did it together!" was a standard charge added to every political persecution (Templars, Cathars, witches, whoever) - a "modicum of discretion" was probably used and then some. Malice and ignorance are very intimately intertwined. You can directly compare it to anti-Jewish sentiment and mythology of the middle ages for a slightly better documented example of how it works.



Lost in mistranslation then. "Copulated" has a detached and uneasy semantic load. "Had sex" would be the common, value-neutral English usage. In either case, you insist that the sex existed independently of romantic attachments. That's an impossible case to prove.



So the Vikings understood homophobic slurs and male prostitution, the kings and lawmakers understood the whole castration and burning thing, the Europeans bordered a vast literary culture that certainly did talk about it and had pretty sophisticated classifications for the legal and moral aspects of the in-betweens as they saw it (the Muslim world, naturally), the Medieval Europeans inherited a hefty Classical tradition to draw upon, and yet they did not understand the concept?

Colour me bloody skeptical. It just does not seem reasonable.

While there is a perceived clash, there is not an actual clash. Since the practicing Catholic queers feel no need to be loud about it you don't hear about them much.

Obviously how it was perceived varied extensively. Sodomy and homosexuality are different things. Considering how publicly men could express their feelings for each other in England (as an illustration) all they really needed to not do was get caught during sex or talk about it. Devoted friendship was seen as a high ideal whereas the sodomite was perceived as the anti-friend. Define anti-Jewish, do you mean the traditional view of them being Christ killers or something more like Von den Jüden und jren Lügen?

My language learning of English was more academic than street. "Had sex" makes it sound like it is just another thing like "had dinner", this seems in stark contrast to earlier views of sex where it was seen as more special. I do not recall claiming that sex insisted independently of romantic attractions indeed in many cases it was probably how they thought they should express their attraction.


I think we to be talking about two different things, but because of language barrier we talk past each other; I am greatly shamed by my poor English skills.

 

[Arilou]

So the Vikings understood homophobic slurs and male prostitution

The vikings were weird. From what we can tell homosexuality seems to have been considered related to witchcraft. (it's the semen=life energy thing, so any man who err... "recieves" must be trying to steal someone's life energy to use for nefarious purposes) one of the homophobic slurs mentioned in early swedish law is "Wizard's friend". (The Lokesanna also mentions this)

Note that homosexuality itself, or even homosexual sex acts, are not banned in said laws: Only calling someone a person who lets himself be penetrated.

In either case, you insist that the sex existed independently of romantic attachments. That's an impossible case to prove.

Are you arguing that sex always and in 100% of the case was accompanied by romantic attachements? Because if that's your claim I'd say the burden is on you.

 

[Sun_Wu]

The vikings were weird. From what we can tell homosexuality seems to have been considered related to witchcraft. (it's the semen=life energy thing, so any man who err... "recieves" must be trying to steal someone's life energy to use for nefarious purposes) one of the homophobic slurs mentioned in early swedish law is "Wizard's friend". (The Lokesanna also mentions this)

Note that homosexuality itself, or even homosexual sex acts, are not banned in said laws: Only calling someone a person who lets himself be penetrated.



Are you arguing that sex always and in 100% of the case was accompanied by romantic attachements? Because if that's your claim I'd say the burden is on you.

Or we could always go with the middle ground of in some cases it was romantic attraction and some cases they just wanted sex. I have met both types, some want sex and are very promiscuous while a few have been with someone a long time, the mix seems to be with far more of the former than the latter and from what I've seen many of the mid length relationships are open relationships sexually (by mid length I mean 10-20 years), they have a lower "divorce rate" because they don't care about infidelity which has broken many ordinary marriages.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Are you arguing that sex always and in 100% of the case was accompanied by romantic attachements? Because if that's your claim I'd say the burden is on you.

No, he's arguing that none were, in the way it was originally phrased; basically all the emotional energy was 100% saved up for the blah blah socially defined bosom friendship because people really operate like that, and all that distasteful copulation just happened along the way somewhere kind of accidentally. So the burden is definitely on him. Proving that something which clearly exists, does not actually exist is an active proof for the negator. It's like proving there is no spoon.

As it turns out it was just lost in mistranslation, so, moot point. I don't think Sun and I disagree much on the factual bits of it, it's just my political aside that seems to have gotten the most attention. I would have dropped it but then the Sexless Catholic Queer Brigade showed up and tried to pose their views as common and reasonable and worse, as historical evidence for something or other.


EDIT: About Vikings - right. Their treatment of the matter was different from that of mainland Europe, but they were next-door neighbours. It only serves to buttress my main point: there were so many contemporary and historical understandings of homosexuality around medieval Europe it seems extremely unlikely they did not have one themselves, especially if we are treating Europe as a whole. They had various ways to approach it to choose from, and they chose censorship and criminalization, which is partly why people today are reinventing the past to a certain extent. I don't think that overall picture could be seriously argued.

 

[Sun_Wu]

No, he's arguing that none were, in the way it was originally phrased; basically all the emotional energy was 100% saved up for the blah blah socially defined bosom friendship because people really operate like that, and all that distasteful copulation just happened along the way somewhere kind of accidentally. So the burden is definitely on him. Proving that something which clearly exists, does not actually exist is an active proof for the negator. It's like proving there is no spoon.

As it turns out it was just lost in mistranslation, so, moot point. I don't think Sun and I disagree much on the factual bits of it, it's just my political aside that seems to have gotten the most attention. I would have dropped it but then the Sexless Catholic Queer Brigade showed up and tried to pose their views as common and reasonable and worse, as historical evidence for something or other.


EDIT: About Vikings - right. Their treatment of the matter was different from that of mainland Europe, but they were next-door neighbours. It only serves to buttress my main point: there were so many contemporary and historical understandings of homosexuality around medieval Europe it seems extremely unlikely they did not have one themselves, especially if we are treating Europe as a whole. They had various ways to approach it to choose from, and they chose censorship and criminalization, which is partly why people today are reinventing the past to a certain extent. I don't think that overall picture could be seriously argued.

Sir, I did not argue they were non, I was merely talking about that in those "bosom friendships" some also had the parties engaging in sex.

What is "Sexless Catholic Queer Brigade"?

 

[The-Doc]

What is "Sexless Catholic Queer Brigade"?

The term he's opting to disregard you with.

 

[Sun_Wu]

The term he's opting to disregard you with.

Well that's rather insulting, does that mean he is insinuating that I'm a queer and that I'm a papist dog which further implies I'm an Occidental?

 

[unmerged(484524)]

Homosexuals cannot be cathloic,or of any other religion,because they are despised by all the big religions

 

[The-Doc]

Well that's rather insulting, does that mean he is insinuating that I'm a queer and that I'm a papist dog which further implies I'm an Occidental?

Hey there are worse things than being from the barbaric Occident.

Maybe he's just saying that the perspective of Catholicism has no bearing on life in the Middle Ages. Ridiculous, but not as insulting.

Homosexuals cannot be cathloic,or of any other religion,because they are despised by all the big religions

Not so. What are they teaching you in Romania?

 

[unmerged(484524)]

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.

leaving the jokes aside,can you name me an important religion that accepts homosexuals?Maybe there are homos that believe in an christian or muslim god,maybe...but those christian or muslim religions don t believe in homos...get it?That s why i said butties can t be part of any important religion

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Well that's rather insulting, does that mean he is insinuating that I'm a queer and that I'm a papist dog which further implies I'm an Occidental?

I wasn't insulting you, good sir, but rather your sources. If your sources are terribly offended, they can write me directly. Also, queer is not an insult in the right context, interesting you should consider it as such; neither did I address you as a gay person, so I'm not sure where the outrage is coming from. I'm gay for full disclosure, which should probably help you situate my arguments.

The real point was that modern Catholic apologia has about as much claim on the middle ages as Boswell does, which is to say not much, that's all. I am really rather interested/perplexed that you, as a (presumably Chinese?) person picked the modern Catholic apologists as your spokespeople on the subject. They are not popular in the fabled Occident, strange that they should be elsewhere.

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.

leaving the jokes aside,can you name me an important religion that accepts homosexuals?Maybe there are homos that believe in an christian or muslim god,maybe...but those christian or muslim religions don t believe in homos...get it?That s why i said butties can t be part of any important religion

I'm glad to learn something today; Romania shares so much with Iran.

Other than that, the living strawman has a point with the last paragraph; it's the same point I was raising regarding the Sexless Queer Catholics, if you really think about it. Not sure how applicable it is to the middle ages, though.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Hey there are worse things than being from the barbaric Occident.

Maybe he's just saying that the perspective of Catholicism has no bearing on life in the Middle Ages. Ridiculous, but not as insulting.



Not so. What are they teaching you in Romania?

I don't think I've said the Occident is barbaric, merely full of spineless, effeminate, obsequious dogs.

I don't understand how anyone could attempt to justify that if they are familiar with the Middle Ages, of course the Middle Ages in Western & Northern Europe is worlds away culturally from the present day West so perhaps they could misunderstand it.

I have met more ignorant Americans

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.

leaving the jokes aside,can you name me an important religion that accepts homosexuals?Maybe there are homos that believe in an christian or muslim god,maybe...but those christian or muslim religions don t believe in homos...get it?That s why i said butties can t be part of any important religion

Define homosexual. Do they have to engage in homosexual sex to be homosexual? Or is homosexual defined on predominant or exclusive attraction to the same sex?

I wasn't insulting you, good sir, but rather your sources. If your sources are terribly offended, they can write me directly. Also, queer is not an insult in the right context, interesting you should consider it as such; neither did I address you as a gay person, so I'm not sure where the outrage is coming from. I'm gay for full disclosure, which should probably help you situate my arguments.

The real point was that modern Catholic apologia has about as much claim on the middle ages as Boswell does, which is to say not much, that's all. I am really rather interested/perplexed that you, as a (presumably Chinese?) person picked the modern Catholic apologists as your spokespeople on the subject. They are not popular in the fabled Occident, strange that they should be elsewhere.

I was trying to understand what The-Doc said. Okay, I am understanding your biases now.

I prefer primary sources, as English is the only European language I am familiar with I mostly know about England (I am learning Latin though). I can read Chaucer fluently. After I spent much time studying it I found the side you are describing as "Catholic Apologia" to be closest as Catholic for the old guard at least has changed rather little. I personally don't consider C.S. Lewis to be a Catholic Apologist as he wasn't Catholic. Of course they are unpopular in the Occident, they do not bend their dogma to the zeitgeist. Have you ever heard of Matteo Ricci? He was very good man.

 

[The-Doc]

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.

leaving the jokes aside,can you name me an important religion that accepts homosexuals?Maybe there are homos that believe in an christian or muslim god,maybe...but those christian or muslim religions don t believe in homos...get it?That s why i said butties can t be part of any important religion

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.