ziadel

I've read about the spartans, about how they were the manliest of men, and yet they were largely bisexual...

it seems there was a time when it just was, and there was nothing about it that warranted a second thought, now its a huge to do.



has anyone pimpointed a time when homosexuality became taboo?
can this mainly be attributed to the rise of Judiasm, Christianity and Islam?

what gives?

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Willravel

The puritanistic abrahamic religions are to blame. It's really that simple.

ziadel

well it sucks.

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Willravel

I couldn't agree more. Seperation of church and state, while not clearly stated in the constitution, is still a very important rule in the seperation of church and state. The current legal problem with homosexuality is obviously based in America's puritanical roots, and is blatently religous. Socially, it's basically the same thing.

martinguerre

except that's not true, will.

Roman stoic ethics had huge body issues, that too much desire or too much anyhing could make a man porous. They didn't believe in two biologically determinate genders...and so this weakening could literally effeminize a man in to a woman. The development of the mind, body, and control of each was the "hardening" process by which a man stayed manly. Anything else meant softening in to a woman.

St. Paul picks up on a lot of these same concerns...especially in the Corinthian correspondance...and helps kick off Christendom's ambivalent relationship with sex...but he did NOT invent these ideas.

Greeks thought sexual initiation was a proper part of education, Romans had slaves "pedagouges" teach their sons and protect them from rape and seduction.

Simple, my ass.

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Seaver

Well using the Greeks as an example might not be the best idea. They humped everything that moved... litterally. There are dozens of love poems written about their favorite sheeps.

Willravel

I was talking about the current social issue of homosexuality in western civilization...specifically the US. It is said that fourteen of the first fifteen emperors of Rome were homosexual. During the republic period, Cicero declared without challenge that there is nothing illegal about a man taking another to the country in order to enjoy his erotic sensual pleasures. Roman ethics and religion was heavily influenced by the Greeks, who, to put it blatently, loved the man on man action. In the sixth century AD the Roman Empire outlawed homosexuality. This was partly due to the influence of other cultures upon the Capitol City, but mostly due to the spread and influence of Christianity (which is a puritanistic, abrahamic religion).
Whoa, calm down. If you're going to treat me like crap, don't bother reading my posts.

Charlatan

Maybe, given the topic, he was being ironic.

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Willravel

Hehehe, actually I was trying to take the argments to their end. If there is to be one main influence to blame for the current treatment of homosexuals in American society, it is Judism, Christianity, and Islam (the three Abrahamic religions). You can make the arguments more complicated by explaining why, but in the end there are only so many factors that lead us to where we are.
to which I answered:
It really, as I proved in response to martinguerre , is as simple as the three man Abrahamic religions being to blame for the current taboo.

ziadel

could you elaborate on this a little bit, I know nothing about this...

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martinguerre

See...ths funny thing is i'm the only one in this thread that i know to be queer. But as i'm also Christian, i get supurbly tired of the "blame it on God" stuff that gets thrown around.

Will, i don't know what to say to you, other than your reading of Roman culture is seriously flawed. Stoic ethics states that being penetrated is serious problem for a man...and so too is the desire for lots to sex. They are feminizing influences that reduce one's ability to control the body.

i'll try to put it another way.

To a Stoic (THE dominant discourse of upper class Roman society in the Imperial period) the problem of life is desire and fragility. You can be hurt, and you can want for what you don't have...and that is a problem. To be perfect is to be noblely above the harm of the world and desire for things in it. The perfect being is:

Masculine, firm, cool, unaffected, governed by proper spirit (pnuema) and impervious.

Imperfect beings desire sex, are warm, quick tempered, feminine, fragile, and responsive to stimuli.

There are no strict dichotomies, but continums. Education, training, rhetoric, everything is a practice for the high status male to control and discipline body and mind in to perfection.

Paul picks up on a lot of this rhetoric, and changes it in some interesting ways. Control of the body is huge for Romans...that's why crucifixtion is so shaming. But to Paul, it's a place to show the ultimate impermeability of God's power. That's quite a reversal. But in some places, notably in gender and sex...Paul takes on those ethics without substatial revision.

Pornea (sex, desire, immorality) weakens the body. The Spirit of Christ is in the mind of the beleiver, but by letting Pornea in one's self, the beliver allows Christ to be penetrated by that pollution. Like the Stoics, Paul doesn't care if one is pentrating or being penetrated...it is the desire for sex that is the signal of weakness. But taking it a step further, it isn't just the person that's harmed...Paul literally thinks that fornication (of any gender/orientation) allows Christ to be fucked by sin.

Yeah...Christianity has a role in coding queer sex as negative. But they didn't come up with this whole cloth. And there is reason to believe that outside the conversion of Constantine...we'd still be living in a homophobic society.

Dale Martin wrote a masterful work on this subject...The Corinthian Body, where he talks about Paul's adoption of Stoic ethics, and the various issues around body control that lead to this whole mess we currently find ourselves in. It's a touch technical, but if you're interested in the origins of discourses of self-policing and desire as sin...it's pretty invaluable.

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-John 3:16

Xazy

Let me explain it simple, the old testament G-d said 'it is an abomination.' That is basically the reason why Judaism, and any other religeon that uses the old testament (what I call the Torah) get their values from.

Me personally I believe in live and let live and let G-d sort ti all out,I was not placed here to pass judgement.

Willravel

I ALWAYS put God and His followers in different catagories. God is responible or love and virtue and freedom and forgiveness. His followers are responsible for the crusades. His followers are responsible for virtually every religious war in the last 1000 years. His followers are often bigoted and try to interpret God's will to their own ends. It is important to remember that God is infalable, and man is falable. When I was the Abrahamic religions, I speak of those who claim they represent God, but who in reality use God as a tool for gaining power and control over people. God gave us hope, Pat Robertson gave us hatered.
Was what I wrote incorrect? Was anything that I wrote actually incorrect? Do you know how widespread Stocim was? Do you know that Stoicm, founded by Zeno of Citium, by trying to piggy back the philosophy on some of Plato's views, and that it was widely considered to be naturalist, and thus less civilized by most Greeks? Do you know about the Cynics, the root of Stocim? Did you know that the Cynics were essentially puritans (suppression of desires and restriction of wants)? Did you know that after what we now call hristianity took up roots in Rome, that the Stoics were among the first to convert? In other words, despite the roots of Stocim not being Abrahamic, their decendants, and thus any current influence, is Abrahamic.
I know what Stoicm is.
Like I said, Christianity was a singularly grand influence on those who were once Stoic. Paul adapted the words of Christ in order to make them more generally acceptable by the society that was already immerced in Stocim. Let me put it this way. Who are the direct descendants of Stoists? Romans, Spaniards, French, Greek...pretty much everyone around the Mediterranean Sea. What religion are they now? Almost entirely Christian, Muslim, and Jewish; all religions that ar Abrahamic, and all religions that came to their understanding of homosexuality independantly of Stoicm. I am suggesting that Stoicm has little or no influence on the current state of homosexuality in the US, and thus is irrelevant to the question "has anyone pimpointed a time when homosexuality became taboo?" If we want to go purely chronilogically, instead of by current influence, we can give Judism credit (Judism predates Stocim by hundreds of years).

martinguerre

Will...at some point, i can't really get very involved in debating the validity of this. My masters is based on the study of Paul in cultural context. Dale Martin teaches Paul at Yale University. What i've been posting comes out of his work, and notes on Greco-Roman culture from my classes with Prof. Diana Swancutt, also of Yale. What's your source material?

And before you snap at me for repeating myself, i was asked by ziedel to elaborate, so back the truck up and let it go.

I don't think the chronological argument makes much sense...when paul talks about pornea, he doesn't really cite a lot of scripture. He uses Stoic language to talk about desire and the invasion of sin into the body of Christ. 1 cor 6 is a good example.

Your mistake is to seriously underestimate the Roman influence on Paul in talking about sexuality. Without understanding this, it appears as if the origin of this attitude is uniquly abrahamic. But when it is understood, the discourse of masculinity as placed in opposition of desire/being penetrated/"libertinism" and etc...it makes a lot more sense. Religion can and has transmitted these ideas. But that's not the whole story, not by a long shot.

Objections to queer sex doesn't exclusivly hang on religious objections, it's grounded in cultural discourses as well. There are plenty of irreligious folks out there who are still raving homophobes. Ever wonder how they got that way? Our ideas of the natural are still grounded in the inheritance of Stoic discourses. Even though we alledgedly believe in fixed gender, we use orientation to work out our fears of emasculation. Too much "soft" play will make a boy gay... Desire can still make a person, especially a woman, in to a slut who is stereotyped as having no control over her body.

And tough men don't cry...

Our ideas of natural law, and what is normative gender expression has a whole lot more content that simply the "puritan" religious impulse, as you so anachronistically like to call it. Those concepts will keep queer sexuality as culturally subordinated even if the religious fight is won. I dunno about you, but since my standing in this culture depends on how queer idenity is represented and recieved...i'd rather understand all the mechanisms by which they are coded as anti-normative.

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-John 3:16

Willravel

I've read a lot of books, do you really want me to list them all? Recently, I've read the History of the Decline and Fall series by Gibson. While not an analysis, it was quite revealing of intricite details of the Roman Empire. Of course this isn't the point at all. My point is that Stoicm has no effect on current Western society. If it did, wouldn't we see people trying to supress passion on a grand scale (like majority of Western society)?
Well the chronological argument has to take into account that the old testemant was written before Stocim, so we have to take into account the old testimant quotations from the bible about homosexuality. These had to have SOME influence on Paul, as well as the words of Jesus Christ.
Name one person you know of who is homophobic and an athiest. And then prove to me that their homophobia wasn't from some religious influence. Until you can do that, Stoicm is irrelevant.
Natural law? I'm going to let you in on a little secret...my first dog was gay. He was presented to planty of females for the purpous of mating, but he never showed any interest except to play. On the other hand when he was around other males, he went nuts. Sexuality does not have a singular goal of procreation. We know that sexuality has a lot to do with social connections, and strees releaving just to start. What about the 'gay gene'? It has never been established that homosexuality is contrary to natural law, that is unless you want to quote Pat Robertson.

One also has to consider that a vast majority of people in North America are Christian, not athiest. So even if some athiest people in North America are influenced by 'natural law', the vast majority will still be influenced by the Bible.

World's King

Homosexuality isn't taboo...

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Willravel

Hehehe! That was my first thought. I guess it still is in some places.

martinguerre: Thank you for the wonderful debate. I have to respectfully bow out for now. I need to do some reading on this and come back. Luckily I still have some of my mom's phd books (which I will cite). Have fun at Yale.

martinguerre

I'm queer....I know this already. "Natural" is a cultural assumption that is passed off as a universal. This is Foucaultian theory here...the key words being "our ideas" not "the ultimate reality of the universe." It's a construct.

Several of them post on this very board. I don't think this is any challenge. Ask Joe or Jane homophobe...and many of the reasons you'll get have nothing to do with scripture and everything to do with "natural law" which i think i've shown to have substantive parallels with Stoic discourses.

Which i think is a pretty daring assumption. Modern philosophy depends heavily on classic philosophy, and the modern notion of the individual to my mind is translated from the Stoics, amongst other sources. Body control looks very different, and has other roots...but i've already covered that.

In the end...yes, Paul is reading Hebrew Scriptures. But when it comes to sex and body control, he is refering with greater frequency to Stoic ideas than he is to the LXX. I can think of a few counter examples, but in those cases he weaves both sources together as his reasoning. I'm not dismissing the Levitical passages as having no influence on Paul, but i'm trying to get across that our modern version of homophobia doesn't just start in "religious" texts. It has other roots...

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-John 3:16

Ustwo

Oh oh oh, would I be one of those!

martin sometimes I think everyone that doesn't submit to the PC treatment of homosexuality is a homophobe in your book. Lighten up

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ziadel

well theres certainly a lot of controversy over it...

Matthew Shepard, gay marriage, blah blah on and on...


and I know of one person who is very aethiest, and is VERY homophobic... like REALLY homophobic, like the site of two beautiful girls kissing makes him physically ill (what guy doesnt like seeing two hot laides getting down!?)

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Ustwo

Thats not homophobia, thats a disorder

He should seek help.

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Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

NCB

Well, we can see your knee reflexes are still working good, eh will? But how does abrahamic religious thought transfer to the cultures of East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where homosexuality is frowned upon and has little to do with religion? Sometimes will, you just cant blame Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

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Charlatan

Ummm, I don't think he was blaming Pat and Jerry per se. Rather he was blaming all abrahamic religions: Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

It is easy to jump to this conclusion as these three religions have done much to forward the cause homophobia. That said, I am not convinced they are the origin of the taboo.

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NCB

But in doing so, he condemns even those within the religions who are more accepting of homosexuals.

I agree. However, the true answer may not be very clean and PC to those who support homosexual lifestyles.

__________________

Willravel

martinguerre: It's my understanding that the move in Roman law towards and outright ban on homosexuality was in major part influenced by the major leadership realizing that the Roman family unit was breaking down (which also was influenced by Roman men marrying non-Roman women).

That's one of the issues that triggered the famous census from Luke 2--to find out how many honest-to-gosh Roman citizens they actually had in the empire. It was common belief that purity in national blood-line kept the empire strong (sound kinda familiar?) and hence there were not only incentives (such as limited or reduced military service time, tax incentives, etc.) for Romans to marry Romans and produce Roman offspring (and not get their sexual gratification solely from gay [pre- and post-pubescent] relationships) but punitiive measures put into place (later on as it became more epidemic). So there is also the "pragmatic" side of it, a sort of social engineering aspect at work as well (probably even more so than the "ethical" side of the effort...since ethics were deemed situational at best after a point).

So far as the instigation of homosexual bans outright, it's problammatic to date the first examples. I would say, given human nature and the superstitious bent of people in general, even pagan religions recognized the "unnaturalness" of such relationships and shunned them more from fear of retribution from the deities than for moral grounds. But what Paul said is right (or at least I believe it), that God has placed a "natural law" upon the hearts of all people (or at least most people everywhere from a social standpoint) that recogized certain "do's and don'ts" as universal. And natural selection seems to agree about such matters, giving no procreative blessing to gay relationships, only the passing on of a mindset rather than pure unadulterated universality. (But I digress...)

I'm sure there are standardized/codified laws or regulations that pre-date the Hebrew bans against homosexuality. But again, they probably do not have the same basis as Mosaic Law (God said it's taboo). And so far as Paul is concerned, I think his arguments to the NT Christians were not so much stoic ethics (although they may have sounded like pure stoic rhetoric) than echoing the OT laws (which still weren't a bad code of ethics and/or guide for living...except for the extreme measures which kept Israel on the straight and narrow, like stoning for practically every infraction. Even Jesus "surpassed" those in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-8). But it was about relationship with God first...then others...then self.

By the way, I guess by "stoic standards" John the Baptizer would have been able to join them (no alcohol, strict dietary regiment, ascetitcism [sic] and isolation). Or the community where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls a few decades back (Kumran Community?).
My understand of Stoicm is better from a psychological aspect, instead of historical or religious. I understand Stocism as one of the most influential of all therepeutic philosophies in ancietn Rome. The Stoics were philosophers and scientists, making great advances in science and logic. Stoicism taught two interconnected things: (1) absolute determinism and (2) the complete extripation of the emotions. Stoics believe in foreordained occournces in life (tyche). They also believed that they were in control of their mental world, so feeling unhappy about misfortune is our fault and may be corrected by Stoic teaching. Strong positive feelings are also to be avoided because they lead to overvaluation of things and people, and thus a potential unhappiness should they be lost. Here’s the concession: Stoicm was like Christianity, and it’s popularity in the Roman Empire aided the reception of, and also influenced, Christian thought. Stoicm was universalist intead of elitist. Stoics believed that the universe was ruled by reason, or logos, and permeated by spirit, or [I]pneuma. Determinism was easier to accept if one thought that the universe was wise and rationally working out an ultimately good plan.

What you have to bear in mind is Stoicism, with it’s emphasis on divine wisdom and human submission, has elements that can be assimilated easily to Christian belief. In the fourth century, Christianitywas a simple faith, lacking a supporting philosophy. St. Augistine (340-430) integrated faith and philosophy into a powerful Christian world view that would dominate all aspects of medieval thought until the thirteenth century. Here is a quote from St. Augustine that illustrates the combinance of Christian Stocism:
Time to take a rest.

Charlatan

I don't think he does at all. He is looking at the historical approach of these religions. I don't believe will was addressing the present day nature of these faiths (which is relatively complicated with regards to their various positions on homosexuality).

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Willravel

Thank you for defending me. You're absolutely right.

martinguerre

How the hell does one Godwin a thread about Romans?

You're laying it on awfully thick here, but you're making my point anyways. Several cultures (though certainly not all) have a perception that queer sex is "unnatural" and they enforce that through taboo and social pressure.

This, by the way, doesn't mean anything about the intrinsic value of orientation, etc. I'm perfectly comfortable recognizing the roots to homophobia, since it's all social construction anyways. I recognize these taboos as descriptive of what others have done, and not prescriptive for me. I say this because it sounds like you're trying to make a sales pitch here...i don't have a stake in the motivations for the roman census. It's fueled by insider/outsider fears, and greater social mobility (as recognized by greater rates of free women marrying ex-slaves, for instance.)

This is the equivalent of saying "is not." I could say "is too!" but that's not going to change anything. I don't think the parallels are coincidental at all. And I'm joined in that assesment by a great number of Pauline scholars. So i guess we agree to disagree.

After this point...nothing you say changes my argument. The point of the matter is that "Monotheism" as a broad category is necessary but not sufficient for understanding the origins of homophobia in modern society.

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-John 3:16

Willravel

I can Godwin ANYTHING (I'vs been known to Godwin: Disney, France, Domino's Pizza, landscapers, the Discovery Channel, The History Channel, AIM, and Nike). You're taking this too seriously. I'm not your antagonist. My goal in this thread is not to win, but to uncover truth. If I was wrong, then I will admit it. As a matter of fact, I did!
I realize that this is a topic near and dear to your heart, but it is also jut a topic at the end of the day. I don't have my PhD in philosophy, history, or religion. I don't even have my masters (yet). I'm here to learn, specifically from people who know more than I do about stuff. Likewise, I hope you are able to keep and open mind and take in other peoples opinions and facts (without saying my ass"). If I'm wrong, which I was, I will make the necessary concession and become better by it. It is a lot more difficult to make such a concession when the person who is teaching you is also treating you like crap.

Gilda

Nope. Leviticus 18:22 can be interpreted that way, but it certainly isn't the only interpretation. There is no hebrew word for "homosexuality"; what Leviticus describes is a very specific circumstance under which homosexual sex between two men may not occur, not all male-male sex, not female-female sex, and not the state of being homosexual in general, nor does it call it an abombination, which is also a poor translation. An equally valid interpretation of that passage could be that sex between two men on a woman's bed (or in a pagan temple, or with a male prostitute; the exact meaning is very vague) is ritually unclean.

I think it's more a case of taking an idea, that being that homosexuality is a sin, and interpreting the bible in that light, in such a way that one finds support for the idea that already existed.

I think the idea that there is something wrong with homosexuality is derived from misogyny. The idea is that women are less than men, weak, soft, ineffectual, and a man who takes on those feminine qualities is less of a man. A woman who doesn't fit her role as subservient to a man in a relationship isn't staying in her assigned place.

Also, those who condem homosexuality as an abombination

From the West Wing

Gilda

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Willravel

Doesn't look like it condones slavery...as much as if you do own slaves or do slavery, don't do it to your own folks. And there were a ton of other "do's and don'ts" regarding slavery...up into the New Testament which said to treat them as equals in Christ (Philemon comes to mind and Paul's empassioned plea to release him to ministry).
It is that according to the New Testament (Heb. 3-4, Col. 2) the Sabbath was meant to prefigure the rest that the people of God now have in Christ. Now that that which was prefigured has come, the laws of the Sabbath are followed differently. To the question of why Sabbath breaking was a capital offense in the first place, it is probably because it involved transgressing a holy worship ordinance among God’s people. (from this site)
Do people still follow Mosaic law? Of course. It is still considered unclean for many jews to eat prok products.