The Dictionary of Homophobia (105 page)

Refusing to cooperate with God, homosexuality would express an “irrational” desire for sensual delight. On these grounds, it is classed among Hedonist deviances, as sodomy in general or masturbation. Traditionally and still often today, theologians and canonists do not meditate on homosexuality, its nature or its origins. For them, God and nature desire reproduction and impart a healthy instinct to man; pure homosexuality does not exist or would be an accidental monstrosity. It is issued from an over-abundance of usurping sensitivity. Incidentally, it is generally confused with Greek—and therefore pagan—pederasty and Eastern pedophilia, which allows it to be seen as a release of excessive adult emotions, while remaining male (as long as he is the active partner), and a teenage naiveté. Inversely, orthodox thinkers have difficulty imagining the “passive” as other than forced, raped, or abused at an easily influenced (biological or mental) age. The “effeminate” passive adult in traditional societies is considered a prostitute (which can be the case) and generally incurs more social slight, even if the Church does not make any distinction: in all cases, it is considered profanation of masculinity. The boy or young man, if he is androgynous, is a worry for canonists and authors of monastic rules: naturally seductive, he fatally gives rise to sexual desire in the cloister and is a privileged tool of the devil. Ascetic privation, sexual ambiguity, and its availability in male milieus seem sufficient to explain the exceptionality. If it is occasional, it is a
perversion
of taste.

Russian St Nilus of Sora (sixteenth century) and the
Pedalion
(
The Rudder
), a codification of Canon law by St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, according to Plato, stigmatize “that which no quadruped beast would dare to do” as an abuse of our unconfined imagination. They do not express a zoological reductionism (if there is nature, it is in one sense “analogical”), but a reminder of the requirement for the free being to submit his sexuality, potentially overflowing, to what gives it sense, reproduction, and to imitate the temperance of seasonal animal coupling.

From this came the idea that homosexuality would be a biological threat to humanity. The taking root of the
vice
(to which is linked the attraction of pleasure, as man is sensual and seeks it infinitely) would discourage men from the use of women in procreation: homosexuality and sodomy would invade Christianity, according to Chrysostom in his work
Against Opponents of Monastic Life
. Justinian justified his code by his concern to prevent “natural” catastrophes and epidemics, derived from the hand of a vengeful God. His mission was to protect society from the collective punishment but also to scare sinners who were destroying themselves morally and damning themselves. Sodom was the dramatization and justification for Justinian’s preventive legislation. The idea of the threat to the species leads to the homosexual being scapegoated for his irresponsible egotism as much as his lustfulness. Heir to the Byzantine tradition, the
Pedalion
sees homosexuality as a form of excess and also revives medical myths of psychosomatic harm caused be masturbation and sodomy.

Largely taboo, due to the fear of
scandal
, the subject that had remained confined to canonic and penitential literature appeared marginally in Russian Christian thought of the twentieth century and in emigration. Freudian
psychoanalysis
and psychopathology served as scientific paradigms and cautioned as to the idea of “nature” and definite roles of gender, without the homosexual being an approved third sex or being authorized to live his nature, as he is not of original nature. But “personalism” frees the person, by showering him with his moral freedom and transcendence in relation to unmastered desire, in the tradition of Kant.

If Russian Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov (1901–70) was inspired by Jung in general, he forgot the psychiatrist’s generous positions. The sole mention of homosexuality in his
The Sacrament of Love
reduces it to a manifestation of sexual nihilism, of excessive masculinization of the world, of a refusal of femininity (magnified by the Virgin), and moreover of God: “This too masculine world, where feminine charisma does not play any role anymore, where woman becomes masculine, is more and more a world without God, because it is without Mother-Theotokos [Mother of God], and God cannot be born there. It is symptomatic that this ambiance,
debauchery
of children, incest and homosexuality affirm themselves openly.” So homophobia is once again based on the uncompromising imperative of reproduction: by his refusal of the world, of creation, the homosexual egotistically and viciously refuses to participate in the renewal of humanity for his “mechanical” and absurd pleasure. It is symptomatic that Evdokimov put the refusal of woman and paternity alongside
pedophilia
: the homosexual is thus a rapist, almost an abortionist of children, and of Jesus himself. The sexual nihilism would be an aspect of rhetorical and practical atheism at work in the modern world, particularly in the West, that gives it too much freedom of expression.

As for Freud, his “pansexualism” is rejected with disgust, while his arguments on homosexual immaturity are used. Evdokimov places those theories in parallel with the debauchery of children and incest in presupposing an infantile regression and an incapacity to meet his normal object. It is symptomatic that those theologians who show themselves to be “progressive” toward the status of women, such as Evdokimov, Oliver Clément, and Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, also propose their services as
moderns
in the critique of homosexuality and show a compensatory aggressiveness. The same ones stress the misogyny of a part of Christian culture, plead for a historic-contextual interpretation of prohibitions of impurity in Leviticus, and describe St Paul as an ignored progressive, but do not think to proceed with this type of rereading on homosexuality. Anti-Catholic and interested in recruitment, this orthodox lyricism of female charisma, often antifeminist at its base, is as suspicious as its bogus rehabilitation of sexuality, which at numerous levels is nothing but disguised conservatism. In his
Questions sur l’homme
(Questions on man), Clément expressed the old anxiety about the reversal of cosmic order brought about by lesbianism: “Violence creates a type of homosexual and domineering Amazon, and ignorance of the disciplines of metamorphosis, once the old levees are broken, only frees the instincts of very ancient magic.”

Since gay liberation, the Orthodox Church rejects, whenever possible, the
decriminalization
and any judicial, social, or scientific commonplaceness of homosexuality. American Orthodoxes distinguish themselves by their controversial conservatism. British psychotherapist and theologian Elizabeth Moberly opposes with “compassion” any normalization of “an incapacity of the child to bond with the parent of the same sex” and a “blocking of development” certainly widespread, but as pathological and curable as the flu! This sad problem demands patience and therapy, but the eroticization of this deviance of desire would be, for Moberly, the worst of all things. William Basil Zion goes into rapture over Moberly’s depth and criticizes the Jesuit John McNeil for his neo-Thomist homophilia and John Boswell for his erroneous interpretation of the bases of patristic homophobia. A caricatured vision of the gay
ghetto
serves to reduce homosexuality (accused of the refusal of
otherness
, i.e. of woman) to eroticism, promiscuity,
AIDS
, narcissism, and mental instability, rendering meaningless all acknowledgment of gay “couples” or of their “love.” Gay liberation would be a victimization of irresponsible hypocrites, while the role played by Christian stigmatization in the critiqued behaviors is never mentioned.

The Archbishop Chrysostom of Cyprus led without much effect a large campaign in April and May 1998, recommending to Cypriots to prefer state homophobia (seven years in
prison
for consenting adults since 1899) to adherence to the European Union, if the price were a legal protection of homosexuals and their orientation, which is only “debauchery.” The Romanian Church obtained from parliament an ambiguous abrogation of dispositions condemned in Europe. In Greece, the concordant Church could not prevent decriminalization (1951) and the lowering of the sexual majority (fifteen years old), but has largely maintained its moral condemnation. The Metropolis of Attica rejected, in the name of St Paul, perversions that preclude access to the realm of God and is indignant of the growing equality of treatment between gay couples and heterosexual couples.

State
communism
in Slavic and Balkan countries forbade the Church from taking a public position on social questions, but with the fall of communism, the Church joined the state on the idea of a social morality to direct adult desires and life choices toward a “normative” nature. The Serbian Church approved the homophobia of three quarters of the population, brought up between communism and religion, and incited violent demonstrations by nationalists, monarchists, and reactionaries against
tolerance
toward gays. In 2001, Belgrade’s first gay pride gave rise to violence from Milosevic and Greater Serbia partisans, valorized on posters calling on “the Orthodox to mobilize for a spiritually healthy Serbia and against anti-Christian homosexual immorality.” In 2001, the social doctrine of the Russian Church defined homosexuality as a “sinful alteration of human nature”; further, it proposes stigmatization, by requiring that the state remove gays from all pedagogical and military authority.

Lesbianism, traditionally forgotten, is now condemned, due to the popularization of the theme. The status of women (excluded from the priesthood) and the joint horror of sodomy and homosexuality manifest the heterosexist character of orthodox religion. The critique of Western Augustinian ways, such as the guilt complex over sex and the Orthodox pretensions about limiting
marriage
to procreation, reveal their intolerance for the
discrimination
of adult love and the need for the social legitimization of sex. Orthodoxy is a prisoner of a need for cosmic order and Trinitarian symbolism that makes “gender” so essential to the point of alienating the person in the name of his or her transcendent vocation. A miraculous election to self-restraint, the radical crucifixion of carnal desire: such is God’s project for the gay Orthodox.
—Nicolas Plagne

St Clement of Alexandria.
Le Pédagogue
. Paris: Sources chrétiennes, 1960–70.

St Nicodermus of the Holy Mountain.
The Pedalion
or
The Rudder
. Athens, 1953.

Evdokimov, Paul.
Le Sacrement de l’amour
. Paris: Desclée, De Brouwer, 1967. [Published in the US as
The Sacrament of Love
. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.]

Meyendorff, John.
Le Mariage, une perspective orthodoxe
. Paris:YMCA, 1986. [Published in the US as
Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective
. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975.]

Moberly, Elizabeth.
Psychogenesis: The Early Development of Gender Identity
. London: Paul Kegan, 1982

———.
Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic
. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1983.

Stern, Mikhail, and August Stern.
La Vie sexuelle en URSS
. Paris: Albin Michel, 1979.

Zion, William Basil.
Eros and Transformation: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective
. New York: Univ. Press of America, 1984.

—Balkans, the; Bible, the; Europe, Eastern & Central; Heresy; Inquisition; Justinian; Russia; Sodom and Gomorrah.

OTHERNESS

The concept of otherness is relatively recent in the history of homophobia, yet it is becoming increasingly dominant and widespread among philosophers, priests, psychoanalysts, and anthropologists alike. According to this view, homosexuality is the fear of true otherness in its embrace of similitude and narcissism. Where did such an idea originate?

Without a doubt, it was not in the Old Testament: Eve born of Adam, woman of man, certainly does not appear to be an example of otherness. As for
Sodom and Gomorrah
, it is the “cry of their abominations” (injustice and inequity, according to Genesis), their distortion of the common law—and not their rejection of otherness—which distinguishes them from all other cities, and calls upon them divine retribution. Of course, we need not even mention Lot, the only fair man of Sodom, whose act of incest with his two daughters is definitely no great lesson in otherness.

Nor in the New Testament will one discover arguments centered on the notion of “neighbor,” which is a form of the “other.” Even under
Paul
, the condemnation of “uncleanness, fornication, and lewdness” (2 Cor 12:21) is still based on deviation from the law, and not any particular relationship with the Other. In this way, the criticism of homosexuality as being anti-“other” could not have originated in Scripture.

With regard to
philosophy
, we can focus on modern philosophy’s role, given that ancient philosophy, from Plato to Roman Stoicism, appears to be indifferent to the notion of otherness, and in fact, speaks favorably to the idea of love (or friendship) for the same or similar. In modern philosophy, there is a notable importance accorded to gender
differences
by philosophers such as G W. F. Hegel or Emmanuel Lévinas, and with it, the seed of modern homophobia which depicts homosexuality as the fear of the Other. Yet, according to both Hegel and Lévinas, the idea of the Other is as much based on biological differentiation as it is against it. Moreover, the modern concept of the Other could just as well lead to an opposing theory: homosexuality could be interpreted to mean the primacy of a look toward the Other, and the subsequent choice to present oneself as an
object
for others. This, notably, is Jean Genet’s “Sartrian” interpretation: the genesis of homosexuality, of “pederasty” as Sartre would say, is situated in the man who discovers his truth in “being for others.”

In the world of
psychoanalysis
, the anti-otherness arguments appear to be more serious. It was Sigmund Freud who, before all others, considered homosexuality to be a “narcissistic love” and as an inability to grasp the difference of the sexes by assuming the castration of the mother. This legitimized the terms “
inversion
” and “
perversion
,” relating the male homosexual urge as an identification with the mother, and consequently, an inability to attain the symbolic Other. However, things then become complicated. Firstly, the distinction that Freud makes between “narcissistic love” and “anaclitic love” is not only internal to heterosexuality, but also totally exempt of any value judgment: anaclitic love could just as easily be that with the “mother” figure or with the “whore,” which would not be any great doorway to the Other. Secondly, Freud later recognized that secondary narcissism (which allows narcissism to become narcissistic love, thus preserving the exteriority of the object) may play an essential role as a secondary defense against any death drive. Thirdly, because Freud occasionally found (notably in cases of female homosexuality) the inversion of narcissistic love into love by support, homosexuality becomes a form of privileged access to the idea of the Other (by way of identification with the father). Jacques Lacan emphasized this point: if it is gender differences that evoke the constituent separation between the imaginary and the symbolic, then these differences are themselves an effect of the symbolic. In other words, the symbolic place of the Other can be represented equally by either a masculine or feminine image. If popular psychoanalysis (or its American interpretation) appeared to fix the homosexual to the image of sameness, a more serious reading of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory (for example, Lacanian) may free the homosexual, or at least re-situate him at the same level as the heterosexual with regard to his complex relationship to the Other.