Here’s a very contemporary Canadian Rufus Wainwright singing Judy’s song at the Palladium:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnT2VEsuHc

As I understand it, many local Churches Together groups include Quakers as observers, though Quakers are resolutely non-creedal and the Churches Together organisation is explicitly trinitarian. As observers, the Quakers have a seat at the table and can raise and encourage discussion of issues, but don’t have an official role in any decisions made. I find myself wondering if they’ve been involved in brokering this agreement.

I have just checked it out, and Crompton does use one of the works of William Armstrong Percy III as a reference. Percy’s work is entitled “Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece”. Urbanna: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Sounds like 1996 was a good year for W.W. Percy!

…while their property and money went to the Church. Bravo!!

And you too, Will!!

Yes, this is confirmed by Warren Johansson and William A. Percy in Chapter 7 (“Homosexuality”) of “Handbook of Mediaeval Sexuality”, eds. Vern L. Bullough, James A. Brundage, (Garland, NY/London, 1996).

Among a number of other interesting comments, they state that a movement against sodomites was begun by St. Peter Damian (c. 1051) and by Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII, 1073-85); and that “Canon law, previously rather unarticulated and scattered, developed rapidly and homophobically after 1000″ (p. 168).

Homophobia also intensifed under the Inquisition – sodomy was linked with heresy (the Bogomils and the Cathars), and sodomites were handed over to the secular authorities for torture and execution.

You could also say “A shame that people forget that until about the 1700s the church in the UK was the main persecutor of people as witches”

Your statement is what in science is called an ‘appeal to tradition’ – an irrelevant appeal to tradition is a fallacy in reasoning in which one argues that a practice or a belief is justifiable simply because it has a long and established history.

History is not an excuse for current misdeeds.

Thank you for mentioning our dear John Boswell (1947-1994), winnner of the 1981 American Book Awards for History, and who, according to “Who’s Who in Contemporary Gay & Lesbian History” by Aldrich & Wotherspoon, 2001, was himself tragically struck down by Aids.

Boswell’s other scholarly work, “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe”,1994, is equally famous and was 12 years in the making.

I agree that:

“His argument was that intolerance of homosexuality was not an essential feature of christianity itself, but only became a dominant attitude after nearly 1200 hundred years of church history.”

Moreover, both of Boswell’s books are highly researched, and he did have access to the Vatican Archives. It was there in fact that he found original copies of medieval monastic liturgies for same-sex unions.

These liturgies were also made available during what we call “The Dark Ages” to members of the Aristocracies of the Holy Roman Empire.

However, without necessarily denying the existence of such liturgies and tolerance for homosexuality within the RCC prior to the 14th century, a Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of Nebraska by the name of Louis Crompton published his Bonnie and Vern L. Bullock Award Winning book entitled “Homosexuality and Civilization” in 2003, and it was a finalist in the Gay/Lesbian category.

I am somewhat familiar with these three works, and I am impressed, and quite remarkably so, that Crompton has found ample evidence pointing to the existence of homophobia in every century of Christianity.

In that case, Boswell’s discoveries would have applied to monks, clerics, members of the hierarchy and the aristocracies, but not to the common of mortals who were persecuted in the most barbarous ways imaginable when they were simply “accused” of sodomy, in which case there property was turned over to the ecclesiastical authorities. That is not to say that aristocrats were not skating on thin ice, especially if their estates were of great value.

Also, I understand that Boswell’s works are highly valued by Gay Catholics, and that Crompton’s work is far more universal because it includes Early and Classical Greece as well as Imperial China (500 BCE-1849).

Finally these three books give its real meaning to the word “groundbreaking”, if only because we have some evidence that “somewhere Over the Rainbow” is not a complete myth.

You said:

“A shame that people forget that until about the late 1800s the church in the UK was the main provider of healthcare, charity and education.

Whenever religion gets debated in here it is without exception the nutty fringes that get held up as the summation of the christian faith.”

Where to begin?

Of course, I understand post (1) in the sense that the headline of this story appeared at first sight to be such good news…until I noticed that the word ‘groundbreaking’ was in quotation marks.

On second thought, it occured to me that only if this headline signfied

1)that the churches had updated their sexual theology in order to accept and teach according to contemporary scientific evidence,

2)that homosexuality is one of the many sexual orientations of humanity, and

3)that it can be immoral in the event someone may be hurt or killed by it,

that this headline could be interpretated as good news for the LGBT community worldwide.

Having said that, am I to understand that your comment implies that homophobia, a nutty fringe of religion, did not exist prior to the late 1800′s in the UK?

In 1690, for example, England’s “Society for the Reformation of Manners”, a movement in reaction to the Restoration just as the Restoration had been a movement against Puritanism, saw Anglicans working with Puritans in voluntary associations throughout the country, recruiting informers and distributing blank warrants for arrests.

The society reported in 1738 that 101,683 sodomites had been persecuted in the last 44 years, an impressive number by any standard.

Behind this effort for moral improvement lay a paranoia based on superstition. An earthquake had recently devastated Jamaica and tremors were felt in London: could this be a sign of divine wrath?

Accordingly, John Disney’s “Second Essay upon the Execution of the Laws against Immorality” (1710) argued that the convictions for “the horrid Sin of Sodomy” were especially desirable “because this Sin draws down the Judgements of God upon the Nation where ’tis suffered in a very particular Manner.”

As a last example for this brief commentary, in 1726, a squadron of police constables converged upon the molly house kept by Mother Clapp in Field Lane, Holborn, where 40 homosexual men – “notorious Sodomites in the language of the day – were rounded up and hauled off to Newgate prison to await trial. Three were hanged at Tyburn, and it was proposed that anyone convicted of sodomy should be castrated in open court and “the Hangman sears up his Scrotum with a hot Iron.”

Perhaps you’re right, and that these are the “nutty fringes” of religion, but these historical events, for which the LGBT community can hold the churches responsible because of a misinterpretaion of holy scripture and of natural phenomena, are the very ones that led to the trial, persecution and eventual demise of one of Ireland’s and England’s most celebrated authors even today, Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde (1854-1900).

Finally, the myth of a golden era of christianity appears to exist in your mind, sir. Moreover, if the churches themselves prefer living in the past, then Gays can very easily follow them to any century, and hold them equally responsible for countless and horrendous murders of LGBT persons.

Given the hierarchy’s access to the works of ancient Greek philosophers who were quite knowledgeable and accepting of homosexuality, I doubt that a plea of innocence by ignorance could stand up.

As ‘groundbreaking’ as this lip-service event may seem, the fact remains that churches insist in living in the past, and refuse the evidence that proves that LGBT persons of all kinds are not only as ‘normal’ as heterosexuals, but we are also often more intelligent, caring and productive, e.g. Alan Turing et al.

Alors, qu’en dis-tu, M. Renard Royal?

I have no doubt Jean-Paul and yourself have been on these ‘threads’ a lot longer than I, considering I only started responding to these a little while ago. Nothing to do with trying to ‘dominateer’, maybe you just feel threatened by new blood as you been around for so long ;o) I have always enjoyed a good debate and always good to find others (like yourselves) who enjoy it just as much. Too many simply just can’t! More need to, nice to see all that do on here.

Jean-Paul, erm Judy Garland? really? Please! Like I say kinda living in the present and for the future. So I ain’t a Judy fan – doesn’t mean I don’t see that she was and maybe still is an icon but to use her in this arguement – bit desperate.

Whenever religion gets debated in here it is without exception the nutty fringes that get held up as the summation of the christian faith. It is like saying that because Blair was in the Liebour party he represented the views of all socialists rather than being the war mongering murderer he should be sent to the hague for.