Kittredge Cherry's Blog: Q Spirit, page 59

Station 1: Jesus condemned / Anti-gay hate speech

Jesus is condemned to death and “faggot” first appears in print in Station 1 from “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button, courtesy of Believe Out Loud



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1913: The word "faggot" is first used in print in reference to gays in a vocabulary of criminal slang published in Portland, Oregon. The drawings in this station come from the cover of one such dictionary of slang.

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Mini-commentary by Kittredge Cherry:



Putting the death sentence of Jesus with the first use of "faggot" reveals a harsh truth: Words are often the first step on the continuum of violence.



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“Stations of the Cross: The Struggle for LGBT Equality” is a new set of 14 paintings that link the crucifixion of Jesus with the sufferings of LGBT people.



Artist Mary Button painted the LGBT Stations series for Believe Out Loud, an online network empowering Christians to work for LGBT equality. They invite churches and faith groups to download and use the images for free.



The whole series will also be shown here at the Jesus in Love Blog this week. Click here for an overview of the LGBT Stations by Kittredge Cherry, lesbian Christian author and art historian.

LGBT Stations of the Cross shows struggle for equality

Jesus falls the first time as Nazis send LGBT people to concentration camps in Station 3 from “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button, courtesy of Believe Out Loud


“Stations of the Cross: The Struggle for LGBT Equality” is a new set of 14 paintings that link the crucifixion of Jesus with the sufferings of LGBT people.



“In the sacrifices of martyrs of the LGBT movement, we can come to a new understanding of the cross, and of what it means to be part of the body of Christ,” explains Tennessee artist Mary Button in her official artist statement.



Button painted the LGBT Stations series for Believe Out Loud, an online network empowering Christians to work for LGBT equality. They invite churches and faith groups to download and use the images for free.



The whole series will also be shown here at the Jesus in Love Blog starting tomorrow, with two images per day for a week. The original paintings will be on display and for sale on March 13 at a Believe Out Loud fundraiser in New York City and be displayed in Washington DC during Holy Week, which coincides with Supreme Court oral arguments on same-sex marriage.



Button matches each traditional Station of the Cross with a milestone from the past 100 years of LGBT history, including Nazi persecution of homosexuals, the Stonewall Rebellion, the assassination of gay politician Harvey Milk, the AIDS pandemic, ex-gay conversion therapy, the murder of transgender Rita Hester, the ban on same-sex marriage, and LGBT teen suicides.



The Stations of the Cross are a set of artistic images traditionally used for meditation on the Passion of Christ. They tell the story of his crucifixion from his sentencing until his body is laid in the tomb.



Button creates some startling images as she illustrates the LGBT struggle in chronological order beside the Jesus’ journey to Calvary. For example, when Jesus is nailed to the cross, queer people are hooked up for electroshock therapy meant to “cure” homosexuality.



The LGBT Stations are generating controversy. The conservative Lutheran website Exposing the ELCA denounced the series as “offensive”and “disgraceful” for associating Christ’s sacrifice with LGBT rights.



Button traces the origins of her LGBT Stations to a book that relocated the gospels into the African American civil rights movement, ending with Christ as a black man lynched in Georgia. Her life changed when she read “The Cotton Patch Version of Luke and Acts: Jesus’ Doings and the Happenings” by Clarence Jordan.



“I believe that we can only begin to understand the meaning of the crucifixion when we take away our polished and shiny crosses and look for the cross in our own time, in our own landscape,” she said in her artist statement.



For this reason, she committed to create a new Stations of the Cross series on social justice issues every year. “Last year, my stations took viewers on a journey through the beginnings of the Syrian uprising,” she told the Jesus in Love Blog. “This year I decided to do a series of stations related to LBGT equality when I learned that the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act during Holy Week.”



She makes bold, colorful line drawings with a folk art vibe and collage effect. LGBT historical documents became visual elements in her Stations. For example, the background for “Station 2: Jesus carries his cross” is the charter of the Society for Human rights, founded in 1924 as the first homosexual rights organization in America.



Button is minister of visual arts at First Congregational Church in Memphis. She has created artwork for the National Council of Churches, Ecumenical Women at the United Nations, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Daughter of a Lutheran minister, Button received a master of theological studies degree from Candler School of Theology after graduating from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Her work has been exhibited across the United States including at the Museum of Biblical Art and the Church Center for the United Nations



The original 12-by-12-inch LGBT Stations of the Cross paintings will be auctioned at an opening event from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wed., March 13 at the headquarters of Intersections International, 274 5th Ave., New York City. Intersections is the parent organization of Believe Out Loud, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit Believe Out Loud.



“We hope the stations inspire Christians to reflect on Christ’s presence in human suffering as we work together to promote the dignity of all people,” said Joseph Ward, director of Believe Out Loud. “We are impressed by the way Mary Button weaves Christian symbols and liturgy together with contemporary themes in her art, so we approached her to commission the series. This stations series is designed as a resource for congregations; we hope churches will download and use these stations during the Lenten season for prayer and reflection.”



The entire series is available now for free download from Believe Out Loud's Flickr site.



Here is a complete list of Button’s LGBT Stations of the Cross. All of them will be posted at the Jesus in Love Blog over the next week. Click the titles below to view individual paintings and text in the series. Links will be added as the series progress.



Station 1: Jesus is condemned to death

1913: The word "faggot" first appears in print



Station 2: Jesus carries his cross

1924: America's first homosexual rights group forms



Station 3: Jesus falls the first time

1933: Nazis ban homosexual groups



Station 4: Jesus meets his mother

1945: LGBT prisoners are kept in concentration camps after Allied liberation



Station 5: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross

1950: LGBT people fired from US government during Lavender Scare



Station 6: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

1954: Gay computer scientist Alan Turing commits suicide



Station 7: Jesus falls the second time

1967: LGBT people protest police raid on Black Cat gay bar



Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

1969: Stonewall Rebellion



Station 9: Jesus falls the third time

1978: Gay politician Harvey Milk assassinated



Station 10: Jesus is stripped of his garments

1981: First official report on AIDS



Station 11: Crucifixion

1992: NARTH founded to promote ex-gay conversion therapy



Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross

1998: Transgender Rita Hester murdered



Station 13: Jesus is taken down from the cross

2004: Same-sex marriage banned in 15 states



Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb

2010: Suicides by LGBT youth make news












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Related links:



Artist Statement: LGBT Stations Of The Cross



“The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” by Douglas Blanchard



Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More by Kittredge Cherry



Timeline of LGBT history (Wikipedia)

___Special thanks to Ann Fontaine and Colin for the news tip.



This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery. It is also included in thee Queer Christ that series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.



Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.

http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/

Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Perpetua and Felicity: Patron saints of same-sex couples

“Felicity and Perpetua: Patrons of Same-Sex Couples” by Maria Cristina

Saints Perpetua and Felicity were brave North African woman friends who were executed for their Christian faith in the third century. Some consider them lesbian saints or patrons of same-sex couples. Their feast day is March 7.



They were arrested for their Christian faith, imprisoned together, and held onto each other in the last moments before they died together on March 7, 203.



The details of their imprisonment are known because Perpetua kept a journal, the first known written document by a woman in Christian history. In fact, her "Passion of St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their Companions” was so revered in North Africa that St. Augustine warned people not to treat it like the Bible. People loved the story of the two women comforting each other in jail and giving each other the kiss of peace as they met their end in the amphitheater at Carthage, where they were mauled by wild animals before being beheaded. Their names are familiar to Catholics because Perpetua and Felicity are included in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass.



Perpetua was a 22-year-old noblewoman and a nursing mother. Felicity, her slave, gave birth to a daughter while they were in prison. Although she was married, Perpetua's husband is conspicuously absent from her diary.



A banner saying “patrons of same sex couples” hangs above Felicity and Perpetua in the colorful icon at the top of this post. It was painted by Maria Cristina, an artist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She paints the two women holding hands in an elegant gesture. The skull of a long-horn cow, similar to paintings of famous New Mexico artist Georgia O’Keefe, adds a welcome bit of Southwestern flavor to the image.



Yale history professor John Boswell names Perpetua and Felicity as one of the three primary pairs of same-sex lovers in the early church. (The others are Polyeuct and Nearchus and Sergius and Bacchus.) The love story of Felicity and Perpetua is told with historical detail in two books, “Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe” by Boswell and “Passionate Holiness” by Dennis O’Neill. He is founder of the Living Circle, the interfaith LGBT spirituality center that commissioned the following icon of the loving same-sex pair. It was painted by Brother Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his progressive icons.



Saints Perpetua and FelicityBy Brother Robert Lentz, OFM, www.trinitystores.com

The Lentz version of Perpetua and Felicity is one of 10 Lentz icons that sparked a major controversy in 2005. Critics accused Lentz of glorifying sin and creating propaganda for a progressive sociopolitical agenda, and he temporarily gave away the copyright for the controversial images to his distributor, Trinity Stores. It is rare to see an icon about the love between women, especially two African women. The rich reds and heart-shaped double-halo make it look like a holy Valentine.





Felicity and Perpetua by Jim Ru
Artist Jim Ru was inspired to paint Felicity and Perpetua as a kissing couple. His version was displayed in his show “Transcendent Faith: Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Saints” in Bisbee Arizona in the 1990s.



Irish artist St. George Hare, painted an erotic, romanticized vision of Perpetua and Felicity around 1890. His painting “The Victory of Faith” shows the women as an inter-racial couple sleeping together nude on a prison floor.



“The Victory of Faith” by St. George Hare (Wikimedia Commons)

Perpetua and Felicity are still revered both inside and outside the church. For example, they are named together in the Roman Canon of the Mass.



They are often included in lists of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender saints because they demonstrate the power of love between two women. Their lives are the subject of several recent historical novels, including “Perpetua: A Bride, A Martyr, A Passion” by Amy Peterson and “The Bronze Ladder” by Malcolm Lyon.



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Related links:



"Eternal Bliss" - SS Felicity and Perpetua, March 7th (Queer Saints and Martyrs - and Others)



Suspect 3rd Century Women Put to Death in Arena: Ancient Hate Crime? (Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT hate crime victims)



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This post is part of the LGBT Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.



March is Women's History Month, so women will be especially highlighted this month at the Jesus in Love Blog.



Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.

http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/

Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts



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Icons of Perpetua and Felicity and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at Trinity Stores

Artist paints history’s butch heroes: Ria Brodell interview

“He-Man and St. Michael Find They Have a Lot in Common” by Ria Brodell

Queer desire, gender identity and growing up Catholic are explored by artist Ria Brodell in paintings of “Butch Heroes” and “The Handsome and the Holy.”



Brodell, a culturally Catholic gender-queer artist in the Boston area, brought together her favorite saints, pop culture icons and other seemingly paradoxical characters from her childhood in her series “The Handsome and the Holy.” For example, an angel and a hunky action figure, both warriors for good, embrace in “He-Man and St. Michael Find They Have a Lot in Common.” The series also includes self portraits of the artist as an ideal man, whether as a monk or a movie star.



Now the up-and-coming artist is working on a new series called “Butch Heroes,” using the format of traditional Catholic holy cards to present butch lesbians, queer women and female-to-male transgenders from history. They come from various continents, races and ethnicities and led surprisingly dissimilar lives. Some faced punishment, even execution, for homosexual acts or “female sodomy.”



“Catharina aka Anastasius Linck” by Ria Brodell

Brodell grew up looking at her aunt’s holy card collection for inspiration, but she didn’t find any that fulfilled her longing for queer role models.



“I see the Butch Heroes as the role models of which I was never aware,” Brodell told the Jesus in Love Blog in the interview below. “Knowing that we have always existed, struggled, survived, in some way or another, even if we were persecuted for it is important.”



So far she has completed 17 paintings of Butch Heroes, ranging from the celebrated French artist Rosa Bonheur to the infamous Catharina Linck, the last known woman executed for sodomy in Europe. She was beheaded in 1721. Brodell also depicts Butch Heroes from Asia and North America, including a Native American warrior-healer known as Sitting in the Water Grizzly. Some are shown alone and others are pictured as couples, such as British pub keeper Mary East (aka James How) and Mrs. How. All are posted now on her website (riabrodell.com) in an online exhibition.



“Rosa Bonheur” by Ria Brodell

Brodell paints with gouache on paper in a style that is meticulous and yet evocative. The scale is intimate, with each “Butch Hero” measuring only 11 by 7 inches. Her research skills are as impeccable, precise and detailed as her artistic technique.



She scours LGBTQ history books, libraries, museum archives and other sources to uncover the true lives of gender-variant people whose stories have been censored, heterosexualized or criminalized. She studies their social class, employment, clothing and environment in an effort to be as accurate and culturally sensitive as possible. Ultimately she aims to represent the full diversity of cultures and eras in which queer women lived.



“James How aka Mary East and Mrs. How” by Ria Brodell

The artist writes a brief biography to accompany each of her Butch Heroes. Every text is an achievement of scholarship and concise readability, summarizing a queer life with eloquence. The artist also provides a list of sources for each Butch Hero. Her most frequently cited source is the 2009 book Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila J. Rupp.



Brodell has had solo exhibitions in Massachusetts and California, where she is represented by the Kopeikin Gallery. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2006 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2002 from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.



The artist discusses her life and work in the following interview for the Jesus in Love Blog with Kittredge Cherry, art historian and author of Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.



Kittredge Cherry: On your website you say that your art makes connections between queer desire, gender identity and your Catholic upbringing. Many of my readers have struggled to reconcile LGBTQ identities with Christianity. Some developed their own post-church spiritualities. Please tell more about your spiritual journey.



Ria Brodell: Well, I have to admit that this is a very hard question to answer. Catholicism is a large part of the life of my extended family members. I, however, am not a practicing Catholic any longer. There is a bit of tension or sadness there on my part, in relation to Catholicism and my family. I feel nostalgia for it. I am attracted to the iconography, and I still feel an attachment to some of the saints and the stories. But, as a queer person, I struggle with the contemporary reality of Catholicism; their stance on homosexuality is just one sticking point. I cannot be a member of a church I disagree with on so many issues. So I suppose my spiritual journey at this point is one that I’m still contemplating, but I’m not using a church to do so.



“Self-Portrait as a Nun or a Monk, circa 1250” by Ria Brodell

KC: I am intrigued by your "Self-Portrait as a Nun or a Monk, circa 1250." What does it say about your identity and place in history? Did you ever consider joining a convent or monastery?



RB: This was one of the pieces that led up to my Butch Heroes painting series. I was thinking about history, specifically what my situation would have been had I been born into a different century. I concluded that as a queer person, and as a gender nonconforming person, I would have had few options. Basically, if I didn’t want to wear female clothing, be a wife and mother, or if I wasn’t wealthy…nun or monk would have been a possibility. Now I see that there were other, albeit risky options, as modeled by the lives of the people in Butch Heroes.



Yes, I actually did consider joining a convent. I thought about it a lot in my late teens, though I’m not sure how serious I was. I was struggling with (confused by) my sexuality, gender identity, Catholicism, and family. I remember looking for answers in the HUGE Catholic Catechism book my parents had, I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it didn’t help. I was basically a pretty good kid, and this book was telling me (through no actions or fault of my own) that I was flawed, and that therefore, I essentially was not a good kid, or that’s how I interpreted it. That confused me, and led me to think that a convent may be a solution.



KC: Why did you choose the holy card format for your "Butch Heroes"? In what sense do you see the "Butch Heroes" as holy?



RB: The primary reason I chose the holy card format for Butch Heroes was because it was one of the formats in which role models were presented to me as a child. My aunt had a huge collection and we would look at them together. She would tell me about the various saints whose stories were depicted on them. The visuals were beautiful and the stories were fascinating. The symbolism and the graphic, sometimes gruesome, details are something I still love about them.



So, when I started researching people for Butch Heroes, I immediately thought of holy cards. The way that holy cards employ symbolism, their intimacy, colors, style etc. was perfect. They elevate a person to reverence. They are used for remembrance. I want this for the Butch Heroes. I see the Butch Heroes as the role models of which I was never aware.



I don’t necessarily think of the Butch Heroes as holy, however I do see them as important. By using the holy card format I’m not intending to say that they were saints, and I’m definitely not intending to catholicize them. My intention is to use a format that has a personal significance to me, that has an inherent reverence to it, in order to elevate them, give them a presence and tell their stories.



KC: Many of these Butch Heroes faced terrible punishments or execution. What is the value for queer people today to remember their stories?



RB: I’ve thought about this frequently, especially as things are getting better for us (slowly). Is it necessary to look to the past? Is it important? My conclusion is always yes, because history is long, and it is forgotten easily. It puts our lives in perspective. Knowing that we have always existed, struggled, survived, in some way or another, even if we were persecuted for it is important. It’s comforting for me; finding our queer ancestors, to know who came before, and that we are not “a plague that has infected the modern world.” It also debunks the heteronormative and male-centric way in which history has been presented.



KC: How do you decide who to portray as "Butch Heroes"?



RB: I try to keep it personal. This series started by me musing over how I would have managed to get by as a queer, butch or masculine-of-center person. So when looking for Butch Heroes, I look for lives I can identify with. When choosing someone to include, I have decided to use specific search criteria: female bodied people who lived outside of their society’s gender norms, who were more masculine than feminine in the way they presented themselves (i.e., clothing, appearance, employment, or role in society, etc.), and had documented relationships with women.



KC: Do you have any plans to include any Butch Heroes who were officially recognized as saints or religious leaders? Some who come to mind are the cross-dressing "transvestite" saints such as Joan of Arc, or queer colonial Quaker preacher Jemima Wilkinson aka Public Universal Friend?



RB: If I find people who were recognized saints or religious leaders that fit the personal criteria I’m using for Butch Heroes, I am very happy to include them. In fact, I have a Methodist minister, on my to-do list.



KC: I see 17 Butch Heroes on your website. How many more will be added to your Butch Heroes series?



RB: I’m not entirely sure about the final number. I’d like to continue the series until I feel that I have represented people from many different backgrounds. I’d like to show the breadth of our history, even if in reality it is just a glimpse. As of now, I’m still finding new people whenever I start researching a new area, so I know I’m not done yet.



“Sitting in the Water Grizzly” by Ria Brodell

KC: What are other ways that people can access your Butch Heroes? Are the paintings available for purchase as art objects? Do you intend to reproduce them as actual holy cards or in a book? When and where will they be exhibited again?



RB: Right now they are only available for viewing on my website (riabrodell.com) and in my studio. I definitely plan on selling the original paintings, but only during or after they have been exhibited as a whole. I do have plans to make a book, I think that would be a wonderful way to get their stories out to a wider audience, and I am currently looking for a publisher. I would definitely consider making them into actual holy cards, perhaps in sets. As far as upcoming exhibitions, I am still researching/painting them, but they may be ready to exhibit after I finish a few more, probably here in Boston or in L.A. If people want to stay up to date on the availability of the work, upcoming publications or exhibitions, they can contact me via my website to be added to a mailing list.



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March is Women's History Month, so the Jesus in Love Blog is especially pleased to highlight Brodell’s paintings of historical women this month. Many thanks for bringing these butches back to life again, restoring them to wholeness and holiness.



Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.

http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/

Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts



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This post is part of the Queer Christ series series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

Peter Gomes: Gay black Harvard minister preached "scandalous gospel"

“The Rev. Peter Gomes, of Plymouth, 1942 – 2011” by Jon Dorn




Peter Gomes was a gay black Baptist minister at Harvard and one of America’s most prominent spiritual voices against intolerance. Gomes reportedly hated being labeled “gay minister,” yet he used his national celebrity to make the religious case for LGBT people. He died two years ago today at age 68 on Feb. 28, 2011.



A man of many contradictions, Gomes became a Democrat in 2007 after decades as a conservative Republican. He even gave the benediction at President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985 and preached at the National Cathedral for the inauguration of Reagan’s successor, George Bush.



Gomes (May 22, 1942 - Feb. 28, 2011) was born in Boston to a black African immigrant father and a mother from Boston’s African American upper middle class. He grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, earned a divinity degree at Harvard University, and taught Western civilization at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for two years before returning to work at Harvard in 1970. Four years later he became the first black person to serve as chief minister to Harvard. He held the positions of Pusey minister at Harvard’s Memorial Church and Plummer professor of Christian morals for the rest of his life.



He came out publicly as “a Christian who happens as well to be gay” at a student rally in 1991 after a conservative student magazine at Harvard published a condemnation of homosexuality.  “I now have an unambiguous vocation -- a mission -- to address the religious causes and roots of homophobia,” he later told the Washington Post. “I will devote the rest of my life to addressing the 'religious case' against gays.”



In his 1996 best-seller, “The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart,” he showed how the Bible was misused to defend homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and sexism.



His 2007 book “The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?” went on to show that Jesus was a subversive whose radical gospel always overturns the status quo.



Among Gomes’s many admirers is artist Jon Dorn, who drew the portrait at the top of this post. Dorn is a cartoonist, filmmaker, and Master of Fine Arts student at Emerson College in Boston. He also serves on the Plymouth Cultural Council.



Gomes’ blend of scholarship, wisdom and accessibility is expressed in a few selected quotations:



“Hell is being defined by your circumstances, and believing that definition.” -- Peter Gomes



“The question should not be ‘What would Jesus do?’ but rather, more dangerously, “What would Jesus have me do?’” -- Peter Gomes in The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?



“To some, the temporal triumph of the Christian community in the world is a sign of God's favor and the essential righteousness of the Christian position. The irony of the matter, though, is that whenever the Christian community gains worldly power, it nearly always loses its capacity to be the critic of the power and influence it so readily brokers.” --Peter J. Gomes in The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?



“The battle for the Bible, of which homosexuality is the last front, is really the battle for the prevailing culture, of which the Bible itself is a mere trophy and icon. Such a cadre of cultural conservatives would rather defend their ideology in the name of the authority of scripture than concede that their self-serving reading of that scripture might just be wrong, and that both the Bible and the God who inspires it may be more gracious, just and inclusive than they can presently afford to be.” -- Peter Gomes in The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart



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Books by Peter Gomes include:



The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart



The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?



Sermons: Biblical Wisdom For Daily Living



The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need



Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living



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Related links:



Peter Gomes at LGBT Religious Archives Network



Remembering Peter Gomes: Black, Gay, Baptist Preacher (Queering the Church)



Rev. Peter Gomes: The Accidental Gay Advocate (Irene Monroe at HuffPost)



Gay, Black, Republican, Baptist Preacher, Rev. Peter Gomes, 1942-2011 (Candace Chellew-Hodge at Religion Dispatches)



Rev. Peter J. Gomes Is Dead at 68; A Leading Voice Against Intolerance (New York Times)



Video: Peter Gomes discusses: Would Jesus Support Gay Marriage? (also posted below)







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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.



Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.

http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/

Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Esther and Vashti on Purim: Biblical queens are queer models for such a time as this

Queen Esther by Jim Padgett, Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing (Wikimedia Commons)


Queen Esther, a role model for LGBTQ people, helped save the Jews from destruction in ancient Persia, an event commemorated today in the Jewish festival of Purim (Feb. 23-24 this year). LGBT Jews see her as an inspiration for coming out. A possible lesbian love story between Biblical queens Esther and Vashi has fired the imagination of a lesbian playwright, while a scholar says both queens are role models for gay and lesbians in ministry.



Esther hid her Jewish identity in order to become the next queen of Persia. Later she "came out" as Jewish to the king, thereby saving her people from a planned massacre. Their story is told in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament). Vashti was a Persian queen who refused to obey a summons from her drunken husband, the king.



The Washington Post article Gay Jews Connect Their Experience To Story of Purim reports that some see Purim as an unofficial LGBT Pride Day. Esther is traditionally considered the heroine of the story, but independent-minded Vashti has been reclaimed by feminists and now LGBT people.





Lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage imagined a love story between the two queens in her play “Esther and Vashti.” Gage describes her play as “a fast-paced, high-action drama where the love story of two women of different cultures and class backgrounds plays itself out against a backdrop of anti-Semitism and the sexual colonization of women.” Her “radical feminist retelling” fills in the blanks of scripture. In her version, Esther, a radical Jewish lesbian living in exile, and Vashti, a Persian woman of privilege, were lovers before Vashti married the king. The plight of the two women coincides with their successful effort to stop the impending massacre of the Jews.



Rev. David Bahr applies the strategies of the two queens to contemporary challenges in “Openly Gay and Lesbian Pastors Called by Predominantly Straight UCC Congregations,” a research project for his Doctor of Ministry degree at Wesley Theological Seminary in 2006. His theological reflection states, “As Esther and Vashti wrestle with their callings, I believe they can be instructive for gay men and lesbians called to ordained ministry. When should we wait, wondering if we are being prepared for something bigger? And when is enough, enough? What gives us the greatest sense of integrity? Or perhaps, who is best served? Both Esther and Vashti also present ‘models of resistance to wrong’ – one of direct dissent and one of working within the system.” Bahr currently serves as pastor of Park Hill Congregational Church UCC in Denver, Colorado.



In a famous quote from the Book of Esther, the man who had urged her to hide her Jewish identity changes his advice when their people are about to be massacred: “Perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14) Now is a good time to reflect what Esther and Vashti mean to queer people and our allies today.



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Related links:

The Proudest Queen of Purim (Human Rights Campaign



Closets (Esther 4:13-14) (The Bible in Drag Blog)



Esther: The Queen Who Came Out (Talking Dog)



Mona West also writes about Esther in The Queer Bible Commentary



Carolyn Gage page at Amazon.com

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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.



Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.

http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/

Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts



The traditional view of Esther is presented in the following:

Marcella Althaus-Reid: Queer theology pioneer

Marcella Althaus-Reid


Marcella Althaus-Reid was a queer theologian whose controversial books include “Indecent Theology” and “The Queer God.” Born in Argentina, she became the first woman appointed to a chair in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 2006. She held that post when she died at age 56 on Feb. 20, 2009 -- three years ago today.



Althaus-Reid (May 11, 1952- Feb. 20, 2009) was baptized as a Roman Catholic and grew up in Buenos Aires. She earned her first theological degree there from ISEDET (Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos), Latin America’s renowned center for studying liberation theology, which emphasizes God’s “preferential option for the poor.”



Next she gained recognition for working on social and community projects in the slums of Buenos Aires. As she continued her studies, Althaus-Reid applied the principles of liberation theology to women and sexual minorities, including LGBT people.



Her first book, “Indecent Theology,” was published in 2000 and established her international reputation as a self-proclaimed “indecent, Latina, bisexual theologian.” The book challenges the sexual oppression behind traditional Christian concepts of decency and introduces theology rooted in the context of people whose sexual freedom has been limited. In 2003 she wrote “The Queer God,” in which she aims to liberate God from the closet of sex-negative Christian thought and embrace God’s role in the lives of LGBTQ people.



Her writing style is dense and her books continue to be controversial, even among LGBT people of faith. But nobody denies that Althaus-Reid took risks to raise important issues based on queer life and spirituality.



Her originality and flashes of insight are expressed in the following quotation from “The Queer God”:



“Our task and our joy is to find or simply recognise God sitting amongst us, at any time, in any gay bar or in the home of a camp friend who decorates her living room as a chapel and doesn’t leave her rosary at home when going to a salsa bar.”



___

Links to book by or about Marcella Althaus-Reid:



Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics



The Queer God



From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology



Liberation Theology and Sexuality



Dancing theology in fetish boots: Essays in honour of Marcella Althaus Reid



More books by Marcella Althaus-Reid



___

Related links:



Official website Althaus-Reid.com



Remembering Marcella Althaus-Reid, “Indecent theologian” (Queer Saints and Martyrs - And Others)



Marcella Althaus-Reid: Theology’s bisexual shock jock an queen of obscene (Rollan’s Censored Issues Blog)



Marcella Althaus-Reid (The Dance of the Elements)



Vale Marcella Althaus-Reid 1952-2009 (Michael Carden's Jottings)

____

This post is part of a new effort to add authors and theologians to the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.



Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.

http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/

Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes

Dutch massacre of sodomites,

detail (Wikimedia Commons)

Ash Wednesday today is an appropriate time to reflect on the sins of the church and state against queer people, including the execution of thousands for homosexuality over the past 800 years.



Some of the executions for sodomy were recorded by artists, either long ago or in recent times. This post features 6 images, both new and historical, to remember and honor those whose lives were desecrated and cut short.



Christians traditionally put ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance on Ash Wednesday. The ashes can also serve as a sobering way to remember and repent the church’s role in executions for homosexuality, including the burning of “sodomites.”






“Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for sodomy in Halberstadt in 1721” by Elke R. Steiner. Steiner’s work is based on Angela Steidele’s book "In Männerkleidern. Das verwegene Leben der Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, hingerichtet 1721." Biographie und Dokumentation. Cologne: Böhlau, 2004. ("In Men's Clothes: The Daring Life of Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Rosenstengel, Executed 1721.")


German artist Elke R. Steiner illustrates the last known execution for lesbianism in Europe. Born in 1694, Catharina Margaretha Linck lived most of her life as a man under the name Anastasius. She was beheaded for sodomy on Nov. 8, 1721 in Halberstadt in present-day Germany. Linck worked at various times as a soldier, textile worker and a wandering prophet with the Pietists. She married a woman in 1717. Her mother-in-law reported her to authorities, who convicted her of sodomy with a "lifeless instrument," wearing men's clothes and multiple baptisms. The subject is grim, but Steiner adds an empowering statement: “But even were I to be done away with, those who are like me would remain.”



Sodomy is often considered a male issue, but the facts of history make clear that queer women were persecuted under sodomy laws too. Of course, the meaning of sodomy has changed a lot. The “sin of Sodom” in the Bible was arrogance and failure to care for travelers and the poor.








“The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe,” hanged for sodomy in 1641 in Dublin (Wikimedia Commons)


John Atherton, Anglican bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and his lover John Childe were hanged for “buggery” in 1640 in Dublin, Ireland. The bishop was executed under a law that he helped to institute! The picture comes from an anonymous 1641 booklet titled “The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe.” The title tries to shame and blame the victims, but I believe that the shame belongs to the church and society who killed them for who and how they loved.






Balboa executing two-spirit Native Americans for homosexuality in 1513 in Panama -- engraving by Théodore De Bry, 1594 (Wikimedia Commons).  


The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa found homosexuality among the Native American chiefs at Quarqua in Panama. He ordered 40 of these two-spirited people thrown to his war dogs to be torn apart and eaten alive to stop the “stinking abomination.”










The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused of sodomy, were executed by burning in Zürich in 1482. (Wikimedia Commons)



The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused sodomites, were executed by burning before the walls of Zurich, Switzerland in 1482. Source: Diebold Schilling, Chronik der Burgunderkriege, Schweizer Bilderchronik, Band 3, um 1483 (Zürich, Zentralbibliothek)








Execution of sodomites in Ghent in 1578 -- drawing by Franz Hogenberg (Wikimedia Commons)


Five Catholic monks were burned to death for homosexuality on June 28, 1578, in Ghent, Belguim.








"Timely Punishment..." shows Dutch massacre of sodomites in Amsterdam in 1730-31 (Wikimedia Commons)


A total of 96 gay men were executed for sodomy in the Netherlands years 1730-31.



Terence Weldon of Queering the Church is doing extensive research on the whole sad history of execution of queer people. He is assembling a chronology called “Burned for Sodomy” with the goal of listing all those killed for homosexuality in church- or state-sanctioned executions. It stretches from the 13th century almost to the present.



For the first 1,000 years of church history, Christianity was relatively tolerant of homoerotic relationships. Then came campaigns against heresy, which began to use the terms “heresy” and “sodomy” interchangeably.  Then hostility began to be directed specifically at same-sex erotic behavior. Weldon locates the fateful period when the atrocities began in a well researched overview titled “Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs”:

In 1120, the Church Council of Nablus specified burning at the stake for homosexual acts. Although this penalty may not immediately have been applied, other harsh condemnations followed rapidly. In 1212, the death penalty for sodomy was specified in in France. Before long the execution of supposed “sodomites”, often by burning at the stake, but also by other harsh means, had become regular practice in many areas.

The church contributed to the deaths of thousands for homosexuality over the next 700 years. Witch burning occurred in the same period and claimed the lives of countless lesbian women whose non-conformity was condemned as witchcraft. (Current events in Uganda prove that some are STILL using Christianity to justify the death penalty for homosexuality up to the present day.) As Weldon concludes:

Obviously, the Catholic Church cannot be held directly responsible for the judicial sentences handed down by secular authorities in Protestant countries. It can, however, be held responsible for its part in fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred in the early part of the persecution, using the cloak of religion to provide cover for what was in reality based not on Scripture or the teaching of the early Church, but on simple intolerance and greed.



It is important as gay men, lesbians and transgendered that we remember the examples of the many who have in earlier times been honoured by the Church as saints or martyrs for the faith. It is also important that we remember the example of the many thousands who have been martyred by the churches – Catholic and other.

More recent examples include the "gay Holocaust" of persecution by the Nazis, who sent an estimated 5,000 to 60,000 to concentration camps for homosexuality.



Milder forms of anti-LGBT persecution continue in the church. Now it is common to freeze LGBT people out of church leadership positions. Chris Glaser writes about the exclusion from clergy roles as a “fast imposed by others” in the following prayer based on the practice of fasting during Lent, the season of individual and collective repentance and reflection between Ash Wednesday and Easter.



One: Jesus,

     our fast has been imposed by others,

     our wilderness sojourn their choice more than ours.

Many: Our fast from the sacraments,

     our fast from ordination:

     our only choice was honesty.

One: With the scapegoats of the ancient Hebrews,

     sexual sins of generations

     have been heaped upon our backs,

     and we have been sent away,

     excommunicated, into the wilderness to die.

Many: Yet we choose life,

     even in our deprivation

One: Jesus, lead us to discern our call

     parallel to your own:

     rebelling against the boundaries,

     questioning the self-righteous authorities,

     breaking the Sabbath law

     to bring healing.





This prayer comes from “Rite for Lent” by Chris Glaser, published in Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations. Glaser spent 30 years struggling with the Presbyterian Church for the right to ordination as an openly gay man before he was ordained to the ministry in Metropolitan Community Churches in 2005. He writes progressive Christian reflections at chrisglaser.blogspot.com.



It is horrifying to remember the "burning times," especially for those like me who count ourselves as part of the Christian tradition. Let us rise from the ashes with these verses from the Bible:



Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.

[Psalm 51: 10, 17]



Is such the fast that I choose,

a day for a you to humble yourself?

Is it to bow down your head like a rush,

and to spread sackcloth and ashes under you?

Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to God?

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily.

[Isaiah 58:5-8]



___

Related links:



“Burned for sodomy” (Queering the Church)



Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs (Queering the Church)



The blood-soaked thread (Wild Reed)



List of people executed for homosexuality (Wikipedia)



Significant acts of violence against LGBT people (Wikipedia)



BURN BABY BURN: A Knight, a Squire, a Bishop, a Steward, Five RC Monks and Millions of murders initiated by bigots at Church! (Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano Blog)



The Gay Holocaust (Matt and Andrej Koymasky)



Catharina Margaretha Linck, Executed for Sodomy (Queering the Church)


A History of Homophobia, 3 The Later Roman Empire & The Early Middle Ages (Rictor Norton)



A History of Homophobia, 4 Gay Heretics and Witches" (Rictor Norton)



Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (Rictor Norton, editor)



“Pilloried” - a poem by Andrew Craig Williams



Blessing the Dust: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday by Jan Richardson



Holocaust Remembrance with new pink triangle art (Jesus in Love)



Ex-gay movement as genocide (Jesus in Love)



Book: Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton

____

This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to LGBT and queer people of faith and our allies.

Ash Wednesday: Burned for sodomy, rising from the ashes

Dutch massacre of sodomites,

detail (Wikimedia Commons)
Ash Wednesday today is an appropriate time to reflect on the sins of the church and state against queer people, including the execution of thousands for homosexuality over the past 800 years.



Some of the executions for sodomy were recorded by artists, either long ago or in recent times. This post features 6 images, both new and historical, to remember and honor those whose lives were desecrated and cut short.



Christians traditionally put ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance on Ash Wednesday. The ashes can also serve as a sobering way to remember and repent the church’s role in executions for homosexuality, including the burning of “sodomites.”



“Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for sodomy in Halberstadt in 1721” by Elke R. Steiner. Steiner’s work is based on Angela Steidele’s book "In Männerkleidern. Das verwegene Leben der Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, hingerichtet 1721." Biographie und Dokumentation. Cologne: Böhlau, 2004. ("In Men's Clothes: The Daring Life of Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Rosenstengel, Executed 1721.")

German artist Elke R. Steiner illustrates the last known execution for lesbianism in Europe. Born in 1694, Catharina Margaretha Linck lived most of her life as a man under the name Anastasius. She was beheaded for sodomy on Nov. 8, 1721 in Halberstadt in present-day Germany. Linck worked at various times as a soldier, textile worker and a wandering prophet with the Pietists. She married a woman in 1717. Her mother-in-law reported her to authorities, who convicted her of sodomy with a "lifeless instrument," wearing men's clothes and multiple baptisms. The subject is grim, but Steiner adds an empowering statement: “But even were I to be done away with, those who are like me would remain.”





“The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe,” hanged for sodomy in 1641 in Dublin (Wikimedia Commons)

John Atherton, Anglican bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and his lover John Childe were hanged for “buggery” in 1640 in Dublin, Ireland. The bishop was executed under a law that he helped to institute! The picture comes from an anonymous 1641 booklet titled “The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe.” The title tries to shame and blame the victims, but I believe that the shame belongs to the church and society who killed them for who and how they loved.



Balboa executing two-spirit Native Americans for homosexuality in 1513 in Panama -- engraving by Théodore De Bry, 1594 (Wikimedia Commons).  

The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa found homosexuality among the Native American chiefs at Quarqua in Panama. He ordered 40 of these two-spirited people thrown to his war dogs to be torn apart and eaten alive to stop the “stinking abomination.”





The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused of sodomy, were executed by burning in Zürich in 1482. (Wikimedia Commons)

The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused sodomites, were executed by burning before the walls of Zurich, Switzerland in 1482. Source: Diebold Schilling, Chronik der Burgunderkriege, Schweizer Bilderchronik, Band 3, um 1483 (Zürich, Zentralbibliothek)





Execution of sodomites in Ghent in 1578 -- drawing by Franz Hogenberg (Wikimedia Commons)

Five Catholic monks were burned to death for homosexuality on June 28, 1578, in Ghent, Belguim.





"Timely Punishment..." shows Dutch massacre of sodomites in Amsterdam in 1730-31 (Wikimedia Commons)

A total of 96 gay men were executed for sodomy in the Netherlands years 1730-31.



Terence Weldon of Queering the Church is doing extensive research on the whole sad history of execution of queer people. He is assembling a chronology called “Burned for Sodomy” with the goal of listing all those killed for homosexuality in church- or state-sanctioned executions. It stretches from the 13th century almost to the present.



For the first 1,000 years of church history, Christianity was relatively tolerant of homoerotic relationships. Then came campaigns against heresy, which began to use the terms “heresy” and “sodomy” interchangeably.  Then hostility began to be directed specifically at same-sex erotic behavior. Weldon locates the fateful period when the atrocities began in a well researched overview titled “Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs”:

In 1120, the Church Council of Nablus specified burning at the stake for homosexual acts. Although this penalty may not immediately have been applied, other harsh condemnations followed rapidly. In 1212, the death penalty for sodomy was specified in in France. Before long the execution of supposed “sodomites”, often by burning at the stake, but also by other harsh means, had become regular practice in many areas.

The church contributed to the deaths of thousands for homosexuality over the next 700 years. Witch burning occurred in the same period and claimed the lives of countless lesbian women whose non-conformity was condemned as witchcraft. (Current events in Uganda prove that some are STILL using Christianity to justify the death penalty for homosexuality up to the present day.) As Weldon concludes:

Obviously, the Catholic Church cannot be held directly responsible for the judicial sentences handed down by secular authorities in Protestant countries. It can, however, be held responsible for its part in fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred in the early part of the persecution, using the cloak of religion to provide cover for what was in reality based not on Scripture or the teaching of the early Church, but on simple intolerance and greed.



It is important as gay men, lesbians and transgendered that we remember the examples of the many who have in earlier times been honoured by the Church as saints or martyrs for the faith. It is also important that we remember the example of the many thousands who have been martyred by the churches – Catholic and other.

More recent examples include the "gay Holocaust" of persecution by the Nazis, who sent an estimated 5,000 to 60,000 to concentration camps for homosexuality.



Milder forms of anti-LGBT persecution continue in the church. Now it is common to freeze LGBT people out of church leadership positions. Chris Glaser writes about the exclusion from clergy roles as a “fast imposed by others” in the following prayer based on the practice of fasting during Lent, the season of individual and collective repentance and reflection between Ash Wednesday and Easter.



One: Jesus,

     our fast has been imposed by others,

     our wilderness sojourn their choice more than ours.

Many: Our fast from the sacraments,

     our fast from ordination:

     our only choice was honesty.

One: With the scapegoats of the ancient Hebrews,

     sexual sins of generations

     have been heaped upon our backs,

     and we have been sent away,

     excommunicated, into the wilderness to die.

Many: Yet we choose life,

     even in our deprivation

One: Jesus, lead us to discern our call

     parallel to your own:

     rebelling against the boundaries,

     questioning the self-righteous authorities,

     breaking the Sabbath law

     to bring healing.





This prayer comes from “Rite for Lent” by Chris Glaser, published in Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations. Glaser spent 30 years struggling with the Presbyterian Church for the right to ordination as an openly gay man before he was ordained to the ministry in Metropolitan Community Churches in 2005. He writes progressive Christian reflections at chrisglaser.blogspot.com.



It is horrifying to remember the "burning times," especially for those like me who count ourselves as part of the Christian tradition. Let us rise from the ashes with these verses from the Bible:



Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.

[Psalm 51: 10, 17]



Is such the fast that I choose,

a day for a you to humble yourself?

Is it to bow down your head like a rush,

and to spread sackcloth and ashes under you?

Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to God?

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily.

[Isaiah 58:5-8]



___

Related links:



“Burned for sodomy” (Queering the Church)



Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs (Queering the Church)



The blood-soaked thread (Wild Reed)



List of people executed for homosexuality (Wikipedia)



Significant acts of violence against LGBT people (Wikipedia)



BURN BABY BURN: A Knight, a Squire, a Bishop, a Steward, Five RC Monks and Millions of murders initiated by bigots at Church! (Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano Blog)



The Gay Holocaust (Matt and Andrej Koymasky)



A History of Homophobia, 3 The Later Roman Empire & The Early Middle Ages (Rictor Norton)



A History of Homophobia, 4 Gay Heretics and Witches" (Rictor Norton)



Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (Rictor Norton, editor)



“Pilloried” - a poem by Andrew Craig Williams



Blessing the Dust: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday by Jan Richardson



Holocaust Remembrance with new pink triangle art (Jesus in Love)



Ex-gay movement as genocide (Jesus in Love)



Book: Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton

____

This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to LGBT and queer people of faith and our allies.

Ash Wednesday: Recalling sodomy executions, repenting the church’s sins against LGBTQ people

Dutch massacre of sodomites,

detail (Wikimedia Commons)

Ash Wednesday today is an appropriate time to reflect on the sins of the church and state against queer people, including the execution of thousands for homosexuality over the past 800 years.



Some of the executions for sodomy were recorded by artists, either long ago or in recent times. This post features 6 images, both new and historical, to remember and honor those whose lives were desecrated and cut short.



Christians traditionally put ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance on Ash Wednesday. The ashes can also serve as a sobering way to remember and repent the church’s role in executions for homosexuality, including the burning of “sodomites.”






“Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for sodomy in Halberstadt in 1721” by Elke R. Steiner. Steiner’s work is based on Angela Steidele’s book "In Männerkleidern. Das verwegene Leben der Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, hingerichtet 1721." Biographie und Dokumentation. Cologne: Böhlau, 2004. ("In Men's Clothes: The Daring Life of Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Rosenstengel, Executed 1721.")


German artist Elke R. Steiner illustrates the last known execution for lesbianism in Europe. Born in 1694, Catharina Margaretha Linck lived most of her life as a man under the name Anastasius. She was beheaded for sodomy on Nov. 8, 1721 in Halberstadt in present-day Germany. Linck worked at various times as a soldier, textile worker and a wandering prophet with the Pietists. She married a woman in 1717. Her mother-in-law reported her to authorities, who convicted her of sodomy with a "lifeless instrument," wearing men's clothes and multiple baptisms. The subject is grim, but Steiner adds an empowering statement: “But even were I to be done away with, those who are like me would remain.”








“The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe,” hanged for sodomy in 1641 in Dublin (Wikimedia Commons)


John Atherton, Anglican bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and his lover John Childe were hanged for “buggery” in 1640 in Dublin, Ireland. The bishop was executed under a law that he helped to institute! The picture comes from an anonymous 1641 booklet titled “The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe.” The title tries to shame and blame the victims, but I believe that the shame belongs to the church and society who killed them for who and how they loved.






Balboa executing two-spirit Native Americans for homosexuality in 1513 in Panama -- engraving by Théodore De Bry, 1594 (Wikimedia Commons).  


The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa found homosexuality among the Native American chiefs at Quarqua in Panama. He ordered 40 of these two-spirited people thrown to his war dogs to be torn apart and eaten alive to stop the “stinking abomination.”










The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused of sodomy, were executed by burning in Zürich in 1482. (Wikimedia Commons)



The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused sodomites, were executed by burning before the walls of Zurich, Switzerland in 1482. Source: Diebold Schilling, Chronik der Burgunderkriege, Schweizer Bilderchronik, Band 3, um 1483 (Zürich, Zentralbibliothek)








Execution of sodomites in Ghent in 1578 -- drawing by Franz Hogenberg (Wikimedia Commons)


Five Catholic monks were burned to death for homosexuality on June 28, 1578, in Ghent, Belguim.








"Timely Punishment..." shows Dutch massacre of sodomites in Amsterdam in 1730-31 (Wikimedia Commons)


A total of 96 gay men were executed for sodomy in the Netherlands years 1730-31.



Terence Weldon of Queering the Church is doing extensive research on the whole sad history of execution of queer people. He is assembling a chronology called “Burned for Sodomy” with the goal of listing all those killed for homosexuality in church- or state-sanctioned executions. It stretches from the 13th century almost to the present.



For the first 1,000 years of church history, Christianity was relatively tolerant of homoerotic relationships. Then came campaigns against heresy, which began to use the terms “heresy” and “sodomy” interchangeably.  Then hostility began to be directed specifically at same-sex erotic behavior. Weldon locates the fateful period when the atrocities began in a well researched overview titled “Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs”:

In 1120, the Church Council of Nablus specified burning at the stake for homosexual acts. Although this penalty may not immediately have been applied, other harsh condemnations followed rapidly. In 1212, the death penalty for sodomy was specified in in France. Before long the execution of supposed “sodomites”, often by burning at the stake, but also by other harsh means, had become regular practice in many areas.

The church contributed to the deaths of thousands for homosexuality over the next 700 years. Witch burning occurred in the same period and claimed the lives of countless lesbian women whose non-conformity was condemned as witchcraft. (Current events in Uganda prove that some are STILL using Christianity to justify the death penalty for homosexuality up to the present day.) As Weldon concludes:

Obviously, the Catholic Church cannot be held directly responsible for the judicial sentences handed down by secular authorities in Protestant countries. It can, however, be held responsible for its part in fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred in the early part of the persecution, using the cloak of religion to provide cover for what was in reality based not on Scripture or the teaching of the early Church, but on simple intolerance and greed.



It is important as gay men, lesbians and transgendered that we remember the examples of the many who have in earlier times been honoured by the Church as saints or martyrs for the faith. It is also important that we remember the example of the many thousands who have been martyred by the churches – Catholic and other.

More recent examples include the "gay Holocaust" of persecution by the Nazis, who sent an estimated 5,000 to 60,000 to concentration camps for homosexuality.



Milder forms of anti-LGBT persecution continue in the church. Now it is common to freeze LGBT people out of church leadership positions. Chris Glaser writes about the exclusion from clergy roles as a “fast imposed by others” in the following prayer based on the practice of fasting during Lent, the season of individual and collective repentance and reflection between Ash Wednesday and Easter.



One: Jesus,

     our fast has been imposed by others,

     our wilderness sojourn their choice more than ours.

Many: Our fast from the sacraments,

     our fast from ordination:

     our only choice was honesty.

One: With the scapegoats of the ancient Hebrews,

     sexual sins of generations

     have been heaped upon our backs,

     and we have been sent away,

     excommunicated, into the wilderness to die.

Many: Yet we choose life,

     even in our deprivation

One: Jesus, lead us to discern our call

     parallel to your own:

     rebelling against the boundaries,

     questioning the self-righteous authorities,

     breaking the Sabbath law

     to bring healing.





This prayer comes from “Rite for Lent” by Chris Glaser, published in Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations. Glaser spent 30 years struggling with the Presbyterian Church for the right to ordination as an openly gay man before he was ordained to the ministry in Metropolitan Community Churches in 2005. He writes progressive Christian reflections at chrisglaser.blogspot.com.



It is horrifying to remember the "burning times," especially for those like me who count ourselves as part of the Christian tradition. Let us rise from the ashes with these verses from the Bible:



Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.

[Psalm 51: 10, 17]



Is such the fast that I choose,

a day for a you to humble yourself?

Is it to bow down your head like a rush,

and to spread sackcloth and ashes under you?

Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to God?

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily.

[Isaiah 58:5-8]



___

Related links:



“Burned for sodomy” (Queering the Church)



Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs (Queering the Church)



The blood-soaked thread (Wild Reed)



List of people executed for homosexuality (Wikipedia)



Significant acts of violence against LGBT people (Wikipedia)



BURN BABY BURN: A Knight, a Squire, a Bishop, a Steward, Five RC Monks and Millions of murders initiated by bigots at Church! (Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano Blog)



The Gay Holocaust (Matt and Andrej Koymasky)



A History of Homophobia, 3 The Later Roman Empire & The Early Middle Ages (Rictor Norton)



A History of Homophobia, 4 Gay Heretics and Witches" (Rictor Norton)



Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (Rictor Norton, editor)



“Pilloried” - a poem by Andrew Craig Williams



Blessing the Dust: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday by Jan Richardson



Holocaust Remembrance with new pink triangle art (Jesus in Love)



Ex-gay movement as genocide (Jesus in Love)



Book: Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton

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This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to LGBT and queer people of faith and our allies.