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The New Testament and homosexuality: Contextual background for contemporary debate

Robin Scroggs

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

another rebutal for itching ears 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 68 people found this review helpful.

It is the Christian right who takes scripture out of context to suit their own desires, that is, promote homophobia. Start scratching--itchy ears.

tching ears, April 15, 2003 wrote:
Reviewer: A reader from Ballwin, Missouri United States
2 Timothy 4:3
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

Academically sound and intellectually honest 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 27 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book for anyone curious about the Scriptural basis (used by both sides) in Christian debates over the morality of homosexual acts. It is short (150 pages) and very readable.

The book starts out with a brief overview of various positions on homosexuality taken by different Christian sects, and how those different positions are claimed to be supported by Scripture. Then he takes a historical approach, going into detail about the cultural background of the time and place where the New Testament was written, which means particular focus on Greek pederasty (sex between men and boys). Scroggs explains both the debate in mainstream Greek society, as well as the views of and Scriptural interpretations (and misinterpretations) of both Palestinian and Hellenistic Jews. He makes clear what is known, as well as what is missing from the historical records.

My favorite aspect of this book is that Scroggs does not let the reader know his opinion at first. He starts being incredibly objective, and then slowly becomes more and more opinionated and colorful in his statements. Finally, in the last chapter, Scroggs gives his own conclusions. I won't spoil the end, but I will tell you that he bases his conclusions on two conditions:
(1) The biblical statements must be consonant with the larger, major theological and ethical judgments which lie at the heart not only of Scripture, but of the historical church throughout the ages. (2) The context today must bear a reasonable similarity to the context of the statements at the time of writing.

Scroggs, a Biblical scholar and Christian, is intellectually honest and rigorous about both his research and analysis. He jumps to no rash conclusions about anything, and when he states his own conclusions, he always presents opposing views in a way that is non-judgmental.

Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present

Neil Miller

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A GREAT SURVEY OF GAY HISTORY 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If you are interested in history, I highly suggest this book. Marginalized for eons, gay people are now an integral part of history. Relegated to the backburner, or whispered about in history sources, gay people have come forward with a great history. Within this collection, there are heartaches and triumphs, but always searching for the ideal of equality one day. Another good thing about this book is that it includes non-Western gay and lesbian history as well, yet another subject ignored by the "mainstream" history. An incredibly transfixing and fascinating book, I couldn't put it down, and read into the late hours of the evening.

Editorial Review:

A unique and hugely absorbing narrative history of gay life-from Oscar Wilde to the first gay marriage performed in San Francisco in 2004-by the award-winning journalist and distinguished author of Out in the World and Sex- Crime Panic. Miller accompanies his narrative with essays and excerpts from contemporary and historical writings, and the text is illustrated with photos and line drawings.

Neil Miller is the author of Sex-Crime Panic and winner of the 2003 Randy Shilts Award for nonfiction and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. He is also the author of In Search of Gay America, winner of the 1990 American Library Association prize for gay and lesbian literature. He teaches journalism and nonfiction writing at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Desiring Arabs

Joseph A. Massad

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about the value of Arab civilization. In the past, Westerners viewed the Arab world as licentious, and Western intolerance of sex led them to brand Arabs as decadent; but as Western society became more sexually open, the supposedly prudish Arabs soon became viewed as backward. Rather than focusing exclusively on how these views developed in the West, in Desiring Arabs Joseph A. Massad reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. To this aim, he assembles a massive and diverse compendium of Arabic writing from the nineteenth century to the present in order to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization.
            A work of impressive scope and erudition, Massad’s chronicle of both the history and modern permutations of the debate over representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently oversimplified and vilified culture.
 “A pioneering work on a very timely yet frustratingly neglected topic. . . . I know of no other study that can even begin to compare with the detail and scope of [this] work.”—Khaled El-Rouayheb, Middle East Report “In Desiring Arabs, [Edward] Said’s disciple Joseph A. Massad corroborates his mentor’s thesis that orientalist writing was racist and dehumanizing. . . . [Massad] brilliantly goes on to trace the legacy of this racist, internalized, orientalist discourse up to the present.”—Financial Times

(20070117)

Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Worldview

F. David Peat

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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One summer in the 1980s, theoretical physicist F. David Peat went to the Blackfoot Sun Dance ceremony in Alberta, Canada. Having spent all his life steeped in and influenced by linear Western science, he was entranced by the Native American worldview and, through dialogue circles between scientists and Native Elders, he began to explore it in greater depth.

"Blackfoot Physics" is the account of his discoveries. In an edifying synthesis of anthropology, history, metaphysics, cosmology and quantum theory, Peat compares the medicines, the myths, the languages, indeed the entire perceptions of reality of the Western and indigenous peoples. What becomes apparent is the amazing resemblance between indigenous teachings and some of the insights that are emerging from modern science, a congruence that is as enlightening about the physical universe as it is about the circular evolution of humanity's understanding. Through Peat's insightful observations, he extends our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of the universe, and how the two intersect in a meaningful vision of human life in relation to a greater reality.

"Blackfoot Physics" is a book that will captivate anyone with an interest in the relationship between science, spirituality, and the different ways of knowing.

The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps

Heinz Heger

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

It has only been since the mid-1970s that any attention has been paid to the persecution and interment of gay men by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Since that time, books such as Richard Plant's The Pink Triangle (and Martin Sherman's play Bent) have illuminated this nearly lost history. Heinz Heger's first-person account, The Men with the Pink Triangle, was one of the first books on the topic and remains one of the most important.

In 1939, Heger, a Viennese university student, was arrested and sentenced to prison for being a "degenerate." Within weeks he was transported to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in East Germany, and forced to wear a pink triangle to show that his crime was homosexuality. He remained there, under horrific conditions, until the end of the war in 1945. The power of The Men with the Pink Triangle comes from Heger's sparse prose and his ability to recall--and communicate--the smallest resonant details. The pain and squalor of everyday camp life--the constant filth, the continuous presence of death, and the unimaginable cruelty of those in command--are all here. But Heger's story would be unbearable were it not for the simple courage he and others used to survive and, having survived, that he bore witness. This book is harrowing but necessary reading for everyone concerned about gay history, human rights, or social justice. --Michael Bronski

Memoir of a Race Traitor

Mab Segrest

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A huge amount of information! 5 out of 5 stars.
42 of 44 people found this review helpful.

This diary is fast moving and entertaining, yet it doesn't lose it's impact. Mab Segrest is an activist who has been working against the fascist right for many years. Her focus has been primarily on issues related to race, but she also touches on issues related to being a lesbian. Mab was raised in a family who actively worked to prevent the desegregation of schools, so her diary includes some interesting insights into what it's like to be actively working on political and social fronts that are opposite to those held by your immediate family. She also clearly and completely describes some heartbreaking work she did in the 80s - work that involved investigating the murders of several people, some of which were her friends and mentors. The events and the governmental abuses that led to these deaths are disturbing, yet described without a hint of sensationalism or propaganda - just honesty, and sorrow. The book ends with a 100 page history of the USA in in the past few decades, with an emphasis being placed on race relations and gay and lesbian issues. There's a lot of information in this little biography, and all of it's extremely well written. I highly recommend it.

The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life

Michael Warner

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Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Is gay marriage good for gays? Are queer people better off when they see themselves as "normal" Americans? What is lost when gays go mainstream? What, after all, is The Trouble With Normal? Here, Michael Warner, one of our most brilliant social critics, argues that gay marriage and other moves toward normalcy are bad not just for gays but for everyone. In place of the sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity.

With this lively and surprising exploration of the dangers of normalcy, Warner sends a warning shot to the gay rights movement, which has cleaned up its image in order to blend in with an imaginary main-stream. Now taking as its raison d'etre the fight for gay marriage, gay politics has abandoned its historic fight against the stigmatization of sex. But, as Warner shows, when gays agree to separate their "sex" from their "identity," they are only rewarded with oppressive trends like stricter zoning of gay clubs and businesses, the "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" policy in the military, and, ironically, the "Defense of Marriage" act. Warner examines the debate over gay marriage through a completely original lens, and also assesses laws governing sexual activity, cohabitation, bar and club zoning, trends in political activism, and HIV prevention. The result is a piercing and cogent analysis of the politics of shame and the stigma of sexual identity.

Sexual shame and stigma can be found across the full spectrum of contemporary life. From the Oval Office to the back room, sex remains something that we think needs to be controlled. Michael Warner cuts through the confused moralism that surrounds sex, and offers in its place an ethics that requires freedom of choice, tolerance, and, most important, access to pleasures and possibilities. On this score, he points out, we have a lot to learn from the "disreputable" queers, prostitutes, trannies, and club crawlers whose point of view about morality, sex, and shame can be transformative. Warner's bold defense of queer ethics and his powerful indictment of all that's wrong with the trend to "normalize" give us a vision of sexual ethics that proclaims sex to be as varied as the people who have it, and holds that honesty and morality are not limited to those with a marriage license. His lucid and lively argument will spark heated debate among all readers who are troubled by the unhappy tension between sex and dignity.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (Between Men--Between Women)

Lillian Faderman

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Empowering and Engaging 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers is a fascinating work that traces the cultural history of lesbianism in the United States -- providing a broad and thorough overview of lesbianism's diversity, its relationship to feminism, and its evolving forms of resistance in relationship to the oppressions of the dominant culture. Perhaps what is most impressive about this book is that while it is an impressively researched and intellectually stimulating piece of scholarship, it is also an extremely engaging read. Faderman draws the reader into lesbian cultural history in a way that is never clinical, but compellingly human--under her treatment, the lesbian subculture emerges in all of its varied complexity, its celebratory subversiveness, as a fascinatingly rich and vibrant culture of historical, political, and sexual significance. This book is a marvelous introduction to lesbian culture and history . . . it is entertaining, empowering, and utterly engaging.

Editorial Review:

An account of lesbian life in the twentieth century traces the evolution of lesbian identity, discussing the establishment of lesbian subcultures in each decade, examines how feminism and gay liberation have destigmatized lesbianism, and more. Reprint.

Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe

John Boswell

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Of Boswell, Timidity and Denial anent History, 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Messrs.: Some reviewers' titles, when combined with their texts, are remarkably suggestive of Freudian slips with regard to what is seemingly in their respective minds, and reveal where their thoughts and inhibitions lie. Part of this is exposed by an attendant desire to promote whatever they define as a sort of self-supposed or imagined world standard for an amorphous mythical "tradition," which is to be supposedly found by all a higher authority to the numerous and irrefutable historical facts presented by Boswell. First of all, to-day's concept of Romantic Love was simply unrefined before three hundred or so years ago, and the evolving nature of various associated rituals come down to us from that point. Second, before that evolution (or devolution, depending on your perspective), the so-called traditions of friendship, brotherhood (and all related terms and practices), abduction, and marriage as then and also formally practiced, I would emphasize, together with the near universal association of the masculine or masculinity with male same-sex personages (most often heroes, gods and demi-gods), practices, acts and interests, were all firmly homosexual. Practitioners were unabashedly presentated worldwide as homosexual to a predominant audience for many tens of centuries. Third, homosexual relationships and not heterosexual ones were considered the more natural, ascendant, as well as the norm, and certainly the position actively and overtly promoted by the early and later Church. Most churchmen (and members of their flock), of yester-day and to-day, were exceedingly avid practitioners of homosexual desire, love and friendships. Read for yourself what they reduced to writing, in whatever language you read, for proofs. Why then the anguished surprise, unfounded denials and the sense of disgust, for lack of other expressions, publicly expressed concerning the long, historical, widely known, and accepted practice of marriage between same-sex partners, either as performed and thus sanctified by the Church or via the equally acceptable alternative vehicle, which also bestowed the appellation of marriage on the same-sex relationship, of simply living together as a couple and being recognized as married by your neighbors? This is what Boswell has written in both of his monumental works, as I comprehend him. Some have missed these essentials altogether. This reality, as conveyed and constructed of fact after fact by Boswell, is the complete obverse, quite obviously, of what many uninformed or head-in-the-sand people believe, or are determined to believe, as traditional because of what they have been taught erroneously or might prefer to think for various reasons. But Boswell's revelations and relentless enumeration of historical facts and their elucidation is nonetheless well researched and undeniably true, and his work stands appropriately at the polar opposite to the watered-down and factually ignorant fabrications written by others, which non-facts and mis-apprehensions are further carelessly bandied about by the majority of heterosexualists (or non-Uranians), whether due to willful ignorance, nervous denial, or homophobic hysteria. To compound this egregious situation, during the mid-Nineteenth Century, as Boswell also informs the reader, we began to define individuals in terms of which of two genders they loved, which is itself an absurd shrinking of the spectrum of human practice, something not previously thought remotely to be necessary, or yet considered and conceptualized before then. Homosexualists were first categorized as Uranians until the term homosexual became the standard adjective (it is not properly used as a noun), although the word Gay had been used previously for centuries, for those having similar natural interests. Do not confuse the heterosexual family unit of to-day with the preferred arrangement from antiquity to present because indeed it was not the relational preference until quite recently along the timeline. As well, heterosexual marriage, when and if selected, was almost always performed for dynastic reasons (usually under terms of a contract), but not for love as is asserted to be the cause to-day. There was also a real need to address familial concerns related to procreation and rights of inheritance, which actively drove the contractual parties (the parents or guardians) to ensure that the husband would be the most likely father of any resultant progeny. These particulars are clearly demonstrated by what Boswell (and other historians and intellectuals of current and past note) presents again and again in his book(s). To the ancients and those living up to the Modern Era's fringe, the female was a drone and a minor property item, and mostly recognized as an object of procreative necessity-this is a fact, not a statement of belief or errant misogyny--although not the object of true friendship or love (i.e., intelligent love or bond), and certainly not an equal partner in marriage as our common but incorrect heterosexual currency would now define it. If you should care to read the ancient wits, various Greek and Roman philosophers and like playwrights, up to the beginnings of the Romantic Era, their most acidic and vituperative comments and biting satires would focus upon the cuckold who actually professed to love his mate (notice I do not here use the terms spouse or wife because, once more, as shown by Boswell, there were no official ceremonies, whether secular or religious, then extant, until the Late Middle Ages, which is why most relationships of whatever type were what we to-day define as common law). Since females were universally thought not to possess the intellectual equipment, loyalty or logic requisite for true love or even friendship (the term "friends," when used to described a relationship amongst males, was then more freighted with serious meaning than to-day), and possessed of no capability to form a lasting relationship, they were employed in drudgery, for ready sexual satisfaction, child-bearing and rearing, and housekeeping duties. In the centuries before condoms and the pill, as Boswell relates, young men were more frequently employed for the sexual release of older males (unwanted children were very frequently abandoned or sold), especially when all members of a household were under the sway of the pater familias or dominant male, and where all members were dominated and considered equal prey. In addition, Boswell writes, homosexual love was considered greatly preferable to heterosexual love in all respects, as well as being far more natural, tasteful and enduring. Indeed, most ancient males held the opinion that heterosexual sex was highly disgusting and distasteful, and could cause one to become effeminate, if performed too regularly. At present, due largely to the misanthropy of the so-called feminist revolution and its resultant devolution, already infected and informed by the limpid ideals of Romantic Love that preceded it, true historical tradition with regard to one's affective interests, love and relationships has been literally turned upside down. Neither the ancients, members of the so-called Church, both early and late, nor the Renaissance Man or the scholars of the Enlightenment would recognize or yet understand this massive turn of events in affective interest. Given only one of the many well-documented examples provided by Boswell, it could be easily established that, following the historical precursors of same-sex abduction and adoption, marriage was first practiced amongst those with same-sex affective interests. These facts are directly converse to the inaccurate and deceiving portrayal concocted by to-day's (and yester-day's) ignorant rabble that marriage is of heterosexual origin and that heterosexual relationships have been the exclusive preference of all mankind since time out of mind, regardless of such assertions being proven non-historical and without basis in fact or reality. As with one reviewer here, who wrote when addressing Same-Sex Unions..., "the parallels to marriage are utterly unquestionable," but then backs away and asserts that he "doubt(s) that he (Boswell) establishes that same-sex marriage existed," there is a consistently disappointing and confused attempt to somehow create a distinction without a real difference. That is timidity, intellectual atrophy and denial taken to extremes, which is, sadly, just one example of what can be described as intellectual suicide and the stubborn avoidance of reality whenever and wherever this particular subject matter is broached. I think the singularly tremendous and beneficial scholarship of Boswell and what will be his distinguished legacy require all honest readers, together with his book reviewers, to consider the known (even if uncomfortable) and unavoidable facts, and to not bring their biases, sense of denial, misunderstandings (purposeful or otherwise) and timorousness to bear on this great work of history, or to this subject matter as a whole.

Editorial Review:

Both highly praised and intensely controversial, this brilliant book produces dramatic evidence that at one time the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches not only sanctioned unions between partners of the same sex, but sanctified them--in ceremonies strikingly similar to heterosexual marriage ceremonies.

Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943

Erica Fischer

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Excerpts

A letter from Lilly to Felice, March 31st, 1943

Felice, I love you! What a feeling it is to be able to say that! Oh, Felice, the nicest fate I could hope for is that of lasting happiness. I want to live with you for a long, a very long time, do you hear? And life is so beautiful, so wonderful. Felice, do you belong to me - without limit? To me only? Please say you do, at least for a very long time to come, please! Do you love me? I'm acting like a seventeen-year-old, arent't I?

Be good to me, Felice, please? And yet please don't hold back. I wanted to lure you out of your hiding place. I am like a child playing with fire; will I get burned? A little? Totally? Felice, stop me! Isn't it just a little bit your fault that I'm so crazy, so totally crazy?

A poem from Felice to Lilly, Christmas 1943

That there was a time before you - I can't believe!
To me, we've forever been this way,
Together, side by side in life and in dreams,
Surrounded both by darkness and the light of day.

You belong to me! Since you arrived,
And slowly at first, then full of trust,
Placed your heart in my hands, I have strived
For the strength to build a life for us.

So I have hope for days yet to come,
As this year nods and slips into air,
Because before me, like some emblem,
I carry the copper gleam of your hair.

Extract: "The Vow"

January 30th, 1943, the tenth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power, Hermann Gring's speech to Berliners was delayed for two hours because British scout planes were flying over the city in broad daylight for the first time. Four days after Gring declared his certainty of victory, the remaining German troops trapped in Stalingrad capitulated. Accompanied by funereal music, the defeat was announced on the radio. On February 18th Reichspropaganda minister Goebbels spurred the German people to make a greater effort. In a "Declaration of fanatical Will" at the Berlin Sportpalast he announced the "Salvation of Germany and the whole of civilisation" through "total war". In memory of the victims of the Russian campaign, a three minute traffic stoppage was declared. At the Zoo station, people stood stock