2000 Years of Church Homophobia

(excerpt) - by Peter Tatchell

Over the last 2,000 years, church-inspired homophobia has led to hundreds of millions of queers world wide being rejected by their families, driven to depression and suicide, discriminated against by anti-gay laws, and condemned to death for sodomy.

Christian leaders have never expressed any remorse for the church's persecution of lesbian and gay people. When Pope John Paul II apologised in 1999 for centuries of Vatican-backed injustice and oppression (such as anti-Semitism and colonialism) he made no mention of Catholic support for murderous anti-homosexual witch-hunts.

His heartless omission was compounded this year when he attacked the World Pride 2000 gay festivities in Rome as an "offence to Christian values" and launched another embittered attack on the gay community, condemning homosexuality as "objectively disordered" and "contrary to natural law".

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Current religious homophobia has its roots in Biblical teaching. Leviticus 20:13 demands that homosexuals be put to death. And this is exactly what the Christian churches did for over 1,800 years. They followed literally and precisely the murderous incitements of Leviticus 20:13, sponsoring the mass murder of queers.

We were stoned to death in antiquity, burned alive during the medieval era and, in Britain, hung from gallows until the mid-nineteenth century. This slaughter of homosexuals took place with the official blessing of successive Popes and Archbishops of Canterbury.

The murder of queers in the name of "God" is comparable to the Nazi extermination of Jews. Both Christianity and Nazism demonised, scapegoated and murdered minorities. Nazi anti-Semitism parallels Christian homophobia. The Bible is to gays what Mein Kampf is to Jews. It is the theory and practice of Homo Holocaust.

While the church no longer advocates the death penalty for gay lovers, it still preaches a gospel of sexual apartheid, arguing that homosexuality should not be accorded the same moral or legal status as heterosexuality.

This claim for the moral superiority of heterosexuality is analogous to the way the leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church defended white superiority during the apartheid era in South Africa. It echoes their theological justification of racial discrimination against black people.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Winning preach a similar doctrine of supremacism - straight supremacism - which they use to justify the treatment of queers as second class citizens. They provide moral respectability and legitimacy for the homophobic hate campaign of the Daily Mail. Their opposition to gay equality gives comfort and succour to queer-bashers everywhere. It coincides with the prejudice that inspired the Soho nail-bomber, David Copeland.

While they may disclaim it as their intention, these men of "God" encourage the homophobic attitudes that fuel violence against our community. Church leaders have queer blood on their hands.

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If church leaders advocated similar discrimination against black or Jewish people, there would be a nation wide outcry and near-universal calls for their resignation. They would be shunned and disgraced.

Instead, these apostles of intolerance and unreason were invited to advise the government on the content of the school curriculum and on the wording of the recent Learning and Skills Bill covering sex education in schools. They were granted privileged access and influence that was not accorded to child welfare agencies, teacher's unions or education experts.

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Copyright © Peter Tatchell 2000. All rights reserved
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