Between June 1996 and January 1997, because a fellow teacher was concerned that a student who had been bullied for her perceived sexual orientation may not have been killed accidentally while crossing a major highway, but might have actually committed a hidden suicide, and had turned to me as the school’s openly Gay teacher to see what could be done to prevent future such deaths, I went to a local big chain book store and found books that dealt with the negative school environments, both obvious and subtle, that Gay students had to face daily which could lead to suicide attempts, and also books and reports on how school districts could remedy this. For those months, because they had a great sound system and, honestly, good drinks, and as some of the reports I found, although informative, were as dry as the Sahara and I needed noise to keep awake while reading them, I went to Tramps, the rather rustic Gay bar around the corner from where I lived in Oklahoma City and sat in a chair reserved for me by the bouncer, Chuck, that he had placed near the well-lit dart boards to do my reading.
Among the books I found were “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality” and “Same -Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe” by the late John Boswell, a historian and a full professor at Yale whose many writings deal with Christianity and Homosexuality along with the history of others at the margins of society. A common thesis in these two books was that the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned Gay people throughout its history, and had expressed no special concern about it, but even celebrated love between men until the latter part of the 19th Century. Both books were so thoroughly researched that some pages are more footnote than text, and the fact he spoke seventeen languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian, Catalan, German, French, Old Church Slavonic, Ancient Greek, and Latin meant he could wade through ancient Church documents without relying on someone’s translation.
When it came to marriage, he showed that the modern concept of marriage as a sacrament in the Catholic Church has only existed in the last quarter of the existence of Christianity so far, and, like many things we think today have always been, was one of those societal things whose acceptance or rejection was relative to how people’s behavior played into the formation of the countries that now comprise Europe and whether nor not they united a population under a ruler with certain requirements.
Anything that threatened a new monarch just starting up a kingdom, or country, was eliminated, and one effective way to do that was killing those people off or making them the kingdom’s rejects best to be avoided by anyone not willing to anger the king, as anger in the past often brought about horrendous redress.
Rome was the home base of Christianity, and Rome was steeped in laws. The Empire needed order and Rome disliked messy court cases and sought to limit them with very specific and detailed laws.
When it came to inheritance, because of the rule of Primo-Genitor that held that everything left by the deceased father went to the first born son, with the acceptance of sowing wild oats, the question of who actually was the first born son was settled by the law that established that the legal and indisputable first born, regardless of the results of promiscuous behavior, was the first son born of a legally recognized wife.
Early Christians in Rome, being citizens, followed those laws.
There was nothing sacred about marriage, just convenient, mess avoiding legality.
Same sex couples, being a part of society, but not having kids, did not have the Primo-Genitor problem, so civil marriage was irrelevant and not done. Bi-sexual people could populate whole villages while having a person or people of the same sex on their dance cards, but would have to officially marry a person of the opposite sex if they wanted to avoid inheritance complications and messy court involvements.
The Church, therefore, established what would now be called “marriage” to bless committed same sex unions, almost out of charity.
“Ya can’t have that, so we will give you this.”
Copies of the rituals are extant.
Boswell researched and studied ancient prayer-books of both the western and eastern churches, and found the rites of adelphopoiesis, or the joining of two men, and cites a mass Gay wedding that took place in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, the pope’s home church as Bishop of Rome.
Overtime, as Rome became history and its laws no longer that strongly applicable, straight Christians wanted the church’s blessing along with the weakened civil union of the Roman Empire, and this along with the Church controlling the inheritance of monarchs and thereby their kingdoms by controlling who married whom, the Church came up with the Sacrament of Marriage in the 1400s at the Council of Trent. Meaning that for the first 75% of Christianity’s existence so far, Gay was okay.
Same sex marriage in the Church preceded opposite sex marriage and was based on something as spiritual as the committed love of two individuals while the straight form of marriage was the equivalent of a business arrangement.
Evidence of the acceptance of Homosexuality has been in front of the people presented by the priests each time they said Mass.
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According to Catholic belief, unlike other Christian denominations where they stay what they are, the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ at the Consecration. Up to that point while the first part of the Canon is prayed there is only bread and wine on the altar. After, there is Himself sitting right there in the flesh, so things obviously have changed. Things have become serious.
With Christ right there, there are a few more prayers before the Doxology, Communion, and the mad dash to the car in the parking lot to avoid the exiting bottle neck, and it would stand to reason that those saints mentioned after the Consecration have a better placement than those mentioned before, which would make them special by placement.
Some saints may have been mentioned with the bread and wine sitting there, but these post-Consecration saints are mentioned when it’s Jesus on the altar.
In one of the prayers in the second half of the Canon, the priest prays,
“To us, also, your servants, who, though sinners, hope in your abundant mercies, graciously grant some share and fellowship with your holy Apostles and Martyrs: with John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia and all your Saints; admit us, we beseech you, into their company, not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon, through Christ our Lord.”
For the Baptists, those last four words are the Catholic version of “In Jesus’s name” so there is power in them.
The Felicity and Perpetua mentioned were two women. One was a Roman noblewoman, who was put to death for being Christian. The other was her servant and true soulmate. Being a Lesbian was just a thing in those days, with nothing extraordinary about it, so it was not talked about, not because it wasn’t decent, but because commonly accepted behavior was of no note. Women may not have married, only male activities were addressed in law with women’s actions only important insofar as they related to males, so it is through certain noticeable actions that stood out, like abandoning female roles for male ones and forgoing the assigned role of wife and mother even though Perpetua was a Roman noblewoman, that their non-traditional gender roles are visible.
Perpetua kept a diary that still exists, and there are a number of offhanded mentions of non-gender specific role choices, so her “Lesbian-like” behavior is a matter of record.
The inclusion of Perpetua and Felicity and their placement in that part of the Canon indicate no one had a problem with their being Lesbians.
And they are brought up with Jesus sitting right there.
Sexual activity had not been a topic of conversation (what was there to talk about?) being the business only of those engaged in it, and orientations did not exist as a thing until, when creating psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud needed to separate what he considered normal from abnormal behavior, and with himself as the benchmark, things he did and his life experiences were the model of normal with everything else abnormal.
Then sex became a topic.
It might be interesting to know that, after the word “Homosexual” entered the lexicon in 1869, it was only in the 1890s that the word “Heterosexual” was coined because if you were going to refer to abnormal behavior by a name, “normal”, often merely public behavior, needed a name too.
Pope Francis is not introducing something new in supporting Civil Unions, but reintroducing with a baby step what had been for the first 1400 years of Christianity, and some are not pleased.
According to Catholic belief, regardless of any politicking during a conclave where the cardinals choose the next pope, the ultimate choice is made by the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, in order to further along God’s plan.
So, unless they reject what they claim to believe, knowing that God works in mysterious ways, rather than politically object to his support of Civil Unions, which are not church related unions but merely a civil business arrangement just as marriage had been for early Christian heterosexuals, they aren’t putting much faith in the Holy Trinity’s Paraclete department.
So, considering that Gay people had church marriages and weddings before Straights, and had their own fancy term, Homosexual, at least 25 years before the Straights got theirs, Heterosexual, perhaps it is time society stop judging others and assigning them the role of enemies and threats, and take care of their own lives, families, and needs in defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and back off and let other people, who belong to a group they don’t, exercise those same creator endowed rights.