vekky (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} vekky) wrote,@ 2008-05-12 11:10:00 |
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Religious discourse and hatefulness
And so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
– Genesis 1:27
Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
– Leviticus 18:22
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.
– Deuteronomy 22:5
¿No sabéis que los injustos no heredarán el reino de Dios? No erréis; ni los fornicarios, ni los idólatras, ni los adúlteros, ni los afeminados , ni los que se echan con varones, ni los ladrones, ni los avaros, ni los borrachos, ni los maldicientes, ni los estafadores, heredarán el reino de Dios.
– 1 Corintios 6-10
When Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa, newly arrived in 1513 in the Panamian isthmus, visited the house of a local king, he recorded a sight which disturbed him – ‘young men in women’s apparel, smooth and effeminately decked’ (Baird 58). Unable to tolerate their presence, he ordered that they be thrown to the dogs. This was the time of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. Notions of Divine Law followed the paths of the conquerors to the so-called ‘New World’. Gender variant practices and sodomy were already understood at this juncture of time as contra natura and against God. Hernán Cortés, for his part, believed that the great Aztec Empire he had ‘stumbled’ on was rife with sodomy. He noted in one of his letters back to Spain: ‘they are all sodomites and practice that abominable sin’ (58). Friar Bartolomé de las Casas similarly talks of men who dressed as women and women who dressed as men. The Aztecs, he noted, did not treat them well and in fact sometimes killed them publicly (59). The notion that the New World was rife with cross-dressing and that homosexual relations were indulged was most likely a projection of fearful religious Spanish minds. However, it does reveal the obsession over these practices at a time when Church and State were still one – an obsession which inaugurated itself on New World soil and would continue to be a major feature even after the Wars of Independence and the separation of Church from State in Latin America. Long termed ‘el pecado nefando’, sodomy was viewed as against nature as it did not lead to procreation. Sexual relations between a man and a woman in the context of the sacrament of marriage were the only valid vehicle for sexual practices – and only while they led to reproduction, not for the sake of lust. Same sex acts fell clearly outside this construct and sodomy was a term which encapsulated such acts. From the time of the New World to the present day, then, homosexual practices and relations have been proscribed heavily by the Catholic Church as an institution and by some of its staunchest adherents, who often cite the kinds of passages quoted at the beginning of this section to argue that they go against God. The most visible homosexuals and travestis it turns out, provoke the ire of many Catholic bishops in the region and other religious fundamentalists. In the plane of sexual practices and sexual ‘essences’, such subjects are clearly seen as outside both God and society. For conservative Catholic hierarchy, we are the sexes we are by essence – God created us this way. Anything else is aberration or a detour from God’s Plan.
Fiorella Cava compares the religious fundamentalism of her home country, Peru, to the radical Islamic regimes of the Middle East so often criticised in the West. She argues that Peruvian clerics cite the Bible selectively, take it literally and also do not admit possible divergent interpretations (23). While there is nothing in the Gospels – the message of Jesus – that condemns either cross-dressing or homosexual acts, the official line draws on the first five books of the Old Testament, then solely the epistles of Paul in the New Testament, to support its ideology. This is an example of Pharisaism – a strand of stoic Christianity which has in general a closed view of the world. She also views the Church in Latin America and the ideas it espouses as phallocentric and patriarchal, and she is surely not the first to make this claim (31).
To the notion that men and women were created in God’s image is added another: that they are distinct entities, each with their discrete place. The Church has attacked women’s rights movements as questioning women’s ‘natural’ role – as mother, as wife, as progenitor of offspring. Abortion, contraception and reproductive technologies have famously been condemned as a usurpation of God’s decree, so it is unsurprising that within the sanctified domain of ‘men’, ‘women’, and heterosexual matrimony for procreative purposes, family is also a main touchstone. Abortion, women’s rights, homosexuality and transgenderism are frequently framed in terms as attacks on the family. The Family Pastoral Commission, responding to anti-homophobia campaigns instituted by the Mexican government in recent years, denounced them as simply legitimating what constitutes ‘grave depravity’ and is ‘instrinsically disordered’ and ‘against natural law’ (‘Noticias transexuales’) . This church group makes a distinction between homosexual inclination and homosexual acts. Homosexuals are called upon to be abstinent and should be generally treated with kindness and respect. The ‘lifestyle’, however – the practice of homosexuality – should be opposed, according to this group, in the name of ‘defending life and the family’(‘Noticias transexuales’). This group and another in Nicaragua even recently condemned the growing acceptance of the word ‘gender’. They have followed the Vatican in denouncing what they deem deceptive terminology that attempts to displace the naturalness of the sexes and install five genders – man, woman, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual (‘Noticias transexuales’). The word gender is seen as a disingenuous manoeuvre to place these other ‘aberrant’ identities on a par with what are the natural sexes – male and female. Catholic groups are not alone in making these protests. The Evangelical Alliance joined forces with the Episcopal Gathering of Nicaragua to condemn the introduction of the Law of Equal Opportunities, citing that its general vagueness would encourage access to abortion, the advance of the homosexual agenda, and an unfair preference to hiring women in jobs simply for the sake of filling sex quotas. Both groups took the opportunity to condemn publicly the use of the term ‘gender’ in the draft proposal to the Law of Equal (‘Noticias transexuales’).
These protests in the face of progressive legal reform and campaigns against homophobia are not isolated. Church bishops frequently decry and block work around sexual health and vulnerable communities like male and female prostitutes and travestis. In Mexico they attempted to influence electoral process in the face of the possible election of a muxe transgendered person, Amaranta Gómez, to office (Maya) . Oaxaca City parish priest, Ignacio Rosete, described Gómez as ‘aberrante’ (Maya). Homosexuals and transgendered people are thus conceived of as outside what is ordained by the Church and the Divine Order. Although individuals within the Catholic tradition may not ascribe to the notion of the aberration or abomination of homosexuality and trans phenomena, the major institutions and discourse of religiosity in Latin America clearly do, articulating them as both outside natural law and ‘moral’ society.
And so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
– Genesis 1:27
Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
– Leviticus 18:22
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.
– Deuteronomy 22:5
¿No sabéis que los injustos no heredarán el reino de Dios? No erréis; ni los fornicarios, ni los idólatras, ni los adúlteros, ni los afeminados , ni los que se echan con varones, ni los ladrones, ni los avaros, ni los borrachos, ni los maldicientes, ni los estafadores, heredarán el reino de Dios.
– 1 Corintios 6-10
When Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa, newly arrived in 1513 in the Panamian isthmus, visited the house of a local king, he recorded a sight which disturbed him – ‘young men in women’s apparel, smooth and effeminately decked’ (Baird 58). Unable to tolerate their presence, he ordered that they be thrown to the dogs. This was the time of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. Notions of Divine Law followed the paths of the conquerors to the so-called ‘New World’. Gender variant practices and sodomy were already understood at this juncture of time as contra natura and against God. Hernán Cortés, for his part, believed that the great Aztec Empire he had ‘stumbled’ on was rife with sodomy. He noted in one of his letters back to Spain: ‘they are all sodomites and practice that abominable sin’ (58). Friar Bartolomé de las Casas similarly talks of men who dressed as women and women who dressed as men. The Aztecs, he noted, did not treat them well and in fact sometimes killed them publicly (59). The notion that the New World was rife with cross-dressing and that homosexual relations were indulged was most likely a projection of fearful religious Spanish minds. However, it does reveal the obsession over these practices at a time when Church and State were still one – an obsession which inaugurated itself on New World soil and would continue to be a major feature even after the Wars of Independence and the separation of Church from State in Latin America. Long termed ‘el pecado nefando’, sodomy was viewed as against nature as it did not lead to procreation. Sexual relations between a man and a woman in the context of the sacrament of marriage were the only valid vehicle for sexual practices – and only while they led to reproduction, not for the sake of lust. Same sex acts fell clearly outside this construct and sodomy was a term which encapsulated such acts. From the time of the New World to the present day, then, homosexual practices and relations have been proscribed heavily by the Catholic Church as an institution and by some of its staunchest adherents, who often cite the kinds of passages quoted at the beginning of this section to argue that they go against God. The most visible homosexuals and travestis it turns out, provoke the ire of many Catholic bishops in the region and other religious fundamentalists. In the plane of sexual practices and sexual ‘essences’, such subjects are clearly seen as outside both God and society. For conservative Catholic hierarchy, we are the sexes we are by essence – God created us this way. Anything else is aberration or a detour from God’s Plan.
Fiorella Cava compares the religious fundamentalism of her home country, Peru, to the radical Islamic regimes of the Middle East so often criticised in the West. She argues that Peruvian clerics cite the Bible selectively, take it literally and also do not admit possible divergent interpretations (23). While there is nothing in the Gospels – the message of Jesus – that condemns either cross-dressing or homosexual acts, the official line draws on the first five books of the Old Testament, then solely the epistles of Paul in the New Testament, to support its ideology. This is an example of Pharisaism – a strand of stoic Christianity which has in general a closed view of the world. She also views the Church in Latin America and the ideas it espouses as phallocentric and patriarchal, and she is surely not the first to make this claim (31).
To the notion that men and women were created in God’s image is added another: that they are distinct entities, each with their discrete place. The Church has attacked women’s rights movements as questioning women’s ‘natural’ role – as mother, as wife, as progenitor of offspring. Abortion, contraception and reproductive technologies have famously been condemned as a usurpation of God’s decree, so it is unsurprising that within the sanctified domain of ‘men’, ‘women’, and heterosexual matrimony for procreative purposes, family is also a main touchstone. Abortion, women’s rights, homosexuality and transgenderism are frequently framed in terms as attacks on the family. The Family Pastoral Commission, responding to anti-homophobia campaigns instituted by the Mexican government in recent years, denounced them as simply legitimating what constitutes ‘grave depravity’ and is ‘instrinsically disordered’ and ‘against natural law’ (‘Noticias transexuales’) . This church group makes a distinction between homosexual inclination and homosexual acts. Homosexuals are called upon to be abstinent and should be generally treated with kindness and respect. The ‘lifestyle’, however – the practice of homosexuality – should be opposed, according to this group, in the name of ‘defending life and the family’(‘Noticias transexuales’). This group and another in Nicaragua even recently condemned the growing acceptance of the word ‘gender’. They have followed the Vatican in denouncing what they deem deceptive terminology that attempts to displace the naturalness of the sexes and install five genders – man, woman, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual (‘Noticias transexuales’). The word gender is seen as a disingenuous manoeuvre to place these other ‘aberrant’ identities on a par with what are the natural sexes – male and female. Catholic groups are not alone in making these protests. The Evangelical Alliance joined forces with the Episcopal Gathering of Nicaragua to condemn the introduction of the Law of Equal Opportunities, citing that its general vagueness would encourage access to abortion, the advance of the homosexual agenda, and an unfair preference to hiring women in jobs simply for the sake of filling sex quotas. Both groups took the opportunity to condemn publicly the use of the term ‘gender’ in the draft proposal to the Law of Equal (‘Noticias transexuales’).
These protests in the face of progressive legal reform and campaigns against homophobia are not isolated. Church bishops frequently decry and block work around sexual health and vulnerable communities like male and female prostitutes and travestis. In Mexico they attempted to influence electoral process in the face of the possible election of a muxe transgendered person, Amaranta Gómez, to office (Maya) . Oaxaca City parish priest, Ignacio Rosete, described Gómez as ‘aberrante’ (Maya). Homosexuals and transgendered people are thus conceived of as outside what is ordained by the Church and the Divine Order. Although individuals within the Catholic tradition may not ascribe to the notion of the aberration or abomination of homosexuality and trans phenomena, the major institutions and discourse of religiosity in Latin America clearly do, articulating them as both outside natural law and ‘moral’ society.
