This ITV four-part series called Sex and Religion predictably included one on gay sex. This brought out the hostility from Christianity, Islam and Orthodox Judaism to gay sexual relationships very well, but Hindu and Sikh spokespersons went unchallenged in their claim that Hinduism and Sikhism are, in contrast, gay-tolerant.
In this connection, it is worth noting that on the subject of Section 28 a spokesperson for the National Council of Hindu Temples opined: “Homosexuality is an unnatural state which must be discouraged.” And one from the Network of Sikh Organisations said: “We do not recommend gay activities at all, so we do not think Section 28 should be repealed.” No mention was made of the Society of Friends (the Quakers) and the Unitarian Church, which (despite the condemnatory biblical texts) take a benign humanist approach to the issue, and the official Buddhist stance on it (if there is one) was completely ignored.
I liked the account of the Roman Emperor Hadrian’s love for the dishy Antinous who, on his death, was deified by the emperor and became a cult, which enjoyed popular support long afterwards. This shows the tolerance of pre-Christian Rome to homosexual relationships and is in sharp contrast to the stance taken by Justinian I, the Christian ruler of the Roman Empire in the first half of the sixth century, for whom homosexual practice was such a heinous offence that “it provoked God to punish whole populations with famine, pestilence and earthquake”. For Justinian the only fitting penalty was castration. Similarly, in the thirteenth century, the Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas was said to have likened homosexuality to cannibalism and heresy.
The historian Professor Jeffrey Richards gave a clear account of the punishments inflicted on gays by the Church in the early and later Middle Ages. Richards is the author of Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages, published by Routledge.
Interestingly (and very depressingly for gay Christians), a pro-gay Catholic theologian forecast that it would take at least another 400 to 500 years before the Church accepted gay marriages.
The following programme in the series was announced as: “how masturbation provoked paranoia in Christian communities”!