The World of Religion No. 58 – March/April 2013 –
It may seem strange to some of our readers that, following the heated parliamentary debate in France on same-sex marriage, we are devoting a large part of this issue to how religions view homosexuality. We do, of course, address the essential elements of this debate, which also touches on the question of filiation, in the second part of the issue, with the contradictory points of view of the Chief Rabbi of France Gilles Bernheim, the philosophers Olivier Abel and Thibaud Collin, the psychoanalyst and ethnologist Geneviève Delaisi de Parseval, and the sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger. But it seems to me that an important question has been largely overlooked until now: what do religions think about homosexuality, and how have they treated homosexuals for centuries? This question has been sidestepped by most religious leaders themselves, who have immediately placed the debate on the terrain of anthropology and psychoanalysis, and not on that of theology or religious law. The reasons for this are better understood when we look more closely at the way in which homosexuality is violently criticized by most sacred texts and how homosexuals are still treated in many parts of the world in the name of religion. For while homosexuality was widely tolerated in antiquity, it is presented as a major perversion in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures. "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, what they do is an abomination; they shall be put to death, and their blood shall be upon them," it is written in Leviticus (Lev 20:13). The Mishnah will not say anything else and the fathers of the Church will not have words harsh enough for this practice which "insults God" according to the expression of Thomas Aquinas, since it violates, in his eyes, the very order of nature desired by the Almighty. Under the reigns of the very Christian emperors Theodosius or Justinian, homosexuals were liable to death, because they were suspected of making a pact with the devil and were held responsible for natural disasters or epidemics. The Koran, in about thirty verses, condemns this "unnatural" and "outrageous" act, and Sharia law still condemns homosexual men to punishments, varying according to the country, from imprisonment to hanging, including a hundred blows with sticks. Asian religions are generally more tolerant of homosexuality, but it is condemned by the Vinaya, the monastic code of Buddhist communities, and certain branches of Hinduism. Even if the positions of Jewish and Christian institutions have softened considerably in recent decades, the fact remains that homosexuality is still considered a crime or an offense in around a hundred countries and remains one of the main causes of suicide among young people (in France, one in three homosexuals under the age of 20 has attempted suicide due to social rejection). It is this violent discrimination, carried for millennia by religious arguments, that we also wanted to recall.
There remains the debate, complex and essential, not only on marriage, but even more so on the family (since it is not the question of equal civil rights between homosexual and heterosexual couples that is really being debated, but that of filiation and questions related to bioethics). This debate goes beyond the demands of homosexual couples, since it concerns the issues of adoption, medically assisted procreation and surrogacy, which can affect heterosexual couples just as much. The government was wise enough to postpone it until the fall by seeking the opinion of the National Ethics Committee. Because these are crucial questions that can neither be avoided nor resolved with arguments as simplistic as "this is disrupting our societies" - they are, in fact, already disrupted - or, on the contrary, "this is the inevitable course of the world": any change must be evaluated in terms of what is good for human beings and society.