Gay Rights Around the World: Exploring the history, impact and effect on society, and current status (2nd of 6 parts)

Bernadine Racoma

April 12, 2013

In Part 1 of this series that explores the history and status of gay rights worldwide, we have already learned that homosexuality has been in existence since ancient times, even during the pre-conquest civilizations.

Prohibitions and Criminal Offense

We continue where we left off in Part 1. While the knowledge and toleration of homosexual liaisons was very common until the third century, there were already some people that established prohibitions on the male to male liaisons, particularly with the introduction of Christianity. Therefore, we see that from the fourth century, the freedom to have homosexual relations was starting to raise some eyebrows.

• From the fourth century there were already prohibitions on male to male liaisons. The Council of Elvira, which is now the region of Granada in Spain, was the Western European Church’s representative. It began to bar pederasts from receiving the Holy Communion. Emperors Constans and Constantius II proclaimed the first law that prohibited same sex marriage in 342 CE. In 390 CE homosexual sex was declared illegal by three emperors, Valentinian II, Arcadius and Theodosius I. The last known literature material about homosexual passion was “Dionysiaca” that was written between 390 and 405 CE by Nonnus.
• While there was a law against sex between homosexuals, emperors in the Christian era continued the collection of taxes from male prostitutes. Anastasius I on the other hand abolished the tax but had his pick from the best of men.
• In the sixth century the homosexuals became the scapegoat for pestilences, earthquakes and famines, starting from the reign of Justinian I. It was also during this century that Anastasia the Patrician, a woman disguised as a male monk at an Alexandrian monastery, died. The kingdom of Spain in 589 CE converted from Arianism to Catholicism and revised their laws to conform to the new religion, thus Jews and gays became persecuted. Iberia took the law further in 693 CE, meting out punishments of hair shearing, 100 lashes, exile, and castration. They were also barred from receiving Communion.
• Despite the strict laws of the Catholic Church, Abbot Alcuin of York sent poems of love to other male monks during the Carolingian Renaissance in the ninth century.
• Poland was founded in 966 CE. The country never labeled homosexuality as a criminal act throughout the country’s history.
• Around the year 1007 CE, the Burchard of Worms’s “Decretum” compared acts of homosexuality to other sexual offenses like adultery and thus merited the same form of penance, which at that time usually consisted of acts of fasting. In 1100 CE, Archbishop Rodolfo of Tours, France convinced the King of France to appoint Giovanni as Orléans’ bishop, much to the utter disgust of the Bishop of Chartres, Ivo. Giovanni was Rodolfo’s lover who also had liaisons with the French king. Pope Urban II did not make a big issue of it and appointed Giovanni, who ruled for 40 years as a respected and well-loved bishop.

Act of Sodomy and Condemnation

• In the 12th century, homosexuality became an act of sodomy and was condemned by England, Jerusalem, Rome and Italy. In the 13th century more countries followed suit, meting harsh punishments for sodomy. Persecutions of gay men escalated in the 14th century, with the execution of England’s King Edward II, the sensational sodomy trial of Rolandino Roncaglia of Italy in 1347, executions of Antwerp gay men Willem Case and Jan van Aersdone in the 1370s and Venetian gay men Nicoleto Marmagma and Giovanni Braganza. In 1395, cross-dresser and transvestite prostitute John Rykener, also known as Eleanor and Johannes Richter was arrested and questioned in London. Leonardo da Vinci was arrested, tried and acquitted of sodomy in 1476.
• Acts of sodomy were brought against several well-known artists in the 16th century, such as Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, creator of “The Birth of Venus” and Benvenuto Cellini, who sculpted “Perseus with the Head of Medusa.” Michaelangelo was already 57 years old when he wrote more than 30 love poems for Tomasso dei Cavalieri, a 23-year old nobleman. The two remained friends until the artist’s death. The young man represented love, piety and pity to the great master.
• The first lesbian activity that earned a conviction was the affair of two Plymouth, Massachusetts residents, Sarah White Norman with Mary Vincent Hammon. Hammon was not yet 16 so she escaped prosecution.
• In the 18th century, Englishman Jeremy Bentham was one of the first people who sought for the decriminalization of sodomy in his country. Andorra and France during its revolutionary phase around 1791 adopted a new law, making the country the first in Western Europe to decriminalize consenting adults’ homosexual acts. The death penalty meted to sodomy convictions was abolished in Prussia in 1794.