I intentionally chose to give this lecture a title both broad and closely related to the Conference theme in that this paper was designed to offer a basis for reflection on the relationships between theology and homosexuality as well as on the prospects for a gay theology. In doing this, I also hope to contribute to the debate surrounding the major issues being dealt with in this conference, especially around the «dilemma» of the essentialist and constructivist approaches to homosexuality.

In recent years, theological thought on homosexuality and, more importantly, the efforts toward development of what could be called «gay theology» have made great forward strides. This advance has occurred on both the theoretical (theological) and practical (pastoral) levels, and is even more remarkable considering that not so long ago homosexuality was considered «a sin too horrible to mention among Christians».

Sociologically speaking, the evolution of the theology of homosexuality and gay theology is not a miracle; it has, in many regards, been comparable to that observed in other «scientific» approaches to homosexuality.

These approaches, dating from the end of the 19th century, featured the development of a new frame of reference which first saw homosexuality transferred from the caretogy of «sin» to that of «sickness» or «disorder» and, then, to that of a possible and legitimate human «sexual orientation» (this «progression» of course being not at all linear or inevitable. In fact, if I may indulge in an ironic aside, some viewpoints on the subject seem to be bogged down in stages of thought at least as «primitive» as those at which they place homosexuals...)

Let us rather recall that, around the 1950's and 60's in a number of Western countries, here and there, we began to see on the part of Christians new signs of openness and welcome toward homosexually oriented individuals. Holland immediately comes to mind, with some pioneering pastoral work, which also had considerable impact in French speaking countries; we could also mention the work of Father Marc Oraison[1] in France, for example. Initiatives in the area of critical rereading of the biblical sources of the official teaching of the Churches on homosexuality also come to mind - namely Canon Bailey's work[2] in the mid 50's, which also opened the door to rethinking the relationship between Christian faith and homosexuality.

More recently in th wider wake of the Gay Movement, even more daring theological arguments have emerged (here referring in particular to theologians like John McNeill[3] which attempted to affirm the positiveness of homosexuality, as did gay and lesbian Christian groups and organizations[4] that wanted to create a space where they could live their dual reality as both homosexuals and believers and at the same time to contribute to the evolution of the mentality and attitudes held by mainstream Churches. We know, moreover, that some protestant denominations went so far as to ordain openly gay clergy.

I take the liberty of mentioning, in addition, that in the wake of the gay liberation movement of the 70's, a few theologians, including myself tried to lay some groundwork for a «gay liberation theology»[5] inspired by the approach and methods of Latin American liberation theology[6], the import and richness of which, especially during the 70's, is well known, not only among politically involved Latin American Christians but also among other groups involved in various liberation movements.

Of course, the value of this type of approach was not always obvious - not only in traditional Christian circles, but even to the more «progressive» Christians who were themselves involved with Liberation theology but often hesitated to recognize the relevance or even the «dignity» of a reality as «futile» («decadent» and «bourgeois»!) as homosexuality among the justifiable «noble causes» for which one should fight politically and theologically. As well, this line of thought met reticence on the part of certain gay Christian groups which were not radicalized or closely linked to th gay liberation movement but were more centered on spiritual matters or a desire for acceptance by the established Churches. Still we can say that the theological ideas of gay liberation did make major inroads and score points in the Christian consciousness and in the Christian community.

It must however be added that the context of the 1980's and the new political issues which have emerged (most notably regarding critical scrutiny of the entire subject of the liberationist approach or ideology itself) in all likelihood today demand a reappraisal - or rethinking - of this gay theology in categories more adequately tuned to our present circumstances and the evolution in thought that has occurred.

And yet here we are, at just the right moment to pursue our efforts to renew - to update - this gay theology, more critically regarding liberationist thought, with more awareness of recent research done in the social sciences (notably around the debate of essentialism and constructivism); and we are once again faced with the brutal reality of an almost total lack of openness by certain sectors of the Christian world and in particular - but not uniquely - the Catholic hierarchy. This fact is witnessed very eloquently by the example, among others, of the «Pastoral Letter» published last year by the Vatican and signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a declaration which seems to bring us dispairingly back to square one, or at least twenty or thirty years backward...

It is indeed discouraging, especially when one considers the great strides achieved during the past few decades, to find oneself once again in the position of the traveling salesman who is a bit tired of selling vacuum cleaners, to be dealing in apology rather than theology, to recall that: No... the social sciences, contrary to what the eminent cardinal upholds, are not as unanimous as all that in their judgment concerning homosexuality... No, it is not at all certain that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were punished by God because they were a threat to transmit AIDS to the angels...

It is very disturbing to see ther kind of argument coming out of Rome hardly a few months after the Pope had himself solemnly rehabilitated Galileo and expressed the regrets of the Church for this tragic misunderstanding - if we can call it a misunderstanding! - in the history of the Church... One begins to think that clergy and theologians alike would gain by showing a bit more historical awareness - and modesty - like Sherloch Holmes who, following one of the rare failures of his career, the case of the Yellow Face[7] (which took place in the tiny English village of Norbury), asked his inseparable companion, Dr Watson:

Watson (...), if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper "Norbury" in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.

I think that it might be fruitful to whiper «Galileo» once in as while in some Vatican ears...

Be that as it may, there certainly is a temptation to attribute this blunt refusal on the part of the traditional Christian world to the powerful resurgence of the «right» in the West with Reagan, Thatcher and John-Paul II. However I prefer to leave this type of explanation to others - to my mind it is much too simple anyway - but keeping in mind nonetheless that it does at least provide confirmation of constructivist arguments - if not, as such, in the area of homosexuality, at least in regard of theology itself! What the last twenty or thirty years of theological debate around the issue of homosexuality (as well as around a lot of other issues - moral, social, cultural or political) have brought out is indeed the eminently plural nature of theological debate in general and of the theology of homosexuality in particular. What this plurality confirms - if confirmation was indeed needed - is that it is never created from the perspective of Sirius or the North Star, or even less from God's point of view but evidently always, as the Latin American liberationist theologians used to put it, from the place where one's feet are planted on the ground.

But we can also think of a very interesting suggestion of the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli[8] regarding sociology - but which, it seems to me, applies equally well to theology: namely that we could consider at least two types of knowledge - that is, here, of theological knowledge: one that could be called paranoiac, hanging over our heads (which is of course an illusion in that it is never really above the melee but always somewhere in the middle of it); and the other, metanoiac (and it is interesting to find a major concept of Paulinian theology in the writings of a sociologist from the Durkheimian school of thought in the French tradition!) -- metanoiac, in the sense of «conversion» of the subject to his or her «object», in the sense of a knowledge of companionship (meta-noia) and not of overbearing and arrogant domination. If gay theologies have been able to see the light of day, it is essentially because believers who have their two feet - and a few other parts of themselves - in homosexual desire, have bought it out, in relation to theological debates (often even liberal ones) which continue to speak of it from the outside -that is, from above.

The theological issue of homosexuality appears to me however much wider than the classic and rather unoriginal debate taking place between progressives and conserveratives in the Churches and the Christian World. It far surpasses the concerns only of gay and lesbian Christians in that the religious experience seems to appear, here at the end of this century, in a different and, to a certain point, unpredictable light. The «Radical Sixties» and the «Revolutionary Seventies» - to put it bluntly - gave us the feeling (or the naive illusion) that there was a conflict to settle between religion and reason, between the «obscurantism» of another age and the «light» of progress in a culture which was finally come of age. The West so firmly believed this that even its straight theologians were proclaiming the death of God... From this viewpoint, in consideration of our main interest here, it is certain that in many sectors of homosexual life, considering the traditional teaching of the Churches, homosexuality as a theological issue often appeared at best a sympathetic oddity and often an anachronism which was only of interest to a few homosexuals, the majority having detached themselves from the alienating oppression of religion.

But here were are today seeing our times in a rather different light. Not only does God seem to be not as dead as all that, but He - or perhaps She! - appears on the contrary to be alive and doing very well thank you... We could of course once again be tempted to reduce this phenomenon to the revival of the right and conservatism pretty much all over the world. But this would, once again, be too simple, I am afraid. First of all because we are seeing today that a good number of our peers - and among them many gays and lesbians - are relating positively to old or new religious roots: to Christianity, certainly, but also to others - of Eastern origins for example, Gnostic or Neo-Pagan. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, a glance at the religious anthropology of our culture reveals that many existing realities at first sight not of a religious nature have in fact been invested with religious meaning and lived as religious by many of our peers, and have become for all practical and even theoretical purposes what some suggest calling «secular religions». We might in all likelihood consider the political and revolutionary involvment of the 60's and 70's (including of course the feminist, gay and other liberation movements) in that perspective. We might as well think of realities such as ecological awareness, sensitivity - and spirituality -, so important today in several western circles. And - what is of particular interest and importance to us here - sexuality, eroticism, that «sex» which Michel Foucault[9], as we know, suggested had become for many the main avenue of self-fulfillment, the carrier of all expectactions - to the point of believing that beyond sex there is no salvation. Well, at least before AIDS...

In this wide but fundamental sense we could say that the theological issue of homosexuality involves everyone in his or her own religious experience whatever it is labelled or however it is lived. And the tools of theology, like those of religious anthropology seem to be very useful for clarifying certain aspects - at first glance purely secular - of present homosexual reality. Thus, to take one brief example, it might be useful to distinguish between religion as an experience of ecstasy (i.e., an experience which allows escape from the limits of the secular human condition) and morals, whose essence, by comparison, would be, on the contrary, more geared toward self-management of secular space - the direct opposite of the ecstatic nature of religion.

Religious history reveals that religions are often born of the immorality of religious fervor and die of the most secular overmoralization. We may well wonder if this pattern of transformation does not throw light on - among other things - the gay experience of sexuality in recent years, from an ecstatic and almost religious quest to increased moralization - and I'm not only thinking of Reagan, or John-Paul II here, but of the gay world itself - very notably under the impact of a phenomenon such as the appearence of AIDS, and the emergence of this concept of «safe sex», for example, which would have made philosopher Georges Bataille[10] jump, - he who considered eroticism an affirmation of life even unto death.

In any case this line of thinking seems to me to offer very fertile grounds for further inquiry.

However I would like to readdress directly the theological issue of homosexuality. It might be said that it involves anyone in the sense - the very classical sense - of saint Anselm's famous definition: fides quaerens intellectum, faith - that is, adhering to a meaning which gives life and direction to existence and to the world - in quest of self-understanding. This, then, is the way in which theology appears as a kind of a quest for knowledge as related to a total experience of faith, analogous in this way to the proposition of philosophy as it relates to life: primum vivere, deinde - afterwards - philosophare... We adhere, first and foremost, vitally, wholly, emotionally to a life-giving meaning, and we then submit this adherence, this total experience to reflection which, to paraphrase the first Letter of saint Peter, renders us «ready to account for our faith». To believe is to affirm our direction and stick to it. «Doing» - or even «making» theology (as one says making love) is becoming aware of the existential relevance of this direction for our life today.

Moreover, any theological act must be presented essentially in terms of hermeneutics. What matters here is the restatement, translation, interpretation for today - that is, for men and women in the here and now - of a way offered, a meaning affirmed which is usually rooted in the language, culture of other times and other worlds - whether it be the Bible, an oriental religion, a mystical or mythological tradition. In my country, at 40º below zero - but I suppose it must be more or lesse the same here -, Krishna disciples have to wear something under their saffron robes - even though there isn't any provision of this kind in the Baghavad Gita...

Few Christians today, for example, are capable of reading the Bible directly from the original Hebrew or Greek. In order to have access to the source of the beliefs, to which they want to adhere, they have to navigate the perilous seas of translation. Now, we know that any attempt at translation is full of risk: traduttore, traditore, says the Italian proverb. Translator, traitor! The claim, the risk, the wager of theology as a hermeneutic of faith exists in the present (and not as the simple exegesis of a dead text). This task is not only to affirm the present day relevance of these beliefs but to be faithful to them as they are situated in the present through a translation, - that is, a change which actually causes a rupture of the original text. The purpose of any theological act as an interpretive act is to affirm faithfulness to what is the same through that which is often different.

But this exercise is still not without risk or peril. Imagine this one example alone - the use in many translations of the Bible of the term «homosexual» (term coined as we know in the second half of the 19th century in Europe) to designate certain behaviour and certain individuals condemned in the Old or New Testament. And here we really hit upon the heart of the theological issue and the debate on essentialism and constructivism. The kadeshim held so in contempt in Leviticus, those men who had sexual relations with other men in the ceremonies often interpreted in the term (in itself problematic) of «sacred prostitution» - can they really be called «homosexuals»? And the attitude the Biblical text displays toward these individuals and their behaviour - is it relevant in relation to the reality of those whom today we call «homosexuals»?

Let us take another example from Biblical tradition, one which is often used to illustrate this difficult exercise in interpretation: the example of the Biblical interdiction of the spilling (and consuming) blood. We know that this interdict is the basis for refusing blood transfusion - even on pain of death - for certain Christian sects practicing today. We see here the confrontation of two different concepts of faithfulness to the fold: one that is literal and consists of reproducing the materiality of certain acts or teachings; and another that, while distancing itself from the materiality of these acts (at times to the point of contradicting them radically), still claims to carry them out in the name of the same (or even a more authentic) faithfulness by gauging that the Biblical interdict refers fundamentally to the sacredness of respect for life and that the «technique» of tranfusion is one important way of assuring it, belonging to our modern world [(though this particular example might have become problematic since the appearence on the scene of AIDS!)]

Thus interpretation aims at achieving faithfulness to the fold through a breaking with the codes that embody it. The interpreter, as translator, must posses the language that gives access to the text in which he or she wishes to convey the message as well as the language of those to whom he or she wishes to transmit this message (beginning with himself, of course). Interpreting - and, what is of more precise concern to us here, «doing» a theology of homosexuality - has the theologian moving between the two great «texts»: on the one hand that in which a believing tradition finds the source of the belief to which it adheres (the Bible, for instance -but it would be fundamentally true for other founding sacred writings) and on the other, the immense text which is the present reality of homosexuality - that is, the reality of the men and women who concretely live a homosexual experience in a particular culture which has little to do with the Biblical times. It is in the language of these men and women that the message of the way to follow must be translated and transmitted under pain of not being understandable at all, of not being faithful at all.

This view of things is, if we think about it, eminently traditional. It is exactly what has bee done by the entire Christian tradition for example, from saint Paul who dropped circumcision to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles to John-Paul II who, a few months ago, urged native people of Canada to embody their Christian faith in their own culture, not to mention some of the greatest and most orthodox theologians such as Thomas Aquinas who - let's not forget - scandalized the Ratzingers of his day by undertaking the task of trying to reach understanding of the Christian faith using the philosophical categories of Aristotle - a «pagan» thinker whose writings had moreover come to be known in Europe through Islam! - because they seemed to him to constitute the most useful and fruitful intellectual tool available to him in his days.

The challenge of the theology of homosexuality - gay theology - is to try to deliver the Christian message using the language, culture and awareness through which the homosexual experience today is manifested and in which this experience tries to think of and understand itself. This «text» is of course a vast, immense and cacophonic entity; it is neither unanimous nor static. And of course it cannot claim dogmatic exclusivity. It also includes the debate over he conceptualization of homosexuality and how it is understood as well as the multifarious life experience of gays and lesbians.

«Official» contemporary theology seems at times to be open to this hermeneutic necessity in that, for example, in takes into consideration some of the scientific findings and statistics based on experience in the developement of its thesis. The problem is that the extremely selective and dogmatic use of these data compromise even the possibility of a truthful and fruitful interpretation. Thus, for example, when a particular theology uses psychological or psychoanalytical data to «assess» homosexuality as a «disorder» (be it neurosis or regression) it is certainly using the context of present day culture with regard to homosexuality. But it is one view among others within the context of a complex debate which is constantly in evolution, and not a definitive and indisputable truth.

It is quite obvious that «doing» gay theology does not automatically guard against the risk of such bias. Actually, there is not very much to be gained - except perhaps cheap sensationalim - by suggesting a gay relationship between Jesus and John, the «Beloved» disciple... However, when gay and lesbian Christians scrutinized the Biblical text from the text of their own involvement in life and liberation, for instance, they were highly sensitive to the fact that the God of the Bible appears as the God of Exodus, of Liberation, and that it is indeed to this God and his will that they are faithful when, as believers, they are struggling for the historic emancipation of an «homosexual desire». When gay and lesbian believers fought so that men and women would have the right to be different in their culture and society they have perhaps understood infinitely better than most others the message and profound logic of the old Biblical commandmant: welcome the stranger! Not by virtue of any particular merit on the part of the stranger himself, but because you yourselves have been strangers in the land of Egypt. And I, your God, have taken you away from it, and gave you a land of freedom and prosperity.

But it could also be that gay and lesbian believers, confronted today with the tragedy of AIDS, have come to see with new eyes not so much the old malediction of Sodom and Gomorrah but rather the old wisdom of the Ecclesiastes who stated that if there is a time to embrace, there also is a time to abstain from embracing...

Truthfully, it is not only the homosexual reality which needs, so to speak, to be theologically interpreted, it is the religious traditions themselves, notably the Christian way, which has to be read, interpreted and, in a sense, enriched in a new way through the «text» of homosexual reality, as well as it has to be read through the «text» of women, for example.

Undertaking a theological interpretation of homosexuality leads us back to the homosexual text in its totality - which is itself complex, full of contradictions, made up of sub-texts and dialects often impermeable to each other: male and female, gay or closet, political or playful, etc.

It is very clear that the development of a «gay identity» through the very large gay liberation movement of the last fifteen years has encouraged the possibility of certain ways of looking at homosexuality, to understand and above all live it, to the detriment of other ways which often found themselves excluded, banished, deligitimized, often of good faith in the name of a liberationist ideology which in its own way fell into a reductionist essentialization of homosexuality, and dismissing other possible forms that homosexual desire could take in the surrounding gloom of oppression (from which the movement claimed to liberate) or of the inauthenticity - for which the movement wanted to substitute a more authentic truth.

The hermeneutic essence of theology (faithfulness to a meaning through a rupture in its interpretation) shows us perhaps the fruitfulness - or even the necessity - of a similar method of interpretation, of movement among the multiple text of present day homosexuality in order to overcome the dilemmas of essentialism and constructivism. If it is clear, for example, that Greek pederasty where everything came to an end at the first sign of a beard - has little to do with present day gay macho homosexuality - where, on the contrary, nothing happens if there is no moustache! - we also have to ackowledge that the capacity of human beings do somehow transcend socio-cultural structures and to put themselves in touch with phenomena which, though in one sense totally different, are also, in some mysterious way, deeply the same.

| pirlouette.ca |page d'accueil de Dr M. & Mr G. | Dr M. | Mister G. | Publications |

1 Marc Oraison, La question homosexuelle. Paris, Seuil, 1975. |retour au texte / back to text|

2 D.S. Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition. Archon Books, Hamden Conn., The Shoestring Press, 1975 (London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1955). |retour au texte / back to text|

3 John McNeill, The Church and the Homosexcual. Kansas City, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1976. |retour au texte / back to text|

4 For example: Dignity (Catholic), Integrity (Anglican/Episcopal), Lutherans concerned for Gay People; David & Jonathan, Communauté du Christ Libérateur (France), European Forum of Gay Christians, etc. Cf. also the «Gay Churches» (like the Metropolitan Community Church). |retour au texte / back to text|

5 De Sodome à l'Exode. Jalons pour une théologie de la libération gaie. Préface de G. Baum. Montréal, l'Aurore, 1980 (G. Saint-Jean, éd., 1983). Cf. also:M. Macourt, ed., Towards a Theology of Gay Liberation. London, SCM Press, 1977. |retour au texte / back to text|

6 Cf., e.g., G. Gutierrez, A Liberation Theology. Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1973; J.L. Segundo, The Liberation of theology. Maryknoll N.Y., Orbis Books, 1976 (1975). |retour au texte / back to text|

7 A.C. Doyle, «The Yellow Face», The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, London, Penguin,1981, p. 362. |retour au texte / back to text|

8 Cf. M. Maffesoli, La connaissance ordinaire. Paris, Méridiens, 1986. |retour au texte / back to text|

9 M. Foucault, La volonté de savoir. Histoire de la sexualité, I. Paris, Gallimard, 1976. |retour au texte / back to text|

10 G. Bataille, L'érotisme. Paris, Minuit, 1957. |retour au texte / back to text|

| pirlouette.ca |page d'accueil de Dr M. & Mr G. | Dr M. | Mister G. | Publications |