August 29, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

“Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says.” This just in from Live Science, posted Auust 27.  The Live Science article is sharing news of the publication of a schlarly paper in the Journal of Modern History.

The question I have here is whether author Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University knows of the work of the late Dr. John Boswell, or is dependent upon his work, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe [New, York,Villard Books, 1994].   The “making of brothers” as Boswell called it, or “affrèrement” as Tulchin gives the French, is not exactly news.  Boswell found evidence of same-sex blessing ceremonies, not in burial vaults, but in liturgical manuals and altar missals used for Christian services, from as early as the 4th century to as late as the 14th century, and from Paris in the west to as far east as Jerusalem.

Boswell, who was an amazing scholar, spoke here in West Hollywood more than 20 years ago before he published his complete findings.  I was in the audience.  I took notes, came home and transcribed them carefully.  This was news then, and I lapped up every detail I could jot. 

If the Live Science report is correct, Dr. Tulchin’s contribution will add to this scholarly work, and make it more comfortable for sentient beings to  accept the idea that gay couples have been around for a very long time.  Not all human beings are intellectually honest, of course, and they don’t want to know.  Boswell related, in the same presentation, that (the late) Rev. Jerry Falwell was asked what he thought of Boswell’s ground-breaking research published by the University of Chicago in 1980, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century.  Falwell ducked answering by saying he was not aware of the book.  Dr. Boswell dryly remarked, “That’s very interesting, because I personally mailed him a copy.”

The “affrèrement” or making of brothers apparently was some kind of ritualized and recognized act in which two men swore fidelity to one another.  Some anthropologists discount the homosexual aspect of this because they have documented brotherhood ceremonies in primitive cultures around the world.   Perhaps it is another sign that much of human sexuality is ambiguous in meaning.  Sexual expression (acts) is always open to interpretation even within the sanctity of each marriage bed.

At what point does a brotherly relationship between two un-related males become a lover relationship?  Is brotherhood a euphemism — or can it be in some situations and not in others?  Would gay brothers tell anthropologists precisely what their relationship means to each other? 

Over the centuries gay people have had to be very creative to find ways not only to express their love and sensuality, but also to artfully conceal it from those who simply do not wish to know about it, or cannot accept it.

But I may have to wait to get my questions answered.  The Journal of Modern History is a quarterly, subscription-only scholarly journal.  The September 2007 issue is not yet available on their web site (even though this story is all over the net).  Dr. Tulchin is listed as Assistant Professor in the History/ Philosophy Department on the website for Shippensburg University.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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August 29, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I began journaling some years ago–actually in the 80s. Daily, I took a small spiral-bound notebook with me to lunch and I wrote, much of it about what it means to be gay and Christian—and to hold those together in a world that wants them to be ripped apart.  When it got full, I started numbering the notebooks.  I still have them.  It was a neat and tidy way to accumulate my thoughts and at least have them down. But as PCs got better and better, it became so much better to jot down things at the keyboard. I found that my rate of speed on a keyboard was about equal to my rate of speed in the brain. Handwriting is too slow.

But as each successive hard drive filled up (and when I changed jobs), keeping track of what I had written became more problematic. I lost things, or at least misplaced them electronically for long periods of time. I couldn’t keep them organized. Worse, through the mischief of electronic demons, pieces of files became scattered on the hard drive, creating fragments of thought ripped out of their context, or enthusiastic ideas now cut off from their conclusions. The naughty hard drive became the land fill of thought, like dementia for the organized mind.

The blog is today’s journal. I am experimenting with it as my own form of organization, under key topics which are important to me. Plus, it allows me to link to other people, ideas, computers, and to my own mind in a way which creates new insight through the effort to find and make links.

Searching my hard drive for material I have treated, I see that five years ago I did a lot of idea-collecting and writing about coming out from a Christian perspective. Entire books could be written on this. (Have been written?)

What set me thinking was a bit of research David Plummer mentions in One of the Boys [p207].  Stay with me here. He says,  

“Coming out” is often described as part of gay identity formation. The “coming-out” process . . . appears to be constituted because of homophobia and, as such, testifies to the power and pervasiveness of homophobia. As Garnets and colleagues wrote, “coming out becomes a process of reclaiming disowned or devalued parts of the self, and developing an identity into which one’s sexuality is well-integrated” (Garnets, Herek, and Levy, 1993: 583). [boldface added] . . . Once again, the relevance of the “closet” for this research is that it is a place to hide and is constructed by homophobia.

“Reclaiming disowned or devalued parts of the self.” There is a link here to the spiritual work of recovery, whether from substance abuse, shame, a dysfunctional family history, or internalized homophobia.

It is like my old hard drive, with fragments and pieces of files, and the new enthusiasm of developments in one’s life, cut off from its conclusions. Thoughts are lost. Sanity is lost. The links to other human beings are cut off. The closet is a place of solitary confinement as much as supposed safety.

Coming out is the reclaiming of lost or devalued parts of myself.  This is actually why I started keeping a journal in the 80s and now a blog in the 00s.  To reclaim pieces of myself which were disowned or devalued.  And distorted by fear and shame.  To come out is to re-order my dignity as a human being, and to reconnect what had been scattered or chopped up and discarded by homophobia.

Presbyterian author Chris Glaser, in Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians, Gay Men, Their Families and Friends (Westminster, John Knox Press, 1991) has a wonderful prayer about the closet. It’s on the “Prayers of Others” page.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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