Roman sex and Christian revulsion

It is impossible not to be frustrated at the convoluted and complicated intersections between conservative proponents of Christian faith, and sexual expression. From the Roman Catholic celibate priesthood, pedophilia, to the furore over women bishops, to the ongoing conflicts over the place of LGBT people, it's all rather tangled in a very bad way. And it appears this goes right back to the beginning, when the itinerant Christians shifted to become the Establishment.

There's a new book out called From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity and a really good review in the NY Review of Books is helpful for putting some of this in context. The book (and review) highlights the transition from one culture (the Romans) to another (the Christians) that was very different.

The Romans were busy having lots of sex, but it was intertwined with prostitution and especially, slavery. According to the review and the book, slavery looms above it all. yet it was the sex that got the attention.

The reviewer explains

From Saint Paul onward, the great issues of sex and freedom were brought together in Christian circles like the enriched ore of an atomic device. For Paul, porneia—fornication—meant a lot more than premarital fooling around. It was a brooding metonym, “enriched” by an entire spectrum of associations. It stood for mankind’s rebellion against God. And this primal rebellion was shown most clearly in the topsy-turvy sexual freedom ascribed first by Jews and then by Christians to the non-Christian world.

But then, what was true freedom? Freedom also was a mighty metonym, of which the freedom to decide one’s sexual fate was only one, highly “enriched” part. Above all, it meant “freedom” from “the world.” And by “the world” Christians meant, bluntly, the Roman society of their own times, where unfreedom was shown in its darkest light by the trading and sexual abuse of unfree bodies. It no longer mattered, to Christians, with whose bodies, from which social categories, and in what manner sex might happen. From Paul onward, for Christians, there was right sex—sex between spouses for the production of children; wrong sex—sex outside marriage; and abhorrent sex—sex between same-sex partners. Wrong sex of any kind was a sin. And a sin was a sin

So is all the strum und drang of modern Christianity and the historical opposition to gay people, still a reaction to the sexual orgies of the Romans and their slaves? and it was the sex more than the slavery that got their attention?

In any case, the book sounds fascinating.

"Overturning the will of the voters": we've been down this road before

Once upon a time, there was a decision in California that extended protections and rights to an unpopular minority.

The response was a ballot initiative to reverse the decision, and to amend the state constitution so that the protections and rights were rolled back. This passed convincingly at the ballot box.

There was a legal challenge. The state refused to defend the amendment, to the ire of its supporters.  The courts stepped in, and ultimately found that that the amendment was unconstitutional. Despite the support of the majority of voters, it was declared invalid.

Proposition 8? No.

I'm talking Proposition 14, which was passed in 1964 with a whopping 65% majority, and ultimately declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1967.

The story: in 1963, the California legislature passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act that stated property owners could not refuse to rent or sell property to anyone because of ethnicity. It also included religion, sex, marital and family status, and physical handicap. This was considered an important landmark for civil rights.

In 1964, Proposition 14 (sponsored by real estate and Republican groups) stated that property owners could indeed discriminate. As I said, it passed convincingly.

When it was challenged in court, the state declined to defend Proposition 14, because  Gov Pat Brown (Jerry Brown's father) considered it unconstitutional.  The California Supreme Court found that Prop 14 violated equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment.

The Supreme Court of the US agreed. In Reitman v. Mulkey (1967), SCOTUS invalidated Prop 14 by a 5-4 decision.  From the decision, they pointed out the real consequences of Prop 14:

The right to discriminate, including the right to discriminate on racial grounds, was now embodied in the State's basic charter, immune from legislative, executive, or judicial regulation at any level of the state government. Those practicing racial discriminations need no longer rely solely on their personal choice. They could now invoke express constitutional authority, free from censure or interference of any kind from official sources. All individuals, partnerships, corporations and other legal entities, as well as their agents and representatives, could now discriminate

As Wikipedia tells us, "Reitman established a significant precedent because it held that state assistance or encouragement of private discrimination violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. As of 2013, this precedent remains good law."

You might want to pass this along to the bloviating anti-equality die-hards, who continue to advocate for the right to do just that.

This Son of York

At a young age, I saw Shakespeare’s Henry V and was hooked forever. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival ran the history plays chronologically, so annually thereafter I saw the three parts of Henry VI, then Richard III. I became a devotee of the history of the Wars of the Roses, the ongoing civil wars of 15th century England where the White Rose of York battled the Red Rose of the Lancasters and the throne bounced between them,  until the Last Plantagenet succombed to the sword of the Tudors.

 I read and re-read Josephine Tey’s book The Daughter of Time, which made a plausible case that Richard III had less cause than Henry Tudor (Henry VII) for killing the Princes in the Tower—Richard’s nephews, whom he had caused to be named illegitimate. I devoured history books that remarked (sometimes grudgingly) upon Richard’s contributions as a notably fair minded king for his time, particularly in legal matters. Of course, he was no saint;  the middle ages were too much about politics and violence for that.  Yet he seems to have been honorable, within the dictates of the time.

Richard was the slim, dark brother, the eighth and youngest child in a family of large fair men.  He had scoliosis, or curvature of the spine that made one shoulder higher than the other and probably caused him chronic pain.  Yet he was a warrior who rode, fully armored, into battle many times.  Indeed, this young Duke of Gloucester was a commander by the age of 17.  He was devout in his faith, collected books, and even reputed in one account to be a dancer.

As a child, Richard lived for years away from home, with the Earl of Warwick. Initial plans for his marriage to Anne Neville, Warwick’s daughter, were entangled in the politics of the period, as her father threw in his lot with the other side. When it became possible again, their alliance was complicated by the fact his older brother George was already married to Anne’s elder sister and did not want to share the Neville estate. George tried to hide Anne from Richard by whisking her away and disguising her as a scullery maid, but Richard rescued her. Sounds a bit romantic, doesn’t it?  


He died on Bosworth field in 1485, where even his enemies conceded he fought bravely before being felled by a blow to the head. But history in this case truly was written by the victors, and his reputation, as well as  his appearance, were sculpted by the victorious Tudors into the massive villainy of Shakespeare’s character. The few contemporary accounts don't agree with an unremittingly evil Richard as painted by the propaganda.

Richard's body was attacked after death, stabbed and his feet cut off.  He was buried (and perhaps reburied) without ceremony under a garden at Grey Friars.  Now, his remains have been uncovered under a car park, identified by DNA compared to living descendents of his family.  His face, reconstructed by forensic scientists, now looks out upon us, serene, perhaps enigmatic.

And so, the story is revived, with the romance and wars of the late Middle Ages again the subject of discussion and debate. The battle of the Red and the White Rose will go on in pubs and debate halls.  Who did kill the princes in the tower?  Who was the scoundrel, and who the hero?  And meanwhile, the bones of the last king to die in battle on English soil will be re-buried in Leicester Cathedral.




Sources: 
Wikipedia 
Richard III Society
Guardian Roundup 
Yahoo Photo Gallery 
How Richard Looked (Daily Beast)

Mapping it (updated with more maps)

My brother has a saying: "Maps are our friends." I've been interested in the information available in a number of maps lately.

Following up on our discussion about Mississippi Republicans' lamentable opposition to inter-racial marriage, here's a map showing the date when anti-miscegenation laws were overturned. That big blotch of yellow in the South, those are the states where it took the Supreme Court to do it (in Loving v. Virginia, 1967). (From Mapscroll):

Next, let's look at the frequency of citizens who hold passports in the different states (darker color = fewer passports):
How about Education? Here's one showing the fraction of population age 25+ who holds a bachelor's degree (darker = higher):

Got that? Let's move along to religion, and the distribution of evangelicals:

Nan Hunter, writing at the blog Hunter of Justice looks at the map of the US from the point of view of LGBT rights.The states that have any recognition for LGBT people , such as antidiscrimination laws, and/or partnership/marriage protections, are left white. (However, many of the white states are explicitly anti-marriage so it's a pretty low bar.) The remaining states are blue (for Democratic legislature and governor), red (for Republican) and purple (for mixed). Unsurprisingly, the white states are largely blue or purple.

And here is an over-optimistic estimate of when marriage equality laws will happen in different states, based on data about the polling opinions there (For example, data like this. Map From Mapscroll)

What about economic activity? Here's the per capita GDP by state:


And here's one that shows us who gets the federal money. Values <$1.00 are states that get less from the Fed than they pay in taxes; values >$1.00 are states that get more than they pay.

Finally, this week is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.



Discuss.

Of mosques and history: fear and loathing in America

The US is not at her best right now. In the ascendant is an old fashioned nativist party, not unlike the aptly named “Know-nothings” of a previous age . We’re seeing this play out in the conflict over Islam in this country, from sea to sea. In New York City, in Murfreesboro Tennessee, and in Temecula California, local groups are protesting the presence of mosques (or in the case of NYC, an Islamic prayer center—not a mosque). The press colludes in this, allowing the nativists to set off “The Muslims” from “Americans”. A whopping 70 % concurs (poll) and the President is taking heat for defending the Constitution Amazingly, some attempt to justify this blatant prejudice by claiming that Islam is not a “real” religion, that somehow our Constitutional freedom of religion does not include Muslims.

Writing in the NY Times, Ross Douthat opines,

There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

This seems perceptive, but then Douthat puts himself firmly in the 2nd group.

For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, …. they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.

Our friend Counterlight has some more comments specific to the NY conflict.

The America of a “distinctive culture” that Douthat celebrates is the same America that was violently opposed to Catholicism in an earlier time. Indeed, in the 1700s, Catholic priests were forbidden entry into New York. Ironically, in Murfreesboro in the 1920s, there was opposition to construction of a Catholic church not unlike the protests today against the mosque.

[O]hers were not pleased by the anticipated construction of a Catholic church. The local and vocal chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) took exception….. One of the organizational catalysts [of the Klan] was the massive immigration of that period from the largely Catholic countries of eastern and southern Europe. This new Klan preached racism, anti-Catholicism, nativism (favoring of native inhabitants over immigrants) and anti-Semitism. It was organized at a national level and flourished particularly in the Midwest where it took control of several state governments.

Hmmmmm….. sound familiar? Despite Klan protests and a march that included many prominent citizens, the new Catholic church was dedicated in Murfreesboro in 1929. Apparently memories there are not long enough.

But it doesn’t stop with protests against religious buildings. In Pennsylvania, an archeological dig has uncovered the bones of Irish laborers in a mass grave from the 1830s, and with them, signs of violence that killed them. The Irish immigrants were loathed and feared at that time. Nearly 200 years later, there is a spate of violence against Mexicans in New York. . We have changed our definition of The Other, but we are still attacking him with violence.

In 1942, Japanese Americans, including legal citizens of this country, were imprisoned in remote prison camps throughout the west: no due process, because there was no crime. In 1988, the nation finally apologized to the few survivors. I took these photos in Manzanar, where the remains of one of the camps sits on the bleak plains below the Eastern peaks of the high Sierra. This was a brutal, bitter, horrible place where we as a people inflicted cruelty on our fellow citizens simply for being a recognizable minority.

We seem destined to re-live the hysteria of the past, over new groups, the gays, the Muslims, anyone who the mob can be inflamed to fear and loathe. I'm surprised that Lady Liberty in New York Harbor doesn't pick up her skirts and walk back to France. There's little here to admire anymore.