By Eduardo Galeano and - -
MONTEVIDEO, Sep 1 2003 (IPS)

The cross and the sword are raised high as in old times, and with good reason: in the last few months, homophobia has come under serious attack, writes Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan writer and journalist \’\’The Open Veins of Latin America\’\’ and \’\’Memories of Fire\’\’. Earlier this summer, the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that criminalised homosexuality, effectively voiding similar laws in 12 other states. And in New Hampshire, for the first time in the history of Christianity the faithful and the clergy of the Episcopal Church elected a bishop who is openly gay. Galeano writes in this article for IPS that all of these acts of \’\’grave immorality\’\’, of liberty and mental health, are not gifts: they are victories, the result of the persistent battle of gays and lesbians against discrimination and violence. Armed with the rainbow banner, a symbol of human diversity, they are overturning one of the most sinister heresies of the past. The walls of intolerance are beginning to fall.

Richard Nixon, that eminent historian, had it right. In 1972, when he was president of the United States, he delivered to his closest collaborators the following crash course on the decadence of Greece and Rome:

”You know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them! Sure. Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates. You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags.”

In 1513, a few centuries before this magisterial lesson, Vasco Nunez de Balboa threw fifty indians to a pack of dogs, which disembowelled them ”because the only thing they need to be women are teats and they can give birth”.

In Panama, as in many other parts of America, homosexuality was allowed — until the conquistadors burst in. That night in 1513, Balboa initiated the land in the punishment of the unspeakable sin of sodomy.

Those were the times of the Holy Inquisition. Times it would seem would never end. In Spain, the Inquisition lasted three and a half centuries. The heresy of difference, in all of its forms, was punished by torture or death in many places in Europe and America. Many homosexuals, men and women, were burned alive. The pyre reduced them to nothing but ash ”so there would remain no memory of them”.

All that’s far behind us, one would assume. But the smoke still rises.

The Holy Family

Rather than ask forgiveness of its victims, the Catholic Church repeats its ancient curses. Recently the Holy Inquisition, which is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, launched from the Vatican a global campaign against homosexual marriage, ”a gravely immoral act that goes against the plan of God and natural law”.

Immediately the high functionaries of the Church in the world echoed the voice of their commander. In Uruguay, Archbishop Nicolas Cotugno declared that ”homosexuality is a contagious disease” and recommended the isolation of all carriers, comparing homosexual marriage to the union of men and animals.

The church is preoccupied with sexuality, and has been for centuries. One Pope after another, it established a rigid barrier between sin –which includes almost everything– and the little we are left for comfort, since we have to reproduce somehow. From the High Pontiff to the last parish priest, there is no man of the cloth who is not a sex expert. Yet as all have taken the vow of chastity, it is hard to understand how they can reach such complete knowledge about an activity they are proscribed from practising.

Reading the last condemnation of the Vatican, one is tempted to ask the celestial sexologists a question or two: If heterosexual marriage is a ”natural law”, why don’t you marry? And if homosexuals are violators of ”God’s plan”, why did God make them that way?

Another specialist in Good and Evil, President George W.Bush, is right along side the Vatican in condemning homosexual marriage and opposes adoption by couples that don’t constitute a normal marriage, ”between a man and a woman”.

The president, who is not a Catholic, has made this papal crusade his own. It isn’t the first time Bush and the Pope have discovered they are birds of a feather. Both enjoy direct communications with the On High, albeit on different telephones. On certain occasions, like the war against Iraq, they receive contradictory orders. On others they form a common front. They have been, and remain, united on such sacred matters as the promotion of sexual abstinence among youth and the battle against abortion and the use of contraceptives.

With his habitual broad-mindedness, Bush in these areas is in harmony not only with the Vatican theocrats but with fundamentalist Islamists as well: puritans united will never be defeated. And whenever these issues come up before the United Nations, Bush has voted common cause with his sworn enemies: Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and even Iraq, before it received the hurricane of missiles launched in the name of God and of oil.

Eppur si muove

The cross and the sword are raised high as in old times. And with good reason: in the last few months, homophobia has come under serious attack. Everywhere, that which the Pope calls ”deviant behaviour” and ”the legalisation of evil” is spreading.

Earlier this summer, the United States Supreme Court handed down a historic sentence striking down as unconstitutional a Texas law that criminalised homosexuality. The ruling effectively voids similar laws in twelve other states.

Meanwhile in New Hampshire, for the first time in the history of Christianity the faithful and the clergy of the Episcopal Church elected a bishop who is openly gay. Massachusetts is on the verge of legalising homosexual marriages. In Vermont, the Civil Register already recognises the legitimacy of these unions. In Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, since early this year homosexuals can marry. Homosexual marriages are now permitted in Belgium, as they are in Denmark, Holland, and Sweden. Versions of legal marriage exist in Norway, Finland, Iceland, France, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, and certain regions of Spain. And in the city of Buenos Aires, for the first time in Latin American history, the union of couples of the same sex are now celebrated.

All of these acts of ”grave immorality”, of liberty and mental health, are not gifts: they are victories, the result of the persistent battle of gays and lesbians against discrimination and violence.

Among all the pleasures worthy of hell, homosexual love is still the most ferociously repressed. Machismo and armed stupidity have disguised this atrocity as normality and converted it into custom.

In more than 70 countries, homosexual relations are illegal. In many, the punishment is prison. In some, whipping or the death penalty. In others, where the death penalty is not legal, paramilitary squads and sick fanatics perform their purification ceremonies: they sweep the streets torturing, mutilating, and murdering those who merely by existing constitute a public scandal.

Gays and lesbians are damned on earth and in heaven. Five years ago the prime minister of Malaysia proclaimed that they are a threat to national security. The door is kept locked in the Great Beyond, as well. As I heard the mother of a young lesbian say, ”What hurts me most is that we won’t be together in paradise.”

But all of these scorned men and women, these rare souls, are generating some of the best news history has ever seen. Armed with the rainbow banner, a symbol of human diversity, they are overturning one of the most sinister heresies of the past. The walls of intolerance are beginning to fall.

This affirmation of dignity, which dignifies us before everyone, arises from the courage to be different and the pride of being so.

As Milton Nascimento sings :

Any way of loving is worth it, any way of loving is worth loving

(Cualquier manera de amor vale la pena, cualquier manera de amor vale amar.) (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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