Gay Theological Journal
Submitted by Heather on September 20 1999 at 16:34:06
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The Gay Theological Journal, which reprinted my essay "For Those Who Persecute You" in its May/August 1998 issue, finally got around to sending me a copy of the issue (the editor, after fruitlessly searching the office, ended up sending me his own copy, which I thought was rather nice). The journal, in case you haven't seen it, prints articles on homosexuality and religion (mainly Christianity), and includes one of the best round-ups of gay religious news that I know of. Needless to say, I read through the issue with an eye for any items that might be relevant to pedophilia, and my search was duly rewarded. The "Epistles" section included five letters about the story of the centurion and his servant, including that information that gay Catholic writer John McNeill devotes four pages in his book Freedom, Glorious Freedom to discussing the story. Even more interesting was Mark E. Pietrzyk's "Gay Rights and the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Countering the 'Slippery Slope' Argument." This turned out to be the article I've been seeking for a year and a half: an account of the history of Jewish and Christian attitudes toward intergenerational sexual relationships. Pietrzyk, after recounting the argument sometimes put forward by opponents to homosexuality, that legitimizing homosexual relationships will lead to the legitimization of pedophilic relationships, goes on to say: "What I wish to do in this paper is to expose the falsity of the slippery slope argument which links homosexuality to pedophilia by confronting fundamentalists on their own grounds. For the historical records indicate that biblical law and the Judeo-Christian tradition, far from condemning pedophilia, often condoned sexual relations between adults and children." Pietrzyk's argument isn't the most sophisticated I've seen – he basically supports his thesis by defining as "child" anyone who is a child under present-day standards – but his article is filled with tons of interesting facts, including this one (which answered a question I'd long had): "In 1918, the Catholic Church finally raised its permissible age for marriage from fourteen for males and twelve for females to sixteen for males and fourteen for females." I'm going to see whether I can get permission to reprint the article, but I thought I'd mention the journal here because, quite aside from its occasional references to pedophilia and pederasty, it's an excellent (though slanted) resource for anyone interested in religion and homosexuality. Heather |