Towards a Gay Communism

by Mario Mieli

  In the eyes of the greater part of so-called ‘normal’ people, heterosexuality goes together with procreation, while homosexuality is associated with vice and prostitution. It is commonplace that a bad woman is both a whore and a lesbian. The scornful conception of transvestism serves as a link between prostitution and homosexuality. And the ‘invert’ is an evil individual who does dirty things and seduces children in public gardens or third-run cinemas.9

  When a famous person such as Pasolini, for example, is brutally murdered by a young hustler, society opens its surprised eyes to this contradictory phenomenon hidden with it (and this is the only real connection between homosexuality and prostitution, leaving aside the prostitution which many transvestites are forced into). It finds that there are all these ‘delinquent’ young boys, who of course are really heterosexual – ‘It’s obvious that this Pelosi [the killer of Pasolini) can’t be a queer; if he did that kind of thing, it was simply because he was hungry …’ – but who sell themselves for a few thousand lire and a plate of spaghetti to homosexuals in search of a bit of friendly company.10 In reality, of all the present expressions of the homosexual ghetto, none is so profoundly akin, so evidently conforming to the heterosexual society, as this parasitic and violent form of hustling. Perhaps this is why, to the eyes of ‘normal’ people, these so-called ‘heterosexual’ male prostitutes are so easily unnoticed. And in this way there passes unnoticed, too, one of the modes of exploitation that the heterosexual society inflicts on us gays.

  The Anti-homosexual Taboo. Its Origins

  Freud already felt the need to take into account ‘the fact that inversion was a frequent phenomenon – one might almost say an institution charged with important functions – among the peoples of antiquity at the height of their civilisation’.11

  As a result of historical and anthropological investigation, the Danish psychiatrist Thorkil Vangaard came to recognise the universal presence of homoerotic desire. Robert J. Stoller, for his part, writes:

  In other circumstances of time and place, contrary to what happens in our Western society, a homosexual act may be an important assertion of the individual’s male identity, rich in the sentiment of a proud masculinity. Vangaard and Karlen relate cases where the homosexual act is used formally, publicly and in a religious context so as to transmit virility from man to boy and establish bonds of honourable virility between adult lovers.12

  Géza Róheim described the customs of some Australian tribes among whom initiation rites and circumcision were accompanied by homosexual relationships between adults and young boys.13

  Clellan Ford and Frank Beach stress the fundamental role that homosexuality plays among several peoples in North Africa, New Guinea and Australia. Marise Querlin has studied homosexual behaviour among certain North American tribes already mentioned earlier by Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, and similar behaviour among the indigenous inhabitants of Siberia. Malinowski described the severe repression of homosexuality among the Trobriand people of northeastern New Guinea.14

  Finally, Freud also noted how, already in his time, the pathological standpoint of homoeroticism had given way, in scientific thought, to the anthropological.15

  As John Lauritsen has summed up, homosexuality flourished throughout the ancient world: among the Scandinavians, Greeks, Celts, Sumerians, and throughout the ‘Cradle of Civilisation’, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the Nile Valley, and the Mediterranean Basin. The art and literature of these peoples offer testimony to an unhindered acceptance and often exaltation of same-sex love. The anti-homosexual taboo that marks our Western civilisation would appear to be of Hebrew origin. The ancient Hebrews were the first people in history to condemn homosexuality.16

  The Bible records two celebrated episodes of mass homosexuality, that of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19–20) and that of the Benjaminites (Judges 1 9–20). According to Pietro Agostino d’Avack,

  In both cases, the inhabitants of Sodom, being informed of the arrival of the two angels, and the Benjaminites of Gibeah, apprised of the arrival of the Levite, tried violently to grab these visitors away from those who had extended hospitality to them (Lot in the first episode, the Ephraimite in the second), with a view to satisfying their libidinal desires; and on both occasions the hosts, out of respect for the sacred duties of hospitality, did not just refuse, but actually offered instead their own daughters. In one case as in the other, the Lord’s revenge was visited in the most terrible fashion on the impious. Sodom and Gomorrah were completely destroyed by fire and brimstone, while the people of Gibeah and the other Benjaminite tribes who had run to their aid were confronted and annihilated in battle, at the Lord’s command, by the other tribes of Israel, their cities and villages all abandoned to the flames, and men and animals put to the sword.17

  The destruction of Sodom is ascribed by the Bible to Abraham’s time, which means approximately 2,000 bc. And yet it seems clear that the anti-homosexual taboo was not imposed on the Hebrew people at so early a date.

  An explicit prohibition on homosexuality is contained in the books of Moses. Mosaic law prescribed that men who had sexual relations with one another should be put to death, so that the chosen people should differentiate themselves from the practices of those around them. ‘You shall not lie with a man as with a woman: that is an abomination’.18 In line with the divine punishment for the ‘crime’ of the people of Sodom, the capital punishment imposed by Hebrew law for this offence was that of burning.

  It is more than probable, however, that Hebrew legislation against homosexuality did not in fact date back to the time of Moses, the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Palestine. It seems rather that the legislative portion of the Mosaic books was compiled predominantly during the Babylonian exile (sixth century bc), when the activity of priests and Levites was especially intense.

  In his pamphlet Religious Roots of the Taboo on Homosexuality: A Materialist View, John Lauritsen explains why he inclines to the opinion of those scholars who see the anti-homosexual taboo among the Hebrews as having been imposed during the Babylonian exile. Earlier, homosexuality was not only accepted, it was actually vested with important religious functions; according to Lauritsen, male prostitutes followed a sacred vocation and practised their art in the Temple.19

  We still do not know what precise motivations led the ancient Hebrews to condemn homoeroticism. John Lauritsen shows how unconvincing are the various hypotheses that scholars have put forward to explain this. For my part, I believe that only a deeper study of ancient Hebrew history from a homosexual standpoint will enable us to put forward some valid explanatory hypotheses. This work, however, still lies in the future.

  What is clear is that there was some kind of connection between the preservation of Hebrew national tradition, particularly that of monotheism, and the rejection of homosexuality. The Hebrews ended up by identifying homosexual ‘practices’ with the religions and customs of the heathen; the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in their eyes, was provoked by the wrath of Jahweh at an alien people for their alien customs.

  Some passages from the Old Testament link homoeroticism with the cult of Ashtoreth (the great female divinity of the northern Semitic peoples, who most probably represented the fertilised soil, and was the patron of sacred prostitution) and her heavenly spouse Baal, a cult which the Hebrews were particularly inclined to ‘decline’ into, particularly given their common habitation and mingling, in the land of Palestine, with the Canaanites (Solomon, for example, built altars to Ashtoreth, which were subsequently destroyed by the reforming king Josiah). It would seem that the Canaanite cult of Baal was linked with certain ‘obscene practices’ (Numbers XXV). For me, it was also interesting to discover how, among the southern Semites, the corresponding figure to Ashtoreth, ‘Athar, was a male divinity – a fact which has led some people to hypothesise the remote existence of the cult of an ancient divinity of androgynous character, only later differentiated into a goddess among the northern Semites and a male god among their southern r
elations. But these are only hypotheses, and there may be others that are more convincing.

  What is certain, however, is that by way of Christianity, the Jewish condemnation of homosexuality has been handed down to us.

  But in what sense can one speak today of an anti-homosexual taboo?

  According to Freud, ‘the meaning of “taboo” . . . diverges in two contrary directions. To us it means, on the one hand, “sacred”, “consecrated”, and on the other “uncanny”, “dangerous”, “forbidden”, “unclean’’.’20 Now in our society homoeroticism is certainly considered uncanny, dangerous, forbidden and unclean, a fact which is not difficult to establish. But can we also say that it is somehow treated as sacred and consecrated, something from which it is necessary to keep a respectful distance?

  On the one hand, we have seen how originally, before it was persecuted, male homosexuality was something sacred among the Hebrews, being practised in the Temple in the form of prostitution, also how the Hebrews later came to connect homosexuality with the cult of a divinity worshipped by other peoples. The Judeo-Christian moral and religious tradition has marked Western society down to today. In a certain sense, therefore, we can say that today the anti-homosexual taboo conceals the originally sacred character of its object. Later on, ancient Greek culture also became a profound influence on Western civilisation, and among the Greeks, homosexuality certainly did originally have a sacred character, as well as being both erotic and chivalrous.21

  Today, on the other hand, even when so many people no longer believe in the devil, homosexuality still keeps its diabolical connotations, as ‘vicious’, ‘perverted’, ‘dishonourable’, ‘unclean’ and ‘revolting’. It remains a ‘sin against nature’, and as far as the Church is concerned, any sin is inspired by the devil. But the diabolical precisely serves as a medium between the sacred and the ‘unclean’. ‘It is precisely this neutral and intermediate meaning – ‘demonic’ or ‘what may not be touched’ – that is appropriately expressed by the word ‘taboo’, since it stresses a characteristic which remains common for all time both to what is sacred and to what is unclean: the dread of contact with it’ (Freud).22

  In dealing with homosexuality, heterosexual society suffers from what Freud described as a ‘taboo sickness’, an obsessional neurosis (as society is obsessed with the presence of us gays):

  As in the case of taboo, the principal prohibition, the nucleus of this neurosis, is against touching; and thence it is sometimes known as ‘touching phobia’ or ‘delire de toucher’. The prohibition does not merely apply to immediate physical contact but has an extent as wide as the metaphorical use of the phrase ‘to come into contact with’. Anything that directs the patient’s thoughts to the forbidden object, anything that brings him into intellectual contact with it, is just as much prohibited as direct physical contact.23

  Heterosexual society prohibits or at least rejects gay relations, erotic contact between bodies of the same sex, and in the same way it rejects any contact with open homosexuals, those who have not been forced into hiding, pushed into corners or excluded from society. It condemns, moreover, any idea or fantasy with a clear homoerotic content (so that gay thoughts and fantasies, especially those of heterosexuals, must remain secret). Many heterosexuals have decisively repressed their own homosexual desire, and even when this repression is not completely successful, they at least conceal their gay fantasies from others as something intimate and essentially shameful, which is not to be communicated.

  But the anti-homosexual prohibition owes its strength and its constricting character specifically to the relation with its unconscious counterpart, the latent and never eliminated homosexual desire, that deep necessity that cannot be consciously recognised: ‘the basis of taboo is a prohibited action, for performing which a strong inclination exists in the unconscious’ (Freud).24

  We shall see later on how homosexual desire continuously shifts around, with a view to overcoming the barrier that forces it to remain unconscious, and seeks surrogates for the forbidden ‘object’, substitute ‘objects’ and practices that then also enter into the complex of phenomena that can be interpreted by the concept of sublimation of the gay desire (or else its conversion into pathological symptoms).

  The anti-homosexual taboo is all the more severe in as much as the prohibition directs energy against a very strong inclination that exists in a latent state: for heterosexuals, homosexuality always represents an ‘instinctual temptation’.

  The inherent prohibitions on homosexuality are transmitted from generation to generation, by the tradition represented in the authority of society and parents, and despite the fact that every single individual newly experiences, in the course of development, the congenital homosexual impulse in all its potential fullness. The gay desire remains very strong even among those peoples who have respected the anti-homosexual taboo for thousands of years. If this were not so, then the taboo would have no reason to be maintained with such rigour.

  The society in which we live displays an ambivalent attitude towards the prohibitions which the anti-gay taboo imposes on it. At the unconscious level, both individual and collective, nothing could be more pleasant than to transgress it – but people are afraid. And fear proves to be more powerful than the impulse to enjoyment. According to Freud, again, ‘the desire is unconscious . . . in every individual member of the tribe just as it is in neurotics’.25 Reversing this statement, we might say that the population is neurotic because the desire to transgress, i.e. in this case to transgress the sexual Norm, is unconscious in each individual. For liberation, we need to learn to openly enjoy such transgression.

  The manifest homosexual who has transgressed the anti-gay taboo becomes taboo himself, ‘because he possesses the dangerous quality of tempting others to follow his example: why should he be allowed to do what is forbidden to others? Thus he is truly contagious in that every example encourages imitation, and for that reason he himself must be shunned’.26 It is out of envy that we gays are pushed aside, insulted, derided and censured. In this way people try to exorcise and push aside the gay desire that our presence makes surface in society, forcing everyone to confront it. If other people did not punish and censure our homosexual transgression, they would end up wanting to do the same things as we, the transgressors, do. And it is true that, if the example of one person who has violated the anti-gay taboo should lead others to follow, then disobedience to the prohibition would spread itself like a ‘contagion’.

  The objective of the revolutionary struggle of homosexuals is not social tolerance for gays, but rather the liberation of homoerotic desire in every human being. If the only result were that so-called ‘normal’ people should ‘accept’ homosexuals, then the human race would not have recognised its own deep homosexual desire, it would not have come to terms with the universal presence of this and would go on suffering without remedy from the consequences of this repression that is itself an oppression. We revolutionary homosexuals, today, seduce others to imitate us, to come with us, so that together we can undertake the subversion of the Norm that represses (homo)eroticism.

  Today, the persistence of the anti-gay taboo provides a sure and potent weapon in the capitalist arsenal: it serves to stupefy people, to maintain a neurotic and submissive ‘calm’. The taboo transforms one of the basic erotic tendencies into a source of horror and guilt, denying every human being the possibility of erotic relations with half the population, dividing people and keeping them apart, preventing love between man and man and woman and woman, and making a fundamental contribution to perpetuating the opposition between the sexes. People ‘know very well’ (even if they don’t have a clear understanding) that they have homosexual impulses. The system can then play on their guilt, severely prohibiting homosexuality, which it stamps with the mark of infamy. ‘Normal’ people feel guilty because, underneath it all, they know that they are a little queer themselves. But the sense of guilt is the umbilical cord that chains the human species to capital, trying to s
trangle it. If we want to live, we must sever this monstrous bond once and for all.

  Today, the great fear that surrounds homosexuality doesn’t live on air alone. Deep down inside, everyone can smell the blood that has been shed over millennia to keep the anti-homosexual taboo respected and feared (through castration, imprisonment, exile, torture and death). When they look into themselves, everybody knows that they are potentially condemned to the flames.

  The Persecution of Homosexuals Over the Centuries

  The repression of homosexuals today, for all its harshness, is only the echo of a horrendous persecution perpetrated for thousands of years. As we have just indicated, the anti-homosexual condemnation of the Hebrews was spread throughout the West with the rise of Christianity.

  Already at the end of the republican era in Rome, a Lex Scantinia27 was issued against ‘male abuses’ between free citizens, providing for a fine of 10,000 sesterces for the ‘guilty’ parties.28 It is clear, therefore, that Christianity already found in Rome an environment that was favourable to the punishment of homosexuality (but for what reason?). In the time of St Paul, this fine was raised to the confiscation of half a man’s estate.29 During the decline of the empire, legislation developed a severity that was previously unknown. In the 4th century Christianity became the official state religion. Shortly before, in 300, the Council of Elvira had decreed that ‘sodomites’ were ineligible for the Christian last rites. In 342 a decree of Emperor Constantine imposed the death penalty for the ‘crime of sodomy’. A later legal code, that of Theodosius, Valens and Arcadius, condemned homosexuals to be burned alive in the square (390). For centuries, the punishment of burning, explicitly recalling the destruction of Sodom, was the penalty most frequently provided for in legislation.