Re: blind faith
Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Tue, 09 Dec 1997 13:47:50 -0800
AntiUtopia wrote:
> We have pretty good documentation for textual claims of the resurrection, but
> pretty spurious
> documentation for textual claims of the homosexuality of Christ.
Well you also don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. (Reminds
me of how much fans of INXS kept dwelling on why Michael Hutchence would commit
suicide when in fact, given how his body was found, it obviously was simply
autoerotic asphyxiation.)
Given the amount of historical research we have on the Guy (and you can throw in
the religious bias as well, too), what else are you going to make of "the first
Romantic in human history," as Oscar Wilde referred to him as. And this is where
you get into the crux of just what exactly constitutes a gay man, or a bisexual
man for that matter. As I've said before, I think homosexuality has a lot more
to do with "homo" than it does "sexual," and I think bisexuality has a lot more
to do with "bicameral" than "sexual" also. Christ acknowledged his anima and
fully integrated it into his persona making him a very psychologically balanced
individual, and he was pretty much the world's first most high-profile feminine
man who acknowledged love for his fellow MAN rather than simply wanting to
compete with him for a job/girlfriend/whatever in a Darwinistic way. (I both
defend Darwin AND the teachings of Christ. So I'm not what you'd consider a
card-carrying "Christian.") And his legacy is nothing but what has been
stereotyped as "feminine" attributes throughout time: Love, compassion,
sensitivity et al.... Kazantzakis' treatment of the question of Christ providing
the logical extension to the question in The Last Temptation of Christ: WHAT
would have happened had he married and settled down, rather than hanging out
with societies outcasts? Would he have committed suicide like Seymour? And why
didn't Seymour and Muriel produce progeny before he died?
It's just as reckless to suggest that Christ was a heterosexual as it is to
suggest that he was a homosexual, because outside of palling around with Mary
Magdalene there really IS no evidence, so the point is moot. (Had they produced
progeny would have helped the evidence needed that he was heterosexual, but not
really, because history is littered with gay men who married and had children.
And this is where you get deeper into the Holy Blood/Holy Grail territory as far
as the secrets and legends of historical evidence is concerned.) Asexual
celibacy is probably more accurate, because he had studied enough of the Eastern
masters to realize that "desire" is what needs to be overcome to avoid
suffering. And when you take sexuality out of the equation of your relationships
with others, be they male OR female, you suddenly free yourself to, yes, be able
to "love" EITHER gender.
What isn't moot is the fact that he demonstrated attributes 2000 years ago which
only until the last hundred or so years have been acknowledged as necessary
psychologically healthy ways for males to interact with other males and females
too. This is why Christ as an icon would not/has not ever seriously been
discussed as having been female. His significance is pretty much based on his
gender and the "expectations" of his gender then, as it is still now, and
wouldn't have had the impact had he been female.
Malcolm