Litnet

Louis Crompton se oevre, " Homosexuality and Civilization", is ‘n goudmyn vir sielkundiges, historici, en sosioloë, geïnteresseerd, en betrokke by hierdie sigbare onderwerp vandag in die Westerse wêreld. Die geskiedenis hiervan behoort veral vir die denkende Afrikaner te interesseer weens sy Calvinistiese tradisie. Die volgende het juis plaasgevind in Calvinistiese Holland.

Die volgende sitate illustreer die onderwerp onder bespreking:

In the eighteenth century the Dutch Republic challenged England´s proud boast that it was the freest country in Europe. Despite clerical opposition, Spinoza published biblical studies challenging the very bases of Christianity, and many of the most radical authors of the Enlightenment found publishers in The Hague or Amsterdam. Superstition too seemed to have abated: the last burning for witchcraft had taken place in 1595; such trials did not end in England until 1712 and in France until 1718. Given this record of toleration, it is an irony of history that the most deadly persecution of homosexuals known to us before Hitler took place in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century.

The persecution of 1730 provoked a reign of terror that lasted in the Netherlands for more than a year. The spectacle of men hanged, burned, and drowned in city after city spread fear far and wide. The anxiety of apprehension, the strain of standing trial, the agony of torture, the pangs of death on the scaffold or in the dungeons of prisons where men sentenced to the stake were first strangled, the indignity of seeing friends´ bodies treated as refuse to be burned or thrown into the sea; all these were part of a repulsive national ordeal. Nowhere, however, were the horrors of the panic so potently realized as in the small village of Faan, in the northeastern province of Groningen.

Hierdie vervolging van homoseksuele in Holland het plaasgevind, en ‘n hoogtepunt bereik, teen ‘n agtergrond van ekonomiese ondergang na die vorige luisterryke periode, vandag  bekend as Holland se "Goue Eeu". Die teoloë van daardie tyd het gereken dat die ongekende welvaart wat die land ervaar het het ook gelei tot die sonde van sodomie, en dit was die rede vir die land se ekonomiese ondergang. Homoseksuele is uitgekryt as "sataniese vuilgoed", en sodomie beskou as ‘n Roomse sameswering om ‘n einde te bring aan die Reformasie in Nederland. Die tekste van die Ou Testament, nl dié van Levitikus, was gebruik as basisteks vir wette om straf mee uit te deel (die doodstraf deur verbranding).

Soos in die geval van Venesië in the vyftiende-eeu was Nederland ook ‘n suksesvolle kommersiële "empire" wat ‘n skielike katastrofe gevrees het op die skaal van Noag se vloed. Hierdie mite was die basis vir hierdie diepliggende vrees en paranoia. 

The gevolg van hierdie ongehoorde brutaliteit het opslae veroorsaak in die internasionale pers:

News of executions on this scale made an international sensation. French, English, Irish, German, and even colonial American newspapers were full of the scandal and reported the arrival of fleeing refugees. The English press, hardly favorable to sodomites, nevertheless accused Dutch tribunals of procedures that might jeopardize the innocent. The states of Holland sent formal protests asking the English government to suppress the newspapers, but the charge that stung most sharply - that Dutch courts imitated the Inquisition in their use of torture - could hardly be denied, since this was routine in sodomy cases.

Hierdie gee vir ons ‘n smakie hoe ons Cavinistiese broers in Holland met homoseksuele in die verlede gewerk het. Danksy die groot filosofiese strominge van Frankryk (Voltaire en Diderot), Skotland, Engeland, Duitsland en Frankryk, bekend as die "Eeu van Verligting en Rede" , het die Europese wetgewers geleidelik die onsinnigheid begin begryp om straf uit te meet volgens Bybeltekste, en die Code Napoleon het die doodstraf vir homoseksualiteit die finale nekslag gegee.

Pieter Redelinghuys