Die inspirasie vir sekulêre wette aangaande homoseksualiteit in Italië gedurende die dertiende eeu kom direk van die Bybel, en soos Louis Crompton in sy oeuvre, "Homosexuality and Civilization", dit stel:
New secular laws invoked the authority of scripture, the church fathers, canon law, and papal edicts. The first municipality known to have adopted the death penalty for sodomy was Bologna in 1259. Rome itself followed in 1363. So did Cremona (1387), Lodi (1390), and Milan (1476) in Lombardy; Padua (1329) and Bassano (1392), Carpi (1351) and Parma (1494), and Genoa (1556).
The city of Treviso, near Venice also included a peculiarly macabre provision, directed at woman as well as men, in its statutes of 1574:
If any person, leaving the natural use, has sexual relations with another, that is, man with man, if they be fourteen years old or more, or woman with a woman if they are twelve or more, by committing the vice of sodomy.....the detected person, if male, must be stripped of all his clothes and fastened to a stake in the Street of the Locusts with a nail or rivet driven through his male member, and shall remain there all day and all night under reliable guard, and the following day be burned outside the city.
In Venesië tydens die stad se magtigste en welvarendste periode van sy geskiedenis is homoseksualiteit beskou as bedreiging vir die sekuriteit van die staat: The Council of Ten affirmed that sodomites put the city in jeopardy, since "God destroyed and ruined by his judgement cities and peoples in which these men lived. In 1458, in a statement that confused biblical chronology, the country declared that God "brought down his wrath upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and soon thereafter flooded and destroyed the whole world for such horrible sins".
Wat dan was die gevolg van hierdie nuwe paranoia teenoor homoseksualisme en die versterking van sekulêre wette wat hulle inspirasie uit die Bybel ontvang het?
"Earlier boys and men who played a passive role had often gone unpunishes. But in 1424 the council began to perceive young boys as willing accomplices, for money or affection, and ruled that boys between the ages of ten and fourteen should, if convicted, receive at least three months in jail and twelve to twenty lashes. Children, like adults, were tortured. One youth of sixteen had his genitals severely mutilated and his arm so mangled that it needed to be amputated".
"The Venetian authorities repeatedly discovered members of the clergy in the sodomite subculture but were vexed that they lay outside their jurisdiction. Men in holy orders could not be punished ( apart from sentences of exile) except by church authorities, who ordinarily declined to degrade clerics - a measure that would have brought them within the reach of Venice´s severe secular penalties. One senses that ecclesiastical bodies were uncooperative despite indignant protests from the council because public pilloryings or executions would have reflected on the morals of the church, which preferred to confine men to monasteries on bread and water. Nevertheless, we do hear of priests who suffered the death penalty. In their case this meant suspension in a wooden cage from the campanile in Saint Mark´s Square, where they were left to die of starvation or exposure".
Die brutaliteit waarmee die sekulêre staat van die Italiaanse stede homoseksueles vervolg het, wette baseer op Bybeltekste, was onbeskryflik.
Die Bybel kan ook aangekla word vir die goedkeuring van die volgende misdade teenoor die mensdom:
Genocide: Die goedkeuring van genocide van die vyande van die Israeliete in die Ou Testament.
Anti-Semitisme met sy tweeduisend jaar geskiedenis op die basis van ‘n teks uit die Nuwe Testament: Op julle en julle nageslagte ... met verwysing na die Jode ("moordenaars" van Christus) ...
Pieter Redelinghuys
Kommentaar
Die inspirasie vir die brutale marteling van homoseksuele kan direk aan die deur van die Bybel gelê word, en berus op Bybeltekste. Derglike tekste word nie gevind nie in die skrifte van Confucius, of in dié van die Buddhisme nie.
Volgens Louis Crompton in sy "Homosexuality and Civilization" het die Portugese Inkwisisie en sekulêre outoriteite soos volg te werk gegaan: "Torture, applied in about a sixth of the cases, was so severe as often to exceed the prescribed penanties for the acts the man was accused of. The commonest technique was the pulley which involved the tying of the unfortunate´s wrists behind his back with leather straps. He would be slowly lifted to the ceiling of the torture chamber by a pulley and then dropped, his fall ending just before he hit the ground, a procedure that would painfully dislocate most of his joints.
These ordeals were recorded in great detail - the fact that the scribes were paid by the page encouraged minuteness. Screams, pleas, and prayers were set down verbatim. Of the youngest of the sixty-nine sodomites whose sufferings are described - a ten-year-old named Brás Nunes - we read: " Restrained with straps and ropes, constantly calling upon the Holy Virgin Mother for compassion, he was tied and placed on the slab and raised up to the pulley, at which point he was dropped".
Die brutaliteit waarmee die Spanjaarde die Amerindiese Indiane behandel het, is goed gedokumenteer, en byna onbeskryflik: " An early episode, first recounted in the writings of Pietro Martire d´Anghiera, an Italian serving in Spain as councillor of the Indies, is the most notorius. In the 1516 edition of his "Decades" he tells the story of Vasco Nunez de Balbao, who in 1513 had arrived at the court of a native king in Panama. When Balbao found the king´s brother surrounded by men "smooth and effeminately decked" who engaged in sodomy, he had forty of them "given to a prey to his dogs". The scene was memorialized in the famous engraving published in Frankfurt in 1590 as an illustration in Théodore de Bry´s monumental collection of accounts of the New World entitled "Historia Americae". The plate shows elegantly clad Spanish soldiers posing superciliously while their hunting dogs sink their fangs into the limbs and throats of the naked Indians who writhe in agony before them. The fierce mastiffs haunted the European imagination as striking images of Spanish barbarism in the Americas and found a place in twentieth-century Mexican murals protesting the cruelties of the conquest.
Balbao´s savagery did not shock other Spaniards, however, Antonio de la Calancha, rector of an Augustinian college in Lima in 1622, praised Balbao, calling his giving the Panamanians to be savaged by his digs a "fine action of an honorable and Catholic Spaniard.
En wat was die posisie dan in Genève, stad van Calvyn, geleë op die hemelse Lac Lèman?:
" A trial of 1555 reveals the thinking of the Calvinist judges. A young French printer had attacked his roommate, who aroused the house by crying out. The jurists - all religious refugees from France were consulted. The first declared that "this sin ranks among the most execrable, prohibited by both devine and human laws, such that the Lord showed the rigor of his judgment---by burning five cities for it". He argued that the man deserved to die but, since the attempt did not succeed, he might be given a lesser penalty. The second, quoting Genesis and Saint Paul, recommended burning. The third agreed, since under Roman law an attempt was equivalent to the act itself. The man was hanged.
Wat ek persoonlik so skokkend en ontstellend vind van hierdie storie is die besef dat die moderne sekulêre mens nie langer die wyse raad van "die Heilige Skrifte" - "die Woord van God", eer nie, en nie langer gehoor gee aan wette gegrond op Bybeltekste om homoseksuele te martel, verbrand en hang nie.
Piete Redelinghuys
Pieter
Tesame met "The Criminal History Of The Papacy", en die een hierbo, is die twee briewe 'n insiggewend en interessante uiteensetting. Dankie daarvoor.
Jaco Fourie
Hoekom die Bybel belas en die werklike aandadiges aan al die boosheid verontskuldig, sal net die patetieke Godsdiens ondermyners weet ... dis nes drank en vuurwapens gedurig die skuld dra en die sielsieke wat daaraan vergryp, onskuldig wegstap ... dis hoe maklik dit is; suip, pleeg jou wraak en vonnis die bottel ... so ook pleeg ander hul anderhaat deur 'n Bybel as God te verheerlik en die mensdom dan deur hul regsinnige (gereformeerde met 'n klein g) en Spirituele Intelligensie daarmee te onderdruk ... ja Pieter; as jy billik was sou jy jouself ook van die mensdom distansieer want dis eintlik net mense wat sulke booshede pleeg en dan die skuld op iets anders plaas ... ek is nie bereid om die anderkant van die munt - die ware ongelowiges se gru in die geskiedenis - te skets nie, aangesien ek ook nou genoeg gehad het van sulke gebrek aan konsekwent wees deur ekstreme en fundamentele die sogenaamde ateiste ... Cornelius Henn
Beste Cornelius,
Dankie vir jou terugvoer daar jy seker die enigste christen is wie hom verwerdig het om 'n kommentaar te lewer. " Hoekom die Bybel belas en die werklike aandadiges aan die boosheid verontskuldig" ..... Lees weer die opskrif van die artkel: "Misdade teenoor die mensdom met oorsprong in Bybeltekste". Hierdie Bybel tekste het die groenlig gegee vir die vervolging en moord op homoseksuele, anti-semitisme, en volksmoord. Derglike tekste staan nêrens in die geskrifte van Confucius, die Buddha of die Bhagavad Gita nie, tekste wat aanleiding kon gee tot hierdie gruweldade teenoor die mensdom nie.
Hierdie kennis is seker vir die meeste christene so skokkend (as hulle enige sin vir reg en kwaad het) dat die enigste wyse om dit te hanteer, is dié van ontkenning. Net soos jy vir Jan Smuts al die skuld wil gee vir apartheid - maar dit gaan nie werk nie.
Terloops, my bedoeling is nie soseer om godsdiens te ondermyn nie - maar christene moet die implikasies van Bybeltekste op die denkwyse en handeling van mense verstaan. (Daar was in die onlangse verlede 'n moordsaak in die VSA op 'n homoseksueel waar die advokaat vir die verdediging gerefereer het na tekste in die Bybel wat die dood van homoseksuele goedkeur.)
Die vergrype van die verlede kan nie weggewens word nie.
Beste groete,
Pieter Redelinghuys