I write this as a member of the species 'homo sapiens'. Do you know what sapiens means? We define ourselves as the 'wise' being--or 'discerning' or 'sensible'. I confess that 'sensible' sounds to me like an apt descriptor for a shoe.

But 'sapiens' distinguishes us from those nasty and brutish Neanderthals. You wouldn't want to be a Neanderthal, would you?

Isn't such a judgment racist? Carl Linnaeus chose the term sapiens in 1758--to describe himself. Over the years, there has been continuing discussion whether Neanderthals are a part of our species or another species altogether.

Such a discussion may strike you as quaint and archaic. Indeed, the people who specialize in this (sapiologists?) speak of 'archaic humans'. Yet the discussion is as relevant for our current time as it could ever be. Who is included in us?

If you look at the very complicated genealogical trees of human descent, at least as we conceive of them now, it becomes clear that any kind of line one draws is simply a construct. We can decide that those 'creatures' were not part of us.

But the ways in which we make such distinctions are precarious. Consider the image above. Does that look like a 'something' that is another species from 'human'? I can say that it doesn't look like me. But I find it very hard to say definitively: this is not a human face. It looks human to me.

We may have a 'basis' for saying that such a being does not look like us, but the 'basis' for such a statement is one wholly created by us. We may make distinctions on the basis of posture or cranial size. Yet we must not forget that the distinction between 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' culture is literally based on the distinction between Shakespeare (who literally had a high brow) and the Maori (who literally did not). 

If you think "this is crazy," you are right. But consider this example:

The fine print tells us that the woman on the right is a 'deficient' mother and the one on the left is a 'devoted' one. That judgment is made solely on the basis of their cranial structure. The 'science' that gave us such information is called phrenology and is, fortunately, completely discredited today.

Scientists speak of an 'anatomically modern homo sapiens' as dating back at least until 196,000 years ago. Yet isn't such a phrase simply a fancy way of saying 'people who look like us'? And isn't the problem that looking 'like' us has always been in flux?

Human beings have a very long and complicated history of the very concept 'looking like us'. The tribe that lives 'over the hills' might look different to the people who are part of the tribe on this side of the hills. Probably most of us would look at both and think "I can't see any difference."

Although it is now politically incorrect, people often used to say (now they just think) things like "all of you white people look the same." White people, in contrast, think "not at all." But this is a very common problem. It's the problem of not being able to see the subtle differences among the people we perceive to be categorically different from us.

I have a friend who taught at an elite boarding school that had many Asian students. She is able to tell, just by looking, who is Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean. I'm sure that I could learn to make such distinctions. But I'm not quite sure I want to make those distinctions.

As people reading this blog know, I live in Scotland. At the moment, I am in Spain enjoying the sunshine, not a strong feature of Scotland. Visitors might come here expecting that "all Spanish people look alike," but of course the reality hardly that. There is no clear 'hispanic' look--a strange concept imposed by non-hispanics.

One 'proof' of this is that many 'hispanic' people in the United States 'pass' for 'white'. But that should tell us that this distinction about who 'looks hispanic' is based on almost nothing.

The problem of people who look 'different' is not simply an American problem, nor even a problem of skin colour. Scottish people have tended to look different from English people. There is enough intermarriage at this point that such distinctions are not so pronounced. But they are often still there.

A very fine Scottish doctor told me that his counterparts in England probably suppose that he carries a knife and may be dangerous. While he said that with a smile, the point was clear enough. Scots don't quite look like English people. And English people often consider themselves superior to Scots.

Despite the talk of a United Kingdom, it is not quite so united. Simply think of the way in which the Irish are seen (by the way, only Northern Ireland is part of the UK; Ireland is its own country). The Irish have long been seen by the English as inferior.

Perhaps the best way to make this point is that the Irish were not welcomed in the United States when they emigrated there in the 19th century. When I would try to explain this to my students, they did not know what to make of this. After all, Irish people are white. What's the difference?

But then you have to explain that the Irish were not the only 'white' people treated as 'inferior'. So were the Italians and the Germans (who, when they arrived in the US, were hardly seen as 'the master race'). So were the Swedes and the Poles.

We assume that the reason there are problems accepting black and hispanic people in the US are simply due to the colour of their skin. But it has never been simply that. Racism comes in many forms and skin tone is only one variant on that.

To be sure, skin tone may be--particularly now--the most significant variant. Most 'white' people think the Irish and the Germans and the Swedes also count as white people. But a moment's reflection on this should make it clear that this assumtion is really odd. For Russians are also considered 'white'. But aren't they Asians? 

The term 'white' as we know it today has been cobbled together in a way that makes virtually no sense, except as a way to exclude others. Going back to Spain, 'hispanic' people are taken to be 'non-white' but Greeks and Italians are considered 'white'. What?

How different that is from thinking that Neanderthals aren't part of us?

Peter Wehner's recent article "The Cost of the Evangelical Betrayal" (The Atlantic) has the following subtitle: "White, conservative Christians who set aside the tenets of their faith to support Donald Trump are now left with little to show for it."

The usual way of reading this 'betrayal' is that white Evangelicals set aside their religious convictions to vote for Trump because he was the guy who was going to support their political agenda. Trump, so it would seem, embodies virtually everything that Evangelicals say they are against. But the real question is: "who has betrayed whom?"

I think Trump is exactly like so many Evangelicals I know. He will do anything necessary to get and to keep power. So will they. The idea that Evangelicals support Trump despite his continual lying, support of dictators, racism, and willingness to pay off anyone who has 'dirt' on him is misleading. These are qualities that Evangelicals admire.

Wehner, a self-described Evangelical, writes: "Much of the evangelical movement, in aligning itself with Donald Trump, has shown itself to be graceless and joyless, seized by fear, hypocritical, censorious, and filled with grievances." He goes on to give some qualifiers to that statement, such as "it's not true of all evangelicals who are Trump supporters." But I think it's much truer than Wehner himself wants to admit. I realize that such an admission is painful. But this is the reality.

Toward the end of his article, Wehner quotes an unnamed pastor of a large church on the 'Pacific Coast'. That pastor says that "for decades Hollywood has portrayed conservative Christians as cruel, ignorant, greedy, and hypocritical. For 20 years I have worked, led, and have sacrificed to put the lie to that stereotype."

What he says next, though, sums it all up. "Sadly, I now realize that stereotype is more true than I ever knew. It breaks my heart. . .  . [Trump's] everything that I've been trying to say isn't what the church is all about. But, sadly, maybe it is." I would simply remove the term 'maybe'.

The reality is that Evangelicals have shown their true colours. I grew up in the Evangelical world and my own experience is that the Evangelical institutions are largely motivated by fear. They are petty, hypocritical, and suspicious of any actual difference. They may talk about being open, diverse, and welcoming. But the pressures of conformity for anyone who is 'different' are enormous.

Wehner writes "Trump has engaged in a bromance with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, the worst persecutor of Christians in the world." Were American Evangelicals really concerned about Christians being persecuted in some other part of the world--except, perhaps, as an instance of the kind of persecution that they are convinced they receive in the United States--that might mean something. 

But Evangelicals admire dictators and their institutions tend to be run as quasi-dictatorships. They are highly top-down organizations which have various kinds of standards those in the institution are expected to follow. At almost all Evangelical schools, there are doctrinal statements. But, at some point, you begin to understand that there are many other things outside the doctrinal statements that are forbidden to believe.

Unfortunately, you often discover these precisely when it is too late--you have already something that is not allowed. Years ago, the philosophy department at Wheaton had invited someone to speak in chapel. But, once the president of the school heard about the invitation, the department had to 'uninvite' him because his views--in no way contrary to the official doctrinal statement--were contrary to the unofficial doctrinal statement.

That was during an era in which the president of the school officially said--I am the person who defines what the doctrinal statement means. I believe he said--a little more exactly--the board of trustees and I define what it means. But, given that the board of trustees was largely composed of people whose experience and training is in the business world, the president was really the person who 'decided'.

I think I may have previously mentioned that the provost, Stan Jones, who had absolutely zero formal theological training, assumed that he knew much more about the Bible and theology than any of the people who had PhDs in such subjects. I also discovered that he assumed he knew far more about philosophy than did I. How does one argue with someone who both thinks he knows more than you do but in reality knows very little? When I say 'argue' I don't mean 'disagree', I mean debate something that each of you is competent to debate.

It is no surprise that younger people find very little attractive in many of the kinds of Christianity they see on display. That is certainly true of the Evangelical world, which is rife with scandals. But Roman Catholics have had to deal with continuing scandals regarding abuse of children. As a Belgian friend of mine put it, "we trusted the church to provide a moral example for our childen and they betrayed us." No surprise that Catholic churches in Belgium are largely empty.

White Evangelicals in the United States do not support Trump despite him being racist but because of it. Did you notice any black faces in the photo? Of course not. Evangelicals were among those who attacked Obama for being a 'foreigner' or a Muslim. But their racism goes much deeper. I wish there were some way to say that "it's not really so bad." But it is.

One way of seeing that reality is by trying to imagine the phrase "Black Evangelicals." It sounds very strange. I can still remember a black woman theologian saying to me "I didn't realize that Evangelicals largely believe what we believe regarding Christianity."

But that wasn't quite true. Aside from agreeing that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, white Evangelicals also believe that black people need to know their place. And stay there. Gay people need to know their place too, though the reality is that, as a white male, my place is not nearly as precarious.

In the Evangelical world, everything is fine as long as you talk like a white, cis-gendered male. The moment you start talking like a Puerto Rican or African-American, or Asian-American, you are suspect. If you are one of those combined with being trans or gay, you are utterly excluded from the conversation.

Let me be quite precise. There is a certain way of thinking and acting expected in the Evangelical world. You can be accepted as a black woman, as long as you talk like a white Evangelical man. The moment you deviate from the script is the moment that you come under suspicion.

That is how racism in the white, American Evangelical world works. Evangelical colleges love to boast about the number of 'minority' faculty members they have. But those faculty members need to know their place. And stay there.

By the fourth of July of 1969, the Stonewall protests were ‘officially’ over. Fifty years later, the New York Police Commissioner offerred an official apology for the actions of the NYPD back in 1969.

The challenges facing the LGBTQ+ community have never ended, though the situation has improved in many ways. However, one way in which the situation has gotten worse is that, back in 1969, it was perfectly acceptable to be openly hostile to homosexuals. Today, people may have the same degree of hostility (and, sometimes, even more), but most people are smart enough to keep quiet. Employers mandate ‘diversity training’. Certain things cannot be said.

But those things can still be thought. Discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community must be covert. You can discriminate just as badly, but you need to do so in other ways. You can't say “we don’t hire gays.” But you can refuse to hire anyone you suspect to be gay. And you can find some ‘performance issue’ to fire them.

A Wheaton policeman told me that, yes, they did target black people driving west on Roosevelt Road. At least back then, that was the principal route for drugs to the western suburbs. When I asked about racial profiling, the policeman pointed out that there were many traffic laws that most people don’t know about. All the police need to do is follow a car for a little while waiting for an improper lane change. If the police think they're ‘justified’ to suspect you might be carrying drugs, they can search your car. Especially if you're black.

The phrase ‘American Way of Life’ arose in response to communism. But the very idea of the American Way of Life really goes back to the founding of the United States.

It’s a way of life in which all people are supposedly equal. Except if you’re black (since you’re only 3/5^th human), a woman (since you had no vote), a native American. We are taught in school that the Puritans came to the new world to have religious freedom, but it's not mentioned that their religious freedom included oppressing anyone not like them. That has not changed.

The idea that the ‘American Way of Life” is open to all is a delusion. Native Americans were systematically oppressed and forced to accept treaty after treaty after treaty—none of which were followed by the European colonists. Black Americans were almost all brought to the ‘city on a hill’ as slaves. Once they were ‘freed’, there were numerous ways to make sure they were never really free. They were promised ‘reparations’ in the form of forty acres of land and a mule. For a very short period, that happened. But, when African-Americans started to thrive economically, that success was always snuffed out by white people, sometimes by killing but more often by subtler means.

When we talk about systematic oppression, we mean things like ‘redlining’, in which certain neighborhoods were off-limits to black people. We mean the federal government making sure that black people couldn’t get the typical thirty-year mortgages that white people could get. In the US, the quickest way to wealth accumulation was owning a house. Making sure that it would be next to impossible for black Americans to own a house meant that they would always be renters and never able to build up personal wealth.

As a white person (and one with blond hair and blue eyes), I always worry about trying to make my struggles as a queer man sound like they are anything like those which confront blacks. I would not be red-lined; I’ve been able to get a mortgage. You can’t see that I’m gay by the color of my skin.

Yet I think Stonewall and the Black Lives Matter movements address similar concerns. The first of them is simply the right to be, to exist. We noted that homosexuals were in effect criminals. Black people in the US are usually seen by white people through the same lens.

Historically, when people in the LGBTQ+ community tried to make their voices heard, they were often silenced. In 1953, an organization tried to publish a magazine called One. It’s first issue featured a story about homosexuals in heterosexual marriages. Even though the issue was wrapped in brown paper, the postal service alleged that the magazine was ‘obscene’ and refused to deliver it. Five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the postal service was obligated to deliver the magazine—hot off the press from five years ago!

I remember my father (who grew up in Chicago) telling me that Mayor Daley (the senior) was effective because “he kept the blacks in their place.” To this day, I’m not quite sure as to the extent with which my father approved of that. But ‘keeping people in their place’ has always been essential to the American Way of Life.

Native Americans need to be on reservations where they are neither seen nor heard. Black people need to live in the ‘other’ part of town. It is debatable whether the gay guys moved to Boystown in Chicago (yes, it’s really called that) because they wanted to belong to a community or whether they didn’t feel welcome in other places. But the American Way of Life depends on making sure everyone knows their place—and stays there.

Stonewall must be seen as being in line with protests against the assumptions of the American Way of Life. ‘Family values’ has long been code for ‘straight people’. The American Way of life may perhaps be finding some room for gays but only with reluctance. Gay marriage was never simply about allowing gays to get married; it was also about allowing them to become part of the American Way of Life.

But the challenge for the LGBTQ+ community to become part of the American Way of Life is of an entirely different magnitude than that of black Americans to become part of the American Way of Life. How could the American Way of Life find room to include people that the American Way of Life was established to keep in their place?

Today, as we celebrate Independence Day, we have to take a hard look at what we are really celebrating. In effect, we are celebrating the independence of white people of means to be free. Poor white people were not initially allowed to vote, nor were any women, nor were people of color.

I find it heartening to read that, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 83% of Americans are not proud to be Americans at the moment. I have long been part of that group, often taking refuge in my Canadian citizenship (though recognizing that Canada has a long history of oppression too). 

The difficulty—of a huge magnitude—is that, as long as the American Way of Life is the norm, people who don’t ‘fit’ are going to be excluded. To fix that, the American Way of Life itself needs to be scrapped. Perhaps that means rewriting the Constitution. At the very least, keeping people in their ‘place’ means that only some people have true ‘independence’.

Is the United States of America ready to be a place where African-American, Native American, and LGBTQ+ lives are treated as equal in everyday practice?

Don't hold your breath.

Some of those picked up and then released by the police responded with mocking salutes in return. There were people throwing pennies at the police. A policeman pushed a transvestite and she hit him with her purse! A woman struggled with the police for at least ten minutes and she cried out "why don't you guys do something?" Sometimes you just need a woman to take charge.

That's when things got going. In trying to restrain the mob of people outside of Stonewall, the police started pushing people around. While the crowd had swelled to over 500, the picture above shows the street kids who slept in Christopher Park.

You might think: street kids--basically just a bunch of criminals. And at a bar! What would their parents think? But, even today, the reality is that there are many homeless teenagers (that is, children) whose parents have thrown them out of the house for being gay.

My former parish, All Saints Beverly Hills, has a very active ministry with kids connected to the Youth Center on Highland who are homeless because their parents don't want them. The Youth Center, though, only provides activities for the kids during the day and evening. At night, they sleep wherever they can on the streets. 

We can only begin to imagine just how difficult things would have been for homeless LGBTQ+ kids in 1969.

Not surprisingly, those kids were among the first people who pelted police with garbage, rocks, bottles--whatever they could find. You have to keep in mind that they really didn't have anything to lose. You also have to keep in mind that they were fighting for the closest thing to home they had.

And it was likely that Stonewall was also the main source of community for many there that night. To be brutally frank, back in those days, even 'liberal' All Saints Beverly Hills was just as unwelcoming--even to wealthy gays who had positions of respect--as virtually all of the churches of the time. It's a very sad and disturbing legacy, but one that we must not forget.

As you might imagine from a bunch of queers, they started dancing like the Rockettes and singing: 

We are the Stonewall girls

We wear our hair in curls

We don't wear underwear

We show our pubic hair

The police responded with violence. They rushed the chorus line and began hitting people with their clubs. You know just how dangerous people kick dancing can be, right? I mean, they were probably way more threatening than any hardened inmates at Alcatraz. Police have the right to protect themselves from gay dancers!

The police chased the queers down Christopher Street to Seventh Avenue. But the mob was much larger than the police and soon the police were being chased by the mob around the crooked streets (the Village has a maze of streets that is quite unlike the rest of New York City). Reports say that the queers were shouting "Catch them" as they chased the police. Gotta love the idea of the 'criminals' running to catch the police!

Meanwhile, back at the Stonewall Inn, almost everything that could be destroyed had been destroyed. Although it is still not definitively settled as to exactly who had caused the damage, I find it very hard to think that the gays would have destroyed their own home. Much more likely is that the police had done this with a clearly malicious intent. 

Unbeknownst to the patrons at Stonewall, the purpose of the police raid was to close the place permanently. One has to appreciate the irony of the contrast between the intent to close down Stonewall by the police and the way in which it has become a beacon of light for the LGBTQ+ community.

By about 4am, everything had quieted down. Most people left the streets and went home. I take it that the street kids headed, well, back to the streets. But that was only the first round. During the day on June 28, many people came by to see the remains of the Stonewall Inn. Quite a bit of grafitti appeared on what was left of Stonewall. One grafitto read "They Invaded Our Rights." Many others proclaimed the power of the LGBTQ+ community.

What sums it all up for me is the one that simply read: "We are open." You could read that as a business statement. "Despite the recent, um, difficulties, we have not been closed down."

Or you could read that as saying: "Despite your attempts to destroy our community, we are still open to anyone who wants to join us." That, at least as I see it, has always been the message of the Pride Parades. "We welcome anyone who wants to join us. Yes, we are a bunch of queers and misfits. But, if you think you'd find a home here among us, you are always welcome." 

If Jesus had appeared in New York City during the 60s, you can be sure he'd be hangin at the Stonewall Inn.

Given that the Stonewall Inn was raided about once a month, what made the raid on 28 June so different from all of the rest, in term of the result that night and the remarkable long-term effects? Why did this particular raid engender such a strong reaction?

Asking this question is significant because 1969 was a very different era. Today people across the world can watch protests unfold 24/7 on cable news. Even more significant, we are able to bypass any media 'filter' and see photos and videos of events posted by almost anyone. And protestors can phone or text or tweet to let all of their friends know what's happening in real time.

In contrast, even if you lived in New York and read the mainstream papers, you would not have realized that something big was happening. The big newspapers gave very little attention to the story and what they wrote was 100% from the viewpoint of the police.

The first story published (in the New York Times) was very brief. It was titled "Four Policemen Hurt in 'Village' Raid" and began with "Hundreds of young men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 A.M. yesterday." So much for the supposed 'liberal' bias of the Times!

All of the major newspapers reported the story exclusively from the perspective of the police. That meant that the 'riots' were portrayed as 'violent uprisings' by gay people, who (as we noted yesterday) were criminals.

Since gays could be arrested as criminals, their names and their crimes would be reported in the 'police blotter'. "Mom and Dad, I'm gay" is a cakewalk compared to being outed in the Times. You would likely lose your job and certainly your reputation.

Exactly two weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court made it illegal to treat LGBTQ+ employees differently from other employees. Up until that time, only in about half of the states were you protected. In the other half, you could be fired (or never hired) simply because you looked or sounded gay. Of course, the employer was not required to tell you that your supposed 'gayness' was the reason for being first.

In contast to the major New York newspapers, the story was given significant coverage front in The Village Voice. There were at least two reasons for that. One was simply that the Voice's office was just a few doors down from the Stonewall Inn, making the story hard to ignore. Another was that Howard Smith, a reporter for the Voice, ended up being trapped inside the bar, while Lucian Truscott (another reporter for the Voice) was outside.

Truscott's version of the story privileged the police perspective and was decidedly anti-gay. While it may sound shocking to us today, the Voice did not allow same-sex personal ads. So it was not quite so 'liberated' as one might think.

However, Smith's version gave 'voice' to the protestors. He pointed out that the protestors were simply “objecting to how they were being treated.” They were tired to being treated like criminals.

Michael Fader explains the feeling behind the protests in such a moving and forceful way that he is worth quoting at length:

We all had a collective feeling like we'd had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn't anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration. . . . Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us. . . . All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren't going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it's like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that's what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we're going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren't going to go away. And we didn't.

And that's how the movement began. One might say that it's how most movements of protest begin. "We've had enough of this shit. We may have taken it before, but we're not going to take it anymore. From now on, we demand that we be treated like human beings, rather than as animals and criminals." As Sylvia Rivera put it: "You've been treating us like shit all these years? Uh-uh. Now it's our turn!"

Movements start and then start to be taken seriously when it becomes clear that 'business as usual' is no longer possible. Once freedom is in the air, it's hard to put it back into the bottle.

But there is something even more significant about Stonewall in terms of becoming a movement. As someone out walking his dog that night noted: 

The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted. . . but the fairies were not supposed to riot. . . no group had ever forced cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill."

Moral of the story: Don't Mess with Fairies. The police are no match for them. Besides, fairies can riot and still look fab.

Today marks the fifty-first anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall 'event' in Greenwich Village that lasted until the 3rd of July 1969. Almost a week's worth of protests. On the 4th of July 1969, American Independence Day, the Mattachine Society held its 'Annual Reminder' of the oppression against what we now call the LGBTQ+ community in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

The term 'riot' is often used to describe Stonewall, though one could term it an 'uprising' or a 'rebellion'. Note how even the terminology makes it sound like these folks were 'criminals'. In most people's minds, they were criminals. Their criminality is the focus of today's post. I will be writing about a different aspect of Stonewall each day through July 4th.

Simply the way in which the Stonewall Inn operated tells you quite a bit about how the LGBTQ+ community was viewed by society. The bar was owned by the mafia and had no liquor license, which meant that each week a police officer picked up an envelope of cash (called 'gayola' rather than payola) as a bribe. At the door, there was a peephole through which the bouncer examined everyone entering. You needed either to be a regular or 'look gay'. The goal was not to keep out the 'straights'; the goal was to watch out for the police.

You might wonder: was the place run by the mafia because no one else would have been willing to take on the perpetual danger of running a bar for gays that included dancing (which, to turn the old Evangelical joke around, might lead to sex)? Or did the bar operate without a license because, well, who was going to give a liquor license to a gay bar? Deep philosophical questions. 

Despite the gayola, police raids on Stonewall happened about once a month. They were such a regular thing that there was an established signal--turning on all of the lights--to warn that the police were there. Dancing and any kind of 'touching' were immediately to cease. As it turns out, there had already been a raid on Stonewall only four days before the one that turned into something famous.

The whole bit about the peephole makes it sound like a speakeasy. Except that Prohibition ended in 1933. In 1969, it was quite legal for people 18 and over to drink alcohol. However, it was quite illegal--in all but one of the states--for gay people of any age to have sex. So much for the 'Land of the Free'.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Paragraph 175 was used by the Nazis to send thousands of gay men to the camps. But those men, once 'liberated' by American and Russian soliders, were often sent back to prison since homosexual acts of virtually any kind were still criminal. Just looking at someone in a way that suggested sexual attraction was a crime. You didn't need to perform an actual sex 'act' to count as a 'criminal'. Just the desire made you criminal enough.

The draconian additions to Paragraph 175 were removed by the East Germans in 1950 and homosexuality was decrimininalized in 1957. Meanwhile, in 'free' West Germany, those Nazi prohibitions remained in full force. About 50,000 men were sent to prison between 1945 and 1969, when Paragraph 175 was severely limited (though not removed). Only the re-unification of Germany resulted in its full removal in 1994.

In case you're thinking--"at least we're not like the Germans"--it should be pointed out that Oscar Wilde did two years of hard labor for his homosexual crimes. You might say "oh, but that was the 19th century! We're modern now." You'll have to excuse me for mentioning Alan Turing, who was prosecuted in 1952 for his homosexuality. The Brits used a bonafide Nazi technique to 'cure' him: castration. Turing died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning, which may have been accidental but the official ruling was suicide. You can hardly blame Turing.

It's hard to believe that Turing, who was so brilliant and influential in helping end WWII, could have been treated so badly. But one must not forget that he was 'just a criminal' and so he could be treated any way 'society' dictated that criminals should be treated. Fortunately, the Brits did to their senses and officially 'pardoned' the approximately 50,000 men who had been prosecuted in the UK for homosexual crimes. But that was only in 2017.

The situation was hardly any better in the United States. Prior to 1962, sodomy was a felony in all fifty states. For those not familiar with such American criminal terminology, the maximum prison sentence for a 'misdemeanor' is a year, whereas a felony can put you away for a lifetime. It was the pioneering state of Illinois (where Wheaton College is located) that first did away with laws against 'consensual sodomy' (gotta love that terminology--I'm sure they do at Wheaton).

That meant that it was still illegal in forty-nine states and remained so for about a decade. Slowly, state-by-state, that began to change. In 2003, the Supreme Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and thus in the remaining states (quite a significant segment of American society). In passing, it's worth mentioning that Virginia only made sex among unmarried people legal in 2005. Just think of all those fornicators who weren't just immoral but criminal.

One might think that the 2003 ruling would have been the end of criminalizing homosexuality. But one would be wrong. The list of the various states that slowly made changes to their laws in accord with that 2003 ruling would be far too long to include here. Yet the fact that Maryland only appealed its sodomy laws in May 2020 tells you something. By the way, that repeal doesn't take effect until October 2020. Only a few months to go!

In my posts to follow, I will be considering the intersection between the LGBTQ+ community's fight not merely to be accepted but no longer to be considered to be as criminals with the current Black Lives Matter struggles. While there is always a danger in equating things that are not exactly the same, it is often helpful to see similarities.

I remember trying to explain to wealthy, mainly white and suburban college students that one of the reasons why so few students at wealthy, white, suburban high schools were caught possessing drugs was that there were few, if any, police officers present to catch them. In contrast, students at poor, black, inner-city high schools are often highly policed and monitored.

Heavy police presence at inner-city schools is an important part of the current move to 'defund the police'. But consider simply how the supposedly neutral 'comparison' sets things up. The adjective 'inner-city' is code for 'predominantly black'.

Few white people would answer affirmatively a survey question that bold-facedly asked: "do you think that word 'black' implies 'criminal'?" But the connection in their mind is likely not that far from the connections between the words 'homosexual' and 'criminal' back in 1969.

The legal firm Clyde & Co (or should that be "Bonnie & Clyde"?) has sent me a letter by email designed to shut me up. This is exactly what I mean by 'covert abuse'--hostile action to suppress current employees and those former employees who have been 'oppressed' out.

Dear Sir

University of St Andrews ("the University")

We have been consulted by the University in connection with comments made by you on your blog

(http://apps.bruceellisbenson.com/Blog/) ("the blog").

Under the post headed "The St Andrews Delusion", you make untrue and potentially defamatory comments about the University and members of the University's staff. The comments contained in

that post have the potential to cause serious reputational damage to the University and various members of staff mentioned (whether mentioned by name or by reference to other details which makes those individuals identifiable).

The comments made by you, which are currently being considered by the University as the subject of a potential action, include the following:

• "St Andrews is one of the most abusive places for the LGBTQ+ community one could possibly imagine"

• "Anyone who works there knows that St Andrews thrives on covert abuse"

• "One is left wondering whether the views on same-sex partnerships of the two colleagues responsible for determining who was on the 'long list' were irrelevant"

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of the potentially defamatory comments which have been made by you.

The University is currently considering its legal rights in relation to this matter. However, in order to avoid the need for further legal recourse at this stage, we invite you to confirm, within 7 days, your

agreement to the following:

1. You will immediately remove the "The St Andrews Delusion" post from the blog;

2. You undertake not to repeat the comments made in that post to any other party, via your blog or via any other medium;

3. You will provide to the University, and the members of its staff mentioned in the "The St Andrews Delusion" post, a written apology and confirmation that the allegations made by you in that post are false and without foundation (the terms of such apology to be approved by the University).

If we do not hear from your within 7 days to confirm your agreement to the above points, we shall take the University's instructions on further action.

We emphasise that we act only for the University in this matter. We recommend that you obtain independent legal advice on the terms of this letter.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully

Clyde & Co (Scotland) LLP

There is much moaning among American Evangelicals about the supposed persecution they are enduring. As always, you can count on Pat Robertson to say something outrageous:

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by an minority in history ."

You might think that such a quotation was invented me, but my imagination just couldn't dream up anything that crazy. Instead, the quotation comes from an interview with Molly Ivins in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (14 September 1993).

But isn't Robertson just a nutcase and an 'exception' to Evangelical rhetoric? Noooo. I can still remember one of my colleagues at Wheaton warning me that Obama's plan was to close down all of the churches. When she said that, I assumed I had misheard. So I asked her to repeat it. Yes, that was exactly what she said.

But do you see the troika that is persecuting Evangelicals? It's the Democrats, the liberal media, and homosexuals. Just to be clear, I don't have any meetings with Diane Feinstein and CNN. I remember the gay organist of one of the churches I've attended saying: "People talk about something called the 'Gay Lobby', but I've never been invited to one of their meetings." Because the gay lobby does not exist.

There is, though, an established anti-gay lobby: it's called Hobby Lobby (I'm not making that up), a chain of hobby stores owned by fundamentalists. The idea that homosexuals somehow have the power over much of anything is kind of quaint. The reality is quite different.

What's interesting about Robertson's quote is that he speaks first of 'evangelical Christians' but then moves simply to 'the Christians'. This is how Evangelicals see themselves: they are the Christians. How do we know this? Because they are persecuted. Alas, ingrained in the story that the Christian Church likes to tell about itself is that it has always been victimized. That story is largely untrue. All four Gospels depict Jesus as an innocent victim, but the reality is that Jesus said and did things that both the Jewish and the Roman hierarchies would have judged to be treasonous. You may remember that there was this Greek guy named Socrates who was put to death for asking too many questions. Governments and religious establishments don't like people like that--that is, people like me who ask too many questions.

The story of Christian persecution has been repeated--over and over. It has its basis in some true events, but it's largely like those movies that have a subtitle that says "based on a true story." Yes. Very loosely based. During Nero's reign, there were persecutions of Christians--and a whole lot of other people. Beginning in 250 CE, Decius began demanding that everyone sacrifice to the Roman gods, something that many Christians were unwilling to do. Some of those people really did get thrown to the lions.

But it is quite untrue that Christians were significantly targeted for persecution from beginning. The idea that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church (Tertullian) is true as mythology but not as fact. Christians has long sought confirmation of their rightness on the basis of being persecuted.

A huge part of the American mythology is that the founders came in search of religious freedom. While it is true that the Puritans came because they wanted to practice Christianity as they saw fit, they had no intention of allowing others to practice Christianity as they saw fit. In that respect, American Evangelicals are following the pattern of the Christians in the Roman Empire. Once Christianity became the official religion, then Christians were able to persecute those they didn't like. Which is exactly what happened.

Stan Jones, the provost at Wheaton, often spoke of the coming threat of homosexuals. According to him, they were going to insist on their rights and, eventually, Wheaton was going to be forced by the federal government to hire 'practicing' homosexuals (I guess they're still working on being gay) or else lose their tax-exempt status. From my perspective, all Evangelical institutions should lose their tax-exempt status.

The president of Wheaton started coming to faculty meetings and warning us that this was going to happen soon. But, he assured us, Wheaton had a big enough endowment to survive the loss of tax-exemption and it would be able to continue on. The board of trustees actually went on record as saying that they would sooner close the college down and sell off its assets than hire LGBTQ+ faculty and staff. By the way, I don't believe that they would actually do that, though the donor base of the college is certainly wealthy enough to keep them going, especially if it is done as an act against Christian 'persecution'. 

Frank Bruni has recently published an article in the NYT that predicts that many colleges will be forced to close because of the pandemic ("The End of College as We Know It?"). Lord knows that the loss of a bunch of Evangelical colleges would be no loss at all. I pity the students who attend some of these, for the quality of education they offer is poor and the tuition is expensive. But a Christian education is priceless.

What Evangelicals want is dominion. That's the term that people like Mike Pence use. American Evangelicals have a very peculiar reading of the separation of church and state. They see it as being for their protection, so that the government can't force them to do anything they don't want to do. For instance, Wheaton sued the federal government when 'Obama care' required that employers provide contraception. As it turns out, Wheaton was already providing its employees with exactly contraception that it objected to being forced to provide. Oops! But, as soon as the government mandated that they do what they were already doing, they protested. Their 'reasoning' was sanctity of life. 

But they don't give a damn about life. The real reason was that they didn't want the government telling them what to do. Because, well, if the government could tell them to provide contraception (even if they were already providing it), then the government just might try to make them hire practicing gays.

In short, Evangelicals do not want the government to have the right to tell them what to do. But they want the right to tell government what to do. They want dominion over every little part of your life. And they will do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal, including supporting a president who 'officially' supports them but whose life represents a complete contradiction to what Evangelicals say they represent. 

Which makes you wonder: perhaps Donald J. Trump isn't so far away from Evangelicals. Trump has always been ruthless in getting what he wanted. So have Evangelicals. All that moral stuff is really just about control.

First, a shout out to Andrew DeCort! I am proud to say that Andrew was one of my students. It is such a wonderful situation when one can teach students and then they turn around and teach you! I have learned quite a bit from Andrew and I am still learning from him.

My thoughts today are ones that I had in mind before seeing the latest version of Andrew's email newsletter (titled "Neighbor Love"; you can find it here: https://andrew-decort.com​). But Andrew's post contextualizes the death of George Floyd in a very helpful way.

One might think that police brutality against black people in the United States goes back to the civil rights era, the Civil War, or even the advent of slavery in the 'New World'. But the reality is much deeper and more complex than that. The problem is that the United States is--and always has been--Zionist in nature.

The structure of Zionism is quite simple. It is the belief that God has authorized a given nation or people to conquer, steal, and kill. The passage that Andrew quotes comes from the Hebrew Bible. It may be one that you have heard or read before, but perhaps you didn't look at it carefully enough. In the passage, Israel is promised 

a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, 11 houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill . . . . 18 Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may go in and occupy the good land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you, 19 thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised (Deuteronomy 6:10b-11, 18-19).

Israel is not merely being given permission to occupy this land filled cities and houses and goods but commanded to do so. To do anything less than conquering, killing, and destroying the people who currently occupy the land would be to go against 'God's will'. 

Is that perverse or what? But it is the very logic that enabled the European colonists to 'discover' the 'New' World and assume that they had a right to it. A great deal of American rhetoric stands behind this 'right'. Although there were formal treaties with the Native Americans, the reality is that these were continually broken and the people of various tribes were wantonly killed.

Black people are defined as 3/5ths human in the US Constitution and so they could be treated as less than fully human. Nothing has really changed since then. The advent of civil rights came about only by continual protest. However, even today, most white Americans do not really think that black Americans are 'just as good' as they are. 

The problem is that true equality is unbelievably difficult to think. To say that "Black Lives Matter" is not to say that white lives do not matter; it is to say that black lives matter just as much as white lives matter. 

But, if you look at that formulation, you can see right away that it's not right either: for it still privileges whiteness--in the same way that the statement "women are just as good as men" privileges men over women. Do you see how difficult it is to think equality rather than merely mouth the words of equality?

The problem with that Deuteronomy passage is that it instructs the Israelites to take what is not theirs and to kill all those who occupy 'their' land. The 'proof' of their righteousness is that they are successful in killing and conquering. It is very difficut to unmask this logic because it is fully self-reinforcing and entirely circular. By the way, Andrew does not mention anything about when Deuteronomy was written. While this is not perfectly clear, it is definitely long after the 'fact' of taking over the promised land. In that sense it is 'a justification after the fact'. Convenient.

But this kind of justification for thinking one is better than other people comes out in so many different ways. American Evangelical talk about 'family values' is really just code for both 'me and my white family' and 'straight people like us'. You queers might be allowed to exist in our little world, but we know we are better than you. Even laws that allow queers 'equal rights' have the same kind of logic that privileges straight people. Again, the logic reinforces itself so strongly and convincingly that it is difficult to put it into question.

Put even more strongly, the logic of inequality or superiority makes it difficult even see that difficulty. I have heard many stories of my students trying to explain these problems of conceiving inequality to their parents over the Christmas break. They just don't get it.

Or is it just that they don't want to get it?

Melvin Carter, mayor of St Paul, was recently interviewed by ABC news and had the following profound words to say in response to the continuing protests that are now taking place across the world:

The anger is understandable. In some ways, the anger is the only human response. The question is: what are we going to do with it. . . . In St Paul, we are asking people for peace, but I'm being very clear. We're not asking people for patience and we're definitely not asking people for pacificism. We're asking people to take the fire, take the energy, that nuclear energy that's consumed our country for this past week, and channel it towards not destructing our community, not being destructive toward our local businesses, but we have to destroy our systemic racism. We have to destroy those kinds of inequities in our community. We have to destroy poverty and homelessness. And we have certainly seen that we have to destroy the legal, the technical; we have to destroy the court precedents, and definitely all of those things written into police union contracts that make it so difficult to hold people accountable when black lives are lost wrongfully.

"In some ways, the anger is the only human response." Many of us have had our fill with patience. "Just wait a little longer. Things will get better. Let God intervene in the situation." But some of us have no more patience. We have had our fill of waiting. The little drips of water that have served as 'justice' have left our mouths parched and aching. We can no longer 'believe' that things will get better or that God will intervene. There is a time for everything the writer of Ecclesiastes says. Now is the time for vengeance--for retribution in which the law is that of an eye for an eye. Lex talionis, baby.

Professors at Wheaton College have long had the knee of the administration on their necks. In my particular case, most of the time I was there the knee was that of Stan Jones. Like many people who are not very that smart and in way over their heads, Stan's main weapon was fear. The goal of his 'administration' was to terrorize the lives of faculty members and, to a much lesser extent, those of the staff. The point was to make professors so afraid that we would never want to say anything that might challenge the status quo.

How, you might ask, did we know that? Well, here's a little clue. If you had enough chutzpah to disagree with Stan the Man in a faculty meeting, you would receive a call at home after the faculty meeting--just about the time when you would be arriving home--warning you that, if you ever disagreed with him publicly again, there would be serious consequences. Yes, he really did call people up and threaten them.

That was one of the more obvious ways in which you learned that everything you said was being monitored and any stepping out of line would be punished. Another way I discovered both of these aspects was when I went up for tenure. I was supposed to have an hour-long meeting with the provost (Stan) and the president (Duane Litfin). These were usually miserable little affairs, but they normally lasted just an hour. An hour of being berated and told that you were unworthy of simply being alive--let alone given tenure. However, when I arrived at the meeting, only Stan was there--along with the chair of my department and the dean. It was a meeting to tell me that there would not be a meeting. Because I had [mistakenly] applied for tenure too soon.

Jones asked me why I had applied for tenure. I replied that I had received a memo from his secretary telling me that I should apply for tenure. Stan didn't like that answer, because it was true. It also made him look bad. Later, I discovered that the worst thing one could do to antagonize him was to make him look bad. He then proceeded to tell me that it was too soon for me to go up for tenure, since I had only been teaching at Wheaton for four years, not seven. I found this puzzling and asked him how he had arrived at that number. He told me that was what the college catalogue said. I then had the temerity to suggest to him that perhaps, just maybe, he should look at my file, which documented that I had been teaching there for seven years (the normal number of years for applying for tenure). He didn't like that either.

What I discovered that day was that Stan had a series of possible 'ways' to block me for going up for tenure. He tried one, then the other, then the other. They were all simply lies. Finally, he realized that this wasn't getting him anywhere, so he changed tacts. He told me: "As your friend, Bruce, I would advise you to wait two years to go up for tenure." You can imagine just how overjoyed I was to discover this newfound sense of friendship. Holy Mother of God! Stan was my friend.

If you know anything about mafiosi, you know that they have different methods of getting, shall we say, 'compliance'. Stan had obviously been studying the Godfather, for there's nothing more menacing than a suggestion from a 'friend' that something might not be such a good idea, you know what I mean? It's up there with "your son, what a nice little boy; sad that sometimes bad things happen to children."

I've already alluded to the fact that my Scottish ancestry inclines me toward being tenacious. I tend to be spunky. So you might imagine that I didn't take my new friend's advice. I vividly remember the day we met on a deserted street on campus when I was supposed to tell him whether I was or was not going to take his 'advice'. It was only 9am, but it seemed like twelve noon when I told him that I was going to let my application go ahead. The look on his face was a mixture of sheer disbelief that anyone would dare to go against him and utter hostility. I knew I would pay for such insubordination.

It was then that the interrogations began--a weekly one-on-one meeting with Stan and another weekly one-on-one meeting with the president. The first meeting with Stan began with a seemingly observational statement that clearly was meant as an accusation. "Rumor has it on campus, Bruce, that you're a flaming postmodern relativist." The enormity of this portrait was staggering. First, I was supposed to respond to a rumour. Since I had not heard anything about this supposed rumour, it struck me as the academic equivalent of the patient who says to the psychiatrist "so I have this friend who believes he's a chicken" and then asks advice for his 'friend'. Without missing a beat, I simply said: "well, rumour has it wrong."

But, of course, that prelude put me into a difficult epistemological space: if rumour has decreed that I was a postmodern relativist, how could I be expected to prove otherwise? It's the postmodern version of the liar paradox. A relativist doesn't believe in truth or morality, so how could I provide an answer Stan could trust, since I (by definition) probably was lying? What made the problem worse was that Stan is rather dim-witted and so trying to use a line of reason with him with any degree of complexity was going to be 'iffy'. There was, of course, the further part that I mentioned before: Stan assumed that, regarding whatever the field was, he knew more than the person with the PhD in it.

However, it's the adjective 'flaming' that was most interesting. If you know a little bit about how Hollywood has traditionally depicted gay men, you'll realize that the 'flaming queen' has been a frequent stereotype. I've already noted Jones's 'academic' interest in gays, though I didn't mention the suspicion of most people at Wheaton of his 'Jonesing' for gays. I think the whole point of the ordeal was that he suspected that I was gay and was out to 'investigate'.

I did get tenure. But that was not the end of the story. Stan's knee was still on my neck. And the ordeal to come was going to be worse.