Sodom

A Homosexual Viewpoint

R. H. Crowther

It is, of course, no news that homosexuals belong to a class usually relegated by legal and other judgments to the depths of opprobrium. What could become news, however, is a diligent exposure and examination of the long series of moral estimates by which the homosexual, and homosexuality, have been forced into their modern social category. To be complete, such an examination would need to be as many-sided as the evolutionary and cultural aspects of human history, and this would require a very extensive commentary. For the present, let us look at only one aspect, that suggested by the title of this article, and that also which is the most dominant in 20th Century Judaeo-Christian civilization.

Books of both the Old and New Testaments ailude a number of times to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Quite a number of other pre-Christian cities and tribes of the Middle East are also on record for licentiousness but, perhaps because of their startling contrast in character to the profound religious theme which surrounds them, and also perhaps because of their dramatic destruction, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah have become synonyms of sexual abandon and irregularity throughout the Christian world-so much so that the "crime against nature" is commonly referred to as "sodomy", and the character of the ancient sodomites has become considered by many as typical of homosexuals as a general class.

Sodom appears to have been situated, at a time about 2500 B.C., in the general area between the Salt Sea and the Mediterranean, in the land of Canaan, and its evil repute is first mentioned in the 13th Chapter of the Book of Genesis. The Hebrew people of that era considered the Canaanites generally,

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