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Gay Peoples Chronicle

August 1986

Publisher

Cleveland Gay Peoples Press, Inc. A Non-Profit Corporation

Editor-in-Chief Charles Callender

THESE BE BE THY THY JUDGES

Writers

Charles Callender Rob Daroff Patricia Duncan Dora Forbes Mark Kroboth Casimir Kuczynski Sebastian Melmoth Martha Pontoni Phil Arula's Cat

Ruling that Georgia's sodomy law is constitutional, the Supreme Court dealt a bitter blow to the hopes of gay people. Sodomy laws are the most visible symbols of our oppression and provide its most fundamental and demeaning legal base. Since 1961, when Illinois legalized gay sex, 23 state legislatures have abolished sodomy laws and three state legal systems have overturned them. Twenty-four states still cling to these laws. Congress refuses to let the District of Columbia abolish its sodomy law with the ironic result that Representatives are periodically arrested in D.C. restrooms (ussually turning out to have sterling records of voting against any measure helful to gay people.[

In the 24 states where gay sex is still illegal religious bigots--fundamentalists, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, and reactionary members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy--have enough power to prevent legislative action. Gay people hoped a Supreme Court ruling against Georgia would speed up dismantling the remaining sodomy laws through the federal court system. The Court ruled against us, and the task is going to be much more difficult.

The anger of gay people with any politial awareness (in Cleveland, something less than 2% of the community)--is obvious, evident in the demonstrations occuring in larger cities and in statements by lesbian and gay leaders. God knows our anger is justified. We urge all the gay people who share it to take to heart Virginia Apuzzo's warning that it is imperative we decide what we are going to do with it. Yet the Court's ruling also offers some unexpected grounds for hope, mingled with fears of an even grimmer füture.

We can find some hope in the anger filling Justice Blackmun's eloquent dissenting opinion, to which three other justices subscribed, predicting an inevitable reversal of the majority ruling. This is anger expressed by straight people, on our behalf; and many of them are angry.

That the five justices who ruled against us voted their own homophobia seems obvious. Many observors have described their arguments as perfunctory. Does this give

cause for hope? Oddly enough, yes. We think it represents progress. Twenty years ago they could have invoked statements by psychiatrists, describing us as a menace to the society that should be repressed. While religious arguments persist, and affect the Court, homophobia dressed out as pseudoscience is dying.

Instead, the five justices had to rely on history, using the very weak line of reasoning that laws against sodomy have a long history. They do, although not as long as the justices think. Slavery, witch-burning and the use of torture in the judicial process have even hoarier roots. This argument was harshly criticized by the press. And their history is flawed.

Chief Justice Burger's individual opinion, naively going into detail that exposes his very old-fashioned homophobia but shocking scholarly errors, showed these

flaws most clearly. It deserves the scorn heaped upon it by the Plain Dealer.

Ancient Rome, the Chief Justice claims, made "homosexuál sodomy a capital crime. Nonsense! Roman attitudea were expressed succinctly in a letter written by Mark Antony asking "what possible difference can it make where you place it or in whom?" They are also evident in the poem by Catullus printed on page 5. Sodomy laws were entirely foreign to Roman civilization, as were laws outlawing homosexuality. John Boswell has effectively analyzed Roman sexual practice and exploded the myths obscuring it; but Chief Justice Burger clings pathetically to the myths, unable to face the unpalatable facts.

Burger is even naive enough to give two citations supporting his statement that the Romans made homosexuality a capital crime. One citation is the Theodosian Code 9.7.6, in A.D. 390, making it a crime to force or sell males into prostitution. This no more outlawed homosexuality than a measure regulating heterosexual prostitution could be described as forbidding_heterosexual sex. Here Burger relies on Bailey's interpretation of the statute, whịch Boswell points out was flawed by his using a fragmentary text.

As his other piece of evidence for Roman attitudes, Burger cites Justinian's code, classing homosexuality with adultery as a crime deserving the death penalty. Dating from the sixth century A.D. the code of Justinian is Byzantine and tells us nothing about Roman law.

To rule in favo "homeu

of sodomy

Burger says,

ennia of moral teachings." As gay people, we respond that these teachings are in no sense moral and that the rabid homophobia underlying sodomy laws is less than a thousand years old.

Burger's longing for the past emerges in his quoting Blackstone's curiously hysterical rantings about homosexuality as "a crime not fit to be named" whose "very mention...is a disgrace to human nature. Well, Blackstone didn't like women, either. This reveals more about Burger--and about Blackstone--than about homosexuality. Our love no longer dare not speak its name. We've been shouting it for two decades, and will not stop doing so. Burger's fondness for pseudohistory engenders nostalgia for a past that never existed.

III

It is important for gay people to recognize the weakness of the majority's argument. We should also note a strain running through much of the reaction from straight people: intense embarrasment with the ruling. Sometimes quite explicit, as in the New York Times and Washington Post editorials, it is always there at some level, even in interviews with Georgia law enforcement personnel. Enlightened straight people--maybe most straight people--find this country's sodomy laws embarrassing, just as they are embarrassed by fundamentalists, creationism, and other irrational holdovers from the past.

Here, again, is cause for hope. Except for the disquieting thought that many Germans probably found the Nazi movement intensely embarrassing.

Photographer & Cartoonist Rob Daroff

Columnists Peter Beebe Shana Blessing

Jym Roe

The Health Issues Taskforce

Production Bbaff Rod Caldwell' Charles Callandet Rob Daroff Mark Kroboth

Circulation Manager Bob Downing

Circulation Staff Ray Davis Bob Downing Jim Price Nick Santoni

Youngstown: Bill Smith Columbus: News of the Columbus Gay & Lesbian Community Business Manager Martha Pontoni

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