(NAME-MCE) Linking Anti-Semitism and Homophobia

Sat Jul 11 17:33:15 CDT 2009

Linking Anti-Semitism and Homophobia

A Commentary by Warren J. Blumenfeld

On the 24th of July, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, led by their pastor, Fred Phelps, have scheduled to hold protest rallies in three cites in Iowa: Waukee's Jewish Historical Society, Ames on the Iowa State Campus, and Marshalltown at Marshalltown Community Theater, which is performing the play "The Laramie Project" profiling the life and murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. 

On their website godhatesfags.com, Phelps and company directs their protests against "...the Jews...[who] arrested, falsely accused, prosecuted and then sentenced [Jesus] to death..." and because "God hates Iowa" for being "the first to begin giving $ to little [homosexual] perverts for no other reason then they brag about being little perverts."

Phelps, in his own distorted way, continues the historical linkage of the many clear and stunning connections between historical stereotypical representations and oppression against Jewish people and lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people (LGBTs). I divide these historical interconnections into five basic categories: 1. "Religious Condemnations," 2. "Immature Developmental Stage," 3. "Immutable Biological Types," 4. Abuse and Recruitment of Children," 5. "Domination and Destruction of 'Civilized' Society,"

Religious Condemnations

Throughout the ages, people have cited certain biblical passages to justify persecution and denial of legal protections of LGBTs and Jews, even though there is great disagreement among religious scholars over the interpretation of these passages. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16: Paul proclaims "[T]he Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out, the Jews who are heedless of God's will and enemies of their fellow man,...All this time they have been making up the full measure of their guilt, and now retribution has overtaken the good of all." 

Beginning during the Middle-Ages, Jews were referred to as "agents of Satan," people to be hated and feared. The stereotype of Jews having horns and tails originated around this time and codified in the Christian Gospels in: John 8:44: And Jesus said: "If God were your father, you would love me...[but] your father is the devil and you choose to carry out your father's desires."

Revelation 2:9: Stating that the "Jews...are Satan's synagogue." And Revelation 3:9: Stating "I will make those of Satan's synagogue, who claim to be Jews but are lying frauds, come and fall down at your feet."

In 1526, Christian reformer, Martin Luther, published his book called, On the Jews and Their Lies. In it, he recommended: "First, their synagogues should be set on fire" Jewish prayer books should be destroyed and rabbis forbidden to preach. The homes of Jews should likewise be "smashed and destroyed" and their residents "put under one roof or in a stable like gypsies, to teach them they are not master in our land." In fact, Hitler stated that he was influenced by the theology of Paul in the Christian Bible and the works of Martin Luther regarding the evilness and inferiority of the Jews.

Individuals and organization justify persecution of LGBT people likewise using a number of quotes from religious text as their justification. An example includes Genesis 19, in which the story of the destruction of Sodom is frequently cited to justify condemnations of homosexuality. However, there are a number of problems in interpreting this story as an argument for a divine proscription of homosexuality. Many early Jews and Christians, and some current Biblical scholars, interpret the sin of Sodom to be that of inhospitality toward strangers, and unrelated to sex.

In addition, Leviticus 18:22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination." Some Biblical scholars argue that these condemnations of homosexuality were in fact referring to same-sex temple rituals, a practice that was apparently common among the Greeks, Canaanites, and other neighboring groups, and was not a condemnation of homosexuality, per se-a concept that was largely unknown in ancient times as we know it today.

In the Christian scriptures, four passages in particular have been interpreted as condemnations of homosexuality. Paul is said to have denounced women who were involved in same-sex relationships in Romans 1:26: "In consequence, God has given them up to shameful passions. Their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural." And Paul extended this rebuke to men in the following verse: Romans 1:27: "And likewise also the men, giving up natural relations with women, burn with lust for one another; males behave indecently with males, and are paid in their own persons the fitting wage of such perversion." Timothy 1:10: "For whoremonger, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine." And 1 Corinthians 6:9: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind."

According to the 1995 Roman Catholic Church Catechism: "Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are gravely disordered. They are contrary to natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of love [i.e., children]. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved." 

Immature Developmental Stage

Jews and LGBTs have been represented as an immature developmental stage: Judaism as an intermediate or immature religious stage on the way to Christianity-the advanced, mature faith, and the Hebrew Bible as only a prelude to the eventual coming as Jesus; homosexuality and homosexuals as constituting immature human development. 

In modern times, for example, the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran church published a booklet entitled How to Respond to Judaism, in which the authors characterize the Jewish faith as "inadequate because it does not have Jesus, the Messiah, as the object of faith.

Misinterpreting Darwin's theories of evolution, two American physicians, James Kiernan and Frank Lydston, posited homosexuality and homosexuals as congenital throwbacks to an earlier stage of human evolution, a kind of remnant of the primitive organisms from which humans developed. 

Sigmund Freud concluded that homosexuality was a developmental disorder, a fixation at one of the intermediate "pregenital" stages, which he believed to be caused, at least in part, by an incomplete resolution of the Oedipal complex. In this way, Freud saw gay men as perpetual children.

Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo (German secret police) was the architect of the anti-homosexual campaign. He believed that male homosexuals were congenitally weak both physically and mentally, as he said "like women," and to him would be unable to fight in the German war effort. 

Hitler, and later Himmler, theorized that homosexuality was caused by having "Jewish blood," meaning that somewhere on the homosexual's family tree one would find a Jewish ancestor.

As Christians have attempted to convert Jews, many sectors, from religious ministries, to the medical and psychiatric establishments have attempted to convert LGBTs: from the so-called "X-Gay" religious ministries, to "Homosexual Anonymous," a twisted and cynical co-optation of the 12-Step programs method of recovery, to PFOX (Parents, Families, and Friends of X-Gays and Lesbians-an obvious rip-off of the allies support group, Parents, Families, and Friends of Gays and Lesbians), to the so-called "Reparative Therapists" who promise conversion to heterosexuality if the patient has the required motivation to change. 

Immutable Biological Types

By the late nineteenth century, both Judaism and homosexuality had come to be viewed by the scientific community as distinct "racial types," with immutable biological characteristics-a trend that increased markedly in the twentieth century of the Common Era. 

Darwin and other evolutionists posited essentialist or biological bases (biological determinism) for human behavior. In terms of the Jews, Darwin and others argued that they had a "uniform appearance" independent of their geographic locations. Once seen as largely a religious, ethnic, or political group, Jews were increasingly constructed as being a separate "race," specifically a "mixed race" - a so-called "mongrel" or "bastard" race - a people who crossed racial barriers by interbreeding with black Africans in the Jewish Diaspora.

The French writer, Ernest Renan, stated that the [Jewish or] "Semitic" mind is superficial, while that of the "Aryan" is natural and wise. Later these theories would be expanded representing Jews as subhuman species, and as a symptom of racial impurity and decay.

Discussing "homosexuals," the French physician, Ambroise Tardieu, wrote in 1857 that: "This degeneracy is evidenced in men who engage in same-sex eroticism by their underdeveloped, tapered penis, resembling that of a dog, and a naturally smooth anus lacking in radial folds."

A physician, Perry M. Lichtenstein, published in 1921 that: "A physical examination of [female homosexuals] will in practically every instance disclose an abnormally prominent clitoris." Also the U.S. doctor, Allan McLane Hamilton, wrote in 1896 that: "[The lesbian] is usually of a masculine type, or if she presents none of the 'characteristics' of the male, is a subject of pelvic disorders, with scanty menstruation, and is more or less hysterical or insane." And in 1906, the Swiss physician, Auguste Forel, wrote: "The [sexual] excesses of female inverts exceed those of the male,...and this is their one thought night and day, almost without interruption. [Male inverts] feel the need for passive submission...and occupy themselves with feminine pursuits. Nearly all [female and male] inverts are in a more or less marked degree psychopaths or neurotics."

So by the close of the 19th century, as we can see, homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgender people, as well as Jewish people would be constructed as separate and deficient forms of human racial categories. Sometimes they were even constructed as non-human life forms.

Abuse and Recruitment of Children

A crucial point in the psychology of scapegoating is the representation of minorities as subhuman forms that "recruit," molest, and kill children of the majority, and accordingly, both Jews and LGBTs have long been accused of being dangerous predators of children.

In 1144, the beginning of the so-called "Blood Libel," in England. Jews are accused of sleighing William of Norwich, a Christian male child, to use his blood in the making of the sacred Jewish matzos. Jews, it was believed, used the blood of Christian children because it was virginal and innocent and, therefore, was the most potent medication to heal hemorrhoids, to relieve pain during circumcision, to increase fertility, and to cure the so-called "stink of the Jews." Also, in line with the belief that Jewish men menstruate (being viewed as feminized men), they, along with Jewish women, need the blood from Christian children to replenish their bodies of the blood lost during menstruation.

In 1475, Simon of Trent in Northern Italy, the son of a tanner and barely 3 years old, was allegedly killed by the Jews for his blood. Jews were also accused of slaughtering Christian male children because they wanted to symbolically kill Jesus again. A number of Jews in Trent were falsely accused of Simon's death and were themselves killed. The charge of ritual murder continued into the 20th century CE. Jews were also accused of inflicting circumcision on Christian infants as a means of inflicting involuntary conversion to Judaism (i.e., "recruitment"). 

Although, in the overwhelming majority of cases, child abuse and molestation is committed by close family members, primarily men who identity as heterosexual, the cultural perception persists that primarily gay men - and by association, lesbians, and bisexuals - attack young children.

However, bigots play on the stereotypes of gays as child molesters for their own ends. For example, former beauty queen and Florida Orange Juice Commission spokesperson, Anita Bryant, spearheaded her so-called "Save Our Children" campaign, which succeeded in overturning a gay-rights ordinance in Dade Country, Florida in 1977. The ordinance was finally reinstated in 1998. These stereotypes were also the cornerstone in a recent fundraising letter by Lou Sheldon of the so-called Traditional Values Coalition who fomented hostility toward LGBT people by writing that: "Gays and lesbians live perverted, twisted lives that feed upon the unsuspecting and the innocent, like our children. They want your children." According to this myth, since gays purportedly cannot reproduce, they need to recruit "innocent victims" into their "deviant" lifestyle.

These stereotypes have been validated institutionally. For example, the 1992 Republican Party platform openly endorsed this form of oppression, stating that "[The Republican Party] opposes any legislation or law which legally recognizes same-sex marriages and allows such couples to adopt children or provide foster care." In fact, several states explicitly ban lesbians, gay, bisexuals, and transgender people from adopting children or serving as foster parents.

Domination and Destruction of "Civilized" Society

While the dominant society has frequently been concerned that Jews and people attracted to others of their sex can "pass" without detection into the mainstream, they have also historically portrayed these groups as destroyers of society.

In 534, Roman Emperor Justinian, published his Justinian Code with its anti-Jewish and anti-same-sex regulations, claiming these groups were undermining the very foundations of Roman society, and would ultimately destroy all life on this planet: In terms of homosexuals, for example: "For because of such crimes [as men engaging in same-sex relations] there are famines, earthquakes, and pestilences...If, with eyes as if were blinded, we overlook such impious and forbidden conduct, we may provoke the good God to anger and bring ruin upon all."

Originally appearing in Czarist Russia in 1895, the infamous booklet, The Protocols (Minutes) of the Elders of Zion, was circulated, throughout the world. An unknown writer who worked for the Russian secret police wrote it to influence the policies of Czar Nicholas II regarding the Jews. This was a forgery of the minutes of a fictitious conference where rabbis plotted to overtake and dominate the world.

During the so-called "McCarthy Era" following World War II, a number of Congressional legislators declared that Communists (associated in the public mind at the time with Jews) corrupted the minds, and homosexuals corrupted the bodies, of good, "upstanding Americans," and proceeded to purge suspected Communists and homosexuals from government and civilian employment.

>From these stereotypes have developed simultaneously the contradictory myths that Jews and LGBTs are, on one hand, a privileged class of rich super Capitalists who manipulate banking systems and control politicians and the media. On the other hand, they are radical Communists and Socialists attempting to overthrow the capitalist system and the dominant culture.  

The 1940 Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, combined the stereotypes of Jews being not only race polluters (and less than human), but also that they were out to destroy the German state. In the film, Jews are said to commit 47 percent of all robberies and to make up 98 percent of those involved in prostitution. According to the film's narrator, "The Jews are only 1 percent of the population, but they know how to terrorize a great, tolerant nation by controlling finance, the arts, education, and the media."

Similarly, LGBT people are portrayed in dehumanizing and terrifying terms. For example, in the video, The Gay Agenda, produced by the Springs of Life Christian Church for the purpose of overturning "gay rights" ordinances, the announcer arrogantly proclaims that "17 percent of homosexual men consume human feces for erotic thrills, and 28 percent of them engage in sodomy with more than one thousand partners, thereby spreading diseases that imperil the entire society." 

And harkening back to echoes of the Justinian Code almost 15 centuries earlier, televangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, responding to Gay Pride-related activities in Orlando, Florida said: "I would warn Orlando [Florida] that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those [rainbow] flags in God's face if I were you....A condition like this [homosexuality] will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor." 

And adding feminists to this conspiratorial plot, Robertson stated in 1992: "The Feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."

And responding to Vermont's "Civil Unions" for same-sex couples, New England Catholic Bishops, in a June 2000 statement, asserted that: "The Legislature of Vermont...has attacked centuries of cultural and religious esteem for marriage between and man and a woman and has prepared the way for an attack on the well-being of society itself."

Conclusion

A central tenet of Jewish tradition is Tikkun Olam: meaning the transformation, healing, and repairing of the world so that it becomes a more just, peaceful, nurturing, and perfect place. In going over the representations of Jews and LGBTs, I have a hope-a hope that we can all join together as allies to counter these representations, and to defeat these and all other forms of oppression. I end then, by asking us all to join and go out into our lives, and work for Tikkun Olam. Let us transform the world.

Taken from: Blumenfeld, Warren J. (1996). History/Hysteria: Parallel Representations of Jews and Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals. in Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology, Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason (Eds.). New York: New York University Press.

Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011-3192
Office Phone: (515) 294-5931
Office Fax:     (515) 294-6206
Home Phone: (515) 232-8230