Joan of Arc, Cross-dressing Christian Saint and Martyr.

b. ca. 1412 (formally celebrated in France on January 6th)

d. 30 May 1431

Among all the multitude of queer saints,  Joan of Arc is one of the most important. In her notorious martyrdom for heresy (a charge which in historical context included reference to her cross-dressing and defiance of socially approved gender roles), she is a reminder of the great persecution of sexual and gender minorities by the Inquisition, directly or at their instigation. In LGBT Christian history, "martyrs" applies not only to those martyred by the church, but also to those martyred by the church. In her rehabilitation and canonization, she is a reminder that the leaders and theologians of the church, those who were responsible for her prosecution and conviction, can be wrong, can be pronounced to be wrong, and can in time have their judgements overturned.(This is not just a personal view. Pope Benedict has made some very pointed remarks of his own to this effect, while speaking about Joan of Arc).  In the same way, it is entirely possible (I believe likely) that the current dogmatic verdict of Vatican orthodoxy which condemns our relationships will also in time be rejected.  We may even come to see some of the pioneers of gay theology, who have in effect endured a kind of professional martyrdom for their honesty and courage, rehabilitated and honoured by the Church, just as St Joan has been.

Joan of Arc:  Interrogation by the Bishop  of Winchester
(Paul Delaroche, 1797 -1856)

Joan of Arc is the best known cross-dresser in history, defying gender expectations to lead an army, and lead it to victory in the service of her country.  This much is well known, and immediately qualifies her as a trans hero (or heroine.  Take  your pick.) What of the ret of us? Well, remember her story in the church as well as the battlefield:  she was burned as a heretic, before her later rehabilitation and eventual canonization. Now recall the association of heresy and “sodomy”.

John Boswell has clearly shown that the religious opposition to homoerotic relationships was not based in scripture, nor was it deeply entrenched in the early church. Instead, the opposition of the church followed, not led, popular intolerance that grew with the decline in urbanisation after the sack of Rome.  This growth in intolerance was not only directed at homosexuals, but also at other social outsiders – jews, gypsies and “heretics”. Writers such as Mark D Jordan and Allan Bray have since shown how the very word “sodomite”, now widely used  as a pejorative epithet against gay males, was a late medieval coinage which was originally used far more loosely and indiscriminately, often including ay other form of sexual non-conformism – or heresy.

So what was the crime of “heresy” of which she was accused? Well, nominally it was based on her claim to have seen “visions” which inspired her to follow her path of resistance to the foreign invaders.  But note the nationality of her accusers:  it was not the French Church which tried and judged her, but the English Bishops:  countrymen of the army she had opposed and defeated. Was her crime to have experienced visions, or was it to have opposed the English?

Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII: Ingres

Consider that which has made her most famous, iconic as an historic figure:  the cross-dressing.  This was a clear violation of her expected gender role, and may have been described by some as “sodomy” – which was closely related to heresy.  I have recently seen a claim (sadly, I have no link) that the real reason for her trial and execution was this cross-dressing.  If so, she is the first Christian martyr we know of who was executed not just executed and was gay, but executed because of her gender expression. However, there is of course a happy ending: she was later rehabilitated, and canonized. Now consider the obvious moral for us as GLBT Christians today.

Joan had a “vision”, an apparition of Mary. There are also other kinds of vision, some more mundane, more political, of the Martin Luther King “I have a dream”.  In this sense, many of us too have a vision, a dream, of proper inclusion and acceptance in the Christian churches, where we belong with everybody else, on the strength of the promises of Christ.

Joan was persecuted by the church authorities, condemned and executed.  We are not (directly) executed by the church today, but we are certainly condemned and persecuted, labelled as “fundamentally disordered”, and told that if we simply live truthfully in our god-given sexuality,we are committing “grave sin”.  Worse, by the clear failure to take a strong stand against civil laws and proscriptions, as for example the failure to sign the UN resolution on the decriminalisation of homosexuality early this year, the Church is indirectly giving support to some forces that do actively seek our death.

But in the end, she was vindicated.  We have not yet seen that development, but I am certain it will come. It is required by the Gospel of inclusion and social justice, it is also required by the internal logic of theology. James Alison has recently noted that theology will in time be forced to face up to the plain finings of science that  same sex relationships are not unnatural, just uncommon.  They have occurred throughout history, in many societies, and across the animal kingdom. Theologians will be slow to catch up, but they will, and we too will be vindicated.

St Joan of Arc and the queer community: we have a lot in common.

Further reading;

Boswell, John : Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

Bray, Alan : Homosexuality in Renaissance England

Jordan, Mark D : The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology

Related articles at QTC:

• Pope Benedict, On the Queer Lessons in the Church’s Martyrdom of St Joan.
• Trans in Faith: Some Cross-Dressing Saints & Martyrs.
• Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs

Related articles elsewhere:

• "Conscience is the Highest Norm" (The Wild Reed)

November 15th in Queer History

Events this Day in Queer History

1980 - Michael Harcourt, an alderman consistently supportive of the gay community, is elected mayor of Vancouver.

1989 - Massachusetts passed a statewide gay rights law

1992 - Thirty-five members of The Cathedral Project, a gay Roman Catholic group, demonstrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City  to protest a Vatican directive urging bishops to oppose laws banning anti-gay bias.

Born this day

Sara Josephine Baker (1873 –  1945),  US.
Author

Georgia O'Keefe (1887 - 1986),  US.
Bisexual artist

Paul Moore (1919 –  2003) US.
Marine, Bishop

Bishop of the Episcopal Church and served as the 13th Bishop of New York. During his lifetime, he was perhaps the best known Episcopal clergyman in the United States, and among the best known Christian clergy in any denomination.

Although twice married and the father of nine children, he was bisexual. This was firmly revealed after his death. Honor Moore, the oldest of his revealed that her father was bisexual with a history of gay affairs in a story she wrote about him in The New Yorker and in the book The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir.

Fred Richmond  ( 1923 – ),  US.
Navy,  Politician, Pianist

Patricia Marion Fogarty(1940 - )
Illustrator and photographer, lover of filmmaker Jayne Parker.

Dawn Airey  (1960 –  ) UK
Television Executive [Five]

Judy Gold (1962 –  ), US
Comedian / Actress ,  Author,  Producer

Jeroen Willems (1962 –  ),  Dutch.
Actor, Singer,  Director

Evan Adams (1966 –  ), Canadian.
Actor, Playwright,  Doctor

Francois Ozon (1967 –  ),  French.
Director,  Screenwriter

Todd Klinck (1974 –  ), Canadian.  Author / Director / Producer

Stephanie Thomas (1982 –  ), US .  2002  Hate Crime Victim

Died this day

Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908 -  1942) Swiss.
Author, Journalist –

Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978 ),  US.
Anthropologist

Robert McCall (1958 - 1991),  Canadian.
Figure Skater

Jacques Morali (1947  -1991),  French.
Music Producer

Mary Meigs (1917 - 2002 ),  US.
Painter , Author

Hanne Haller (1950 - 2005),  German.
Singer,  Composer,  Author, Producer, Sound Engineer

Donathyn J Rodgers (? - 2005),  US.
Murder Victim

Fred Goldhaber (1947– ) US

Teacher 

Griffith Vaughan Williams ( 1940– 2010 ) UK 

Activist

Sodomy laws in history, November 15

1636 Plymouth colony outlaws consensual sodomy with a penalty of death.

1912 Portland newspapers report what becomes known as the "Vice Clique Scandal." Some 68 men are involved in prosecutions for private, consensual sexual relations.

1935 Oregon adopts a new sterilization law and requires names of all known "sexual perverts" in the state to be turned over to the Board of Eugenics.

1941- Heinrich Himmler announced a decree that any member of the Nazi SS or the police who had sex with another man would be put to death.

1950 The Puerto Rico Supreme Court rules that emission is not necessary for a conviction of sodomy.

Sources:

Wikipedia
Today in Gay History, Blue Pride
On This Gay Day

glbtq emcyclopedia

Gay History Wiki
Calendar of Sodomy, November

Gay History Wiki

Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536

Erasmus, born on the 27th October 1466, was a Dutch humanist and theologian,  who merits serious consideration by queer people of faith.

Born Gerrit Gerritszoon, he became far better known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam: Erasmus was his saint's name, after St. Erasmus of Formiae; Rotterdam, for the place of his birth (although he never lived there after the first few years of early childhood; and "Desiderius" a name he gave himself - "the one who is desired".

Erasmus, the "gay icon"?

Some LGBT activists have hailed Erasmus as a gay icon from history. Circa Club for instance has no doubt, using that precise term and including Erasmus in it's collection of historical gay icons. The primary basis of the claim is a series of passionate love letters he wrote to  a young monk Servatius Roger, and  allegations of improper advances made to the young Thomas Grey, later Marquis of Dorset, while employed as his tutor.

Others are unconvinced, pointing out that the nature of friendship between men, and the form of expressions of affection between them, were very different in Erasmus' day to ours. They also point out that there were never any direct allegations of physical relations with Grey, or with anyone else. This argument largely rests on the assumption that in a time of marked public opposition (and official persecution) of  "sodomy", any suggestion of homosexual intercourse would have provoked strong denunciation and even prosecution. I am not convinced by either side.

Erasmus was certainly not "gay" in any modern sense. The use of the term "gay icon" for any man of the Renaissance period, and particularly for a priest, is clearly anachronistic, and inappropriate. It is also true that expressions of "love" in the letters to Servatius may be no more than expressions of Platonic affection, expressed a little more effusively (but not much more so) than was customary at the time. We cannot say for certain that he was sexually active with men.

But the absence of proof also does not disprove the hypothesis. As a priest, Erasmus was expected to be celibate. There is also no evidence of sexual relations with women, but that does not disprove that he was heterosexual. The claims that the strong climate of opposition to sodomy "would have" resulted in public exposure are also invalid. Over several centuries, thousands of "sodomites" were tried and executed - but the meaning of the term was vague and variable, including everything from "unnatural" (i,e, anal or oral) intercourse between husband and wife, to witchcraft and heresy, to treason. In post-Reformation England, it was even sometimes used interchangeably with "popery", as Catholicism was also viewed as treason against the English monarchy. In fact, many of those convicted may have been the victims simply of malice and grossly unfair criminal procedures, and completely innocent of sexual non-conformity - and very many more who were indeed engaging in homosexual activities were left entirely unhindered.

The matter of Erasmus' sexual activities is at best undecided - and also irrelevant. To focus on "did he or didn't he" is to make the mistake of the homophobes, who are convinced that homoerotic relationships are all about genital sex. It is enough for me to note that whatever the physical relationship may or may not have been, there was a definite, powerful and emotionally intimate relationship between Erasmus and Serviatus.

I also like this quotation, from his "In praise of marriage":

I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin. Nothing is so far from the truth. As if marriage, whose function cannot be fulfilled without these incitements, did not rise above blame. In other living creatures, where do these incitements come from? From nature or from sin? From nature, of course. It must be borne in mind that in the appetites of the body there is very little difference between man and other living creatures. Finally, we defile by our imagination what of its own nature is fair and holy. If we were willing to evaluate things not according to the opinion of the crowd, but according to nature itself, how is it less repulsive to eat, chew, digest, evacuate, and sleep after the fashion of dumb animals, than to enjoy lawful and permitted carnal relations?

-In Praise of Marriage (1519), in Erasmus on Women (1996) Erika Rummel

Erasmus, the scholarly reformer.

It is not his sexuality that most impresses me, but his legacy as a scholar and church reformer. His career spanned the years leading up to, and after, Luther's break with the Catholic Church that became the Protestant Reformation. Prior to the split, Erasmus had himself been fiercely critical of the Church, arguing forcefully for reform of the many and manifold abuses. He had close relationships with Luther and many other leading members of the Reformation movement, which his ideas strongly influenced. However, when the break came, he chose to remain formally inside the church structures, and not outside of it.

LGBT Christians are often attacked by others for remaining inside a religion which is seen as inimical to gay interests, and so to be siding with the enemy of gay liberation, but this is simplistic. Erasmus' response to the reformers was that it was the abuses that needed to be destroyed, not the church itself - an argument that applies equally strongly to the situation today, in respect of sexuality. The restricted, misguided view of sexuality promoted by some claiming the authority of religion, is not inherent in the Christian religion, but has been imposed on it to promote a particular heterosexual agenda. It is this abuse that we must oppose, not Christianity.

In doing so, we should also learn from Erasmus' methods. Among his criticisms of the Church was its heavy dependence on medieval scholastic theology, with its elaborate structure of speculative philosophy. Instead, he went back to the sources, to build his theology on a sounder structure of evidence. Recognizing the inadequacies of the Latin Vulgate bible, he devoted himself to the study of Greek, and eventually published a more reliable Latin translation (which came to replace the Vulgate, with a parallel Greek text), He also wrote a series of treatises on several of the church fathers.

Queer theologians today are doing something similar. Instead of sitting back meekly and accepting the received ideas on the Bible's supposed condemnation of homosexuality, they have gone back to the roots of Biblical scholarship, closely studying the texts in the original Hebrew and Greek, and paying close attention to the full literary analysis and contextual considerations. They have demonstrated the weaknesses of the traditional interpretations, and have earned the concurrence of many heterosexual colleagues. This reassessment of the Biblical evidence has been one of the important factors in the present moves to greater LGBT inclusion in church, as pastors or in rites for recognizing same-sex unions. Other theologians have resisted the received opposition by ignoring scholastic monolith, and going back to the source of the Christian religion - Christ himself, as revealed in the Scriptures. Others again, emphasise the importance of a personal relationship with God, through prayer, in place of unthinking deference to the human authority of clerical oligarchs.

Erasmus, the man in the middle.

In the build-up to the Reformation, Erasmus aimed to avoid taking sides in the split. His thinking was a definite influence on the reformist cause,  and was later accused of having "laid the egg that hatched the Reformation". His response was that he had hoped it would lay a different bird. He worked hard to retain good relationships with both sides and to keep the peace between them, but in the end, his reward was to be viewed with some suspicion and resentment by both sides. By Catholics, for having fostered the reformist thinking in the first place, and by Reformists for having deserted them at the end.

Queer people of faith will sympathise. We too aim to straddle two camps- and are frequently attacked from both sides: by some traditionalists Christians for our supposed sexual sin, and by secular gay activists for siding with the enemy,

May the example of Desiderius Erasmus sustain us in our endeavour.

Pope Julius III (born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte), boy-loving pope.

b. 10 September 1487
r. 7 February 1550 to 1555
d. 23 March 1555)

In his early career in the Church Julius established a reputation as an effective and trustworthy diplomat, and was elected to the Papacy as a compromise candidate when the Papal Conclave found itself deadlocked between the rival French and German factions. As Pope he lost, or failed to show, any of the qualities which had distinguished his previous career, devoting himself instead to a life of personal pleasure and indolence.  His lasting fame, or notoriety, rests rather on his relationship with the 17 year old boy whom he raised to the position of Cardinal-Nephew, and, it was said at the time, with whom he shared his bed

At the start of his reign Julius had desired seriously to bring about a reform of the Catholic Church and to reconvene the Council of Trent, but very little was actually achieved during his five years in office; apologists ascribe the inactivity of his last three years to severe gout.

In 1551, at the request of the Emperor Charles V, he consented to the reopening of the council of Trent and entered into a league against the duke of Parma and Henry II of France (1547–59), but soon afterwards made terms with his enemies and suspended the meetings of the council (1553). (For the history of papal conflicts with councils, see conciliar movement).

The Innocenzo scandal

Julius's particular failures were around his nepotism and favouritism. One notable scandal surrounded his adoptive nephew, Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte, a 13 or 14-year old beggar-boy whom the future Pope had picked up on the streets of Parma some years earlier and with whom he had allegedly fallen in love.On being elected to the Papacy Julius raised the now 17-year old but still uncouth and quasi-illiterate Innocenzo to the cardinalate, appointed him cardinal-nephew, and showering the boy with benefices

Artistic legacy

Julius spent the bulk of his time, and a great deal of Papal money, on entertainments at the Villa Giulia, created for him by Vignola. Julius extended his patronage to the great Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whom he brought to Rome as his maestro di cappella, Giorgio Vasari, who supervised the design of the Villa Giulia, and to Michelangelo, who worked there.

Giovanni Bosco

Giovanni was born to an impoverished rural family in Castelnuovo, Piedmont. Patronage from clerics allowed him to be ordained priest in 1841. He devoted himself to improve the life and education of the many homeless peasant teenage boys in and around Turin, hundred of whom were attracted to the city by the Industrial Revolution.

In 1864 he founded the Salesian Fathers religious order. At Bosco's death the Salesian "oratoires" numbered about 250. He was beatified in 1924, and declared a Saint of the Catholic church in 1934.

Bosco is one of the many homosexuals who found in the Catholic church a family and a "mission". Quite possibly he had an attraction to young boys which he succeeded in sublimating  into a socially useful undertaking.

(From  Aldrich & Wetherspoon, "Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History from Antiquity to WWII")

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cardinal Borghese (1576 - 1633), Homoerotc Art Lover (queerhistory.blogspot.com)

October 9th in Queer History: Cardinal John Henry Newman

Saint's day:


Blessed John Henry Newman

Cardinal  Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on October 2011, which means that although not yet recognized by the Catholic Church as as a saint, he is in effect on the way to sainthood. "Blessed" John He is important in queer history for his notable devotion to his beloved friend, the fellow priest Aubrey St John, in whose grave he shared after death.


Sodomy in History, October 9


October 9

1706 — English sailor James Ball is sentenced to death for sodomy with a ship boy.

1900 — The Hawaii Supreme Court upholds a sodomy conviction secured by a non-unanimous jury verdict.

1958 — The Hawaii Supreme Court rules that people of the opposite sex can be prosecuted for sodomy as well as those of the same sex.

1967 — The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear a challenge to the Washington sodomy law, the first challenge based on privacy rights ever to reach it.

1990 — The Maryland Court of Appeals rules that the state’s sodomy and unnatural and perverted practices law are unconstitutional as applied to people of the opposite sex, but constitutional as applied to those of the same sex. The Court misconstrues case law history in the state to justify its ruling.

1998 — The South African Constitutional Court strikes down the country’s sodomy law under the new constitution.

Archbishop George Augustine Hyde

 b. 1923

From LGBT Religious Archives:

George Augustine Hyde (1923), who led the first known church to openly minister to and with homosexuals in the U.S., attended a Roman Catholic seminary, though he left before achieving priestly ordination. He became a high school teacher in Atlanta, Georgia, where he met John Augustine Kazantks, a bishop in the Orthodox Church of Greece, who had been pushed out of his post and his homeland due to his revealing his homosexual orientation. Occasioned by the denial of communion to a group of gay and lesbian Catholics in a local parish, Hyde, with Kazantks' blessing, decided to form an independent Catholic congregation for addressing their needs. During the month of June, 1946, bi-weekly “informational and educational programs” were begun, conducted by both Kazantks and Hyde, designed to prepare those in quest for an ecclesiastical life outside the Roman and other “institutional churches." The first formal gathering of the new parish was held on July 1, 1946, the occasion being the ordination of Hyde to the priesthood at the hands of Bishop Kazantks. This gathering was held in a meeting room of the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta. This particular meeting room, the rental of which was underwritten by the management of the Cotton Blossom Room, a gay bar in the same hotel, was to house the activities of the  nascent congregation from June to December, 1946. In late November l946, the emerging congregation rented a large residence near the downtown business district for housing a chapel and living quarters for the local clergy. Educational and instructional classes continued to meet at the Winecoff Hotel until it was destroyed by fire on December 7, 1946.

Through working with the gay and lesbian community in Atlanta, contacts were made with a number of gay and lesbian people across Georgia who desired to relate to an accepting church. In January l947, Bishop Kazantks moved to Savannah, Georgia, and from his home there maintained a ministry to a scattered flock across southern Georgia, while Hyde did the same in Atlanta and the northern half of the state.
Over the next decade the church experienced a reasonably steady growth. The original (1946) congregation of about 85 people had grown to a total of more than 200 people by the end of l947. In the l950s, Kazantks expressed his desire to return to Greece and did so in l957, dying later that year. Prior to his leaving he put Hyde in touch with Archbishop Clement Sherwood (1895-1969) of the American Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church. On May 7, 1957, Hyde was consecrated a bishop by Sherwood, assisted by Bishop Maurice Francis Parkin and William Ernest James Robertson. 

In 1950, seven years prior to his consecration as bishop, Hyde had centered his pastoral outreach in Washington, D.C., where he established and functioned as superior of a “Worker Priest” ministry called “The Society of Domestic Missionaries.” As workers in various secular jobs the Domestic Missionaries “took the church to where the people were”. A secondary “benefit” was that their secular salaries went toward the support of the ministry-church. The present day practice of the Holiday Inn (motel chain) providing an “on call chaplain” for its guests was started in the early l960's by a Domestic Missionary whose secular occupation was as desk clerk at a Washington, D.C., Holiday Inn.

It has been erroneously reported by some sources that shortly after his consecration Hyde split with Sherwood over Eastern vs. Western liturgical practices and that, in l960, Hyde formed his own church, i.e. the Orthodox Catholic Church of America. This is incorrect. While it is true that a brief disagreement did surface that negatively impacted the harmonious fellowship previously existing between Sherwood and Hyde, there was no formal schism. Subsequently, Sherwood designated Hyde as “Bishop of the Western Rite Missions” of the American-Eastern Orthodox Church” and charged him to accelerate Clement’s own long-time plan for all of the Bishoprics of the American-Eastern Church to cut their identity ties with Greece, Russia, the Balkans, the Middle East and to identify themselves as members of an indigenous American Church under the title of the “Orthodox Catholic Church of America.”  This divesting of the assortment of ethnic bishoprics of their national identities was not very successful. Archbishop Clement Sherwood died April 9, l969, with Hyde being elected in l970 as his successor. With this event the nationally-defined ethnic Bishops (Russian, Greek, Ukrainian, etc.) went into schism, taking with them about eight thousand people and scores of clergy and churches, rather than to conform to the name change to Orthodox Catholic Church of America which they felt Hyde would now force upon them.

The Orthodox Catholic Church of America, while having an active pastoral outreach to gay people as members and priests, was never exclusively a “gay church”, just as it was never a “black church” because of its pastoral outreach into the black community. As a pastor Hyde not infrequently chided his congregation, “if kneeling side by side in prayer next to a black person or a gay person is a problem, know that it is you who has a problem, not them."  However, in l969, Hyde encouraged and worked with the Reverend Robert Clement in nurturing his founding of a gay-oriented parish in New York’s Greenwich Village, that was administratively known as the Eucharistic Catholic Church with its New York parish being known as the Church of the Beloved Disciple. This congregation eventually numbered about 500 people. Clement was consecrated Bishop in l974 and subsequently expanded the Eucharistic Catholic Ministry into Canada.

Archbishop Hyde retired for health reasons in l983 and was succeeded as Archbishop of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America by Bishop Alfred Laankenau of Indianapolis, Indiana.   Hyde moved to Belleair, Florida, where he continues to reside. In l995, the Orthodox Catholic Church of America, under the headship of Lankenau, decided to ordain women. Hyde disapproved of the decision, and when subsequently approached by a small group of priests and members who also disapproved of female priests, he came out of retirement so as to address and serve their liturgical, sacramental, and spiritual needs. When it became apparent that Lankenau and his associates were not going to abandon the practice of ordaining women, Hyde and his constituency incorporated in the State of Florida as the Autocephalous Orthodox Catholic Church of America. In common usage they are known as the Orthodox Catholic Archdiocese and Metropolitanate of America, the territorial and jurisdictional name originally given by the Patriarch of the historic Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch to the American Orthodox Catholic Church upon the consecration of its first bishop in l892.

_________________
Sources: Archbishop George Augustine (Hyde) c. 2004;  J. Gordon Melton; the “Eucharistic Catholic Church (Canadian Branch)” posted at http://netministries.org/see/churches/ch04614, accessed September 15, 2004; Ward, Gary L., ed. “Independent Bishops: An Independent Directory”. Detroit, MI, Apogee Books, 1990; “Genesis of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America” a history of the OCCA by Archbishop George Hyde, edited by Fr. Gordon Fischer, 1993,
www.orthodoxcatholicchurch.org/history.html.

Gay Lovers in Church History

SS Sergius & Bacchus: Gay lovers, Roman soldiers, martyrs and saints.

For St Valentine's day, a partial roll call of same sex lovers (not necessarily genital, but sertainly intimate) in the history of the Catholic Church.  There are many others. These are the ones I know:
David & Johnathan
Ruth & Naomi
Jesus &  the Beloved Disciple:  We cannot know precisely the nature of this relationship, but it was clearly a close one.

Martha & Mary - Described in the New Testament as 'sisters', but this may have been a euphemism for lesbian lovers.
Philip and Bartholomew:  Included in the Apostles, frequently named in the early liturgies of same-sex union.
Peter and Paul: Primary apostles, also frequently named in the early liturgies of same-sex union.
The Roman Centurion and his "pais" (= slave/lover).
John Finch and Thomas Baines, buried together in Christ's College Chapel, Cambridge.  17th Century.
Euodia and Syntyche of Phillippi: a missionary couple active in the early church (?), mentioned in St. Paul's letter to the Philippians (4:2-3)
Tryphaena and Tryphosa: a missionary couple active in the early church (?), mentioned in in Rom 16
Perpetua and Felicitas:
Paul and Timothy:
Tychicus and Onesimus:
Zenas and Apollos:
Polyeuct and Nearchos: third-century Roman soldiers who became saints.
Faustinos and Donatos: buried together at Phillippi, in Macedonia.  4th century
Posidonia, and Pancharia: buried together at Phillippi, in Macedonia.  4th to 5th century.
Kyriakos and Nikandros: buried together at Phillippi, in Macedonia.  4th to 5th century.
Ss Sergius & Bacchus: Roman Soldiers, gay lovers,  martyrs - see picture.
Gourasios and Konstantios: buried together at Phillippi, in Macedonia.  4th to 6th century.
Euodiana and Dorothea: buried together at Phillippi, in Macedonia.  5th century.
Martyrios, presbyter, and Demetrios, lector: buried together at Edessa, in Macedonia.  5th to 6th century.
Eudoxios, presbyter, and of the sinner John, deacon: buried together at Edessa, in Macedonia.  5th to 6th century.
Droseria and Eudoxia: buried together at Edessa, in Macedonia.  5th to 6th century.
Athanasios and Chryseros: buried together at Edessa, in Macedonia.  5th to 6th century.
Alexandra and Glukeria: buried together at Phillippi, in Macedonia.  6th century
St Patrick of Ireland:  after his escape from early slavery, Patrick worked for time as a male prostitute. A recent history of Irish homosexualilty suggests that he may have taken a male lover in later life.
Dicul and Maelodran the wright:  buried together in the church at Delgany, County Wicklow.
Ultan and Dubthach: buried together in the church at Termonfechin, County Louth, near Drogheda.
John Bloxham and John Wyndham: buried together in Merton College Chapel, Oxford.  14th Century.
King Edward II and Piers Galveston:  well known as gay lovers, their relationship as 'sworn brothers' was recognised by the church.
William Neville & John Neville:  English knights, buried together in Galata, near Constantinople 14th Century
Nicholas Molyneux and John Winters: made a compact of 'sworn brotherhood, made in the church of St Martin of Harfleur. 15th century.
John Finch and Thomas Baines buried together in Christ's College Chapel, Cambridge.  17th Century.
Fulke Greville & Sir Phillip Sidney: the joint monument Greville planned for himself and Sidney in St Paul's cathedral was never built.  But the simple intention alone indicates the natrure of the relationship, as also its recognition by the church.
Cardinal John Henry Newman and Fr. Ambrose St.John: buried together, 19th C.