No Sacred Place

The Christian Church was co-opted by the colonial capitalists into the colonial structure and enterprise on the condition that it does not excite the African slaves with doctrines such as the equality of all men and women before God because that would derail the entire colonial project. The role of the Christian Church was therefore to preserve the social relations of colonialism similar to the role it played in the preservation of the social relations in the capitalist economic structure in Europe. Having accepted its mandate for its partnership in the enslavement of Africans both in Africa and in the West Indies, the Christian Church in its doctrine stressed the high importance of humility, docility, and the slaves’ acceptance of their servitude. This is how God designed the world (Rodney 1972). The recurring theme was: “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high or lowly and ordered their estate” (A & M 573). The slave master has his castle and the slave has his burden to work from sun rise to sun set under the brutal lashes of the whip; at night he can retire to his miserable fleapit. This is the will of God for Negroes. Furthermore, the litany of the sins which were committed by the Church far outweighs the sins of those who are cast as ‘the Other’ by the Church and who are deserving of our sympathy. A brief excursion into the Church’s history will present a multitude of Church inflicted horrors: the inquisitions, the burning of so-called heretics at the stake, the annihilation and obliteration of the original peoples of the New World with the blessing of the Church, the acquiescence and at times the full participation in the enslavement of African peoples, the practice of institutionalized racism, its marriage to colonialism, crusading to name a few of the sins of the Church. So can we really rely on the Church’s interpretation of Scripture? The homophobia and heterosexism that are promoted by this policy position demoralize, bastardize, and grossly misrepresent the hermeneutics that assist with the interpretation of Scripture and the ministry of Jesus. The Church in its policy position purports to be protecting morality, but in reality it is only perpetuating unjustifiable suffering for those who are different and to preserve its privileged position in the eyes of the society. The Church sees the need to protect its Peter’s Penance. This in and of itself is immoral. Like the Church, the laws that deal with family, marriage, and sodomy perpetuate the same unjustified suffering of lesbians, gays, women, and previously African slaves. Laws that perpetuate these irrational positions are contrary to and violate the Constitution and the Human Rights Convention; these laws ought to be jettisoned just as much as the pseudo-morality of the Church. It cannot be convincingly argued that either the story of Lot or the Levite is a wholesale condemnation of homosexuality, or for that matter a polemic against homosexuality. On both occasions what seems to have been condemned was homosexual rape, not a caring homosexual relationship between consenting parties. The brute violence which is condemned here can on no account be tolerated in any society whether primitive or modern. Note also that the keeping of a concubine (an outside woman) was not morally reprehensible, nor the sexual consortium between Abram and Hagar. I have already alluded above to the incestuous relationship between Lot and his two daughters which resulted in procreation of two sons. Are these sexual conducts not immoral too? The Levite was traveling with his concubine which suggests that there was wife in his life. So where was his wife? These men were taken with the fascination of sado-masochistic, brutish buggering of other men for one reason or a number of reasons. It is a social and psychological phenomenon that there are men and women who are fascinated by persons of their own sex. This is not the ‘normative’ behavior as most societies present a heterosexual front. But underneath the veneer of heterosexuality is an inclination towards masculinity. Even God apparently takes an interest in the penis of men because he commanded Abraham to use circumcision as the mark of his covenant with him and his descendants. Every male member of Abraham’s family had to be circumcised in the foreskin of his penis when he is eight days old, including the slaves which he had. “That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised; and all the men of his house, slaves born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him” (Genesis 17:26 -27). Why should the penis be used as symbolic of the covenant between God and man? Is there any homoeroticism in that? Why not a finger or the shaving of the head? Why not the piercing of the ear? The idea that the mark of the covenant should be on a man’s penis is alarming to say the least. Is there something that is fascinating about the penis of men as opposed to the vagina of women? Since God is male why did he not circumcise the vagina of the woman? Who is fascinated by the penis of men in this context God or the writer of the passage? God does not appear from a literal reading of Scripture to be particularly interested in women, he is generally connected with men, a prophetess or priestess is exceptional in God’s interrelationships with mankind. However, I do not believe this should be taken literally because the Scripture was written from a patriarchal cultural perspective. This is a fact that all religionists should bear in mind. The Church considers the social phenomenon of marriage and family to be her sole prerogative ordained by God and administered by the Church. And the family form which God has ordained, according to the Church, is the nuclear family direct from England. This claim has since been countered by social anthropologists and sociologists. Clarke (1957) has shown that Christian marriage is not the norm in the Caribbean families. This sociological fact has been confirmed by Barrow (1996). The predominant family form is the common law union which has received legal sanction by the Barbados Family Law Act that identifies it as a “union other than marriage.” This is an unfortunate nomenclature because it carries with it the stigmatization which it attempts to cure (a legislative paradox). None-the-less the nomenclature gives recognition to de facto family relationship in a way that was not hithertofore possible or envisioned. The society is gradually evolving. The sociology of sex holds that men and women store within them the urge to mate and that is a living fact, the evidence is everywhere. At a certain stage in the evolutionary process, men and women became conscious and self-conscious of the need to regulate their sexual urges. Why the need for regulation of sexuality? Perhaps because unbridled, unrestricted sexual license could not be tolerated in the civil society or perhaps mankind fancied itself to be a cut above the rest of the animal kingdom. But I must also observe here that animal sexuality is regulated by the fact that sexual activity among them is periodical or seasonal; so mating urges in men and women had to be restricted and regulated. It was also necessary to settle the matter of inheritance and the perpetuation of society, as well as for social stability. Marriage then emerged to serve these social and legal objectives and therefore was not instituted by the Judeo-Christian religion. If anyone holds a contrary opinion, it is farcical, intellectually dishonest, and theologically unsound. It follows then that the so-called ‘holy matrimony’ is just another human institution that was socially constructed, fabricated for the governance and regulation of sexual conduct. Calling it ‘holy’ therefore does not in essence add anything sanctimonious or supernatural to it. It is just a theological nicety. But