Generally, mundane astrologers understand and accept that there is a strong historical connection between Russia and the Saturn-Neptune cycle. In modern history, we can point to their conjunction in 1846 and the circumstances that led Russia to attack the Ottoman Empire in 1853 creating an international military action against them called the Crimean War. Russia suffered a humiliating defeat by 1856 that seriously upset both the domestic political landscape regarding ethnic Ukrainians, Russian Jews, and the peasantry, and foreign relationships with Europe with the rising tide of nationalism. The 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II, who had been a liberal reformer, occurred as Saturn was in the Balsamic Phase with Neptune just prior to the 1882 conjunction. It brought hyper-nationalist and conservative Alexander III to power, who targeted Ukrainians, Jews and ethnic Germans in the Empire. In 1917, the conjunction coincided with the Russian Revolution, and specifically, the Bolshevik take-over of the government. In 1952-53, the conjunction coincided with the death of Stalin, and then in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. These remarkable historical events all happened under Saturn-Neptune conjunctions. The current cycle once again has Saturn in the Balsamic Phase with Neptune, both planets in Pisces as they approach their next conjunction at 0 Aries.

Given the history, it is no surprise that Russia is currently struggling, fighting an inhumane, criminal war against Ukraine and suffering serious diplomatic and economic isolation from the rest of the world as a result. Based on the astro-history, I think it’s more than possible that the Putin regime will come to an end around the time of the next Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 2026. Whether Russia will go through another constitutional crisis and systemic change, is harder to predict, but Putin’s illiberal, authoritarian system has Saturn in Taurus and will experience a Saturn return in 2030. I suspect we will know as soon as Saturn makes its ingress into Taurus whether the system will survive or be abandoned. However, post-Soviet Russia, founded December 25, 1991, 07:25pm, Moscow, has Saturn at 5 Aquarius, and the next Saturn-Neptune conjunction in February 2026 has Pluto at 4+ Aquarius, so we can expect a serious crisis related to their government structures and institutions of authority beginning around that time. Time is running out for Putin as Pluto is once again direct at 29 Capricorn and, once it re-enters Aquarius, it will stay there for the duration. As transiting Pluto gets closer to 5 Aquarius and Saturn gets closer to Neptune over the next year and half to two years, we should see the conditions in Russia really begin to deteriorate.

We also have to consider transiting Uranus, which is now at 19+ Taurus, conjunct the Putin regime’s Saturn at 20 Taurus. (Putin’s first inauguration ceremony began at 12:00pm and he accepted the position at 12:23pm, May 7, 2000.) This is another indication that Putinism is in crisis and it is in the middle of a shock to the system. However, it also indicates how much Putin is becoming even more radical and reactionary, passing laws that more strictly limit personal freedoms and criminalizing political opposition. It remains to be seen how long the Russian people can put up with this extreme, illiberal authoritarianism. I suspect, not much longer based on the history.

Although most people around the world would probably welcome a regime change in Russia, if the system collapses, the results could bring a serious international crisis. The U.S., the E.U. and even China may have to involve themselves in Russia’s domestic problems in order to stem the tide of violence and anarchy. Most importantly, such a collapse of the civil order would risk the security of the nuclear arsenal. It would also likely lead to serious economic and political problems for the Russian Federation’s component republics, namely, those in Siberia, in the Ural region, in south central Russia and those near the Caucuses. The ethnic rivalries that exist in the Russian Federation bring to mind what happened in the Balkans with the collapse of Yugoslavia. I would hope the world community learned its lesson with Yugoslavia and they’ll strive to soften the landing should the Putin regime begin to collapse in violent revolution.

Without any doubt, if the end of Putinism is accompanied or instigated by political violence, the world will have to figure out how to secure the Russian nuclear arsenal that is spread across various republics in the Federation. And even if the Federation collapses in a relatively peaceful way, those republics will most certainly not turn over their housed nuclear weapons to Moscow, given that Ukraine did just that with a promise of sovereignty, but Moscow invaded anyway. The risk to the world’s safety is obvious. There will have to be an international initiative to solve that problem.

I realize this sounds very ominous, but then Saturn-Neptune, in principle, is not known for risk averse or rational behavior. Their conjunction is often accompanied by paranoid, fear-driven, nationalistic political movements—the Red Scare of 1917-1919, and another Red Scare with McCarthyism in the early 1950s coincided with Saturn-Neptune conjunctions. The beginnings of the German Nazi Party happened at the same time as the 1917-1919 period with the revolution in Germany at the end of WWI. Consider also the elements of McCarthyism with its accompanying ‘Atomic Diplomacy’ and Mutually Assured Destruction, and we get a clear indication of how things can develop in a nuclear armed world under Saturn-Neptune.

We can find corroborative evidence for such an international crisis in the horoscopes for the U.S., especially those for independence in the first week of July 1776, and the horoscope for the coronation of Ivan IV, January 16, 1547 (OS), noon, LAT, in Moscow. Ivan IV is considered to be the founder of Russia as an early modern, monarchical nation-state in contrast to Peter the Great (1721) who created Imperial Russia. The US independence charts have the Moon’s Nodes at 6 Leo/6 Aquarius and Ivan IV’s coronation has the Sun at 5 Aquarius. We can see the havoc that was wrought for both the U.S. and Russia during WWII in the early 1940s when Pluto was last at 4-6 Leo conjunct the US North Node and opposing Russia’s foundational Sun. We are now looking at Pluto transiting 4-6 Aquarius again, hitting the same sensitive points that were hit in WWII, this time conjunct the U.S. South Node and Russia’s Sun. As previously mentioned, this will happen at the same time as the 2026 Saturn-Neptune conjunction.

What exactly do I mean by the word ‘intersection’ here? I’m thinking of the history of the LGBTQ community in the U.S. as a current of social movement and the laws that relate to civil rights as another current. These two currents within the flow of American social history began to intersect and create a confluence in the early 20^th century—a confluence that turned extremely problematic, violent and oppressive to LGBTQ people.

Since the advent of the modern Gay rights movement in the mid-1960s, there has been a concerted academic effort to examine the history, anthropology, and sociology of queerness, generally, but also specifically in the United States. The Queer historiography makes it clear there was a gay subculture and community at the latest by the 1860s in the US, if not earlier, in the 1850s. The problem was, there was no real term for same-sex relationships other than ‘sodomy’, which only describes sexual acts outside of procreative marriage between a man and a woman. Thus, it was difficult to ‘see’ such relationships within a context of a sexual orientation, identity and community. Much of the same-sex behavior identified in the Western territories and states has often been minimized with the argument that men only consorted with other men because there was a lack of opportunity—much like prison sex. The West was populated primarily by men, especially in the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest.

Take Seattle, as an example. Men outnumbered women more than 4 to 1 in the 1850s and 1860s, which prompted Asa Mercer to recruit women and bring them from New England to Seattle in the mid-1860s. It wasn’t a very successful venture and not that many took the offer. Whether it was opportunistic sex because of the lack of women, a more fluid sexuality for many, or a homosexual orientation is still debated, but Seattle’s downtown south of Yesler, a.k.a. the original Skid Road, was infamous for male only steam rooms, hotels, bars, etc. That didn’t change for nearly a century until, as in other cities where gay men began creating communities in the mid-1960s at the time of the Uranus/Pluto conjunction, gay men in Seattle began their take-over of the westside of Capitol Hill creating a near exclusively gay neighborhood and district. The economic problems created by the near collapse of Boeing between 1968-1975, when they laid off about 100,000 employees, left Seattle neighborhoods like Capitol Hill with abandoned businesses and homes. A group of gay businessmen created the Seattle Gay Businessmen’s Association and they invested heavily on Broadway Ave on Capitol Hill in the early to mid-1970s, creating a Mecca for Pacific Northwest gay men. It was their initiative, as well, to change Seattle’s ‘nickname’ from the Jet City and sometimes the Queen City to the Emerald City. That nickname has prevailed over the last 50 years as both a reference to the Wizard of Oz, ‘Friends of Dorothy’, and Judy Garland as a gay icon, as well as the green forested geography of the Pacific Northwest.  

Washington, D.C. is another documented example. Billy Swann, a former slave, who in the late 1870s became the ‘Queen’ of Washington, D.C. with her drag queen parties and shows, often raided by police. The newspapers constantly complained about these denizens of iniquity related to Swann’s activities, his so-called boarding house and its mixed race all male clientele, which only added to the scandalous nature of the gay community in the city. Nonetheless, Swann became a D.C. celebrity and she was more or less the queen mother of the city’s gay community. The Civil War period saw Washington D.C. literally boom with business and population, and by the time of the Uranus/Pluto Crescent Phase 45 deg semi-square in 1862-63, a gay community had developed and has existed in the city ever since.

Magnus Hirschfeld, the German sexologist and gay rights advocate, noted in his journals that the gay community in Chicago’s Old Town at the time of the 1893 World’s Fair had remarkable consistencies and similarities with the gay community in Berlin. Hirschfeld also noted, like Berlin, the community showed signs of having been around for some time. These similarities and subcultural consistencies were an important part of his view that sexuality included different orientations to the world and wasn’t just one set of behaviors based on a biological imperative to procreate. It was meaningful to him that the gay community in Chicago should look like and behave like the gay community in Berlin when there was very limited contact between the two.

These historical examples make one wonder why straight people generally didn’t ‘see’ these gay people and weren’t consciously aware of the subculture that existed around them. One theoretical explanation is that there was a lack of terminology to identify it. No one yet had a sense that there was some separate sexual orientation to the world, in spite of the fact, such ideas had emerged in pamphlets already in the 1860s in Europe. In Germany, Karl Ulrichs had written on the subject of a universal gay cultural principle beginning in 1862 and presented similar ideas to a German court in 1867 advocating for civil rights for men who were ‘Uranians’, as he called them. He also believed such men were born Uranians, they existed in all human cultures, and were just another manifestation and creation of Mother Nature. This idea, of course, ran afoul of Aquinas’ medieval ‘Natural Law’ that had informed European Christian culture’s primitive and simplistic views on sexuality for six hundred years. German jurisprudence wasn’t going to suddenly shift to Ulrichs’ ‘uranian’ view of sexuality, abandon six hundred years of Natural Law as the basis of the moral understanding of sexuality, and extend any ‘right’ to same-sex relationships.

Given the 19^th century scientific developments and the nature of their intellectualism, Ulrichs’ term ‘Uranian’ simply wasn’t going to catch on. There was a growing movement within a new academic discipline, psychology, to examine and understand same-sex behavior, and it was going to take more academic, scientific terminology to get anyone’s attention. The terms homosexual and heterosexual wouldn’t be coined for another few months after Ulrichs’ presentation to the German Court in Munich on the afternoon of August 29, 1867.  Those two terms would be introduced for the first time on the evening of May 6, 1868, in a letter from Karl-Maria Kertbeny to Karl Ulrichs. Kertbeny was a writer and journalist who also wrote pamphlets and articles promoting the legalization of same-sex relationships in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Although those terms eventually became definitive due to the prominent psychologist, Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s, adoption and application of them, they weren’t used in the U.S. for another 30 plus years until the time of the Uranus/Pluto opposition, and then primarily in the psychological/psychiatric professions. The general public-at-large in America didn’t become aware of, or perhaps didn’t take seriously, the queer culture and personalities in their communities until the Oscar Wilde trials in Britain in 1895, but even then, it didn’t seem to capture much of the public imagination in the U.S. outside of intellectual circles. That would soon change with the realization that there was a deeply-rooted gay community in the US as well, not just in Europe. That sudden visibility and the public’s realization of it led to a conflict between the law and the LGBTQ community.

This open clash between the gay community and the law in the U.S. dates back to a gay sex scandal in Portland OR that began on Nov 8, 1912 at 07:12pm. According to Police records, a young man was booked at 07:10pm for shoplifting, and police questioning began at 07:12pm. It’s a fascinating story in itself, but it’s beyond the scope of this article, so we have to skip over the juicy details of it and focus on its general social context and its impact on the country. It’s not that same sex relationships were legal prior to the Portland scandal, they weren’t, but they weren’t really much of a consideration for the general population and the punishments were relatively benign, depending on the specific sexual nature of the crime–usually some time in jail, never more than a year, and that was the end of it. Even in Billy Swann’s case in Washington, D.C., he was sentenced to 10 months in 1888, released early and he was back in business holding his dances and using his home as a space for Black and White men to socialize after hours.

After the gay vice scandal in 1912, however, all that changed. It was brought to the attention of the police that there were same-sex dance clubs, restaurants, bars, cafes and hotels in Portland. And they operated openly, even advertising in the newspaper, the Oregonian. One such advertisement read, “Let’s Go to the Louvre Tonight! Jancsi Rigo, with his Gypsy Orchestra…returned to Portland today and will open a six-week engagement beginning at 6pm tonight at the Louvre. All during the show, ‘she’ will be thinking of that gay little half hour that’s coming afterwards! — The Louvre, a Dialog Place for the Fastidious in the Belvedere Hotel at 4^th and Alder.” The ad itself reads rather funny, and you can see the ‘code’ in it meant for gay men, but it’s still a little odd that people generally and the police vice squad didn’t pick up on what this was actually advertising. Apparently, they didn’t, because we now know Portland’s gay community had been around since the 1880s when the transcontinental railroad arrived, and there were bars, clubs, bathhouses and exclusive hotels.

However, on the evening of November 9, 1912, the 18 year-old teenager, who had been arrested for shoplifting, indicated to police that he had had sex with a number of men who had ‘corrupted’ him, which then activated the vice squad in the police department and over the next couple weeks more than 100 men were arrested, including prominent politicians, civic leaders, businessmen, etc. Although there were other gay locations involved, the vice police initially targeted and raided the YMCA and the Louvre all-male dinner and nightclub in the Belvedere Hotel. Here is a picture from an illustrated magazine of the period that illustrates and chronicles the event.

In the trials that followed, a detailed description of Portland’s gay community emerged, complete with graphic descriptions of their sexual behavior and relationships, the subcultural slang/language these men used with each other, and the realization that this was a nation-wide phenomenon, not unique to Portland, with a gay network served by the transcontinental rail system, that extended from Vancouver BC to L.A. on the west coast, across the country to Minneapolis, Chicago, and East Coast cities. This revelation brought the FBI into the picture and the federal vice squads began infiltrating gay communities all across the country including within the military. Military investigations led to the arrest of dozens stationed at the Newport Naval Training Center in Rhode Island in 1919.

By 1917, based on what had been revealed in the Portland trials, draconian anti-gay laws were passed in a number of states, and by 1923 all 48 states had passed similar laws. Punishment included up to 10 years in prison and castration, euphemistically called ‘sterilization’. It was at this point in time that the gay community was also clashing with the racist Eugenics movement that was sweeping the country.

The historical record shows that there was significant influence from the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Harbor, NY, to get states to pass laws allowing eugenics. Their pseudo-scientific research in genetics informed such laws all across the country.  Specifically, the ERO dedicated its resources to pushing for the restriction of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Italy, the Middle East and Asia, who were deemed ‘genetically inferior’ to Northern European, Germanic, Nordic and Anglo-Saxon whites, and the forced sterilization of individuals deemed to have undesirable characteristics, including LGBTQ. These eugenic sterilization laws and the efforts of the FBI vice squads destroyed the gay communities in the U.S., forcing LGBTQ into what became known as the ‘closet’. Men were threatened with a decade of incarceration, electro-shock treatments, and chemical castration or vasectomies, and women with electro-shock treatment in mental hospitals and involuntary hysterectomies or tubal ligations. The persecution became extreme after 1912 and it continued into the 1970s and in some states until homosexuality was decriminalized by Court order in 2003. And even though the ERO was shut down in 1939-40 for its racist pseudo-science, the state laws using sterilization as punishment for LGBTQ people stayed on the books well into the 1970s in most states.

Another reason for the continuing persecution of LGBTQ people had to do with the labels homosexuality and heterosexuality themselves. Religious heterosexuals rejected the idea that sexuality was innate or an orientation, rather that it was a behavioral choice to make. The religious influence behind that suggested that the only moral choice was to follow God’s Will, and in their interpretation of the Bible, His will was we should all be heterosexuals. Thus, there was a concerted effort to educate children both in school and church about the moral evils of homosexuality. The strategy was to repress such expressions of sexuality and relationship and deny that it’s a viable, moral choice, by spreading fear. They propagandized children with films portraying gay men as pedophiles and pederasts, depraved and perverted.

Of course, that dove-tailed nicely with the Eugenics Records Office’s pseudo-science and their efforts to sterilize gay men and lesbians. Ironic and counter-intuitive as that may have been, since it’s pretty obvious heterosexual couples produce gay children. And then, the Eugenics movement and sterilization of LGBT people were intellectually counter to the religious notion that homosexuality was a behavioral choice and not a genetic predisposition. In spite of the incongruencies and cognitive dissonance between the religious ‘behavioral’ view of sexuality and the Eugenics proponents’ view of it as ‘genetic’, both sought to eliminate gay people from society, or at least punish them with physical and emotional torture, segregate them and render them invisible. As with racial and ethnic segregation and Jim Crow, straight, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were very successful in their efforts to oppress and dehumanize LGBTQ people.

So, what then is the astrological context for all this? In tracing the astro-history of these gay and queer related events and developments, in the big picture, the crises points seem most related to the Uranus/Pluto cycle, as alluded to above. Historical research into the subject reveals documented same-sex relationships and gay communities existed in American cities and in the American West as early as the 1850s around the time of the Uranus/Pluto conjunction at the end of Aries. There were all-male private boarding houses, clubs, bars, etc., in most large American cities and in the West where there weren’t many women. This was not unique to the U.S. The same existed in Europe. However, in Europe, there were pioneering individuals who began advocating for gay rights already in the 1860s, the two most prominent were Karl Ulrichs and Karl Maria Kertbeny.

In the 1860s when Karl Ulrichs was actively writing pamphlets and giving speeches on gay rights, Uranus and Pluto had reached their 45 deg Crescent phase waxing semi-square and he was determined to get same-sex relationships decriminalized. He was a lone voice in the straight wilderness, but he began the mobilization to push for rights. In 1876 at the Uranus/Pluto First Quarter square, Ulrichs was persecuted and prosecuted for distributing sexually immoral pamphlets, and he realized he had gone as far as he could in Germany. The backlash to the idea of gay rights disappointed him. He moved to Italy then and lived there until his death. But he had succeeded in making gay rights an issue in Europe.

By 1901 at the Uranus/Pluto opposition, the terms homosexuality and heterosexuality had become commonplace in intellectual circles, even in the US, and both in European and US cities, gays and lesbians were embracing a ‘homosexual identity’ and creating communities. But it was like hiding in full view. Straight people just didn’t seem to take notice or understand what they were seeing.

However, when Uranus and Pluto reached their Full Phase 150 degree waning quincunx in 1912, the Portland scandal and the revelations to the public about queer sexual behavior, relationships and the extent of their nation-wide networks and communities shocked the country and the world. There was an immediate public outcry to lawmakers to criminalize and punish gay, lesbian and trans people. Over the next 50 years, queer life, for the most part, went underground and LGBTQ, especially gay men, became shadowy creatures of the night, behind darkened windows and storefronts with no advertised names. Long-term relationships were nearly impossible for most for fear of being found out. For gay men, especially, relationships most often had to consist of one-night-stands and cruising. The Closet was imperative in order to stay safe in public, hidden from view, maintaining employment and social and family relationships. Gay bars and clubs in big cities often existed only because of corrupt police and the mafia who would take bribes from gay club owners to stay open and not be raided, or the raids were orchestrated and no one arrested. The days of open advertising for gay venues was over. The 1950s were especially difficult for the LGBTQ community as the McCarthy-Republicans pushed their Red and Lavender Scares on the country, portraying LGBTQ people as commie pinko sympathizers if not outright communists. And once again, there was a conflict with the law and the government. New McCarthy Era policies were implemented in the early 1950s to keep gays and lesbians from working in the Federal Government.

Beginning in January 1962, as the massive February stellium in Aquarius was approaching, sudden changes for LGBTQ people were afoot. It started in Illinois when the state legislature decriminalized homosexuality, The new law took effect at midnight on January 1, 1962, and once again a gay community began to freely develop in Chicago, not in its original location in Old Town, but further north along Halsted, and would become known as Boystown. And even though California had not yet decriminalized homosexuality, San Francisco’s Castro District was taken over by gay men beginning in 1962 and it was a complete take-over by 1965, and within a decade would become a gay Mecca. Similar changes happened in New York in the West Village and Chelsea. Other states began decriminalizing as well by the early 1970s and gayborhoods also developed in the cities in those states.

The agitation for ending homophobic discrimination and oppression, however, became part of the general pro-civil rights and anti-war movements of the Uranus/Pluto conjunction of 1965-66. Leading up to the conjunction in the early 1960s, the country experienced sit-ins, marches, the Freedom Riders, and demonstrations. By 1964 most of the country was ready to finally pass civil rights and voting rights legislation. That was accomplished in 1964-65. And the first demonstration for general civil rights for ‘homophiles’, as the gay community referred to itself then, was held on July 4^th, 1965 at 4pm in Philadelphia. However, the more demonstrations for gay rights that happened, the more police began harassing gay establishments, which led to gay resistance in various cities across the country and then finally the Stonewall riots in NYC on the night of June 27-28, 1969 that lasted three days. And the gay liberation movement was born. The actual Gay Liberation Front organized then on July 4, 1969; the meeting was called to order about 12:15pm in NYC. Stonewall is considered to be the pivotal moment in history that marks the beginning of the modern Gay rights movement.

So, with that little trip down history lane, let’s take a look at the charts for some of these important events. We’ll start with the Kertbeny’s letter to Ulrichs where the terms homosexual and heterosexual were first used. Then we’ll look at the Portland Gay Vice Scandal and follow up with the Newport Naval Training Center scandal, because these two scandals brought unwanted attention to gay communities across the country and led to draconian anti-gay laws that persisted into the 21^st century in some states. And both resonate astrologically with the chart for the first use of the term homosexuality.

Although we don’t have the exact time Kertbeny wrote the word ‘homosexual’ in his letter to Ulrichs, the fact that evening was a Full Moon in Scorpio rising opposing Pluto is reason enough to use the Lunation itself as the radical chart for our modern sense of homosexual and heterosexual orientations. When examining future events related to queer people, the resonance with this chart, as you will see, is astonishing and confirms, for me anyway, that this is a radical chart we can use. In addition to the Full Moon opposing Pluto on the horizon are the Mars/Neptune conjunction in Aries, Venus and Uranus in Cancer, and Saturn Rx in Sagittarius square the Nodes.

Returning to the Uranus/Pluto cycle and issues of civil rights, we can see they are about 55 degrees apart approaching sextile, but still in the early Crescent Phase of the cycle. Venus is at the Crescent Phase 45 degree semi-square to the Sun and Pluto approaching conjunction with Uranus and their New Phase. The chart here represents a fruition of transformative ideas regarding sexuality and a mobilization of effort and purpose to bring these ideas into common consideration and application. With Saturn in Sagittarius square the Nodes, the religious and legal resistance effectively blocked and limited any associated civil rights that might be considered. The Uranus/Pluto cycle that began in 1850, their first conjunction at 29 Aries on Jun 25, 1850 at 07:15pm LMT (D.C.), is generally a dismal chart for issues of civil rights through the cycle and the tight, partile Moon square Saturn at 19 Aries adds insult to injury. The dynamic between these two charts here is not good, either, with transiting Mars conjunct that 19 Aries Saturn. The overall picture is not a pleasant one and the history of the struggle for gay civil rights in the 19^th through the first half of the 20^th century reflects these difficult aspects. It didn’t matter which marginalized group it was, the last Uranus/Pluto cycle turned out to be horrendous for women and racial, ethnic and sexual minorities in the U.S. We had to wait for the next Uranus/Pluto conjunction in the mid-1960s to re-set the intentions and start a new effort to correct what went wrong in the last cycle. It started well for racial minorities with the 1964 and 1965 Civil and Voting Rights Acts at the time of the new conjunction, but it still took until 2003 for decriminalization of homosexuality, and that wasn’t done by popular legislation, but rather by Supreme Court order. It’s beyond the scope of this article to delve too deeply into the 1850 and 1965 Uranus/Pluto conjunctions, but I want the reader to be aware that whatever astrology we are looking at in regards to civil rights and, specifically, gay rights, it’s within the context of the Uranus/Pluto cycle.

The next chart to examine is the Portland gay sex scandal. You’ll see immediately how it resonates with the 1868 chart for Kertbeny’s first use of the term, homosexuality.

The first thing we see is the New Moon conjunct Mars in Scorpio in the same degrees as the Kertbeny letter’s Full Moon opposing Pluto, adding evidence that the Kertbeny Letter Chart is a radical chart for the modern conception of homosexuality. The next obvious aspects are Pluto at 29 Gemini conjunct the Asc in a Full Phase waning quincunx with Uranus at 29 Capricorn in the 8^th House. (Note: the founding chart for Portland, Oregon is Nov 9, 1843, 12:01pm, according to the founders’ journal entry for that day. Its Sun is also at 16+ Scorpio.) The Full Phase quincunx is an 8^th House aspect as well (150 deg from/behind the Asc) doubling down on the theme of sexual relations that are hidden but revealed in a sudden and shocking way (Pluto Rising quincunx Uranus in the 8th, New Moon in Scorpio conjunct Mars in Scorpio in the 5th).

The Oregon legislature immediately began to draft an anti-Gay law that passed in one of the legislative chambers in January 1913, but the citizens of Portland launched a major campaign to stop it and they succeeded. However, the state legislature revisited that law in 1917 and passed a draconian anti-Gay law on Feb 19, 1917 about 10:00am. The law included 10 years incarceration and ‘sterilization’. It became the model that all the other 47 states would use to draft their own anti-Gay laws, some worse than others, over the next seven years. In Oregon, sterilization was primarily vasectomies for men and tubal ligation for women, but in other states, it was castration, usually chemical in the form of a pill, and involuntary hysterectomies for women.

Once again, we see 15-16 Taurus/Scorpio prominent, this time on the horizon. Then there’s a strange aspect configuration involving Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, all about 2 degrees of their signs. Include the Sun in conjunction with Mars trine to Pluto, and male castration/sterilization comes to mind. The t-square to Jupiter in the 12^th probably indicates the long-term imprisonment. Saturn conjunct the IC doesn’t help the overall tone of the chart with its heavy handedness and oppression. Uranus and Pluto were in their Disseminating Phase, Uranus having reached its Disseminating sessquare 135 degrees behind Pluto on Feb 17, 1916. Oregon wasn’t the first state to pass eugenic sterilization laws, but it was the first to specifically target LGBTQ people using eugenic sterilization as punishment. It was also during this Disseminating phase of Uranus and Pluto that the FBI infiltrated gay communities in cities across the country, essentially shutting down all bars and clubs, driving gay community activities and people underground or more euphemistically known as into ‘the closet’.

The military was also a target of FBI infiltration and investigation and after months of investigation of the Newport Naval Training facilities in Rhode Island, they blackmailed local civilian gay men to entrap sailors from the naval base. The Newport YMCA was often the central meeting place for gay men in the area, including those from the naval station. On the evening of March 19, 1919, the FBI staged a raid on the YMCA beginning at 9:00pm. FBI agents were posted in strategic areas in the building to observe who was coming and going where, setting a successful trap using civilian gay men inviting sailors into their rooms. The first arrests occurred beginning at 9:55pm.

And once again, 16 Scorpio/Taurus is on the horizon, adding more evidence that the 1868 Kertbeny Letter Chart is a radical chart to use for the modern conception of homosexuality. Key events in queer history seem to resonate well with that chart. Uranus and Pluto are still in their Disseminating Phase approaching trine. Although women will finally get the right to vote with the 19^th Amendment under this aspect, male politicians thwart their efforts to gain constitutional enfranchisement, the persecution and prosecution of LGBTQ continues and gets worse, and the racist laws that have been in place, especially since the 1901 Uranus/Pluto opposition, continue to disadvantage and marginalize Latinos, Asians and Blacks. The second incarnation of the KKK happened on Nov 26, 1915 at 12:00am, Stone Mountain, Georgia, and during this Disseminating UR/PL phase, they made significant inroads into mainstream American politics.

Ultimately, this UR/PL Disseminating period, 1916-1932, is when the racists, white supremacists, homophobes and misogynists won the culture war that began in 1850. The North may have won the Civil War militarily, but the South won the culture war that followed beginning with the end of Reconstruction in 1876 at the waxing First Quarter Uranus/Pluto square. These conservative culture warriors gained political success at the First Quarter trine, politically and legally attacked civil rights legislation, got all of the civil rights laws overturned, established racial and ethnic segregation, barred Asian immigration during the UR/PL waxing trine and then Gibbous Phase sessquare, ending all hope of expanding civil rights by the Full Phase opposition in 1901. The gay issue became a problem with the Portland sex scandal at the time of the Uranus/Pluto quincunx and the laws that were passed in the years that followed between 1917 and 1923 added LGBTQ to the list of legally marginalized people. They could legally be denied housing and employment and were at risk of persecution, prosecution, imprisonment, torture and ‘sterilization’ if discovered.

As one might expect, it was during the Last Quarter of the Uranus/Pluto cycle, 1932-1965, that the old cycle and everything it wrought and brought began to be resisted and people began advocating for their rights, especially in the post-WWII period. Blacks first, then women, then LGBTQ and it all came to a head at the Uranus/Pluto conjunctions of 1965-1966, as new statements of intent were made regarding the expansion of civil rights to marginalized groups.

The first general demonstration for Gay rights occurred on July 4, 1965 beginning about 4pm in Philadelphia. Over the next four years, these demonstrations continued both in Philadelphia and in Washington, D.C., then gradually in other cities as well. Very little political traction was gained by these demonstrations though and, as previously mentioned, the more agitation for civil rights, the more harassment they received from local police. It all came to a head with the raid and resulting riot at the Stonewall Inn in New York beginning at 01:20am, June 28, 1969—‘the hairpin drop heard around the world’.  Let’s take a look at these two charts.

And surprise, surprise! 15+ Scorpio is on the Ascendant! There is something really uncanny here about the mid-fixed sign degrees in these charts. The Newport Naval sex scandal in 1919 basically had these angles, and you find with the Supreme Court decisions decriminalizing same-sex relationships (2003) and granting marriage equality (2015), 26 Leo is on their Ascendents, whereas that degree is on the Midheaven here. The resonance between all of these charts is undeniable.

The Stonewall chart is somewhat of a departure in aspect and degree patterns from all the other charts. Nonetheless, it is considered to be the moment that historians say is the ‘birth’ of the gay rights movement that has led to the current level of acceptance and socio-political integration in the country. I think the real difference here from previous gay-related events is that Stonewall became the catalyst for the world culture to change regarding LGBTQ people. The Rainbow flag, Pride events, decriminalization, etc., have become global phenomena on every continent. Uranus and Pluto are still in their New Phase after conjunction here, but Uranus has entered Venus-ruled Libra, promising some radical changes in the way we understand human relationships and social contracts, with the expansion of civil rights as the underlying principle, empowering previously marginalized people. One important progressed aspect in this chart that proves the point is the secondary progressed New Moon that occurred at 20 Leo in June of 2015 at the time the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marriage Equality.

You can see that transiting Jupiter was conjunct the progressed New Moon, and transiting Uranus was conjunct the radix Asc at 20 Aries. The transiting MC was 20 Taurus conjunct the radix Venus and progressed Venus was conjunct the radix IC. There are other indicative aspects, but those stand out. The success of the gay rights movement at this moment can’t be denied, and the astrology of the moment clearly shows that success.

Let’s look at the individual charts for Lawrence v. Texas, the decision that decriminalized gay sex and Obergefell v. Hodges that gave LGBTQ the right to marry.

The first thing that comes to mind is the Mars/Uranus in the 7^th trine Sun/Saturn and the Moon in the 10^th conjunct the N. Node. The symbolism of the moment seems pretty clear. We also see 26 Leo and 20 Taurus on the angles again suggesting there is continuing resonance and continuity between these related historical events. Think back to the Portland gay sex scandal and its Venus/Jupiter conjunction in Sagittarius—transiting Pluto is sitting right on that conjunction. Keeping in mind, that sex scandal led to draconian laws against same-sex relationships, this Court decision eliminated those laws where they still existed, transforming at least the way the federal and state governments treat sexual minorities.

Same-sex marriage was approved by the Courts in their decision Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015. It was a logical extension to Lawrence v. Texas. If two men or two women can legally have consensual adult sex, and there is legislated laws regarding sexual discrimination, there’s nothing standing in the way of same-sex marriage, especially, if the 14^th Amendment is the underlying constitutional framework of the precedents for it (Loving, Griswold, Roe, et al.). Again, we see a Venus/Jupiter conjunction in a fire sign, Leo, trining both the Portland gay scandal chart’s Venus/Jupiter, and Lawrence v. Texas’ Pluto in Sagittarius. And identical to the Lawrence decision, 26 Leo is on the Ascendant and 20 Taurus on the MC.

If we want to ask the question, though, how and why did ‘America’ as a social, political and cultural space go through this really profound change that completely altered their history of homophobic discrimination, we have to look at something other than the events themselves. We have to look at a chart for this political and cultural space called ‘America’. Those of you reading this certainly have your charts of choice for the founding of the United States and you will probably want to look at those charts in relation to the charts I’ve provided here. I’m not so sure, though, that a founding chart for the country is where we want to look. The issues here are civil rights issues, and as such, they relate directly to the U.S. Constitution and Government in as much as the equality and social integration were achieved through Court orders/decisions, and not popular legislation. Perhaps then, the March 4, 1789 12:00am LAT, Philadelphia, is the chart to use. Especially, since the decisions regarding same-sex relationships and marriage were based on the 14^th Amendment.

On the other hand, Congress’ approval of Jefferson’s edits and final draft of the Declaration of Independence, especially its preamble, as an aspirational mission statement for the new country with its ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” might also yield some insight as to these important changes in attitude. John Adams wrote that the vote to approve Jefferson’s final draft took place at 11:00am LAT on July 4, 1776. That chart might also be worth examining. But for the sake of avoiding any possible controversy with which U.S. chart to use, let’s stick with the US Constitution and Government.

Here’s the Government/Constitution chart with the transits and secondary progressions to the Obergefell decision.

The most obvious planetary aspects are the progressed Venus and transiting Saturn conjunct the Ascendant and the progressed Sun/Neptune conjunction trining Venus/Mars in Aquarius in the radix chart. This provides us some insight into the underlying values of the Obergefell decision. LGBTQ as ‘queer folk’ had always been marginalized in society. They, themselves, for a long time didn’t want to ‘fit in’ or ‘mimic’ straight relationships. They had grown accustomed to the Closet and all it meant for their lives. They had their gay communities, families ‘of choice’, social circles, etc. This worked for decades, both for the gay community and straight society. LGBTQ could live their lives in the closet, but in ‘protective’ communities like gay neighborhoods, working in gay friendly professions, frequenting gay-friendly and gay-owned bars, clubs, hotels, etc. The AIDS epidemic ended that reality both for the gay community and straight society. LGBTQ people began shifting their attitudes to accept that long-term, committed relationships would save their health and lives. Advocating for same-sex marriage was, in fact and in deed, a conservative position to take. Marriage is socially stabilizing and significantly reduces sexually transmitted diseases. The Government has every interest in protecting the health and stability of the country. Extending the right of same-sex marriage was a Saturn/Venus/Asc development—conservative, stabilizing, and protective.

Beyond these transits and progressions, the Government’s Solar Arc Uranus crossed radix Mars at 28 Aquarius when homosexuality was decriminalized in 2003. During its one degree per year journey through the chart, Uranus crossed Saturn, Sun and the IC, which, I think, has a lot to do with the change of attitudes and growing acceptance of the LGBTQ community in society since 2003 as the Federal Government and the Courts changed their attitudes, setting the example.

Over the last 20 years, the cultural currents, Gay Rights and the Law, have more or less been flowing together without whirlpools, eddies, and white water. The turbulent waters of the 20^th century have calmed at this point. A few individual states still have questionable laws regarding protecting employment and housing, for example, but for the most part, there have been giant strides in acceptance and integration. As a movement that began with the Uranus/Pluto conjunction of the mid-1960s, there is nothing yet completely set in stone. We are still in the First Quarter phase of their cycle, so it’s still a bit early to say for sure if the peace and calm will prevail when the two planets reach the Gibbous Phase sessquare in the early 2030s. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Throughout most of the 20th Century astrologers tried (mostly in vain) to establish a national horoscope for the United States of America. When I first started studying astrology in the early 1970s, one of the more popular charts was set for two something in the morning with Uranus rising in Gemini. I had to wonder then how such a time and chart could be possible. It did not seem particularly likely, probable or even possible that the Continental Congress was in session at two in the morning on July 4, 1776. I rejected the very idea and the chart as a-historical.

In the mid-1970s, the eminent astrologer, Dane Rudhyar, published his book ‘The Astrology of America’s Destiny’, in which he promoted his rectified version of what is known as the Sibly Chart. The time for both was set for shortly after 5:00 pm LMT on July 4th. That seemed much more plausible to me and many others. I began using Sibly, or more accurately, Rudhyar’s few minute rectification of it, as the chart for the U.S.A., and found it generally ‘worked’ with transits and progressions to most important historical events. The key word here being ‘most’. I found a number of questionable planetary patterns with certain events that just didn’t seem plausible. However, for the most part, I ignored those discrepancies, and in a typical ‘appeal to authority’, relied on the astrological expertise of Dane Rudhyar. That would change after studying the history.

In 1978, I went back to university to get another degree in American History. In my studies and research into the founding of the country, I was introduced to the two primary sources most often cited in the historiography, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. University history professors generally ignored Jefferson’s account because it had been written many years after the fact and didn’t always agree with Adams. They told us students to pay more attention to John Adams’ account, since it was written contemporaneously. Secondary sources written by historians tend to emphasize Adams over Jefferson as well.

In studying and researching these primary and secondary sources over the years, the following events and dates stand out in 1776:

*June 7th–The Lee Resolution, a motion to vote for Independence with a rationale for doing so, had been presented to the Congress earlier and the first week of June the Congress took up the issue. In the late afternoon of Friday, June 7th, as the Moon entered Pisces squaring a stellium of Sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus in Gemini, with the Moon square Venus both sessquare to Saturn Rx in Libra, Congress decided to table the Resolution until members could seriously consider the Resolution and its consequences. The Colonies had declared war with England on the previous July 7, 1775, so such a Resolution as proposed by Lee from Virginia was not a surprise, but it required very serious consideration and the correctly stated political and philosophical reasons for independence. The Congress deemed Lee’s language in his Resolution too provocative and impolitic and voted to postpone the vote on it until July 1, 1776. Congress adjourned with July 1st set as the next session and in the interim, Jefferson and a couple others were tasked with reworking the language in the Lee Resolution to protect them from accusations of treason.

*July 1st–according to John Adams, Congress reconvened at 9:00 am, did their normal preliminary activities reviewing old business and setting the agenda for the day, for which an hour was usually reserved. In his account, the Lee Resolution was the first item on the agenda that day and they began debating the merits of it starting at 10:00 am, just prior to the exact 10:30 am Full Moon at 10* 12′ Capricorn squaring Saturn at 14 Libra. They debated for nine hours. After exhausting the pros and cons already by 06:30 pm, they put their coalitions together, and promptly at 07:00 pm, with the Moon at 15+ Capricorn just minutes past the exact square to Saturn at 14+ Libra (06:11pm), John Hancock, the President of the Congress, made a motion to end the debate and take a vote to agree to separate from England or not. The vote was nine Yes, two No, and two abstentions. The motion had passed. 5+ Capricorn was on the Asc, opposing Jupiter at 5+ Cancer, 29+ Libra on the Midheaven trine to Venus at 29+ Gemini.

Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted No. Delaware and New York abstained. Delaware abstained because a key pro-independence delegate, Caesar Rodney, had not yet arrived in time for the vote. Mercury was retrograde. They were dismayed that they had to abstain and their vote was not in the Yes column. South Carolina then made a motion to take a second vote when Caesar Rodney arrived, in order to accommodate Delaware. John Adams had been dismayed because the vote wasn’t unanimous, and saw the opportunity with South Carolina’s motion, to lobby Pennsylvania, South Carolina and New York to vote Yes on the second vote. He admits in his account that he wanted a unanimous vote for public relations and political purposes and therefore promoted the motion for the second vote. John Dickinson, the head of the Pennsylvania delegation, also agreed to a second vote, and told his delegation they could change their vote to Yes since the decision for independence had already been made. Dickinson then left and didn’t return for the second vote.

*July 2nd–Congress convened at their normal 09:00 am time and conducted their normal routine until Caesar Rodney arrived in the 11th hour of the morning. A second vote was then taken sometime between 11:30 am and noon as the Moon at 25+ Capricorn opposed Mercury Rx at 25+ Cancer. The vote was 12 Yes and 1 abstention, New York. Adams was disappointed, but he had successfully lobbied Pennsylvania and South Carolina to change their vote to Yes. Adams believed July 2nd would become the national holiday celebrating Independence. Historians have traditionally agreed with Adams’ sentiment and, therefore, have usually ignored the vote on July 1st. Yet, according to Adams, the first vote was a binding decision and the second vote was meant primarily for public relations purposes. It also didn’t change the outcome of the first vote. Pennsylvania’s delegation leader, John Dickinson, didn’t even appear for the second vote, which is an important fact that supports the idea that the first vote was binding.

In the afternoon of July 2nd, the issue of a formal document declaring independence and explaining their reasons for it was raised again. Thomas Jefferson was the head of a small committee tasked to edit the Lee Resolution between June 7 and July 1. They reviewed the small committee’s draft document and it was collectively decided it needed more serious editing. Jefferson left and wrote a version that evening. He brought it back on the morning of July 3rd for review. It was rejected with more edits required. He made those edits and re-writes on the evening of July 3rd and brought it back on the morning of July 4th.

*July 4th–The session began as usual at 09:00 am, and at 10:00 am, Jefferson presented his most recent edits of what would become known as the Declaration of Independence. The document was reviewed and the language debated for about an hour, at which point, according to Adams, about 11 am, a motion was made to accept the Declaration as edited. There are a number of rectified charts for that 11th hour of the morning, but I have come to accept Adams’ 11:00am LAT (11:04am LMT).

They adjourned about noon and reassembled at 2:00 pm. At that point, the Declaration was more or less just ‘hanging there’, approved as it was, but a decision had to be made that would alter their lives forever. The question was whether they should or shouldn’t print, publish and distribute the Declaration. To do so, could have well been considered an act of Treason and every head in the Hall risked being put in a noose, if things went badly. It was truly a point of no return, if they agreed to publish it. They made the motion, it carried and passed. Astrologers who use this moment usually use 02:20 or 02:21 pm. 8+ Scorpio was on the Asc,16 Leo+ on the MC, the Moon was Void of Course at 25 Aquarius. (I interpret that to be a ‘safety’ factor for the Founders–nothing bad would come of printing and publishing.) The official congressional printer was then given the task of creating a ‘broadside’ or ‘fair copy’ of the Declaration (a template for printing). He left immediately for his print shop, and according to Adams, it took him more than five hours to create it.

From here on, things get murky. Sibly and Rudhyar place the time at 05:10-05:14pm that ‘something’ happened–ostensibly a declaration that the Colonies were independent. There is nothing in the historical record to support or confirm that. In 2015, while in Philadelphia, I took an official tour of Independence Hall with the official, federal historian. I asked him what he knew of the timing of events on the afternoon of July 4th. He said, they adjourned for dinner sometime ‘before 5:00 pm’ and returned at 07:00 pm for the presentation of the printer’s ‘fair copy’. Based on the record, we can assume the printer returned sometime between 07:30-08:00 pm, at which time, according to the historian at Independence Hall, John Hancock formally accepted the Declaration, read it out loud, then affixed his now famous large signature to it. There’s no time recorded, but it most likely happened between 08:00-09:00 pm. It was also decided that evening that they could print enough copies and get them distributed by July 8th. They then scheduled the formal public presentation and planned celebrations for ‘high noon’ on that date.

So, based on the historical record, both primary and secondary sources, nothing critical to Independence occurred at the time used for the Sibly/Rudhyar charts. If the official historian is correct, they had adjourned for dinner and weren’t even present in the Hall at that time.

*July 8th--I think it’s important to note that the official record states ‘high noon’ and not 12:00 pm as the time of the official public presentation of the Declaration of Independence. High Noon is when the Sun is directly over head 90 degrees to the horizon. In Philadelphia on July 8th, that would have been at 12:04pm LMT, 14+ Libra on the Asc, 16+ Cancer on the MC, Moon at 21+ Aries in the 7th. It takes approximately 10 minutes to read the Declaration of Independence out loud, and the celebrations began immediately after it was publicly read. I place the time about 12:10 pm LAT or 12:15pm LMT.

To review quickly, this is the calendar of events with approximate times in LMT according to the historical record:

July 1, 07:08 pm, the first majority Yes vote for Independence.
July 2, 11:30 am-Noon, the second vote.
July 4, 11:00 am-Noon, the approval of the language in the Declaration.
July 4, 02:20-ish pm, the agreement to print and publish the Declaration.
July 4, 07:30-09:00 pm, John Hancock formally accepts the Declaration and signs it.
July 8, 12:04 pm, the formal public presentation/reading of the Declaration
July 8, 12:15 pm, the first celebration of US Independence.

The question, of course, is which one is the ‘founding horoscope’ for the U.S.A.? In order to sort that out, we have to ask ourselves what each one is actually mapping.

Let’s consider the first majority Yes vote on July 1. The Founders made clear at that moment their intention to separate from England and be independent. All events that followed flow from that ‘moment of intent’. The chart should then map the nature and character of the country, its appearance and reputation in the world, its economic potential, and as such, its ‘destiny’ in so far as character is destiny.

The July 2nd vote, re-confirmed the first vote, but more importantly, the chart should show the unity of mind and intention–it’s a political statement of their collective action and thus should show us the realities of the American ‘body-politic’.

The July 4th approval of the Declaration of Independence gives us a chart that lays out the political and philosophical reasons for their decision to separate from England. As such, the chart provides a clear picture of the ideals to which Americans aspire, but which might or might not be born out over time, and perhaps not without a fight or struggle, based on the July 1 chart for the moment of intent to become independent.

The July 4th agreement to print and publish the Declaration, the moment of no possible return, seems an important critical chart to examine. It’s certainly a watershed moment in the process. It might well be more important than the moment of approval of the Declaration as a statement of political and philosophical idealism.

The July 8th formal public presentation of the Declaration and the following ‘national celebration’ maps the public awareness and acceptance of their Independence. As such, it’s more about the American people than anything else–their collective character, their destiny and their relationship with each other, politically, culturally and regionally/geographically.

Here are the charts with the times that I use for each.

Today is Saturday, February 27, 2016

 

Politics as usual? Not anymore. The Republican Party is in serious trouble and the CNN non-debate the other night illustrated all too uncomfortably just how serious their problems are. The GOP leadership has lost control of their ideals and message to the extent that their Speaker, John Boehner, gave up and resigned, and their more traditional and more electable Republican, Jeb Bush, has left the presidential race, leaving two freshman Senators and a non-politician and former Democrat-turned-obnoxious-foul-mouthed-demagogue in the lead. It is a very sad state of affairs for the Party and it does not bode well for them in the future.

But this is something of their own making and we have seen it coming for at least six or seven years since the Tea Party formed back in February and March of 2009 and the mid-term elections of 2010. At that time, in reaction to the economic collapse and the failures of the G.W. Bush administration that led to the collapse and its policies to try to stop it, fiercely ideological, anti-politics, and anti-Federalism elements within the party attacked the mainstream Republicans and the party leadership, and in coalition with the radical Christian right hijacked the party’s processes and put a stop to ‘politics as usual.’ They allowed no more consensus, no more compromise, no more politics and no more discussion. They dug their heals in and obstructed all political process in the Congress. They blamed ‘government’ and ‘politics as usual’ for the country’s problems, echoing the radical ‘John Bircher’ mentality of the mid-20th century.  But then, that mentality has existed in the GOP since the mid-1960s, albeit kept fairly marginalized by party leadership who believed in the political process.

This anti-political element in the GOP started in 1965 in reaction to their 1964 loss to President Johnson and his liberal social and economic agenda. The Vietnam War destroyed Johnson’s presidency, and in 1968, Richard Nixon courted those radical voices in the GOP and in a strategy known as ‘The Southern Strategy’ successfully courted former conservative Southern Democrats who hated Federalism and the new era of civil rights, integration and social equality. Reagan followed the strategy in 1980, but he expanded his base by allowing a radical Christian right-wing a place at the GOP table. Reagan, however, with Party leadership, was able to keep that radical element from exercising too much influence. In anger, the radical Christian right wing devised a strategy of their own to infiltrate local and state political offices, essentially creating a socially conservative Christian political movement throughout the Midwest and the South. Gradually, over the next twenty-plus years they exercised their political muscle well enough to make serious gains in Congress in 2010. Those freshman congressional Christians found an opportunity to attach themselves to the coattails of the new Tea Party who came in at the same time. Their collective status as ‘outsiders’ and their incredible lack of political experience or understanding of politics as the art of consensus and compromise created havoc in Congress and seriously undermined the effectiveness of government. The more ineffective it became, the louder the people screamed for outsiders to come in and fix it.

In addition to this political history, conservative media expressed the same quasi-Christian, anti-politics and anti-Federalism attitudes through Beck, Huckabee, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al, and Fox News with their intense propaganda efforts to attack the political process and denounce ‘consensus and compromise’ as inadequate and a failure in fixing the country’s problems. This added to the din and desire for outsiders to come in and do something.

Much of this is also in reaction to Obama’s election and re-election as the first partly African-American president and an avowed liberal whose policies to address the Bush Administration’s global economic mess were anathema to the new breed of anti-politics and anti-Federalism Republicans. Obama’s election unveiled the barely disguisable neo-Confederate nature of the Tea Party and the new wave of Republicans in Congress and those who supported them. Their insistence on a strict interpretation of the Constitution ‘as it was written and literally meant by the Founders’, their resistance to federal Court rulings regarding American society and social equality, insisting social policy is a Tenth Amendment States’ Rights issue, their rejection of the principle of Judicial Review of existing laws, their view of the Second Amendment as a right to defend themselves against ‘government’, and their view that the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to African-Americans and no one else, are all clear echoes of the Confederacy’s complaints against the federal government in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The old slogans, ‘The South Shall Rise Again’, and ‘Forget, Hell!’ are no longer historical relics of a previous century, but they have become, ironically, yet, in fact, revived sentiments within the GOP since 2008 when Obama was elected.

These anti-politics, anti-Federalism, anti-judicial, quasi-Christian, socially conservative ideals are now dominant among those in Congress, the Party, and among the rank and file. Their confederate, un-American mentality and insistence that outsiders, especially ‘business leaders’ come in and run the country like a corporation instead of a political system, has led to the current state of affairs. And it is, therefore, no surprise that they support someone like Donald Trump. Trump is, perhaps, more apolitical than anti-political, but his refusal to accept consensus and compromise; his direct, often vulgar, retrogressive and bombastic style and rhetoric regarding Hispanics, Muslims, and women appeal to these confederates in the Party. His disdain for politicians and the political process, preferring instead to bully, punch and insult his way through it appeals to the confederate mentality in its frustrated inability to feel heard in a Federal system that doesn’t take a fundamentalist stance on the Constitution and States’ Rights.

And thus, this is where the GOP is today. These anti-politics and anti-Federalist (a.k.a. neo-Confederate) voices are having their day and they have their outsider, champion demagogue in Donald Trump, who uses force and intimidation in order to get himself heard, yet offers nothing of substance to the American people, and he is enough of an egotist and narcissist to enjoy and wallow in the adulation and media attention, whether positive or negative.  However, he is probably electable as a presidential candidate should he get the nomination, given their gerrymandered control in the states. Mainstream Republicans will be making a concerted effort to bring him down before the nominating convention this summer, but even if they cannot, the old GOP is no more. Their self-undoing over the last few decades and especially since allowing the Tea Party and radical Christian right to take control will lead again to future failure even if they succeed in November. Trump will not handle well the realities of governing. They are probably facing a future of embarrassment in the face of extreme incompetence and experience, but that’s better than another Democrat, which would be stomach-wrenching for them. They will have to figure out finally who the GOP is and what they really stand for, because if they maintain this ‘anti-politics and anti-Federalist’ ideology, they will not find any traction with the younger generation or the growing racial and ethnic minorities, and they will cease to exist as a political party fading away like the Whigs of old. It is a sad state of affairs.

Today is Thursday, October 29, 2015

This week there is the World Congress of Families (WCF) being held in Salt Lake City. It is primarily an anti-LGBT gathering of religious organizations and anti-gay activists from around the world who promote the notion of ‘natural’ marriage. There are about 3000 attendees from sixty different countries this year. The WCF was formed out of a meeting between Allen Carlson of the Illinois Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, and two professors from Moscow State University in Russia. Initially, the impetus was a concern for the demographic changes in the U.S. and Russia, that were leading to a population decline and a growing movement for homosexual inclusion in mainstream society.  The congress was first organized as a pro-‘natural’ family event to promote one-man-one-woman marriages and families around the world. Their work has been instrumental in the success of some of the anti-gay legislation in Uganda, Nigeria, and Russia. The WCF, however, denies any ‘anti-gay’ agenda, yet they allow very extreme people and organizations to participate. One such extreme organization is The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) represented by it’s leader, Brian Brown. Brown really tipped his hand regarding his organization’s agenda In his address to this world congress. This is what he said:

” The Supreme Court didn’t change the definition of marriage, it “put a lie into the law” — just like slavery and the Dred Scott decision.” Brown said that there’s no time for activists to be depressed. Citing the history of Christian martyrs, abolitionists and civil rights activists, he criticized believers in his anti-LGBT cause who don’t want to reveal themselves publicly because some of their Facebook friends might think less of them. “Instead of being depressed, we should savor the fact that we live at a point in history, like those times before, in which we can stand for the truth, make a difference, and God has put us here for some reason. This fight is not over. It has just begun.”

In his address, Brown proposed four goals for the anti-marriage equality movement:

1. Affirm continually and publicly that marriage is by nature a union of a man and a woman.

2. Reject the Supreme Court’s decision as illegitimate

Today is Saturday, September 5, 2015.

The whole world is watching the controversy in Rowan County, Kentucky and the recent imprisonment of Kim Davis due to contempt of court charges after she refused the court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She is claiming the right to her religious freedom to disobey the law. Because the Supreme Court ruled in June that same-sex couples have the right to marry in the United States and state laws denying this right are unconstitutional, the federal judge is claiming she violated her oath to uphold constitutional requirements in her role as an elected civil servant. Even as she was escorted away from the court room, she refused to issue the authorization for her staff to hand out marriage licenses. Five members of her staff, after being threatened with the same contempt of court charges, agreed to issue the marriage licenses and those licenses were handed out beginning Friday morning. In spite of this, the controversy and argument are not over.

What is really going on here? In this specific situation, Kim Davis is being punished for not doing her job and violating the law. Her religious views were not considered as relevant by the judge. Yet, for Kim Davis, it is the only thing that is relevant. She is getting plenty of support from social conservatives and most of the Republican presidential candidates, as a result. They are claiming she was jailed for her religious beliefs. The judge denies those allegations.

I think what is really happening here is a deep-seeded change in American culture, probably due to demographic changes, that is dismantling previous Protestant Christian privilege. A glimpse into American History makes it pretty clear that, although there is a constitutional mandate for separation of church and state, and the government may not endorse any religion, the reality is Protestantism has always held a superior place in the culture and enjoyed an obvious cultural privilege. The way I see it, that has been changing and Protestants know this and feel this. There is, in fact, no war on Christianity. Kim Davis was not jailed because of her beliefs. She was jailed because she violated her oath and the law. She is still allowed to believe in her ‘Apostolic Christianity’; she is still allowed to believe, with all her heart, marriage is only between and man and a woman and she can preach that in her church. But what she cannot do is use her elected civil position to discriminate against people because she does not believe in what they are doing.

In the past, Protestant social values were often the basis for community laws and prescribed behaviors. That was a result of their cultural privilege–they were just accepted as our American cultural values. Ever since the mid 1960s, however, that cultural privilege has slowly eroded as a result of Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion, women’s rights, interracial marriage, civil rights, and now the rights of LGBT to be full participating members of the society. Marriage equality was the final blow to that privilege and I can imagine it must feel demoralizing for those Christians who feel they are increasingly marginalized in the culture. There is a problem of perception here though. They, as people and citizens, are not being marginalized at all. They have every right to believe what they believe and that has not changed. What has changed is the unwillingness of the majority of Americans and the judicial system to continue to allow them a privileged status complete with laws and community values that reflect and support their beliefs at the expense of others.

Christians adamantly adhere to the belief that the United States, its government, laws and culture are ‘Judeo-Christian’ in origin and that tradition and history should not be abandoned. However, as it stands now, only one in five Americans actively engages in a religious community or congregation. The younger generation is less religious than any previous American generation, and as they come of age, they do not tolerate the rigid religious social rules of behavior and identity that impinge on their freedom of expression. They simply do not understand how romantic and sexual love can be limited by biological gender and prescribed by a church or religion. It leads, obviously, to the question, ‘What about the civil rights of those who are not practicing Christians?’  And this is the crux of the conflict.

Kim Davis has become a hero or martyr of sorts to these Protestant Christians, which was expected. The wave of support for her is all about the last dying gasp of a privileged religious denomination that has dominated American culture for more than two centuries, but has lost that status over the last fifty years. The Republican Party is dominated by these believers and their field of presidential candidates makes that clear. But their privilege and cultural dominance will no longer be a reality and sending Kim Davis to jail is emblematic of their situation. The Republican Party and its believers, as they are now, will never be able to succeed in the current cultural, social and political landscape as long as they push for a return to the old White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America of yesterday. Protestantism will still be the dominant American religious sect, but it will never again be allowed to dictate to the rest of us how we live our lives, whom we love, or how we plan or arrange our families. Those days are gone.  It is sad that they are feeling marginalized when that is not really the case. It is even more disturbing that they are now taking to ‘civil disobedience’ in order to stop the erosion of their influence and privilege, because it is a futile, quixotic tilting at windmills. We are a nation of laws based on the Constitution and that includes the 14th Amendment that guarantees all of us equal treatment and equal access to all levels of society, not just Protestants.

Today is Sunday, May 3, 2015.

After reviewing the Supreme Court’s arguments this last week regarding the constitutional questions of marriage equality and state recognition of married same-sex couples, I pondered over one of the statements of a Supreme Court judge suggesting to allow and recognize such marriages would ‘redefine the institution’ that had been between a man and a woman for ‘millennia’. Something didn’t ring true in that statement. I remember in graduate school, I studied medieval culture and epic poetry, which expressed for the first time in the culture something that would be called ‘romantic love’ as the basis of relationship. However, in the literature it was portrayed in conflict with traditional values regarding marriage as a social, political and economic contract between families.

In Gottfried’s 12th century ‘Tristan and Isold’, for example, the romantic love between the two main characters ran afoul of the arranged marriage between King Mark and Isold. The fact that it took a ‘magic potion’ to bring Tristan and Isold together, in part, suggested that this romantic love between people could not be helped. The heart knows what the heart wants and the power of this romantic love trumps the traditional notions of relationship and marriage. The romance between them, however, ultimately led to tragedy in its interaction with the existing rules of social interaction and arranged marriages.

This idea of romance and courtly love had its origins in Eleanor of Aquitaine’s efforts to lessen the brutish behavior of her knights at court by encouraging her Ladies-in-Waiting (who were married) to flirt with the knights and thereby get the knights to fall in love with them, in hopes these feelings of romantic love would ‘civilize’ the brutes. If ‘God is love’, then any man who felt this love for a woman was experiencing God. Love was the divine manifestation of God in the human heart and being in a ‘state of love’ was a spiritual experience that would in itself civilize the brutish, martial behavior of the men. Of course, any sexual unions from such flirtations (called ‘courting’) were severely punished and crazy measures to circumvent any such unions were taken. One such measure was the ‘chastity belt’, usually demanded by a lady’s husband.

The Aquitaine Court became the model throughout Europe and this romantic love became a new cultural value during the High Middle Ages. Yet there was a significant cultural lag between the advent of this romance, experienced equally by men and women, and an improved role for women in society and especially in marriage as a social contract. Courtly love was apparently still a male prerogative. The reality was, women were still property and objects of trade between families and kingdoms. In lower classes, marriages were often arranged for men and women by their local royalty and, in large part, were for the purpose of procreating and establishing alliances. Until the High Middle Ages, marriages, whether among the nobility or in the peasantry, had been strictly a civil matter. It was only after this new ‘courtly love’ appeared that the Church demanded that marriages become an ecclesiastical convention performed by a priest in a church with two witnesses.  This form of marriage continued through the 18th century, but with a growing acceptance of the two involved people to determine for themselves whether to enter into the contract. By the 19th century, although marriages were still often arranged, many people entered into marriage as an act of free will, but it was still not often based on romance. Love and commitment were considered desired developments over time. It is quite clear that there was a very significant shift in cultural values regarding love and marriage in the 11th-13th centuries and it shifted again in the 19th century. So, this idea that marriage has looked the same for ‘millennia’ is, on its face, false and misleading.  Not to mention, marriage in pre-Christian cultures was entirely different and did not look at all like marriages of the medieval period.

Romantic love did not become a standard for the basis of marriage until the 1890s, but even then it was within the social practice called ‘courting’. Prior to the 1920s, people ‘courted’, which was mostly a supervised prelude to marriage. ‘Dating’ was not a social practice until the advent of the automobile, which allowed for unsupervised, private ‘courting’ away from the family. This new ‘dating ritual’ gave young women more autonomy as individuals in their own right and gave us love and romance as the primary impulse for marriage. But emotionally, there is a fine line between love and hate, as the adage goes, and divorce rates began to increase, even if it meant you had to go to Nevada, which for a while was the only state that had legalized divorce. This gave women a modicum of freedom within a marriage, but there was a level of social backlash to this ‘modernism’. By the end of World War II this backlash had become a ‘cult of domesticity’ that forced women through propaganda and advertising to stay barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. It peaked in the 1950s when America experienced a frightening degree of conformity in an effort to slow the rate of social change.

The fact is, we cannot separate the definition of marriage from the role of women in society, even if we think of it as primarily love and romance. The changes in women’s roles as a result of a vibrant civil rights movement over the last two centuries led to a complete redefinition of traditional marriage by 1980.  Wives in the 18th and 19th century America had no right to their own property or even their own children. There was no such thing as ‘marital rape’ well into the 20th century. Any property or assets they had prior to marriage transferred to the husband. A married woman could not even get her own credit card until the mid-1970s. These inequities were not corrected until women began using the U.S. Constitution to make their case for equality in marriage, as well as for themselves as autonomous individuals. Although women are still not constitutionally enfranchised by an Equal Rights Amendment, court rulings have placed women on a much more equal footing with men and many of those rulings have to do with the role of women in marriage. As a result of their efforts, marriage now is completely different than it was forty years ago. So marriage has already been redefined many times in Euro-American culture since the Church took over the institution in the High Middle Ages.

Now in the 21st century we still accept that love and romance are the basis of modern marriage but previously prescribed roles for husband and wives no longer exist. There is no longer a requirement to have children, for example. Today people don’t question a couple’s decision not to have children. I can remember a female friend of mine who got married in 1972 and, in a conversation with her, she expressed concern that I might judge her as selfish and ‘unwomanly’ because she and her husband had agreed, at least for the foreseeable future, that they were not interested in having children. I seriously doubt any woman would say anything like that today.  If children are not the overriding reason to get married, then we have already redefined traditional marriage. If married women can own their own property and have their own assets, then we have already redefined traditional marriage. If we no longer need a minister or priest, opting for a civil servant to perform the ceremony, then we have already redefined traditional marriage. If wives have the same rights as their husbands within the marriage contract, then we have already redefined traditional marriage.

Because we have already redefined marriage in ways that loosen the social and legal bonds of the partnership (it’s relatively easy to get a divorce), and extend the same rights to wives and husbands, it has become important for society to find other ways to support these marriages, rather than relying on traditional roles and customs. We have done this through financial and social benefits bestowed upon us by the state and federal governments. It makes financial and social sense to get married and there are supports in place to maintain that relationship. Yet, there have not been any social or financial supports for gay people who fall in love and form a permanent bond. Of course, historically, since the advent of a Christian Euro-American culture, homosexuality has been demonized as a pagan ‘behavior’, a ‘sin of the Greeks and Romans’ and, according to (mis)interpretations of the Bible, is rejected by God and a violation of ‘Natural Law’. The resulting repression and persecution of homosexuals in Christian cultures are well-documented, but like women and racial minorities, gay people have stood up and begun to fight for their rights in a free, pluralistic society by applying constitutional principles to their situation.

Their horrific persecution through forced sterilization, electro-shock treatments, criminalization and imprisonment, and social and economic discrimination and marginalization is finally becoming socially and politically untenable. As we learn more about human sexuality and gender, and as gay people bravely ‘come out’ to reveal to us all that they are everywhere (and always have been), as a society we are gradually becoming uncomfortable with their past treatment and we cannot help but have some level of empathy (that is, if we are not sociopathic). The social, political and cultural changes in America since 1965, one of the most important of which was the redefinition of marriage and the role of women within the institution, and therefore within society, inevitably lead to marriage equality, where, for all people, marriage will be based on love, romance and commitment, and nothing else. Since a spouse can no longer be considered ‘property’ or subordinate in any way, is by all legal standards equal to the other spouse, and procreation is no longer either a social or cultural requirement, there is nothing standing in the way of allowing two people of the same gender to get married.

Marriage equality does not redefine marriage away from ‘traditional marriage’ any further than we already have. It merely expands who can participate. Religious prejudice and bigotry are the only impediments to this equality, when they need not be. There is nothing stopping believers from holding to their anti-gay beliefs. But it is unacceptable, and obviously unconstitutional to force the whole of society to believe as they do, and politically shape policy in America to conform to their religious dogmas.

In reality, creating marriage equality is a very conservative move, if we hold to the idea that marriage is a stabilizing force in society. It expands the definition of family as a basis for social order, reduces promiscuity, and thereby protects us all from disease and increases social stability. It also provides a pathway out of a forced, insular gay subculture and its resulting ghettoization. We saw what can happen in such insular subcultures, and inevitably to society as a whole, when the AIDS epidemic struck. If society had supported and promoted especially committed male-to-male relationships, we could have avoided the deaths of millions. Those who religiously believe that homosexuality, as a ‘sin’, should be suppressed, have nothing behind their views other than outright bigotry. That bigotry proved harmful to society with the unconscionably slow response to AIDS. According to Scripture, all people are ‘sinners’ and as a society and culture, we do not and should not marginalize each other for our sins, unless those sins are hurtful and harmful to others.

In my view, none of this is really about redefining marriage, per se, but rather it is about overcoming prejudice to extend to LGBT their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and the human right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To allow John to marry Jane, but not Tom to marry John, or Jane to marry Lucy, seems to me to be outright gender discrimination that impedes Tom and John or Mary and Lucy from living their lives as they are and as they choose, freely and openly.

The Supreme Court , I think, has no choice, therefore, but to judge the cases before them as a form of gender discrimination (and therefore bans on same-sex marriage would be unconstitutional based on current law) and also inconsistent with our traditional constitutional values, especially regarding the Fourteenth Amendment.

Today is Friday, March 27, 2015.

As I understand it, there is a federal law signed by Bill Clinton called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that allegedly makes sure there is no religious discrimination within the federal government and its agencies. The Supreme Court ruled that the law only applies to the federal government, and as a result, since 1997, there have been 19 states that have passed these RFRAs. However, what is happening at the state level is a cynical attempt to remove discrimination protections for LGBT in the face of the expected Supreme Court ruling coming in June regarding marriage equality.

The most recent state to pass such a law is Indiana. Governor Pence signed the law earlier this week. Others are moving through state legislatures in Utah, Arkansas and Georgia. The problem with these current laws is that they are specifically targeting the LGBT communities. The Indiana law makes it clear a merchant may refuse service to a gay person simply out of ‘religious conscience’. That was never the intent of the federal law, nor was it the intent in a number of the earlier state laws.  As the anti-gay religious communities realize they are losing this battle in the courts, their anti-gay organizations are hemorrhaging money and losing credibility, and marriage equality seems certain to become the law of the land, they are seeking legislative assurances that they will not have to treat or deal with gay people if it violates their ‘religious conscience.’

In other words, they are seeking legislative rights to discriminate, but they are wrapping their discrimination in religion and tying it with the bow of bigotry. It is one thing to refuse service to someone for specific unsocial behavior–intoxicated, high, inappropriately dressed for the type of business, being accompanied by a pet, or any other singular reason for one specific person. However, to allow a merchant to refuse service to an entire group of people based on their identity and social status seems to me a blatant violation of the 14th Amendment.

I realize this is a slippery slope argument, but what if a Christian refused service to a Muslim? Or what if a gay merchant refused service to a Christian, or say, a Republican, by using the argument that it violates his/her conscience and belief system?  I doubt the religious communities and social conservatives would accept that as legal.  Yet, these new state laws are loosely written enough to allow such scenarios. In the end, this will turn into a litigation nightmare and an economic boon for lawyers. And given precedents over the years, there is no doubt the Courts will rule such laws are unconstitutional.

We know, though, that someone in Indiana, for example, will push a merchant not to serve him/her because of their sexual identity, then sue them and the state for redress. It will take a couple years to go through the system, but the ACLU, Lamda Legal, and the HRC will certainly take these cases all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

So what is in it for Indiana and the other states who are now passing these so-called ‘religious protection’ laws? Since Governor Pence signed the law into effect this week, there have been calls for boycotting the state and petitions circulating to remove major sporting events, conferences and conventions from venues in Indiana. Salesforce, a multiple billion dollar cloud computing company, has canceled all employee work-related trips to Indiana and has begun limiting investments in the state.  The CEO of Salesforce has also warned other corporate CEOs that they need to scrutinize the situation in order to protect their employees and Indiana clients from discrimination.  In addition, there are now calls for removing the regional college football championships from Indianapolis and the NCAA has issued a statement saying they are concerned about their players and fans who could face potential discrimination. GenCon, the largest comic convention in the country has a contract with Indiana to hold their event there, but has now stated they will re-evaluate their relationship with the state.

From my perspective, there is not much in it for any state to pass such a law that specifically targets the LGBT community for discrimination by packaging the law in ‘religious conscience’.  UPDATE: Utah just now passed a similar RFRA as I am writing this blog. I suppose it is par for the course.  You can’t force people to like or support you, but you can challenge bigotry and discrimination where you see it.  I suppose it is now my civic responsibility to cross these states off my ‘to visit’ list. And should I ever have to drive through them, I will certainly not spend any money there or as little as I have to.

Today is Wednesday, February 25, 2015. I have not been blogging in the last few months because of a sudden change in my work schedule temporarily back to full time, then three weeks in Europe, and then the need for a vacation from my vacation.

But in the last week or so, I have been having a conversation on social media with a couple of Russians in Russia about gay rights, marriage equality and homosexuality, in general. I have heard reports of extreme homophobia and have posted before on the 2013 Russian ‘Anti-Gay Propaganda Law’.  I didn’t expect the opinions and points of view expressed in my conversations with them. It is really a lot worse than I imagined.  Here’s an example of one adult male Russian’s interpretation of my support for marriage equality and equal rights under the law for homosexuals, in general.

“Let me summarize your answers to my questions:  1) First question was answered affirmatively – redefinitions of ‘the family’ are possible since “The nature of family changes over time–it’s not a constant.”
2) Second question was also affimatively answered so that there shouldn’t be _any_ barriers for such a redefinition. “It’s a matter of social evolution. Nobody writes down a plan, a schemata or graphic and says this is what family should look like.”
3) The main principle is that “Everyone should have the right to live according to how they identify as long as they pose no harm to others.”

First of all thank you for such complete answers.

Having those answers, I can make some conclusions. I understand that for Gary any change of family redefinition is possible, especially in the light of recent achievements in biology. You guys are not alone in your fight with constants. There is a Dutch Pedophilia Party that seeks to legalize pedophilia. 

That is moving in the same direction as you do with gay marriage and homosexual rights.

As far as I understand you don’t see anything wrong in pedophilia if a child ‘loves’ his adult ‘partner’ and they both ‘make no harm’ to each other and people around. That is a direct conclusion from the answers that you give.

You also shouldn’t be against any form of sexual deviation if it follows principle, which you defined when answering question #3. Any type of ‘family relations’ is possible if we start following that principle. Everything, including zoophilia (taking into consideration recent achievements in biology).

It is absolutely obvious that once you start ‘redefining’ the family (which is constant), there won’t be _any_ stop. Any ‘redefinition’ of the family or ‘extension’ of that definition is regressive, leads to promiscuity and, in the end, to degeneration/extinction.”

My response to this was as follows:

“Once again you seem to equate homosexuality with pedophilia. Your ‘slippery slope’ argument that leads to bestiality and zoophilia is stupid. Christian conservatives make the same claims here in the States. It’s nonsense. There’s nothing good in pedophilia! It should never be allowed! And it has nothing whatsoever to do with two adults of the same gender who are in love with each other. There’s no equation here between same-sex adults in a consensual relationship and adults who take sexual advantage of children. It’s a nonsense argument. I don’t support pedophilia–I don’t support or even suggest that zoophilia is something to allow, because there’s nothing consensual in it. It harms the animal and that’s wrong. An animal can’t rationally decide its ‘life and pursuit of happiness.’ If it’s abused by a human, the animal is not ‘free.’ So, it simply shouldn’t be allowed. It’s not humane.

The most important part of this is that the two adults agree to the relationship. If there’s no consensual agreement, then there’s no relationship. To develop a sexual relationship with a child is not consensual–even if the child should ‘want’ it. The child doesn’t have the emotional and psychological maturity to understand the nature of the adult-child relationship. The adult does–or should have. So, the adult is taking advantage of the situation and the child and that’s wrong, and in my opinion criminal.” 

His response to me went like this:

“I am not talking about your personal relation to kids, I am talking about principles that you described. Pedophiles are exactly following your steps and have exactly the same argument (why would you change anything that works?)

Several decades ago nobody could imagine homosexual marriages. I am convinced that that change had been done deliberately by slow media brainwashing. Shaded windows work all the better the more people become disoriented where Good and Evil are.

How can you tell the good from the evil if you don’t have morality and everything is relative? In the world that you describe moral is dynamic, so, basically, it allows multiple interpretations that allow an escape from any kind of responsibility and the role of morality in this case diminishes to near zero values.

In this situation, when taboos are lifted, I am pretty sure that soon some ‘new scientific evidence’ will come out which proves that sex with children is health-giving for adults and psychologically favorable for children.

The argument will be the same: family has no constant definition. Society develops and recent scientific findings prove…(whatever you want to say here.)
And the last argument will be: are you against children’s happiness? Are you against children’s mental health? You don’t believe solid facts (and the facts will be presented as almost absolute truth and with all the authority)? Then you are retrograde person, a pedophilophobe and more than that – you don’t have a heart!

Destruction of the family and lifting barriers started from the madness, called ‘homosexual marriage’. But this blow is not the only one. There are numbers of them, that are impacting society simultaneously, which adds some credit to their artificial origin.

I am talkig about juvenile justice and sexual education in the first place. Though such factors are a social narcotic which breeds inane people and moral mediocrity. And the most dangerous result of this mediocrity is the rise of neonazism, which inane people will be able to accept.

What we see is the end of classic modernity which stands on family, private property and the government (state). All these three major institutions are under attack with gay rights and gay marriage.

And you are the part of the army that does that attack.”

My response to this (gulp!) was really total shock. Extending human and civil rights to LGBT amounts to an attack on ‘family, private property and the State’, the three core principles of ‘Modernity.’  We all need to think about this allegation for a minute.  His argument does not make any sense to me. OK, yes, pedophiles try to make the same argument for acceptance, but they have no grounds for their point of view–in fact, an adult sexual relationship with a child is ‘unequal’ from the beginning and therefore the child is always disadvantaged in the relationship and suffers one way or another. Two adults of the same gender who agree on their relationship is a completely different thing. He continues to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia.  Yet any rational person knows there’s no relationship or connection between the two. There are many more hetero pedophiles than homo, according to available crime data. No gay person wants to have sex with a child any more than a straight person does–and in either case, if they do, meaning they’re pedophiles, they are criminals if they act on their impulses. That isn’t going to change, so it’s hard for me wrap my brain around this Russian’s argument.

Again, he is using a ‘slippery slope’ argument that is only speculation and has no truth or proof to it. The fact remains, homosexuality between consenting adults should never be illegal–and it isn’t in Russia, either. And if such a relationship should lead to a committed love between the two people, then they have the same inalienable rights as everyone else under the law to be who they are and live the way they do openly and without fear of persecution, prosecution, discrimination or humiliation by any majority or the government or any religion. But that has NOT been the case, and we have had to fight for the right to live freely without discrimination. Happily, the U.S., Canada, many European and South American countries have constitutional law that says the government may not discriminate against any minority group, and gay people have taken their case to the courts accusing government of prejudice and discrimination and we won. In some cases, states and countries voted to accept marriage equality. In the U.S., each state also had laws against same-sex marriage, but those laws have been deemed ‘unconstitutional’ and now 39 states must allow same-sex couples to marry.  And it looks like the Supreme Court will render marriage equality bans unconstitutional nation-wide by the end of June of this year.

In the end, I see no destruction of the family. There’s no impact on heterosexual marriage. Heterosexuals will still do what they do and form their families. Homosexuals will do the same. But now, according to the law, our families will hopefully be equal to heterosexual families and must be treated that way.

In regards to children and this thing called ‘gay propaganda’ in Russia, we have to socialize children  and if they are never told the truth about same-gender relationships, couples and their families, heterosexual children will never learn to live with the ‘other’, and homosexual children will be painfully forced to hide themselves to avoid discovery, threats and persecution. Young people need to know that two people of the same gender can fall in love and develop committed relationships with families. It is important for both straight people and gay people to be ‘out’ and in public, so that people begin to understand that gay people are completely normal, intelligent, friendly human beings, who only want to be a part of their communities, society and country. They want to contribute to their neighbors and cities like everyone else. They are not monsters or something to fear.  There is no such thing as ‘gay propaganda’–there is only open discussion, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and education in order for people to sort out the truth of the situation. Russia has laws now that censor any open discussion of homosexuality as ‘propaganda.’ It is outright oppression and I see it as no different than Nazi censorship of Jews in an effort to limit ‘Jewish propaganda.’ 

I can tell you, if I had known any gay people when I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have felt so isolated and alone. If I had seen gay couples and families, it would have made it a lot easier on me to accept myself and not hide myself away from people. Having to hide is extremely psychologically damaging and painful. All gay people ‘internalize’ the homophobia from the family and the society–we hide and hate ourselves as kids as much as society seems to hate us. Breaking through that ‘closet’ door and coming out, standing up for ourselves, not taking ‘no’ for an answer from family and society, fighting for our rights to be who we are, making others see us as human, making people understand that this is a matter of human right as well as civil right–that is changing the world for the better. It is not an attack on the family, property rights or the government. 

If Russians think it is an attack on ‘modernity’, then modernity was cruel and unjust and it needed to be deconstructed. And I am very proud and thankful that those ‘modern’ inhumane attitudes–like this Russian’s attitude–are being swept away into the dustbin of social history. As we say these days, he is on the wrong side of history. And if the majority of Russians think like he does, then Russia itself is on the wrong side of history with this issue, and it will be increasingly difficult for Russia to adapt to social realities in the 21st century. 

Today is Friday, October 10, 2014.

I blogged a few months ago about marriage equality and the problem many religious folks have with it and homosexuality, in general. This time I’ll just focus on the Bible, specifically the Book of Matthew, and re-post what I found there in Christ’s teachings about the subject. The country is in the throws of excitement for those who support marriage equality and those who oppose it are disgusted with the SCOTUS ‘non-decision’ earlier this week. I had an on-line discussion with someone who kept quoting from the Bible (mostly Paul’s letters) in which the word ‘homosexuality’ was used. I wondered how that was possible, since the word didn’t exist at all in any language until the latter 19th century and wasn’t used in the U.S. until the early 1900s. So, how could it show up in a Biblical quote? The answer is obviously a problem with translation. I looked into eighteen different translations of the Bible that are currently in use, and, although some translate Paul’s words as ‘homosexuality’, others refer to pedophilia, ritual sex at the alter, lust outside of committed relationships, etc. It seems all of these sexual behaviors are being lumped into the word ‘homosexuality’ in some translations.  This misleads believers to think that Paul was talking about same-gender sex in a general sense, but that is clearly not the case.

So, I decided to look further into the Bible to see what Christ actually said. I don’t have enough historical or theological background to tackle the Quran, so I decided to stay within the New Testament to find out what Christ said about the subject of love and sexuality. I was completely surprised to find that the Book of Matthew has Christ’s teaching on the subject!

But before I could really be sure I was reading things correctly, I had to go back and examine the multiple versions/translations and, boy, there is quite a difference from one to the other! I, therefore, decided to find a Vulgate Latin version to read something maybe a little closer to the original text. Then I looked at the German Luther version to read something not in English. All together, I examined 18 different translations of Matthew and discovered in Matthew 19 Christ’s view of male/female relationships, marriage, divorce and men who don’t associate with women. Oh, yes, indeed, He mentions the subject!!

The chapter starts out with Christ teaching the disciples about his view of marriage. They ask him about the issue of divorce, since they had heard He was against it. He said he was against it, in spite of Moses’ acceptance of it. He maintained that Moses only allowed divorce since men were so unteachable and emotionally unintelligent, there was nothing else he could do. But, in reality, it was never really meant to be, and in the new age He was going to ban divorce. The following are two translations of the conversation that followed, one Vulgate Latin and the other Luther’s German, and my analysis/commentary on them:

Vulgar Latin Matthew 19:10-12

10- dicunt ei discipuli eius si ita est causa homini cum uxore non expedit nubere 11- qui dixit non omnes capiunt verbum istud sed quibus datum est 12-sunt enim eunuchi qui de matris utero sic nati sunt et sunt eunuchi qui facti sunt ab hominibus et sunt eunuchi qui se ipsos castraverunt propter regnum caelorum qui potest capere capiat 

10-And then the disciples said to Him, “If that’s the situation between a man and woman, then it isn’t expedient (good, practical, appropriate) to marry. 11-He said to them in response, “Not just anyone can grasp (understand) this proverb (idea, teaching), but rather only those to whom were given the capacity to [be with women will understand it]. 12-That is to say, some men were born from the womb eunuchs, some become eunuchs because of other people, and some cut themselves off [from women] for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever has the ability to understand this, understands it.

The first thing that occurs to me is the use of the verb ‘dare’ in the perfect passive ‘datum’, which literally means ‘to give’ and ‘has been given’, but also means ‘surrender; give over to’ or ‘attribute or ascribe to’. In this context, it seems to be saying that the teachings about marriage and divorce are attributed to, ascribed to or meant only for men who are oriented to women and marry them. If a man is meant to be with women, then this teaching about divorce is meant for him.

However, Christ leaves open the possibility that not all men are destined or meant to be with women when he talks about ‘eunuchs’. Clearly, the word ‘eunuch’ is used here metaphorically. Christ does not appear to be referring literally to men who have been castrated, because in the third example in verse 12, He doesn’t use the word ‘eunuch’. In the Latin, it’s expressed in a passive reflexive verb form (se ipsos castrav.erunt): “are cut off by themselves”, i.e., for their own reasons, and specifically for spiritual purposes (for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven). This suggests the word ‘eunuch’, as used in the first two examples, is a metaphor for men who do not relate sexually to women. In researching castration in 1^st century CE Roman culture, I found that there were two meanings for eunuch: one that described a man’s sexual behavior as celibate or not active with women, and one that described a man who had been castrated. That carried over into early Christian culture and continued well into late antiquity among Byzantine Christians who also used the term in those two ways. So, we can safely say this Matthew 19:12 reference indicates celibacy or a non-heterosexual or non-sexual orientation to women.

 In looking further into various translations of these verses, the German Luther Bible stays very close to the above Latin version—in fact, much closer in meaning than many early modern or modern English translations.

 Luther German Matthew 19:10-12

10- Da sprachen die Jünger zu ihm: Steht die Sache eines Mannes mit seinem Weibe also, so ist’s nicht gut, ehelich werden. 11- Er sprach zu ihnen: Das Wort faßt nicht jedermann, sondern denen es gegeben ist. 12- Denn es sind etliche verschnitten, die sind aus Mutterleibe also geboren; und sind etliche verschnitten, die von Menschen verschnitten sind; und sind etliche verschnitten, die sich selbst verschnitten haben um des Himmelreiches willen. Wer es fassen kann, der fasse es! 

10-And then the disciples spoke to him:  if such is the situation of a man with his woman, it is therefore not good to become married. 11-He spoke to them:  Not just anyone grasps the concept, but rather only those to whom it has been granted. 12- For there are some cut-off [from women], who were born that way from the womb; and there are some cut-off, who were cut-off because of people; and some are cut-off, who have cut themselves off, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept [what I’m saying], should accept it.

Luther takes the Latin verb ‘datum’ (literally meaning ‘have been given’) and translates it directly with the German ‘gegeben ist’, meaning here something like ‘to whom it has been granted’ by God. This seems to be echoing quite directly what is intended in the original Vulgate Latin, that is, the teaching is meant for those men who relate to women and want to marry.

 As for those for whom the teaching is not meant, Luther doesn’t use the word ‘eunuch’ at all in his translation. He uses instead the verb ‘verschnitten’, meaning to have been ‘cut off or cut away’, a direct translation of the Latin ‘castrav erunt’ used in the 3^rd example in verse 12.  Luther seems to be translating verses 10-12 to mean ‘removed from or cut off from’ relating sexually to women, because the word ‘Eunuch’ as well as the verb ‘kastrieren’, to castrate, existed in 16^th century German. If he meant literally a castrated man, one would assume he would have used ‘Eunuch’ or ‘kastriert’.

I looked at over a dozen English translations of Matthew 19:10-12 including the following versions: King James, Wycliffe, American Standard, Revised Standard, New Revised Standard, New Century, Good News, Complete Jewish,  Hebrew Names, Common English, English Standard, Bible in Basic English, Tyndale, Weymouth, New International and God’s Word.  It is rather astonishing to me the variety of meanings given in these various translations. Some actually translate the verses to mean ‘castrated men’, which in the context of the teaching, makes no sense. Some just say celibate or renounce marriage. One version suggested that Christ said in the first example in verse 12 that some men were born without desire for sex, but then translated the second example as ‘castrated’ and the third as ‘renouncing marriage’.  In the end, I studied the Latin and Luther’s German versions, reviewed all of the above versions and came up with my own translation that I believe clarifies the teaching:

10-And then the disciples said to Him, “If you require this kind of relationship between a man and a woman, then perhaps it’s best not to be married to a woman at all.” 11-He said to them in response, “Not everyone can understand this, but If you are oriented to be with a woman, then this teaching is meant for you. 12- That is to say, some men are born not to be sexual with women, some men are socially conditioned not to be sexual with women, and some men cut themselves off from relating sexually to women for their own reasons, for example, for spiritual reasons. If you have an open mind about this, you should be able to understand what I’m saying.”

Christ seems to be telling his disciples there is an orientation to be or not to be with women. You can’t just decide that you are or aren’t going to be with a woman because you won’t be able to divorce her. You have the choice if you’re choosing celibacy for spiritual reasons, but otherwise He seems to be saying, you follow your nature and accept the responsibility. What I find fascinating in these verses is the subtle but clear message that a man’s sexuality is not a spiritual issue, but if he’s oriented towards women, then he’s obligated to get married and remain committed to her and the relationship to protect her from potential abuse and harm from society. It becomes a spiritual problem for the man if he divorces her for selfish reasons, leaving his wife to suffer the social consequences. Based on verses 1-9, it’s obvious that Christ is trying to protect unmarried and/or abandoned women from being socially ostracized and abused, suggesting that it’s the man’s fault if anything happens to her once abandoned and on her own. However, Christ makes it abundantly clear that not all men are meant to be with women and that is not, apparently, a spiritual issue. It’s a matter of your genetics (birth), or it can be a matter of learned, conditioned behavior, or it can be a choice. It’s not important. What IS important is how a married man treats a woman and how committed he is to the marriage.

In Matthew 5, Christ also says that He fulfills the old Law, and that, as the Son of Man, he is the new archetypal man for the new age. He is the new model for a new spiritual culture and tradition. Then to back that up, in Matthew 15, He says we no longer have to adhere to Levitican Law to be ritualistically clean, for it is what’s in the heart and what comes out of your mouth that makes you ritually clean or unclean. It’s not the food that goes into your mouth or washing your hands that determines your level of cleanliness for worship, but rather the words, thoughts and ideas that come from the heart and come out of your mouth. He also criticizes people for being rigid  about following Levitican rules and not His ideas. Christ lays it out clearly in reference to this in Matthew 11, that even those communities previously destroyed by their own sin, for example, Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, will be forgiven before those who stick irrationally to old dogmas and don’t follow his new teachings. That’s a pretty shocking claim. Superficially, this often becomes interpreted as simply the punishment for turning away from Christ. However, there’s something deeper in the message. This is specifically about being dogmatic about Leviticus and the Old Testament rules for worship, and not just a general admonition for not following His teachings. 

The way I read it, the core message of Christ’s teachings has to become central to spiritual practice and we can now abandon the old ritualistic requirements for worship. The new standards still include some of Mosaic Law, for example, the Ten Commandments, but beyond that the only thing we need to pay attention to are the teachings of Christ, whose central message is ‘love’. In Matthew 5: 44-47, “ 44- But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45- so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil. 46- Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you? Even the tax collectors do that! 47- And if you speak only to your friends, have you done anything out of the ordinary? Even the pagans do that!” (Good News translation)

So, it’s clear to me that all of the listed abominations in Leviticus are no longer spiritual issues for Christians. Christ did not adhere to those rules and clarified why. The only specifically worded rule against same-sex behavior, other than Paul’s admonition of ritualistic same-sex behaviors at the altar, pedophilia and random acts of lust, is in Leviticus, and it seems Christ didn’t have much use for those rules. That being the case, and considering Christ’s teachings on male sexuality and marriage, where is the problem with same-sex relationships when they are based on commitment and love?  It is obviously a problem within Christianity for heterosexuals as well as homosexuals to give oneself over to sexual lust without an emotional relationship and some level of commitment between the two people.  OK, I can accept the premise that it’s a ‘sin’ to have sexual relations without the benefit of an agreed upon commitment between the consenting adults. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I can accept the premise. But there is nothing in the New Testament and nothing in the teachings of Christ that would prohibit two adults of the same gender to commit to each other in a loving, long-term sexual relationship, for example, a marriage. In Paul’s letters, he talks about the sin of pedophilia or the sin of ritualistic sex at the church altar, or giving yourself over to lust randomly with someone of the same sex. But even Paul doesn’t say anything about a committed adult same-sex relationship.

So, where is this rigid, dogmatic fundamentalist anti-gay sentiment coming from within Christianity? Why are so many Christians not reading and following Christ’s actual teachings regarding such an attitude and such treatment of others, when the Good Book lays it all out quite clearly that such attitudes and treatment of others is, in Christ’s view, sinful? Certainly, there can be no confusion over the definition of marriage, since the only time Christ really focuses on marriage is when He says heterosexual men should be married to women and once they are, they must remain so for life. He does describe what the relationship should be like, but he doesn’t really define marriage at all.

My conclusion is that based on Christ’s actual words, a person’s sexuality is not a spiritual issue. It’s what one DOES with that sexuality that is or isn’t ‘sin’. Within a Christian context, a heterosexual shouldn’t be promiscuous, nor should a homosexual. A heterosexual should develop a durable, committed, loving relationship. A homosexual should theoretically do the same. It’s fascinating that in Christ’s teachings on love and marriage, He never once suggested that marriage’s primary purpose is procreation. His overriding concern was protecting women from societal abuse because of being unmarried or divorced.  I can only assume, our contemporary social problem accepting homosexuality as just another sexual orientation, and that same-sex marriage is somehow un-Christian, is a cultural tradition rooted in a long-standing homophobia and bigotry from the early Middle Ages, and it’s not specifically related to the teachings of Christ in the New Testament at all.