<![CDATA[Messianisme homosexuel: Quand le cannibalisme n’est plus qu’une affaire de goût (What moral depravities can not be excused by the sole criterion of « warm, meaningful human relations » or « fulfillment », the newest semantic heirs to

Pendant que devant le retour du réel le costume messianique de nos Obama français ou allemand semble lui aussi sérieusement prendre l’eau …

De la justesse, face aux tigres de papier iraniens, chinois ou palestiniens, de nombre de ses intuitions et décisions …

Les Démocrates et progressistes américains semblent au contraire redoubler dans la caricature et dans l’aberration …

Entre soutien aux villes-sanctuaire et appels à l’extension du droit de vote aux mineurs, repris de justice et immigrés illégaux comme à la suppression du collège électoral, des contrôles d’identité pour les électeurs et des frontières …

Jeune, ancien militaire, surdiplômé d’Harvard, malto-américain, polyglotte, dûment marié à l’église et revendiquant sa foi chrétienne, s’il vous plait !

Petit retour avec le président de la Yeshiva university, le Dr. Norman Lamm …

Et contre les nouveaux diktats de la pensée unique et du politiquement correct …

Des nombreux problèmes moraux et sociaux que, sauf rares exceptions, posent …

Le véritable messianisme homosexuel qui, par médias et show biz interposés, nous est actuellement imposé …

A condition bien sûr d’être pratiqué « entre deux adultes consentants » et avec la « visée d’une relation d’amour permanente »…

Popular wisdom has it that our society is wildly hedonistic, with the breakdown of family life, rampant immorality, and the world, led by the United States, in the throes of a sexual revolution. The impetus of this latest revolution is such that new ground is constantly being broken, while bold deviations barely noticed one year are glaringly more evident the year following and become the norm for the « younger generation » the year after that.

Some sex researchers accept this portrait of a steady deterioration in sex inhibitions and of increasing permissiveness. Opposed to them are the « debunkers » who hold that this view is mere fantasy and that, while there may have been a significant leap in verbal sophistication, there has probably been only a short hop in actual behavior. They point to statistics which confirm that now, as in Kinsey’s day, there has been no reported increase in sexual frequencies along with alleged de-inhibition to rhetoric and dress. The « sexual revolution » is, for them, largely a myth. Yet others maintain that there is in Western society a permanent revolution against moral standards, but that the form and style of the revolt keeps changing.

The determination of which view is correct will have to be left to the sociologists and statisticians -or, better, to historians of the future who will have the benefit of hindsight. But certain facts are quite clear. First, the complaint that moral restraints are crumbling has a two or three thousand year history in Jewish tradition and in continuous history of Western civilization. Second, there has been a decided increase at least in the area of sexual attitudes, speech, and expectations, if not in practice. Third, such social and psychological phenomena must sooner or later beget changes in mores and conduct. And finally, it is indisputable that most current attitudes are profoundly at variance with traditional Jewish views on sex and sex morality.

Of all the current sexual fashions, the one most notable for its militancy, and which most conspicuously requires illumination from the sources of Jewish tradition, is that of sexual deviancy. This refers primarily to homosexuality, male or female, along with a host of other phenomena such as transvestism and transexualism. They all form part of the newly approved theory of idiosyncratic character of sexuality. Homosexuals have demanded acceptance in society, and this demand has taken various forms -from a plea that they should not be liable to criminal prosecution, to a demand that they should not be subjected to social sanctions, and then to a strident assertion that they represent an « alternative life-style » no less legitimate that « straight heterosexuality. The various forms of homosexual apologetics appear largely in contemporary literature and theater, as well as in the daily press. In the United States, « gay » activists have become increasingly and progressively more vocal and militant.

Homosexuals have, indeed, been suppressed by the law. For instance, the Emperor Valentinian, in 390 C.E., decreed that pederasty be punished by burning at the stake. The sixth-century Code of Justinian ordained that homosexuals be tortured, mutilated, paraded in public, and executed. A thousand years later, Gibbon said of the penalty the Code decreed that « pederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed ». In more modern times, however, the Napoleonic Code declared consensual homosexuality legal in France. A century ago, anti-homosexual laws were repealed in Belgium and Holland. In this century, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland followed suit and, more recently, Czechoslovakia and England. The most severe laws in the West are found in the United States, where they come under the jurisdiction of the various states and are known by a variety of names, usually as « sodomy laws ». Punishment may range from light fines to five or more years in prison (in some cases even life imprisonment), indeterminate detention to a mental hospital, and even to compulsory sterilization. Moreover, homosexuals are, in various states, barred from licensed professions, from many professional societies, from teaching, and from the civil service -to mention only a few of the sanctions encountered by the known homosexual.

More recently, a new tendency has been developing in the United States and elsewhere with regard to homosexuals. Thus, in 1969, the National Institute of Mental Health issued a majority report advocating that adult consensual homosexuality be declared legal. The American Civil Liberties Union concurred. Earlier, Illinois had done so in 1962, and in 1971 the state of Connecticut revised its laws accordingly. Yet despite the increasing legal and social tolerance of deviance, basic feelings toward homosexuals have not really changed. The most obvious example is France, where although legal restraints were abandoned over 150 years ago, the homosexual of today continues to live in shame and secrecy.

Statistically, the proportion the proportion of homosexuals in society does not seem to have changed much since Professor Kinsey’s day (his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, was published in 1948, and his volume on the human female in 1953). Kinsey’s studies revealed that hard-core male homosexuals constituted about 4-6% of the population: 10% experienced « problem » behavior during a part of their lives. One man out of three indulges in some form of homosexual behavior from puberty until his early twenties. The dimensions of the problem become quite overwhelming when it is realized that, according to these figures, of 200 million people in the United States some ten million will become or are predominant or exclusive homosexuals, and over 25 million will have at least a few years of significant homosexual experience.

The most dramatic change in our attitudes to homosexuality has taken place in the new mass adolescent subculture -the first such in history- where it is part of the whole new outlook on sexual restraints in general. It is here that the fashionable Sexual Left has had its greatest success on a wide scale, appealing especially to the rejection of Western traditions of sex roles and sex typing. A number of different streams feed into this ideological reservoir from which the new sympathy for homosexuality flows. Freud and his disciples began the modern protest against traditional restraints, and blamed the guilt that follows transgression for the neuroses that plague man. Many psychoanalysts began to overemphasize the importance of sexuality in human life, and this ultimately gave birth to a kind of sexual messianism. Thus, in our own day Wilhelm Reich identifies sexual energy as « vital energy per se » and, in conformity with his Marxist ideology, seeks to harmonize Marx and Freud. For Reich and his followers, the sexual revolution is a machina ultima for the whole Leninist liberation in all spheres of life and society. Rebellion against restrictive moral codes has become, for them, not merely a way to hedonism but a form of sexual mysticism: orgasm is seem not only as the pleasurable climatic release of internal sexual pressure, but as a means to individual creativity and insight as well as to the reconstruction and liberation of society. Finally, the emphasis on freedom and sexual autonomy derives from the Sartrean version of Kant’s view of human autonomy.

It is in this atmosphere that pro-deviationist sentiments have proliferated, reaching into many strata of society. Significantly, religious groups have joined the sociologists and ideologists of deviance to affirm what has been called « man’s birthright of unbounded ambisexuality. » A number of Protestant churches in America, and an occasional Catholic clergyman, have plead for more sympathetic attitudes toward homosexuals. Following the new Christian permissiveness espoused in Sex and Morality (1966), the report of a working party of the British Council of Churches, a group of American Episcopalian clergymen in November 1967 concluded that homosexual acts ought not to be considered wrong, per se. A homosexual relationship is, they implied, no different from a heterosexual marriage: but must be judged by one criterion -« whether it is intended to foster a permanent relation of love. » Jewish apologists for deviationism have been prominent in the Gay Liberation movement and have not hesitated to advocate their position in American journals and in the press. Christian groups began to emerge which catered to a homosexual clientele, and Jews were not too far behind. This latest Jewish exemplification of the principle of wie es sich christelt, so juedelt es sich will be discussed at the end of this essay.

Homosexual militants are satisfied neither with a « mental health » approach nor with demanding civil rights. They are clear in insisting on society’s recognition of sexual deviance as an « alternative lifestyle, » morally legitimate and socially acceptable.
Such are the basic facts and theories of the current advocacy of sexual deviance. What is the classical Jewish attitude to sodomy, and what suggestions may be made to develop a Jewish approach to the complex problem of the homosexual in contemporary society?

The Bible prohibits homosexual intercourse and labels it an abomination: « Thou shalt not lie with a man as one lies with a woman: it is an abomination » (Lev. 18:22). Capital punishment is ordained for both transgressors in Lev. 20:13. In the first passage, sodomy is linked with buggery, and in the second with incest and buggery. (There is considerable terminological confusion with regard to these words. We shall here use « sodomy » as a synonym for homosexuality and « buggery » for sexual relations with animals.)

The city of Sodom had the questionable honor of lending its name to homosexuality because of the notorious attempt at homosexual rape, when the entire population -« both young and old, all the people from every quarter »- surrounded the home of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, and demanded that he surrender his guests to them « that we may know them » (Gen. 19:5). The decimation of the tribe of Benjamin resulted from the notorious incident, recorded in Judges 19, of a group of Benjamites in Gibeah who sought to commit homosexual rape.

Scholars have identified the kadesh proscribed by the Torah (Deut. 23:18) as a ritual male homosexual prostitute. This form of healthen cult penetrated Judea from the Canaanite surroundings in the period of the early monarchy. So Rehoboam, probably under the influence of his Ammonite mother, tolerated this cultic sodomy during his reign (I Kings 14:24). His grandson Asa tried to cleanse the Temple in Jerusalem of the practice (I Kings 15:12), as did his great-grandson Jehoshaphat. But it was not until the days of Josiah and the vigorous reforms he introduced that the kadesh was finally removed from the Temple and the land (II Kings 23:7). The Talmund too (Sanhedrin, 24b) holds that the kadesh was a homosexual functionary. (However, it is possible that the term also alludes to a heterosexual male prostitute. Thus, in II kings 23:7, women are described as weaving garments for the idols in the batei ha-kedeshim (houses of the kadesh): the presence of women may imply that the kadesh was not necessarily homosexual. The Talmudic opinion identifying the kadesh as a homosexual prostitute may be only an asmakhta. Moreover, there are other opinions in Talmudic literature as to the meaning of the verse: see Onkelos, Lev. 23:18, and Nachmanides and Torah Temimah, ad loc.)

Rabbinic exegesis of the Bible finds several other homosexual references in the scriptural narratives. The generation of Noah was condemned to eradication by the Flood because they had sunk so low morally that, according to Midrashic teaching, they wrote out formal marriage contracts for sodomy and buggery -a possible cryptic reference to such practices in the Rome of Nero and Hadrian (Lev. R. 18:13).

Of Ham, the son of Noah, we are told that « he saw the nakedness of his father » and told his two brothers (Gen. 9:22). Why should this act have warranted the harsh imprecation hurled at Ham by his father? The Rabbis offer two answers: one, that the text implied that Ham castrated Noah: second, that the Biblical expression is an idiom for homosexual intercourse (see Rashi, ad loc.). On the scriptural story of Potiphar’s purchase of Joseph as a slave (Gen. 39:1), the Talmund comments that he acquired him for homosexual purposes, but that a miracle occurred and God sent the angel Gabriel to castrate Potiphar (Sotah 13b).

Post-Biblical literature records remarkably few incidents of homosexuality. Herod’s son Alexander, according to Josephus (Wars, I, 24:7), had homosexual contact with a young eunuch. Very few reports of homosexuality have come to us from the Talmudic era (TJ Sanhedrin 6:6, 23c: Jos. Ant., 15:25-30).

The incidence of sodomy among Jews is interestingly reflected in the Halakhah on mishkav zakhur (the Talmudic term for homosexuality: the Bible uses various terms- thus the same term in Num. 31:17 and 35 refers to heterosexual intercourse by a woman, whereas the expression for male homosexual intercourse in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 is mishkevei ishah). The Mishnah teaches that R. Judah forbade two bachelors from sleeping under the same blanket, for fear that this would lead to homosexual temptation (Kiddushin 4:14). However, the Sages permitted it (ibid.) because homosexuality was so rare among Jews that such preventive legislation was considered unnecessary (Kiddushin 82a). This latter view is codified as Halakhah by Malmonides (Yad, Issurei Bi’ah 22:2). Some 400 years later R. Joseph Caro , who did not codify the law against sodomy proper, nevertheless cautioned against being alone with another male because of the lewdness prevalent « in our times » (Even ha-Ezer 24). About a hundred years later, R. Joel Sirkes reverted to the original ruling, and suspended the prohibition because such obscene acts were unheard of amongst Polish Jewry (Bayit Hadash to Tur, Even ha-Ezer 24). Indeed, a distinguished contemporary of R. Joseph Caro, R. Solomon Luria, went even further and declared homosexuality so very rare that, if one refrains from sharing a blanket with another male as a special act of piety, one is guilty of self-righteous pride or religious snobbism (for the above and additional authorities, see Ozar ha-Posekim, IX, 236-238).

As is to be expected, the responsa literature is also very scant in discussions of homosexuality. One of the few such responsa is by the late R. Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook, when he was still the rabbi of Jaffa. In 1912 he was asked about a ritual slaughterer who had come under suspicion of homosexuality. After weighing all aspects of the case, R. Kook dismissed the charges against the accused, considering them unsupported hearsay. Furthermore, he maintained the man might have repented and therefore could not be subject to sanctions at the present time.

The very scarcity of halakhic deliberations on homosexuality, and the quite explicit insistence of various halakhic authorities, provide sufficient evidence of the relative absence of this practice among Jews from ancient times down to the present. Indeed, Prof. Kinsey found that, while religion was usually an influence of secondary importance on the number of homosexual as well as heterosexual acts by males. Orthodox Jews proved an exception, homosexuality being phenomenally rare among them.

Jewish laws treated the female homosexual more leniently than the male. It considered lesbianism as issur, an ordinary religious violation, rather than arayot, a specifically sexual infraction, regarded much more severely than issur. R. Huna held that lesbianism is the equivalent of harlotry and disqualified the woman from marrying a priest. The Halakhah is, however, more lenient, and decides that while the act is prohibited, the lesbian is not punished and is permitted to marry a priest (Sifra 9:8: Shab. 65a: Yev. 76a). However, the transgression does warrant disciplinary flagellation (Maimonides, Yad, Issurei Bi’ah 21:8). The less punitive attitude of the Halakhah to the female homosexual than to the male does not reflect any intrinsic judgment on one as opposed to the other, but is rather the result of a halakhic technicality: there is no explicit Biblical proscription of lesbianism, and the act does not entail genital intercourse (Maimonides, loc. cit.).

The Halakhah holds that the ban on homosexuality applies universally, to non-Jew as well as to Jew (Sanh 58a: Maimonides, Melakhim 9:5, 6). It is one of the six instances of arayot (sexual transgressions) forbidden to the Noachide (Maimonides, ibid).

Most halakhic authorities – such as Rashba and Ritba – agree with Maimonides. A minority opinion holds that pederasty and buggery are « ordinary » prohibitions rather than arayot – specifically sexual infractions which demand that one submit to martyrdom rather than violate the law – but the Jerusalem Talmud supports the majority opinion. (See D. M. Krozer, Devar Ha-Melekh, I, 22, 23 (1962), who also suggests that Maimonides may support a distinction whereby the « male » or active homosexual partner is held in violation of arayot whereas the passive or « female » partner transgresses issur, an ordinary prohibition.)

Why does the Torah forbids homosexuality? Bearing in mind that reasons proferred for the various commandments are not to be accepted as determinative, but as human efforts to explain immutable divine law, the rabbis of the Talmud and later Talmudists did offer a number of illuminating rationales for the law.

As stated, the Torah condemns homosexuality as to’evah, an abomination. The Talmud records the interpretation of Bar Kapparah who, in a play on words, defined to’evah as to’eh attah bah. « You are going astray because of it » (Nedarim 51a). The exact meaning of this passage is unclear, and various explanations have been put forward.

The Pesikta (Zutarta) explains the statement of Bar Kapparah as referring to the impossibility of such a sexual resulting in procreation. One of the major functions (if not the major purpose) of sexuality is reproduction, and this reason for man’s sexual endowment is frustrated by mishkav zakhur (so too Sefer ha-Hinnukh, no. 209).

Another interpretation is that of the Tosafot and R. Asher ben Jehiel (in their commentaries to Ned. 51a) which applies the « going astray » or wandering to the homosexual’s abandoning his wife. In other words, the abomination consists of the danger that a married man with homosexual tendencies may disrupt his family life in order to indulge his perversions. Saadiah Gaon holds the rational basis of most of the Bible’s moral legislation to be the preservation of the family structure (Emunot ve-De’ot 3:1: cf. Yoma 9a). (This argument assumes contemporary cogency in the light of the avowed aim of some gay militants to destroy the family, which they consider an « oppressive institution. »)

A third explanation is given by a modern scholar, Rabbi Baruch Ha-Levi Epstein (Torah Temimah to Lev. 18:22), who emphasizes the unnaturalness of the homosexual liaison: « You are going astray from the foundations of the creation. » Mishkav zakhur defies the very structure of the anatomy of the sexes, which quite obviously was designed for heterosexual relationships.

It may be, however, that the very variety of interpretations of to’evah points to a far more fundamental meaning, namely, that an act characterized as an « abomination » is prima facie disgusting and cannot be further defined or explained. Certain acts are considered to’evah by the Torah, and there the matter rests. It is, as it were, a visceral reaction, an intuitive disqualification of the act, and we run the risk of distorting the Biblical judgment if we rationalize it. To’evah constitutes a category of objectionableness sui generis: it is a primary phenomenon. (This lends additional force to Rabbi David Z. Hoffmann’s contention that to’evah is used by the Torah to indicate the repulsiveness of a proscribed act, no matter how much it may be in vogue among advanced and sophisticated cultures: see his Sefer Va-yikra, II, p. 54.).

It is on the basis of the above that an effort must be made to formulate a Jewish response to the problems of homosexuality in the conditions under which most Jews live today, namely, those of free and democratic societies and, with the exception of Israel, non-Jewish lands and traditions.

Four general approaches may be adopted:1) Repressive: No leniency toward the homosexual, lest the moral fiber of the rest of society be weakened.2) Practical: Dispense with imprisonment and all forms of social harassment, for eminently practical and prudent reasons.3) Permissive: The same as the above, but for the ideological reasons, viz., the acceptance of homosexuality as a legitimate alternative « lifestyle »4) Psychological: Homosexuality, in at least some forms, should be recognized as a disease and this recognition must determine our attitude toward the homosexual.
Let us consider each of these critically.

Exponents of the most stringent approach hold that pederasts are the vanguard of moral malaise, especially in our society. For on thing, they are dangerous to children. According to a recent work, one third of the homosexuals in the study were seduced in their adolescence by adults. It is best for society that they be imprisoned, and if our present penal institutions are faulty, let them be improved. Homosexuals should certainly not be permitted to function as teachers, group leaders, rabbis, or in any other capacity where they might be models for, and come into close contact with, young people. Homosexuality must not be excused as a sickness. A sane society assumes that its members have free choice, and are therefore responsible for their conduct. Sex offenders, including homosexuals, according to another recent study, operate « at a primate level with the philosophy that necessity is the mother of improvisation. » As Jews who believe that the Torah legislated certain moral laws for all mankind, it is incumbent upon us to encourage all societies, including non-Jewish ones, to implement the Noachide laws. And since, according to the halakhah, homosexuality is prohibited to Noachides as well as to Jews, we must seek to strengthen the moral quality of society by encouraging more restrictive laws against homosexuals. Moreover, if we are loyal to the teachings of Judaism, we cannot distinguish between « victimless » crimes and crimes of violence. Hence, if our concern for the murder, racial oppression, or robbery, we must do no less with regard to sodomy.

This argument is, however, weak on a number of grounds. Practically, it fails to take into cognizance the number of homosexuals of all categories, which, as we have pointed out, is vast. We cannot possibly imprison all offenders, and it is a manifest miscarriage of justice to vent our spleen only on the few unfortunates who are caught by the police. It is inconsistent because there has been no comparable outcry for harsh sentencing of other transgressors of sexual morality, such as those who indulge in adultery or incest. To take consistency to its logical conclusion, this hard line on homosexuality should not stop with imprisonment but demand the death sentence, as is Biblically prescribed. And why not the same death sentence for blasphemy, eating a limb torn from a live animal, idolatry, robbery -all of which are Noachide commandments? And why not capital punishment for Sabbath transgressors in the State of Israel? Why should the pederast be singled out for opprobrium and be made an object lesson while all others escape?

Those who might seriously consider such logically consistent, but socially destructive, strategies had best think back to the fate of that Dominican reformer, the monk Girolamo Savonarola, who in 15th-century Florence undertook a fanatical campaign against vice and all suspected of venal sin, with emphasis on pederasty. The society of that time and place, much like ours, could stand vast improvement. But too much medicine in too strong doses was the monk’s prescription, whereupon the population rioted and the zealot was hanged.

Finally, there is indeed some halakhic warrant for distinguishing between violent and victimless (or consensual and non-consensual) crimes. Thus, the Talmud permits a passer-by to kill a man in pursuit of another man or of a woman when the pursuer is attempting homosexual or heterosexual rape, as the case may be, whereas this is not permitted in the case of a transgressor pursuing an animal to commit buggery or on his way to worship an idol or to violate the Sabbath, (Sanh. 8:7, and v. Rashi to Sanh. 73a, s.v. al ha-behemah).

The practical approach is completely pragmatic and attempts to steer clear of any ideology in its judgments and recommendations. It is, according to its advocates, eminently reasonable. Criminal laws requiring punishment for homosexuals are simply unenforceable in society at the present day. We have previously cited the statistics on the extremely high incidence of pederasty in our society. Kinsey once said of the many sexual acts outlawed by the various states, that, were they all enforced, some 95% of men in the United States would be in jail. Furthermore, the special prejudice of law enforcement authorities against homosexuals – rarely does one hear of police entrapment or of jail sentences for non-violent heterosexuals – breeds a grave injustice: namely, it is an invitation to blackmail. The law concerning sodomy has been called « the blackmailer’s charter. » It is universally agreed that prison does little to help the homosexual rid himself of his peculiarity. Certainly, the failure of rehabilitation ought to be of concern to civilized men. But even if it is not, and the crime be considered so serious that incarceration is deemed advisable even in the absence of any real chances of rehabilitation, the casual pederast almost always leaves prison as a confirmed criminal. He has been denied the company of women and forced into society of those whose sexual expression is almost always channeled to pederasty. The casual pederast has become a habitual one: his homosexuality has now been ingrained in him. Is society any safer for having taken an errant man and, in the course of a few years, for having taught him to transform his deviancy into a hard and fast perversion, then turning him loose on the community? Finally, from a Jewish point of view, since it is obviously impossible for us to impose the death penalty for sodomy, we may as well act on purely practical grounds and do away with all legislation and punishment in this area of personal conduct.

This reasoning is tempting precisely because it focuses directly on the problem and is free of any ideological commitments. But the problem with it is that it is too smooth, too easy. By the same reasoning one might, in a reductio ad absurdum do away with all laws on income tax evasion, or forgive, and dispense with all punishment of Nazi murders. Furthermore, the last element leaves us with a novel view of the Halakhah: if it cannot be implemented in its entirely, it ought to be abandoned completely. Surely the Noachide laws, perhaps above all others, place us under clear moral imperatives, over and above purely penological instructions? The very practicality of this position leaves it open to the charge of evading the very real moral issues, and for Jews the halakhic principles, entailed in any discussion of homosexuality.

The ideological advocacy of a completely permissive attitude toward consensual homosexuality and the acceptance of its moral legitimacy is, of course, the « in » fashion in sophisticated liberal circles. Legally, it holds that deviancy is none of the law’s business; the homosexual’s civil rights are as sacred as those of any other « minority group. » From the psychological angle, sexuality must be emancipated from the fetters of guilt induced by religion and code-morality, and its idiosyncratic nature must be confirmed.

Gay Liberationists aver that the usual « straight » attitude toward homosexuality is based on three fallacies or myths: that homosexuality is an illness; that it is unnatural; and that it is immoral. They argue that it cannot be considered an illness, because so many people have been shown to practice it. It is not unnatural, because its alleged unnaturalness derives from the impossibility of sodomy leading to reproduction, whereas our overpopulated society no longer needs to breed workers, soldiers, farmers, or hunters. And it is not immoral, first, because morality is relative, and secondly, because moral behavior is that characterized by « selfless, loving concern. »

Now, we are here concerned with the sexual problem as such, and not with homosexuality as a symbol of the whole contemporary ideological polemic against restraint and tradition. Homosexuality is too important – and too agonizing – a human problem to allow it to be exploited for political aims or entertainment or shock value.

The bland assumption that pederasty cannot be considered an illness because of the large number of people who have or express homosexual tendencies cannot stand up under criticism. No less an authority than Freud taught that a whole civilization can be neurotic. Erich Fromm appeals for the establishment of The Sane Society – because ours is not. If the majority of a nation are struck down by typhoid fever, does this condition, by so curious a calculus of semantics, become healthy? Whether or not homosexuality can be considered an illness is a serious question, and it does depend on one’s definition of health and illness. But mere statistics are certainly not the coup de grâce to the psychological argument, which will be discussed shortly.

The validation of gay life as « natural » on the basis of changing social and economic conditions is an act of verbal obfuscation. Even if we were to concur with the widely held feeling that the world’s population is dangerously large, and that Zero Population Growth is now a desideratum, the anatomical fact remains unchanged: the generative organs are structured for generation. If the words « natural » and « unnatural » have any meaning at all, they must be rooted in the unchanging reality of man’s sexual apparatus rather than in his ephmeral social configurations.

Militant feminists along with the gay activists react vigorously against the implication that natural structure implies the naturalness or unnaturalness of certain acts, but this very view has recently been confirmed by one of the most informed writers on the subject. « It is already pretty safe to infer from laboratory research and ethological parallels that male and female are wired in ways that relate to our traditional sex roles… Freud dramatically said that anatomy is destiny. Scientists who shudder at the dramatic, no matter how accurate, could rephrase this: anatomy is functional, body functions have profound psychological meanings to people, and anatomy and function are often socially elaborated » (Arno Karlen, Sexuality and Homosexuality, p. 501).

The moral issues lead us into the quagmire of perennial philosophical disquisitions of a fundamental nature. In a way, this facilitates the problem for one seeking a Jewish view. Judaism does not accept the kind of thoroughgoing relativism used to justify the gay life as merely an alternate lifestyle And while the question of human autonomy is certainly worthy of consideration in the area of sexuality, one must beware of the consequences of taking the argument to its logical extreme. Judaism clearly cherishes holiness as a greater value than either freedom or health. Furthermore, if every individual’s autonomy leads us to lend moral legitimacy to any form of sexual expression he may desire, we must be ready to pull the blanket of this moral validity over almost the whole catalogue of perversion described by Krafft-Ebing, and then, by the legerdemain of granting civil rights to the morally non-objectionable, permit the advocates of buggery, fetishism, or whatever to proselytize in public. In that case, why not in the school system? And if consent is obtained before the death of one partner, why not necrophilia or cannibalism? Surely, if we declare pederasty to be merely idiosyncratic and not an « abomination, » what right have we to condemn sexually motivated cannibalism – merely because most people would react with revulsion and disgust?

« Loving, selfless concern » and « meaningful personal relationships » – the great slogans of the New Morality and the exponents of situation ethics – have become the litany of sodomy in our times. Simple logic should permit us to use the same criteria for excusing adultery or any other act heretofore held to be immoral: and indeed, that is just what has been done, and it has received the sanction not only of liberals and humanists, but of certain religionists as well. « Love, » « fulfillment, » « exploitative, » « meaningful » – the list itself sounds like a lexicon of emotionally charged terms drawn at random from the disparate sources of both Christian and psychologically-orientated agnostic circles. Logically, we must ask the next question: what moral depravities can not be excused by the sole criterion of « warm, meaningful human relations » or « fulfillment, » the newest semantic heirs to « love »?

Love, fulfillment, and happiness can also be attained in incestuous contacts -and certainly in polygamous relationships. Is there nothing at all left that is « sinful, » « unnatural, » or « immoral » if it is practiced « between two consenting adults? » For religious groups to aver that a homosexual relationship should be judged by the same criteria as a heterosexual one – i.e., « whether it is intended to foster a permanent relationship of love » – is to abandon the last claim of representing the « Judeo-Christian tradition. »

I have elsewhere essayed a criticism of the situationalists, their use of the term « love, » and their objections to traditional morality as exemplified by the Halakhah as « mere legalism » (see my Faith and Doubt, chapter IX, p. 249 ff). Situationalists, such as Joseph Fletcher, have especially attacked « pilpolistic Rabbis » for remaining entangled in the coils of statutory and legalistic hairsplitting. Among the other things this typically Christian polemic reveals is an ignorance of the nature of Halakhah and its place in Judaism, which never held that law was totality of life, pleaded again and again for supererogatory conduct, recognized that individuals may be disadvantaged by the law, and which strove to rectify what could be rectified without abandoning the large majority to legal and moral chaos simply because of the discomfiture of the few.

Clearly, while Judaism needs no defense or apology in regard to its esteem for neighborly love and compassion for the individual sufferer, it cannot possibly abide a wholesale dismissal of its most basic moral principles on the grounds that those subject to its judgments find them repressive. All laws are repressive to some extent -they repress illegal activities- and all morality is concerned with changing man and improving him and his society. Homosexuality imposes on one an intolerable burden of differentness, of absurdity, and of loneliness, but the Biblical commandment outlawing pederasty cannot be put aside solely on the basis of sympathy for the victim of these feelings. Morality, too, is an element which each of us, given his sensuality, his own idiosyncracies, and his immoral proclivities, must take into serious consideration before acting out his impulses.

Several years ago I recommended that Jews regard homosexual deviance as a pathology, thus reconciling the insights of Jewish tradition with the exigencies of contemporary life and scientific information, such as it is, on the nature of homosexuality (Jewish Life, Jan-Feb. 1968). The remarks that follow are an expansion and modification of that position, together with some new data and notions.

The proposal that homosexuality be viewed as an illness will immediately be denied by three groups of people. Gay militants object to this view as an instance of heterosexual condescension. Evelyn Hooker and her group of psychologists maintain that homosexuals are no more pathological in their personality structures than heterosexuals. And psychiatrists Thomas Szasz in the U.S. and Ronald Laing in England reject all traditional ideas of mental sickness and health as tools of social repressiveness or, at best, narrow conventionalism. While granting that there are indeed unfortunate instances where the category of mental disease is exploited for social or political reasons, we part company with all three groups and assume that there are significant number of pederasts and lesbians who, by the criteria accepted by most psychologists and psychiatrists, can indeed be termed pathological. Thus, for instance, Dr. Albert Ellis, an ardent advocate of the right to deviancy, denies there is such a thing as a well-adjusted homosexual. In an interview, he has stated that whereas he used to believe that most homosexuals were neurotic, he is now convinced that about 50% are borderline psychotics, that the usual fixed male homosexual is a severe phobic, and that lesbians are even more disturbed than male homosexuals (see Karlem, op. cit., p. 223ff.).

No single cause of homosexuality has been established. In all probability, it is based on a conglomeration of a number of factors. There is overwhelming evidence that the condition is developmental, not constitutional. Despite all efforts to discover something genetic in homosexuality, no proof has been adduced, and researchers incline more and more to reject the Freudian concept of fundamental human biological bisexuality and its corollary of homosexual latency. It is now widely believed that homosexuality is the result of a whole family constellation. The passive, dependent, phobic male homosexual is usually the product of an aggressive, covertly seductive mother who is overly rigid and puritanical with her son – thus forcing him into a bond where he is sexually aroused, yet forbidden to express himself in any heterosexual way – and of a father who is absent, remote, emotionally detached, or hostile (I. Bieber et al. Homosexuality, 1962).

Can the homosexual be cured? There is a tradition of therapeutic pessimism that goes back to Freud but a number of psychoanalysis, including Freud’s daughter Anna, have reported successes in treating homosexuals as any other phobics (in this case, fear of the female genitals). It is generally accepted that about a third of all homosexuals can be completely cured: behavioral therapists report an even larger number of cures.

Of course, one cannot say categorically that all homosexuals are sick – any more than one can casually define all thieves as kleptomaniacs. In order to develop a reasonable Jewish approach to the problem and to seek in the concept of illness some mitigating factor, it is necessary first to establish the main types of homosexuals. Dr. Judd Marmor speaks of four categories. « Genuine homosexuality » is based on strong preferential erotic feelings for members of the same sex. « Transitory homosexual behavior » occurs among adolescents who would prefer heterosexual experiences but are denied such opportunities because of the social, cultural, or psychological reasons. « Situational homosexual exchanges » are characteristic of prisoners, soldiers and others who are heterosexual but are denied access to women for long periods of time. « Transitory and opportunistic homosexuality » is that of delinquent young men who permit themselves to be used by pederasts in order to make money or win other favors, although their primary erotic interests are exclusively heterosexual. To these may be added, for purposes of our analysis, two other types. The first category, that of genuine homosexuals, me be said to comprehend two sub-categories: those who experience their condition as one of duress or uncontrollable passion which they would rid themselves of if they could, and those who transform their idiosyncrasy into an ideology, i.e., the gay militants who assert the legitimacy and validity of homosexuality as an alternative way to heterosexuality. The sixth category is based on what Dr. Rollo May has called « the New Puritanism », the peculiarly modern notion that one must experience all sexual pleasures, whether or not one feels inclined to them, as if the failure to taste every cup passed at the sumptuous banquet of carnal life means that one has not truly lived. Thus, we have transitory homosexual behavior not of adolescents, but of adults who feel that: they must « try everything » at least once or more than once in their lives.

This rubric will now permit us to apply the notion of disease (and, from the halakhic point of view, of its opposite, moral culpability) to the various types of sodomy. Clearly, genuine homosexuality experienced under duress (Hebrew: ones) most obviously lends itself to being termed pathological especially where dysfunction appears in other aspects of personality. Opportunistic homosexuality, ideological homosexuality, and transitory adult homosexuality are at the other end of the spectrum, and appear most reprehensible. As for the intermediate categories, while they cannot be called illness, they do have a greater claim on our sympathy than the three types mentioned above.

In formulating the notion of homosexuality as a disease, we are not asserting the formal halakhic definition of mental illness as mental incompetence, as described in TB Hag. 3b, 4a, and elsewhere. Furthermore, the categorization of a prohibited sex act as ones (duress) because of uncontrolled passions is valid, in a technical halakhic sense, only for a married woman who was ravished and who, in the course of the act, became a willing participant. The Halakhah decides with Rava, against the father of Samuel, that her consent is considered duress because of the passions aroused in her (Ket, 51b). However, this holds true only if the act was initially entered into under physical compulsion (Kesef Mishneh to Yad, Sanh. 20:3). Moreover, the claim of compulsion by one’s erotic passions is not valid for a male, for any erection is considered a token of his willingness (Yev, 53b; Maimonides, Yad, Sanh, 20:3). In the case of a male who was forced to cohabit with a woman forbidden to him, some authorities consider him guilty and punishable, while others hold him guilty but not subject to punishment by the courts (Tos., Yev, 53b; Hinnukh, 556; Kesef Mishneh, loc. cit.: Maggid Mishneh to Issurei Bi´ah, 1:9). Where a male is sexually aroused in a permissible manner, as to begin coitus with his wife and is then forced to conclude the act with another woman, most authorities exonerate him (Rabad and Maggid Mishned, to Issurei Bi´ah, in loc). If, now, the warped family background of the genuine homosexual is considered ones, the homosexual act may possibly lay claim to some mitigation by the Halakhah. (However, see Minhat Hinnukh, 556, end; and M. Feinstein, Iggerot Moshe (1973) on YD, no. 59, who holds, in a different context, that any pleasure derived from a forbidden act performed under duress increases the level of prohibition. This was anticipated by R. Joseph Engel, Atvan de-Oraita, 24). These latter sources indicate the difficulty of exonerating sexual transgressors because of psycho-pathological reasons under the technical rules of the Halakhah.

However, in the absence of a Sanhedrin and since it is impossible to implement the whole halakhic penal system, including capital punishment, such strict applications are unnecessary. What we are attempting is to develop guidelines, based on the Halakhah, which will allow contemporary Jews to orient themselves to the current problems of homosexuality in a manner articulating with the most fundamental insights of the Halakhah in a general sense, and consistent with the broadest world-view that the halakhic commitment instills in its followers. Thus, the aggadic statement that « no man sins unless he is overcome by a spirit of madness » (Sot. 3a) is not an operative halakhic rule, but does offer guidance on public policy and individual pastoral compassion. So in the present case, the formal halakhic strictures do not in any case apply nowadays, and it is our contention that the aggadic principle must lead us to seek out the mitigating halakhic elements so as to guide us in our orientation to homosexuals who, by the standards of modern psychology, may be regarded as acting under compulsion.

To apply the Halakhah strictly in this case is obviously impossible; to ignore it entirely is undesirable, and tantamount to regarding Halakhah as a purely abstract, legalistic system which can safely be dismissed where its norms and prescriptions do not allow full formal implementation. Admittedly, the method is not rigorous, and leaves room to varying interpretations as well as exegetical abuse, but it is the best we can do.

Hence there are types of homosexuality that do not warrant any special considerateness, because the notion of ones or duress (i.e., disease) in no way applies. Where the category of mental illness does apply, the act itself remains to´evah (an abomination), but the fact of illness lays upon us the obligation of pastoral compassion, psychological understanding, and social sympathy. In these sense, homosexuality is no different from any other social or anti-halakhic act, where it is legitimate to distinguish between the objective itself including its social and moral consequences, and the mentality and inner development of the person who perpetrates the act. For instance, if a man murders in a cold and calculating fashion for reasons of profit, the act is criminal and the transgressor is criminal. If, however, a psychotic murders, the transgressor is diseased rather than criminal, but the objective act itself remains a criminal one. The courts may therefore treat the perpetrator of the crime as they would a patient, with all the concomitant compassion and concern for therapy, without condoning the act as being morally neutral. To use halakhic terminology, the objective crime remains a ma´aseh averah, whereas a person who transgresses is considered innocent on the grounds of ones. In such case, the transgressor is spared the full legal consequences of his culpable act, although the degree to which he may be held responsible varies from case to case.

An example of a criminal act that is treated with compassion by the Halakhah, which in practice considers the act pathological rather than criminal, is suicide. Technically, the suicide or attempted suicide is in violation of the law. The Halakhah denies to the suicide the honor of a eulogy, the rending of the garments by relatives or witnesses to the death, and (according to Maimonides) insist that the relatives are not to observe the usual mourning period for the suicide. Yet, in the course of time, the tendency has been to remove the stigma from the suicide on the basis of mental disease. Thus, halakhic scholars do not apply the technical category of intentional (la-da´at) suicide to one who did not clearly demonstrate before performing the act, that he knew what he was doing and was of sound mind, to the extent that there was no hiatus between the act of self-destruction and actual death. If these conditions are not present, we assume that it was an insane act or that between the act and death he experienced pangs of contrition and is therefore repentant, hence excused before the law. There is even one opinion which exonerates the suicide unless he received adequate warning (hatra´ah) before performing the act, and responded in a manner indicating that he was fully aware of what he was doing and that he was lucid (J.M Tykocinski, Gesher ha-Hayyim, I, ch. 25, and Encyclopaedia Judaica, 15:490).

Admittedly, there are differences between the two cases: pederasty is clearly a severe violation of Biblical law, whereas the stricture against suicide is derived exegetically from a verse in the Genesis. Nevertheless, the principle operative in the one is applicable to the other: where one can attribute an act to mental illness, it is done out of simple humanitarian considerations.

The suicide analogy should not, of course, lead one to conclude that there are grounds for a blanket exculpation of homosexuality as mental illness. Not all forms of homosexuality can be so termed, as indicated above, and the act itself remains an « abomination ». With few exceptions, most people do not ordinarily propose that suicide be considered an acceptable and legitimate alternative to the rigors of daily life. No sane and moral person sits passively and watches a fellow man attempt suicide because he « understands » him and because it has been decided that suicide is a « morally neutral » act. By the same token, in orienting ourselves to certain types of homosexuals as patients rather than criminals, we do not condone the act but attempt to help the homosexual. Under no circumstances can Judaism suffer homosexuality to become respectable. Were society to give its open or even tacit approval to homosexuality, it would invite more aggressiveness on the part of adult pederasts toward young people. Indeed, in the currently permissive atmosphere, the Jewish view would summon us to the semantic courage of referring to homosexuality not as « deviance » with the implication of moral neutrality and non-judgmental idiosyncrasy, but as « perversion » – a less clinical and more old-fashioned word, perhaps, but one that is more in keeping with the Biblical to´evah.

Yet, having passed this moral judgment, we cannot in the name of Judaism necessarily demand that we strive for the harshest possible punishment. Even where it was halakhically feasible to execute capital punishment, we have a tradition of leniency. Thus, R. Akiva and R. Tarfon declared that had they lived during the time of the Sanhedrin, they never would have executed a man. Although the Halakhah does not decide in their favor (Mak., end of ch. I), it was rare indeed that the death penalty was actually imposed. Usually, the Biblically mandated penalty was regarded as an index of the severity of the transgression, and the actual execution was avoided by strict insistence upon all technical requirements – such al hatra´ah (forewarning the potential criminal) and rigorous cross-examination of witnesses, etc. In the same spirit, we are not bound to press for the most punitive policy toward contemporary lawbreakers. We are required to lead them to rehabilitation (teshuva). The Halakhah sees no contradiction between condemning a man to death and exercising compassion, even love, toward him (Sanh. 52a). Even a man on the way to his execution was encouraged to repent (Sanh. 6:2). In the absence of a death penalty, the tradition of teshuva and pastoral compassion to the sinner continues.

I do not find any warrant in the Jewish tradition for insisting on prison sentences for homosexuals. The singling-out of homosexuals as victims of society’s righteous indignation is patently unfair. In Western history, anti-homosexual crusades have too often been marked by cruelty, destruction, and bigotry. Imprisonment in modern times has proven to be extremely haphazard. The number of homosexuals unfortunate enough to be apprehended is infinitesimal as compared to the number of known homosexuals; estimates vary from one to 300.000 to one to 6.000.000!. For homosexuals to be singled out for special punishment while all the rest of society indulges itself in every other form of sexual malfeasance (using the definitions of Halakhah, not the New Morality) is a species of double-standard morality that the spirit of Halakhah cannot abide. Thus, the Mishnah declares that the « scroll of the suspected adulteress » (megillat sotah) – whereby a wife suspected of adultery was forced to undergo the test of « bitter waters » – was cancelled when the Sages became aware of the ever-larger number of adulterers in general (Sot. 9:9). The Talmud bases this decision on an aversion to the double standard: if the husband is himself an adulterer, the « bitter waters » will have no effect on his wife, even though she too be guilty of the offense (Sot. 47b). By the same token, a society in which heterosexual immorality is not conspicuously absent has no moral right to sit in stern judgment and mete out harsh penalties to homosexuals.

Furthermore, sending a homosexual to prison is counterproductive if punishment is to contain any element of rehabilitation or teshuva. It has rightly been compared to sending an alcoholic to a distillery. The Talmud records that the Sanhedrin was unwilling to apply the full force of the law where punishment had lost its quality of deterrence; thus, 40 (or four) years before the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin voluntarily left the precincts of the Temple so as not to be able, technically, to impose the death sentence, because it had noticed the increasing rate of homicide (Sanh. 41a, and elsewhere).

There is nothing in the Jewish law’s letter or spirit that should incline us toward advocacy of imprisonment for homosexuals. The Halakhah did not, by and large, encourage the denial of freedom as a recommended form of punishment. Flogging is, from a certain perspective, far less cruel and far more enlightened. Since capital punishment is out of the question, and since incarceration is not an advisable substitute, we are left with one absolute minimum: strong disapproval of the proscribed act. But we are not bound to any specific penological instrument that has no basis in Jewish law or tradition.

How shall this disapproval be expressed? It has been suggested that, since homosexuality will never attain acceptance anyway, society can afford to be humane. As long as violence and the seduction of children are not involved, it would best to abandon all laws on homosexuality and leave it to the inevitable social sanctions to control, informally,what can be controlled.

However, this approach is not consonant with Jewish tradition. The repeal of anti-homosexual laws implies the removal of the stigma from homosexuality, and this diminution of social censure weakens society in its training of the young toward acceptable patterns of conduct. The absence of adequate social reproach may well encourage the expression of homosexual tendencies by those in whom they might otherwise be suppressed. Law itself has an educative function, and the repeal of laws, no matter how justifiable such repeal may be from one point of view, does have the effect of signaling the acceptability of greater permissiveness.

Perhaps all that has been said above can best be expressed in the proposals that follow.

First, society and government must recognize the distinctions between the various categories enumerated earlier in this essay. We must offer medical and psychological assistance to those whose homosexuality is an expression of pathology, who recognize it as such, and are willing to seek help. We must be no less generous to the homosexual than to the drug addict, to whom the government extends various forms of therapy upon request.

Second, jail sentences must be abolished for all homosexuals, save those who are guilty of violence, seduction of the young, or public solicitation.

Third, the laws must remain on the books, but by mutual consent of judiciary and police, be unenforced. This approximates to what lawyers call « the chilling effect », and is the nearest one can come to the category so well known in the Halakhah, whereby strong disapproval is expressed by affirming a halakhic prohibition, yet no punishment is mandated. It is a category that bridges the gap between morality and law. In a society where homosexuality is so rampant, and where incarceration is so counterproductive, the hortatory approach may well be a way of formalizing society’s revulsion while avoiding the pitfalls in our accepted penology.

For the Jewish community as such, the same principles, derived from the tradition, may serve as guidelines. Judaism allows for no compromise in its abhorrence of sodomy, but encourages both compassion and efforts at rehabilitation. Certainly, there must be no acceptance of separate Jewish homosexual societies, such as – or specially – synagogues set aside as homosexual congregations. The first such « gay synagogue », apparently, was the « Beth Chayim Chadashim » in Los Angeles. Spawned by that city’s Metropolitan Community Church in March 1972, the founding group constituted itself as a Reform congregation with the help of the Pacific Southwest Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations some time in early 1973. Thereafter, similar groups surfaced in New York City and elsewhere. The original group meets on Friday evenings in the Leo Baeck Temple and is searching for a rabbi – who must himself be « gay ». The membership sees itself as justified by « the Philosophy of Reform Judaism ». The Temple president declared that God is « more concerned in our finding a sense of peace in which to make a better world, than He is in whom someone sleeps with » (cited in « Judaism and Homosexuality » C.C.A.R. Journal, summer 1973, p. 38; five articles in this issue of the Reform group’s rabbinic journal are devoted to the same theme, and most of them approve of the Gay Synagogue).

But such reasoning is specious, to say the least. Regular congregations and other Jewish groups should not hesitate to accord hospitality and membership, on an individual basis, to those « visible » homosexuals who qualify for the category of the ill. Homosexuals are no less in violation of Jewish norms than Sabbath desecrators or those who disregard the laws of kashrut. But to assent to the organization of separate « gay » groups under Jewish auspices makes no more sense, Jewishly, than to suffer the formation of synagogues that care exclusively to idol worshipers, adulterers, gossipers, tax evaders, or Sabbath violators. Indeed, it makes less sense, because it provides, under religious auspices, a ready-made clientele from which the homosexual can more easily choose his partners.

In remaining true to the sources of Jewish tradition. Jews are commanded to avoid the madness that seizes society at various times and in many forms, while yet retaining a moral composure and psychological equilibrium sufficient to exercise that combination of discipline and charity that is the hallmark of Judaism.

Le jeune maire américain modéré Pete Buttigieg a dépassé pour la première fois les poids lourds de la primaire démocrate dans un sondage publié mardi portant sur l’Iowa, un État-clé dans la course à la Maison-Blanche car il sera le premier à voter.

C’est la première fois que Pete Buttigieg, 37 ans, arrive en tête d’un sondage dans la campagne pour la primaire démocrate.

Le maire enregistre 22% des intentions de vote dans l’Iowa selon un sondage de l’institut de Monmouth University, devant les grands favoris jusqu’ici: l’ancien vice-président de Barack Obama, Joe Biden (19%), la sénatrice progressiste Elizabeth Warren (18%) et le sénateur indépendant Bernie Sanders (13%).

Encore inconnu du grand public il y a un an, le maire de South Bend, dans l’Indiana, s’est depuis forgé un nom en se posant en modéré capable de rassembler l’Amérique pour battre le républicain Donald Trump en novembre 2020.

Ancien militaire, polyglotte et utra-diplômé, il est le premier grand candidat ouvertement homosexuel à la Maison-Blanche, marié depuis 2018 à un enseignant, Chasten.

Dans l’Iowa, où la primaire sera organisée le 3 février, «Buttigieg émerge comme un choix de premier plan pour un large éventail de démocrates», quel que soit leur niveau d’«éducation ou leur idéologie», a écrit mardi Patrick Murray, directeur de l’institut de sondage Monmouth University, dans un communiqué.

Plus de deux tiers des 451 personnes interrogées –du 7 au 11 novembre– disent pouvoir encore changer d’avis, précise l’institut. La marge d’erreur est importante, à 4,6 points, mais ce nouveau sondage vient confirmer l’ascension de M. Buttigieg dans l’Iowa depuis plusieurs semaines.

Sur les 17 candidats encore en lice pour l’investiture démocrate, Joe Biden reste favori au niveau national mais est en perte de vitesse (26,8%), suivi par Elizabeth Warren (20,8%), Bernie Sanders (17%), avec, loin derrière, Pete Buttigieg (7,5%).

Voir également:

Pete Buttigieg, meilleur candidat pour battre Trump à l’élection présidentielle?

Après avoir brillé dans l’Iowa, l’ancien maire mise sur la primaire dans le New Hampshire pour affronter Donald Trump à l’élection présidentielle américaine.

PRÉSIDENTIELLE AMÉRICAINE – Va-t-il transformer l’essai? Après ses résultats inespérés dans l’Iowa (toujours contestés par Bernie Sanders), Pete Buttigieg espère bien récolter les fruits de l’énorme coup de pouce médiatique dont il a bénéficié tout au long de cette semaine chaotique.

Le jeune candidat, encore inconnu il y a un an, croise donc les doigts ce mardi 11 février pour à nouveau s’imposer -ou du moins décrocher un score plus qu’honorable- dans le New Hampshire, deuxième État à voter aux primaires démocrates.

Si créer la surprise au cours des prochains scrutins et finir par décrocher la nomination du parti cet été est actuellement le rêve de tous les candidats, la seule vraie prouesse sera la suivante: battre Donald Trump lors de l’élection générale du 3 novembre et le sortir de la Maison Blanche.

Pete Buttigieg est-il le meilleur candidat pour cette périlleuse mission? Le HuffPost a rassemblé plusieurs forces (et faiblesses) du candidat pour tenter d’y voir plus clair.

Aux antipodes de Trump

Comme il aime souvent le rappeler en campagne, Pete Buttigieg a un atout majeur face à Donald Trump: son CV. Il faut dire qu’on pourrait difficilement imaginer un curriculum plus à l’opposé de celui du président républicain.

Contrairement à l’occupant actuel de la Maison Blanche, le démocrate a tout d’abord de l’expérience politique. Alors que le magnat de l’immobilier était l’hôte d’une téléréalité avant de se présenter à la présidence, Pete Buttigieg vient lui de terminer son 2e mandat de maire. Trump s’est construit dans la plus grande ville du pays qu’est New York, Buttiegieg a fait décoller sa carrière à South Bend, 100.000 habitants, dans l’État de l’Indiana.

Buttigieg met aussi régulièrement en avant son expérience dans l’armée. Il a passé sept mois en Afghanistan, un avantage sur tous ses concurrents démocrates et surtout sur Trump. Ce dernier a en effet réussi à échapper pas mois de cinq fois à la guerre du Vietnam: quatre reports grâce aux études qu’il suivait puis une dispense médicale pour une excroissance osseuse au pied dont les médias n’ont jamais retrouvé de trace.

Diplômé de grandes universités, le candidat a aussi montré qu’il était polyglotte(vidéo ci-dessous). En plus de l’anglais, il peut parler en norvégien, espagnol, italien, arabe, dari ou encore français comme il l’a montré en commentant l’incendie de Notre-Dame. Face à un président qui est parfois pointé du doigt pour la faiblesse du vocabulaire qu’il emploie dans son anglais natal.

Pete Buttigieg se présente aussi aux antipodes de Donald Trump sur des aspects plus personnels. Là où Trump s’emporte et est devenu le roi du surnom mesquin, Buttigieg apparaît dans ses interventions comme calme, confiant et au point sur ses dossiers. Alors que les Américains LGBT ont vu leurs droits régresser sous la présidence républicaine, Buttigieg est le premier candidat démocrate ouvertement gay et apparaît régulièrement au bras de son mari Chasten. Âgé de seulement 38 ans, il est de loin le plus jeune de la course. Il n’hésite pas non plus à mettre l’accent sur sa foi chrétienne, un sujet généralement accaparé par les républicains.

Quant à son programme, il ne renferme pas (encore?) de mesure phare, mais sa position modérée sur les impôts et la couverture santé pourrait bien attirer de précieux électeurs indépendants qui avaient penché pour Donald Trump en 2016. Au sein de ce groupe-clé pour départager une élection, la question du système de santé sera en effet la priorité numéro un pour faire son choix en novembre 2020, selon un sondage Gallup paru en janvier.

En mal de popularité

Si la réussite de Pete Buttigieg dans l’Iowa et un très bon score dans le New Hampshire ce mardi serait un énorme tremplin, le candidat traîne cependant un énorme problème de popularité auprès d’électorats-clés pour un démocrate dans une élection présidentielle.

Comme le montrent de nombreux sondages, l’ancien maire n’enregistre pour l’heure qu’un soutien très faible auprès des deux minorités ethniques principales aux États-Unis: les électeurs afro-américains et hispaniques (voir le graphique ci-dessous). La présence de ces derniers, qui ont peu voté républicain en 2016, sera cruciale dans les bureaux de vote en novembre 2020 face à Trump.

Pete Buttigieg souffre, dans les sondages, d'un sévère manque de popularité auprès des électeurs afro-américains... — Pete Buttigieg souffre, dans les sondages, d’un sévère manque de popularité auprès des électeurs afro-américains et hispaniques (graphique: Morning Consult)

Les difficultés ne s’arrêtent pas là. Buttigieg pourrait aussi avoir une mauvaise surprise avec les jeunes, potentiel sous-exploité en 2016. Bien qu’il se vante d’incarner le renouveau politique du haut de ses 38 ans, le candidat n’est à l’heure actuelle pas très populaire avec les démocrates de moins de 38 ans, un groupe d’âge qui englobera 25% des électeurs en novembre. Son approche trop modérée ne fait pas le poids face à la politique autrement plus radicale de Sander, qui lui a gagné le soutien massif des générations Y et Z. Buttigieg pourrait donc avoir bien du mal à donner envie à ce réservoir de voix démocrates de participer au scrutin.

Reste enfin la faible notoriété de l’ancien maire de South Bend. Il lui faudra réellement marquer les esprits tout au long des primaires puis s’imposer face à un président omniprésent sur les réseaux sociaux comme dans l’actualité depuis 2016, après quatorze années passées sur les écrans de télévision de millions d’Américains grâce à “The Apprentice”…

Voir encore:

Untested, Unprecedented Presidential Campaign

Charlotte Alter

Time

May 2, 2019

As Pete Buttigieg addressed supporters off a back porch in Marshalltown, Iowa, the Devil was whispering his name. “Pete,” the Devil hissed into a microphone. “You’re sooo smart, Pete.”

Buttigieg ignored the heckler, plowing forward with his stump speech about American decency as his husband Chasten looked on. “Pete,” the Devil whispered. “I want the heartland, Pete.”

The man in the devil costume was Randall Terry, an antiabortion activist. He had traveled to Iowa to torment the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., the early breakout star of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. “There’s never been a poster boy for homosexuals” before, Terry says. “There’s never been a homosexual that you’d go, ‘Wow, I’d be proud of him.’ He’s the guy. That’s why he’s such a threat.”

Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his right to marry, Buttigieg has become the first openly gay person to make a serious bid for the presidency. And Terry is hardly the only right-winger worried about the rise of “Mayor Pete.” Buttigieg’s saying that “God doesn’t have a political party” prompted evangelical leader Franklin Graham to tweet that being gay is “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized.” Concerned by the campaign’s rise, right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl was recently caught trying to fabricate sexual-assault allegations against Buttigieg to slow him down.

But to some Americans, Buttigieg may just be the man to vanquish America’s demons. In a field of more than 20 candidates—including six Senators, four Congressmen, two governors and a former Vice President—Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-edge-edge) has vaulted from near total obscurity toward the front of the Democratic pack, running ahead of or even with more established candidates and behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Buttigieg is a gay Episcopalian veteran in a party torn between identity politics and heartland appeals. He’s also a fresh face in a year when millennials are poised to become the largest eligible voting bloc. Many Democrats are hungry for generational change, and the two front runners are more than twice his age.

But Buttigieg’s greatest political asset may be his ear for languages. He speaks eight, including Norwegian and Arabic, but he’s particularly fluent in the dialect of the neglected industrial Midwest. Buttigieg is a master of redefinition, a translator for a party that has found it increasingly difficult to speak to the voters who elected President Donald Trump. The son of an English professor and a scholar of linguistics, he roots his campaign in an effort to reframe progressive ideas in conservative language. “If the substance of your ideas is progressive but there’s mistrust about them among conservatives, you have three choices,” Buttigieg tells TIME, sitting on his living-room couch in South Bend. “One is to just change your ideas and make them more conservative. The second is to sort of be sneaky and try to make it seem like your ideas are more conservative than they are. And the third, the approach that I favor, is to stick to your ideas, but explain why conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

His platform is “Freedom, Security and Democracy,” which wouldn’t sound out of place coming from a Bush-era Republican yet actually harks back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But in order to maintain his momentum, Buttigieg will have to do more to flesh out those ideas. Unlike many of his opponents, he hasn’t posted any detailed policy proposals on his website. He’ll also have to convince Democratic voters that his experience running South Bend (pop. 102,245) is adequate preparation for running the world’s most powerful country. And he’ll have to make inroads with black and Hispanic voters who have so far appeared unimpressed with his campaign.

Buttigieg likes to say he has more government experience than Trump, and more military experience than any President in 25 years. And Trump’s victory in 2016 proved that many Americans were willing to elect a President without a traditional Washington résumé. But some voters long for stability after three years of chaos, and it’s not clear whether the Trump presidency has made it easier or harder for outsiders.

The same assets that have propelled Buttigieg so far could ultimately thwart his rise. His youth is appealing to many voters, but it also means he’s green. The idea of electing the first gay President thrills liberals, but it also rallies opponents. As a white man, Buttigieg may appeal to more traditional voters, yet women and voters of color are the heart of the Democratic coalition. He’s running as a healer, not a fighter, at a moment when the party seems to be in a fighting mood. “As a woman of color, it’s very difficult for me to hear ‘We can unite across our differences,’” says Democratic operative Jess Morales Rocketto. “On one side you have people who want to live in a white-supremacist country, and on the other side you have people dying at the hands of white supremacists.”

In many ways, Buttigieg is Trump’s polar opposite: younger, dorkier, shorter, calmer and married to a man. His success may depend on whether Democrats want a fighter to match Trump, or whether Americans want to “change the channel,” as Buttigieg puts it. “People already have a leader who screams and yells,” he says. “How do you think that’s working out for us?”

On a Sunny Monday morning, Buttigieg is musing about redeeming American credibility abroad, sipping from his coffee mug emblazoned with JFK’s face, when his husband plops onto the living-room couch, picks up the blanket next to him and throws it on the floor in mock disgust. “Do we have to have this hideous blanket?” he said. The blanket is full of dog hair. “Can we put our nice blanket there?”

The hair comes from Truman, their hound mix, and Buddy, their tubby rescue puppy. When I first met Buttigieg in 2017, he told me he named Truman after a famous saying often attributed to the 33rd President: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

But you live in South Bend, I said. When are you planning on moving to Washington? He didn’t reply.

The house looks like it’s occupied by moderately tidy people who travel a lot. Coats are piled on the bannister, and old sneakers and a pair of Crocs are lined up next to the kitchen door. A tiny photo of Pete and Chasten with Cher peeks out from behind wedding save-the-dates posted on the fridge. The kitchen walls are a too-bright yellow. The mayor painted them himself, which he says was a mistake.

Buttigieg met Chasten Glezman, then a Chicago grad student, on the dating app Hinge in 2015. They talked over FaceTime for a few weeks before Chasten drove to South Bend for their first real date, at an Irish bar famous for its Scotch eggs. Less than three years later, Pete proposed in gate B5 of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the exact spot where Chasten had first noticed his dating profile.

Chasten Glezman and Mayor Pete Buttigieg on the front steps of their home in South Bend, Ind.

Ryan Pfluger for TIME

Their marriage is at once banal and extraordinary, infused with the exuberant contentment of two people who once thought they would always be alone. Chasten handles the dogs, the shopping, the cooking. Pete does the dishes, laundry and garbage. Chasten hates taking the bin out to the curb. Pete hates the way Chasten folds T-shirts. Chasten gets grumpy when they go too long without food, and Pete doesn’t get it. “You’re like, ‘Oh, here, I packed a bag of almonds and a thing of beef jerky,’” Chasten says. “I hate nuts, and he eats nuts all the time.”

“High in protein, good for you,” Pete counters.

“See!” Chasten says. “I want a meal, and he’s like, ‘We’ll just have a handful of nuts.’” Also, he tells his husband, “You do chew really loudly.”

Both men grew up closeted in conservative Midwestern communities. “Being gay was not culturally acceptable where I grew up, mostly for a lack of understanding,” Chasten says. “And so my family and I were just at a crossroads, and we didn’t really know how to talk to one another.” When he came out after his senior year of high school, tensions at home forced him to spend months crashing on friends’ couches and sleeping in his car. His parents ultimately changed their minds, welcomed him back home and now fully support their son and his marriage.

Buttigieg playing Nintendo with his late father Joseph Buttigieg at home in South Bend, circa 2000.

Courtesy Pete Buttigieg

Pete took a lot longer to come to terms with himself. As a child, “he was an observer,” recalls his mother Anne Montgomery. “Each time he went to a new school, he’d sit there and watch who was doing what and why.” In high school, he was elected senior class president and played Theseus in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the voice of sanity and order in a world gone mad. He won the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s Profiles in Courage contest for an admiring essay about Bernie Sanders—20 years before challenging the Vermont Senator for the Democratic nomination.

Buttigieg and his parents pose with Caroline Kennedy at the JFK Library in 2000. His high school essay on Senator Bernie Sanders won first place in the JFK Profiles in Courage contest.

John F. Kennedy Library Foundation

Alone with the knowledge that he was, as he put it, “really strongly attracted to other young men,” he threw himself into his studies, teaching himself languages and musical instruments and reading James Joyce. One Harvard roommate recalled he had learned circular breathing in order to hold a note on the didgeridoo. He lived with a handful of guys in a suite nicknamed the Château because of its fancy moldings and exposed brick walls. He was the roommate who would sip whiskey instead of chugging beer, and insist on a real Christmas tree in the dorm room. He dated women occasionally but never joined his roommates’ discussions of their sex lives.

After graduation, Buttigieg went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, then did a brief stint at the consulting firm McKinsey, analyzing grocery-store pricing. He moved back to Indiana and joined the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2009, before the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” He remembers his fellow officers tossing the word gay around as an insult, the way middle schoolers once did.

In 2010, at the age of 28, he ran his first political campaign, for Indiana state treasurer, and got crushed, losing by 27 points. But the following year, Buttigieg ran for mayor of South Bend and won. He was professionally ascendant but personally adrift: friends were starting to meet serious girlfriends, get married, have kids, and Pete’s personal life amounted to watching The Simpsons alone with a beer after work. He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2014, halfway through his first term as mayor. When he came back six months later, he says, he realized that if he had died overseas, he would have never known what it was like to be in love.

Lieutenant Buttigieg with his parents Joseph and Anne when he returned to South Bend after six months in Afghanistan, 2014.

Courtesy Pete Buttigieg

In 2015, just as Buttigieg was beginning to come out privately to friends and family members, Indiana’s then Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allowed local businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people. Later that year, at the height of his re-election campaign, Buttigieg wrote an op-ed in the South Bend Tribune to announce he was gay. It was more of a personal calculation than a political one, he says: given his job, he couldn’t openly date until his constituents knew the truth. He feared it would cost him re-election, but he won with 80% of the vote.

It was a sign of how rapidly public opinion on LGBTQ issues has changed. In 1996, only 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage; today 67% do, including 44% of Republicans. Some of Buttigieg’s fellow officers who had used gay as an epithet in his presence reached out to express their support. “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know?” he says. “Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”

All this informs his belief that it’s still possible to reach across America’s political divide. “We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter,” he says. He has seen once disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words, and so he believes in the power of redemption and forgiveness. “This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil,” he says. “The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”

For the mayor of a place like South Bend, politics gets a little more complicated. When Buttigieg was elected in 2011, his mandate was to turn around a dying city. South Bend had been in decline since 1963, when the Studebaker auto company left, taking thousands of jobs with it. Buttigieg got to work. He made downtown more walkable, improved infrastructure for filling potholes and plowing snow, and brought new companies to South Bend through partnerships with Notre Dame. “Mayors in the past had kind of a can’t-do attitude,” says veteran South Bend Tribune columnist Jack Colwell. “When people came to talk to Pete, he’d say, ‘How can we help you get this done?’”

In interviews with local residents, nearly all said Buttigieg had done a generally good job as mayor, though some said he had blind spots on issues affecting black and Hispanic residents. Early in his tenure, Buttigieg fired a popular black police chief who was under FBI investigation for wiretapping white officers who had been suspected of using racist language. And while most residents say the city improved under his leadership, the gains have not been evenly distributed. South Bend still has a persistent racial wealth gap: black households earn roughly half of what white households make, and the black poverty rate is almost twice the national average, according to a 2017 Prosperity Now report commissioned by Buttigieg’s office. Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, the researcher who compiled the report, said Buttigieg was the first mayor of any city to ask him to do this. “He didn’t solve racial economic inequality,” says Asante-Muhammad, “but what city has?”

One of Buttigieg’s main goals was to improve the city’s housing stock. South Bend had a glut of abandoned homes left over from the Studebaker heyday, and Buttigieg announced a plan to either tear down or fix up 1,000 in 1,000 days. Almost immediately, black residents expressed concern. Most of the vacant homes were in black and Hispanic neighborhoods on the town’s West Side. While no families reported being evicted because of the policy, some locals had bought or inherited vacant homes intending to fix them up, then faced heavy code-enforcement fines or even lost the properties they had purchased. Regina Williams-Preston, a teacher whose family has lived on South Bend’s West Side for years, had purchased several abandoned homes in order to renovate them later, but says she lost them to Buttigieg’s policy after her husband got sick and they couldn’t make the repairs.

In the wake of Buttigieg’s campaign boom, Williams-Preston has been escorting national reporters around South Bend, pointing out the areas where his housing policy failed. “He was young and bright and had a lot of really good ideas,” she says, driving through neighborhoods with rundown houses next to overgrown lots. “But he didn’t have the lived experience, the ability to really connect with real people who have real issues and real problems that life hasn’t dealt the best hand.”

Other black leaders in South Bend say Buttigieg listened to the concerns of the community and adjusted when he was wrong. “I trust him,” says Stacey Odom, founder of a local organization that helps families on the West Side repair their homes. “I asked him for five different things, and he gave them all to me.” Buttigieg created an office of Engagement and Economic Empowerment to help address the wealth gap, and issued an executive order on diversity and inclusion in response to local demands, Williams-Preston said. When local leaders asked for $3.5 million to renovate the Charles Black community center, Buttigieg came up with $4.5 million, according to Cynthia Taylor, the center’s director. “You’re gonna have to invite him in, you’re gonna have to sit him down, you’re gonna have to show him the issue,” she says. “Because he definitely will listen.”

Williams-Preston, who’s now running to replace Buttigieg as mayor, says he sometimes seemed insufficiently angry about the inequities in South Bend. She’s looking for a President who has “a deep passion for justice, a deep drive for equality.” She voted for Sanders in 2016 and describes herself as a “Berniecrat.” But as she drives her minivan around the West Side, pointing out grassy areas where vacant houses once stood, she’s wearing a Pete button on her jacket.

Buttigieg may be a loyal son of South Bend, but he keeps angling for a job transfer out of town. In 2017 he ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee. After he lost, he asked his old friend Mike Schmuhl to move back to South Bend to help him run his political-action committee. He never actually told him he was planning to run for President. “It was unspoken,” Schmuhl says.

There are two main types of presidential candidates: those who run on policy and those who run on personality. Buttigieg says he’s a “policy guy,” but he’s definitely a personality guy. His campaign is more about who he is (young, gay, Midwestern, technocratic) and what he represents (social progress, generational change, an olive branch to “flyover country”) than what he’ll do if he’s President.

So far Buttigieg has embraced a few big ideas, such as abolishing the Electoral College and expanding the Supreme Court. (Both would require an improbable constitutional amendment.) But when it comes to the policy issues dominating the primary so far, he has staked out only general positions. On health care, he favors “Medicare for all who want it.” He supports an “intergenerational alliance” to fight climate change and calls the Green New Deal “the right beginning.” He said he wants to “do some math” around Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to make college free and forgive student debt. Warren, for her part, has 11 policy proposals on her website. Buttigieg has zero.

“Every good policy that I’ve developed in my administration happened not because I cooked it up on the campaign, kept the promise intact and then delivered it,” he says, “but because I stated a priority in one of my campaigns, interacted with my legislative body and my community, and developed something that really served people well.”

Does this mean that he thinks policy is less important than narrative? “Maybe I’m saying the narrative is policy,” he responds, in a typical attempt at reframing. “Narrative is how you get people to embrace the policies you’re putting forward.” His campaign plans to release more detailed policies this week.

“Running a campaign based on narrative has long been a privilege reserved for men. And Buttigieg’s maleness and whiteness has undoubtedly benefited him, even as women and people of color become increasingly central to the Democrats’ 2020 coalition. He knows this and acknowledges that “it’s hard for me to even be able to see some of the ways in which whiteness or maleness may have made my life go differently,” adding that it has likely affected the way he’s been covered by the national media.

At the same time, Buttigieg’s sexuality has imbued his campaign with a sense of historical promise. After the valedictorian at Brigham Young University, a conservative Mormon school, came out as gay in his commencement speech in April, he cited Buttigieg as his inspiration. (“I know that kid is going to make it easier for somebody else,” Buttigieg told BuzzFeed News.) Buttigieg’s campaign has also gotten a boost from a network of wealthy LGBT donors.

The millennial mayor’s call for generational change could also prove to be a powerful one. Even as young voters stay enamored with Sanders, older voters seem attracted to Buttigieg’s youth: according to an April 29 Morning Consult survey, his highest polling numbers come from baby boomers. “I like the idea of a millennial,” says Alice Mayer, 62, who voted for Sanders in 2016, as she waited for Buttigieg’s speech in South Bend. “He’s looking at the future, while Bernie’s been there, done that.”

Buttigieg has spent years thinking about how Democrats can reclaim the language of patriotism from Republicans. “The real challenge for the Democratic Party, and its presidential candidates in particular,” he wrote in a 2003 column in the Harvard Crimson, “is to figure out how to reverse the Right’s stranglehold on our political vocabulary.” Soon after, he wrote another column urging Democrats to reclaim words like compassion, strength and morality, arguing that “establishing a new vocabulary is not the point; we need to take the old vocabulary and make it make sense again.” More than any health care plan or climate-change policy, Buttigieg wants to change how Democrats talk. “The landscape can be moved,” he says. “But to move it, I don’t think you just run in and beat people over the head with your way of talking about your ideas the way you always have.”

When Buttigieg announced his exploratory committee in January, in a drab conference room at a Washington Hyatt, his staff was mostly just Schmuhl, his high school buddy turned campaign manager, and Lis Smith, a New York operative who helped Buttigieg run his long-shot campaign for DNC chair. Three months later, the staff has swelled to nearly 50 as Buttigieg bounces between rallies in Iowa and New Hampshire, fundraisers with bundlers and TV appearances everywhere.

Buttigieg has been ubiquitous by design. The campaign’s goal is to “break down the wall that exists between presidential candidates and the media, and therefore the public,” Smith says. The Buttigieg campaign has no digital department, according to Schmuhl, because it weaves digital media into everything it does. Instead, the campaign has an “experience team,” which focuses on everything from events to content. The campaign shared its logos and designs in catchy Instagrammable images, complete with a color palette so that fans can spread the Buttigieg brand on social media. It’s also rethinking the value of paid television advertisements, reasoning that most millennials watch TV through streaming services on their computers and phones.

Despite these new strategies, some of the old truths still hold. It remains almost impossible to win the Democratic nomination without significant support from black voters, and the Morning Consult poll found negligible black support for Buttigieg. The mayor is working on his outreach, eating lunch with the Rev. Al Sharpton at the famous Harlem soul-food joint Sylvia’s and scheduling a swing through South Carolina for early May. But winning voters of color may be difficult for a white guy running against two black Senators, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, as well as Joe Biden, who served as Barack Obama’s running mate and has long-standing relationships in black communities.

In a primary divided between candidates who want to fight Trump and candidates who talk about uniting the country, Buttigieg is in the latter camp. That puts him out of step with the party’s activist base, who clearly want a fighter. Warren, for example, used the word fight 25 times in her announcement speech; Buttigieg didn’t mention it once. His husband says he’s never heard him raise his voice in anger. “We’ve almost fetishized fighting,” Buttigieg explains, sitting in his living room between an antique British musket and an old Soviet spying device, both relics of old and painful wars. “There is a point where you become so absorbed in fighting that you begin to lose track of winning.”

In the end, Buttigieg’s biggest gamble is his bet that voters are sick of a divided America and hungry for reconciliation. He believes independents and moderate conservatives could get behind a happily married Christian veteran. And he may be right. “Pete has a way of rallying people and getting them to come along with him,” says Jake Teshka, former executive director of the St. Joseph County GOP and the only Republican on the South Bend city council. “That’s what makes him dangerous as a candidate for the rest of the Democratic field. I can’t sit here and tell you that if he makes it through and he’s on the ballot in 2020 that I would vote for Pete. But I also can’t tell you that I won’t.”

Voir encore:

Proposed Voting Changes Are about Power, not Principles

Victor Davis Hanson

Natnal Review

March 28, 2019

New rules and new voters reduce the relative voting clout of law-abiding adult citizens.Progressive candidates and new Democratic representatives have offered lots of radical new proposals lately about voting and voters. They include scrapping the 215-year-old Electoral College. Progressives also talk of extending the vote to 16- or 17-year-olds and ex-felons. They wish to further relax requirements for voter identification, same-day registration and voting, and undocumented immigrants voting in local elections.

The 2016 victory of Donald Trump shocked the left. It was entirely unexpected, given that experts had all but assured a Hillary Clinton landslide. Worse still for those on the left, Trump, like George W. Bush in 2000 and three earlier winning presidential candidates, lost the popular vote.

From 2017 on, Trump has sought to systematically dismantle the progressive agenda that had been established by his predecessor, Barack Obama — often in a controversial and unapologetic style.

The furor over the 2016 Clinton loss and thenew Trump agenda, the fear that Trump could be re-elected, and anger about the Electoral College have mobilized progressives to demand changes to the hallowed traditions of electing presidents.

The Electoral College was designed in part to ensure that candidates at least visited the small and often rural states of America. The generation of the Founding Fathers did not want elections to rest solely with larger urban populations. The Electoral College balances out the popular vote.

The founders were also terrified of radical democracies of the past, especially their frenzied tendencies to adopt mob-like tactics.

In response, the Electoral College was designed to discourage crowded fields of all sorts of fringe presidential candidates in which the eventual winner might win only a small plurality of the popular vote.

Voting requirements have also reflected disdain for radical democracy. Lawmakers have argued that young adults who are at least 18 years old have more experience, are more independent, and take on more responsibilities than do younger teenagers living at home. Therefore, they are likely to make more reasoned decisions. Some progressives want to lower the voting age.

Similarly, most states consider the judgment of felons who have committed serious crimes suspect compared with those who have followed the laws. These states have prohibited felons from voting by first requiring completion of their sentences or parole or probation, depending on the nature of their crimes. Many on the left support measures that would ease voting restrictions on ex-felons.

Progressives have deliberately confused residency with citizenship, as if a person living in America, paying some sales or income taxes, should have the same voting rights as those who are legal citizens.

All these proposed modifications are aimed at changing the nature of the electorate and the method of voting in order to change results. In reductionist terms, new rules and new voters reduce the relative voting clout of law-abiding adult citizens.

Leftists assume that Americans are not sympathetic to their new advocacies. In other words, the current 2019 potpourri of progressive issues might not warrant 51 percent sport among the existing voting public in the next election.

Most Americans are skeptical of reparations. They do not favor legalizing infanticide. They do not want open borders, sanctuary cities, or blanket amnesties. They are troubled by the idea of wealth taxes and top marginal tax rates of 70 percent or higher.

Many Americans certainly fear the Green New Deal. Many do not favor abolishing all student debt, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the Electoral College. Nor do many Americans believe in costly ideas such as Medicare for All and free college tuition. The masses do not unanimously want to stop pipeline construction or scale back America’s booming natural gas and oil production.

A cynic might suggest that had Hillary Clinton actually won the 2016 Electoral College vote but lost the popular vote to Trump, progressives would now be praising our long-established system of voting.

Had current undocumented immigrants proved as conservative as past waves of legal immigrants from Hungary and Cuba, progressives would now likely wish to close the southern border and perhaps even build a wall.

If same-day registration and voting meant that millions of new conservatives without voter IDs were suddenly showing their Trump support at the polls, progressives would insist on bringing back old laws that required voters to have previously registered and to show valid identification at voting precincts.

If felons or 16-year-old kids polled conservative, then certainly there would be no progressive push to let members of these groups vote.

Expanding and changing the present voter base and altering how we vote is mostly about power, not principles. Without these radical changes, a majority of American voters, in traditional and time-honored elections, will likely not vote for the unpopular progressive agenda.

Voir enfin:

Is Trump’s Unorthodoxy Becoming Orthodox?

Victor Davis Hanson

Townhall

Feb 04, 2020

When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous.Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump’s tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do.The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China’s growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government.Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China’s cutthroat violations of international norms were long ago overdue for an accounting.China’s re-education camps, its Orwellian internal surveillance, its crackdown on Hong Kong democracy activists and its secrecy about the deadly coronavirus outbreak have all convinced the world that China has now become a dangerous international outlier.Trump courted moderate Arab nations in forming an anti-Iranian coalition opposed to Iran’s terrorist and nuclear agendas. His policies utterly reversed the Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel and outreach to Tehran.Last week, Trump nonchalantly offered the Palestinians a take-it-or-leave-it independent state on the West Bank, but without believing that a West Bank settlement was the key to peace in the entire Middle East.Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal, in particular, was met with international outrage. More global anger followed after the targeted killing of Iranian terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani.In short, Trump’s Middle East recalibrations won few supporters among the bipartisan establishment.But recently, Europeans have privately started to agree that more sanctions are needed on Iran, that the world is better off with Soleimani gone, and that the West Bank is not central to regional peace.Iran has now become a pariah. U.S.-sponsored sanctions have reduced the theocracy to near-bankruptcy. Most nations understand that if Iran kills Americans or openly starts up its nuclear program, the U.S. will inflict disproportional damage on its infrastructure — a warning that at first baffled, then angered and now has humiliated Iran.In other words, there is now an entirely new Middle East orthodoxy that was unimaginable just three years ago.Suddenly the pro-Iranian, anti-Western Palestinians have few supporters. Israel and a number of prominent Arab nations are unspoken allies of convenience against Iran. And Iran itself is seemingly weaker than at any other time in the theocracy’s history.Stranger still, instead of demanding that the U.S. leave the region, many Middle Eastern nations privately seem eager for more of a now-reluctant U.S. presence.For the last 20 years, much of the American orthodoxy had agreed with Europe that the increasingly anti-democratic, pan-continental and borderless European Union was the remedy to all of Europe’s past 20th-century catastrophes.As a result, American presidents did not do much when EU nations typically racked up large trade surpluses with the U.S., often a result of asymmetrical fees, tariffs and fines.The U.S. largely ignored the increasingly anti-democratic and anti-American tone of the EU.Nor did Americans object much when lackadaisical European NATO nations habitually welched on their defense-spending commitments.Apparently, past U.S. administrations supposed that a paternalistic America would always be more eager to defend Europe than Europe would be to defend itself.But then Trump again blew up more old assumptions.NATO will now only survive if its members keep their word and meet their spending promises. An economically stagnant, oil-hungry and top-heavy EU will have to make radical changes, or it will sink into irrelevance and eventually break apart.Trump got little credit for these revolutionary changes because he is, after all, Trump — a wheeler-dealer, an ostentatious outsider, unpredictable in action and not shy about rude talk.But his paradoxical and successful policies — the product of conservative, antiwar and pro-worker agendas — are gradually winning supporters and uniting disparate groups.After all, the U.S. is beefing up its military but using it only sparingly. It hits back hard at enemies but does not hit first. For Trump, being conventional is dangerous; being unpredictable is far safer.For all Trump’s tough talk, his ace in the hole is American soft power — based on a globally dominant economy, its global lead in the production of gas and oil, and an omnipresent cultural juggernaut.For Trump the ex-television star, wars translate into bad ratings and worse optics. As a businessman, he believes needless conflicts get in the way of money-making and win-win deals.The result of the new orthodoxy is that the U.S. has become no better friend to an increasing number of allies and neutrals, and no worse an adversary to a shrinking group of enemies. And yet Trump’s paradox is that America’s successful new foreign policy is as praised privately as it is caricatured publicly — at least for now.

Voir par ailleurs:

LGBTQ community cheers pope’s ‘God made you like this’ remark

Pope Francis’ reported comments have been embraced as another sign of his desire to make gay people feel welcomed and loved in the Catholic Church.

NBC news/Associated Press

May 21, 2018

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ reported comments to a gay man that “God made you like this” have been embraced by the LGBTQ community as another sign of Francis’ desire to make gay people feel welcomed and loved in the Catholic Church.

Juan Carlos Cruz, the main whistleblower in Chile’s clerical sex abuse and cover-up scandal, said Monday he spoke to Francis about his homosexuality during their recent meetings at the Vatican. The pope invited Cruz and other victims of a Chilean predator priest to discuss their cases last month.

Cruz said he told Francis how Chile’s bishops used his sexual orientation as a weapon to try to discredit him, and of the pain the personal attacks had caused him.

“He said, ‘Look Juan Carlos, the pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you,’” Cruz told The Associated Press.

The Vatican declined to confirm or deny the remarks in keeping with its policy not to comment on the pope’s private conversations. The comments first were reported by Spain’s El Pais newspaper.

Official church teaching calls for gay men and lesbians to be respected and loved, but considers homosexual activity “intrinsically disordered.” Francis, though, has sought to make the church more welcoming to gays, most famously with his 2013 comment “Who am I to judge?”

He also has spoken of his own ministry to gay and transgender people, insisting they are children of God, loved by God and deserving of accompaniment by the church.

As a result, some sought to downplay the significance of the comments as merely being in line with Francis’ pastoral-minded attitude.

In addition, there was a time not so long ago when the Catholic Church officially taught that sexual orientation was not something people choose, the implication being it was how God made them.

The first edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the dense summary of Catholic teaching published by St. John Paul II in 1992, said gay individuals “do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial.”

The updated edition, which is the only edition available online and on the Vatican website, was revised to remove the reference to homosexuality not being a choice. The revised edition says: “This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for equality for LGBTQ Catholics, said the pope’s comments were “tremendous” and would do a lot of good.

“It would do a lot better if he would make these statements publicly, because LGBT people need to hear that message from religious leaders, from Catholic leaders,” he said.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit whose book “Building a Bridge” called for the church to find new pastoral ways of ministering to gays, noted that the pope’s comments were in a private conversation, not a public pronouncement or document. But citing the original version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Martin said they were nevertheless significant.

“The pope is saying what every reputable biologist and psychologist will tell you, which is that people do not choose their sexual orientation,” Martin said in a telephone interview.

A great failing of the church, he said, is that many Catholics have been reluctant to say so, which then “makes people feel guilty about something they have no control over.”

Martin’s book is being published this week in Italian, with a preface by the Francis-appointed bishop of Bologna, Monsignor Matteo Zuppi, a sign that the message of acceptance is being embraced even in traditionally conservative Italy.

Voir aussi:

We’re in for a rough ride

James Alison

4 August 2018

This document is a compilation of two articles which were published in The Tablet on 4 and 11 August 2018 respectively, under the titles “Homosexuality among the clergy: caught in a trap of dishonesty” and “The lying trap: why gay priests can be truthful about their sexuality”. Here they appear under the titles I gave them originally.

Would it shock you to know that the leading force behind the term “gender ideology” and the campaign against it, was a gay cardinal? Or that a gay priest wrote the official 2005 explanation as to why gay men could not be priests? I learned of the (now dead) Latin American Cardinal’s reputation for violence towards the rentboys he frequented from a social worker in his home town, and later discovered that this and other outrages were open secrets in both his homeland and Rome. Paris-based Mgr Tony Anatrella was a Vatican expert on homosexuality, one of very few authors the CDF recommended on the subject, alongside Drs Joseph Nicolosi, Gerard van den Aardweg and Aquilino Polaino, gay-cure proponents all. Anatrella had long been reported to have engaged in inappropriate touching with seminarians and others who came to him for help in dealing with their so-called “same-sex attraction”. As recently as this last June, and after many years of shameful ecclesiastical obfuscation in France and Italy, those reports have been found to be credible, and Anatrella has been suspended from public ministry. If it does shock you that such public paragons of homophobia-dressed-as-Christianity might have been “protesting too much”, then prepare yourself for a rough ride over the next few years.

I start with the Latin American and Anatrella, both from outside the English-speaking world, because the accounts of (now former) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s wrongdoings, added to those of the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien, might have fooled you into thinking that this is an Anglosphere thing. It isn’t. Similar tales abound across the four language groups with which I am directly familiar. And now that the dominos are starting to fall, both the name and the deeds of the Latin American will surely come into the record soon. The McCarrick shock was not what he got up to with seminarians and other adults. These were widely known about. It was that in addition to a standardly furtive, albeit egregiously creepy, clerical gay life, this generally kind and well-liked man had also abused at least two minors. Such does not seem to have been the case with O’Brien, Anatrella or the Latin American. And in general, despite what those who try to conflate “gay” with “paedophile” would have you believe, a knowing clerical gay milieu is genuinely shocked and baffled when minors are involved.

In all these cases, in as far as the behaviour was adult-related, plenty of people in authority sort-of-knew what was going on, and had known throughout the clerics’ respective careers. However the informal rule among the Catholic Clergy – the last remaining outpost of enforced homosociality in the Western world – is strictly “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Typically, blind eyes are turned to the active sex lives of those clerics who have them, only two things being beyond the pale: whistle-blowing on the sex lives of others, or public suggestions that the Church’s teaching in this area is wrong. These lead to marginalisation, whether formal or informal.

Given all this, it seems to me entirely reasonable that people should now be asking “How deep does this go?” If such careers were the result of blind eyes being turned, legal settlements made, and these clerics themselves were in positions of influence and authority, how much more are we going to learn about those who promoted and protected them? Or about those whom they promoted?

So it is that voices like Rod Dreher – keenly followed blogger at The American Conservative – are resuscitating talk of the “Lavender Mafia”, and the demand, which became popular in conservative circles from 2002 onwards, that the priesthood be purged of gay men. Investigative journalists are being encouraged to lay bare the informal gay networks of friendship, patronage, and potential for blackmail which structure clerical life (or are being excoriated for their politically correct cowardice in failing to do so). The aim is to weed out the gays, especially the treasonous bishops who have perpetuated the system. Ross Douthat – the New York Times columnist – has called for a papally mandated investigation into the American Church (I guess along the lines of Mgr Charles Scicluna’s in Chile) in order to restore its moral authority. Others, like Robert Mickens, The Tablet’s Rome correspondent for many years, are equally aware of the “elephant in the sacristy” which is the massively disproportionate number of gay men in the clergy, but highlight the refusal of the Roman authorities to engage in any kind of publicly accountable, adult discussion about this fact. Their refusal reinforces collective dishonesty and perpetuates the psychosexual immaturity of all gay clergy, whether celibate, partnered or practitioners of so-called “serial celibacy”.

How to approach this issue in a healthy way? As a gay priest myself I am obviously more in agreement with Mickens than with Dreher or Douthat. However I would like to record my complete sympathy with the passion of the latter two as well as with their rage at a collective clerical dishonesty which renders farcical the claim to be teachers of anything at all, let alone divine truth. Jesus becomes credible through witnesses, not corrupt party-line pontificators.

Having said that, I suspect that particular interventions, whether by civil authority or Papal mandate, are always going to run aground on the fact that they can only deal with, and bring to light specific bad acts, usually ones that rise to the level of criminality. I cannot imagine a one-off legal intervention in this sphere that would be able to make appropriate distinctions where there are so many fine lines: between innocent friendship, sexually charged admiration, abusive sexual suggestion, emotional blackmail, financial blackmail, recognition of genuine talent, genuine love lived platonically, genuine love lived with sexual intimacy, sexual favours granted with genuine freedom, sexual favours granted out of fear or in exchange for promotion, covering peccadillos for a friend, covering graver matters for a rival in exchange for some benefit, not wanting to know too much about other people’s lives, or obsessively wanting to know too much about them. Let alone the usual rancours of break-ups, career disappointments, petty jealousies, bitterness, revenge and so on. All of these tend to shade into or out of each other over time, making effective outside assessment, even if it were desirable, impossible.

I don’t think there is a healthy way to address this without slowly opening up understanding of some of the dimensions of the systemic structural trap that is the clerical closet. This I will do before setting out what I hope is a merciful picture of how this trap has arisen, and how it can be, and indeed is beginning to be undone: I write with a view to diminishing our scandal and helping all of us adjust to a new ecclesial reality. However, let me here describe some elements of the structure which are going to become more and more visible as time goes by. These will not offer a pretty picture. Our Lord told us that what was whispered in private would be shouted from the rooftops. And so it is: what seemed randomly anecdotal is becoming sociologically evident.

For shorthand I use the word “gay” here to refer to an adult male’s stable same-sex orientation, irrespective of how that is accepted or lived out. Also please notice that, for the purpose of these two articles, the issue of a gay cleric’s relationship status – single, partnered, widower, serially available – while important for each one personally, is functionally irrelevant for understanding the systemic nature of the clerical closet. A stably partnered and emotionally balanced priest can no more be publicly honest than a deeply tortured one with many partners. And it is very rare that a genuinely celibate gay cleric is allowed to bear witness to their gift in the first person. Not least because if they are genuine livers-out of celibacy as a gift, they are likely to have discovered that it is as a self-accepting gay man that they are so. And this public self-acceptance puts them further into opposition with official teaching than any sexual indiscretion, which can of course be forgiven.

An anecdotal illustration: a few years ago, I found myself leading a retreat for Italian gay priests in Rome. Of the nearly fifty participants some were single, some partnered, for others it was the first time they had ever been able to talk honestly with other priests outside the confessional. Among them there were seven or eight mid-level Vatican officials. I asked one from the Congregation for the Clergy what he made of those attending with their partners. He smiled and said, “Of course, we know that the partnered ones are the healthy ones.” Let that sink in. In the clerical closet, dishonesty is functional, honesty is dysfunctional, and the absence or presence of circumspect sexual practice between adult males is irrelevant.

And so to some systemic dimensions of “The elephant in the sacristy”. The first is its size. A far, far greater proportion of the clergy, particularly the senior clergy, is gay than anyone has been allowed to understand, even the bishops and cardinals themselves. Harvard Professor Mark Jordan’s phrase “a honeycomb of closets”, in which each enclosed participant has very little access to the overall picture, is exactly right. But the proportion is going to become more and more self-evident thanks to social media and the generalized expectations of gay honesty and visibility in the civil sphere. This despite many years of bishops resisting accurate sociological clergy surveys. At the time of the last papal election in 2013 we did have hints that the Vatican and the cardinal electors were shocked at discovering from reports commissioned by Benedict how many of them were gay. Part of their shock has to have been their fear at how the faithful would be scandalized if they had any idea. They were right to be afraid, and the faithful are going to have an idea as the implosion of the closet accelerates. How scandalized – or how accepting – the faithful will be is going to depend on how well we learn to talk about all this.

A second dimension is grasped when you understand the general rule that the heterosexuality of a cleric is inversely proportional to the stridency of his homophobia. This is one of the reasons why I am sceptical of all attempts to “weed out the gays”. The principal clerical crusaders in this area turn out to be gay themselves – in some cases, so deeply in denial that they don’t know it. And in some cases knowingly so. My own experience, which has since been confirmed by hundreds of echoes worldwide, is that there are proportionately few straight men in the clergy (leaving aside rural dioceses in some countries, where heterosexual concubinage is the customary norm) and they do not, as a rule, persecute gay men. It is closeted men who are the worst persecutors. Some are very sadly disturbed souls who cannot but try to clean outwardly what they cannot admit to being inwardly. These can’t be helped since Church teaching reinforces their hell. For others the lure of upward mobility leads them to strategic displays of enthusiasm for the enforcement of the house rules.

A third dimension is that banning gay men from the seminary never works. In practise, the ban means that those “tempted” by honesty will be weeded out, or will weed themselves out, uncomfortable with the inducements to a double life. Those unconcerned by honesty, and happy to swim in the wake of the double lives of those doing the weeding, will learn how to look the part. The only seminaries that might avoid this are those that differentiate on the basis not of sexual orientation, but of honesty, which is a primary requisite for any form of psycho-sexual maturity. And there are some that do, presumably with the permission of wise Bishops, but in quiet contravention of the official line. These of course are instantly vulnerable to accusations of being liberal, of promoting homosexuality or whatever, when in practical terms, the reverse is true. For honesty is effectively forbidden by a Church teaching, which tells you that you are an intrinsically heterosexual person who is inexplicably suffering from a grave objective disorder called “same-sex attraction”. And so we get seminaries in which there are no gay seminarians, but whose rectors nevertheless push programmes like those of “Courage” on their oh-so-non-gay-but-transitorily-same-sex-attracted charges.

A fourth dimension: no attempt to view this issue through culture war lenses will be helpful. The clerical closet is not the result of some 1960s liberal conspiracy. It is a systemic structure in which, absent scandal, all of its survivors are functional. In the previous round of the blame-the-gays game, from 2002 on, much was made of the supposed culpability of liberal Vatican II bishops such as Rembert Weakland. The idea was that the new breed of John Paul II hardliners would sort it out. Men like John Nienstedt and John Myers. Oh wait …. really? Then again, does anyone seriously think the four cardinals of the “dubia” to be proportionately more heterosexual than the rest of the hierarchy? This is not a matter of left or right, traditional or progressive, good or bad, chaste or practising; nor even a matter of twenty five years of Karol Wojtyla’s notoriously poor judgment of character, though all these feed into it. It is a systemic structural trap, and if we are to get out of it, it must be described in such a way as to recognise that unknowing innocence as much as knowing guilt, well-meaning error as well as malice, has been, and is, involved in both its constitution and its maintenance. To that task I will now turn.

Mercy and the Lying Game

In case it is not obvious, I write neither as a journalist, a sociologist, nor an historian: from the outside of what I describe. I am a priest who aspires to be a theologian, one who is entirely complicit with the realities involved. I realised, over twenty years ago, that the only thing stronger than the systemic trap in which I found myself, as it tried to spit me out, was forgiveness. Every accusatory approach, every desire for vengeance, every culturally or politically convenient way of point-scoring, merely helps tighten the self-defensive knots of the system. Hence the title of my first book to deal with this issue: Faith beyond Resentment. I have tried since then to incarnate and to preach forgiveness long before its need has been recognised, aware that no apparently sacred earthly structure (“principality” or “power” in St Paul’s language) can withstand the recognition that it is based on a lie. It is forgiveness which opens up the truth of things by revealing contingency and mutability, things that can be let go, where only sacral fixity and necessity seem to reign.

I offer, then, a (maybe dangerously) abbreviated reading-from-mercy of some elements of how we got here. Think back to the late nineteenth century. You have the beginnings of the strong impulse to female equality which would soon change voting laws throughout the western world. You have the beginnings of psychology, and with it the talkability of things that had previously not been mentionable, as well as a growing recognition of the objectivity of elements of human “subjectivity”. You also had the coining of the term “homosexual”, shifting the definition of the person involved from the criminal to some sort of quasi clinical way-of-being. And you had, in different languages, a growing literary fiction exploring in ever less coded ways the lives and desires of people we would now describe as gay or lesbian. If you were born in the 1890’s, laws against homosexuality, blackmail, violence and mysterious suicides would have been in the formative ether of your growing-up. It was still a world in which most professions would have been male-only for some decades to come, and an informal “don’t ask don’t tell” about many indiscretions would have been standard.

Fast forward to someone born in Europe or North America in the 1990’s. A different universe. Female equality dramatically closer, psycho-sexual realities being discussed openly with a growing expectation of honesty, being gay no longer either criminal or clinical, same-sex marriage on the horizon, and a plethora of literature, films, role models and so on enjoyed as much by straight as by gay people. Many problems still in many places, but how far from the world where the British Government could ensure the execution of Roger Casement by leaking the diaries where he named his lovers, thus shocking a great man’s highly-placed supporters into shamed silence?

And what of clerical life over the same century? While the young men born in the 1890’s might not, despite a growing literature, have had words or names for themselves, one thing was clear: in a brutal world, a mono-sexual clerical caste where no one questioned your unmarried status was the safest place to be. Not only because you would be physically and legally safer in a genuinely “don’t ask, don’t tell” world. But also, and this is the part often forgotten, because if you wanted to be good, you may well have been horrified at the squalor, moral and otherwise, which seemed to be what your boyish love would turn into over time, with no models better than young comrades, dead in war. In a clergy in which the only teaching at the time was about acts, it was not only a safe space, but one in which, by avoiding those acts, you could aspire to goodness.

However as the century evolved, the world moved on at every level. With far fewer single-sex professions and associations, the traditional “don’t ask don’t tell” of same-sex sociability was falling apart, women quickly picking up things about men that straight men don’t perceive. Following the mass mobilisations of the first half of the century, many more young people became aware of others like themselves. Emboldened to talk publicly about their lives and feelings in the first person, they began to live relatively openly, with ever less police attention or employment discrimination. De-criminalisation advanced all over the western world. Primitive attempts to “cure homosexuals” yielded to the scientific realisation that there is a relatively stable life-long orientation underlying “being this way”, and no pathology intrinsic to it. The science was firm by the 1950s, and has only been growing clearer since. Moreover, life-long models of decent living: coupled, single, with children were becoming available. In short, for gay and lesbian people at least, the social ether was unimaginably healthier.

Meanwhile, the clerical safe space with its (comparatively) soft, informal “hypocrisy” was, by comparison, becoming an ever more unsafe space as safety grew around it. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is not particularly cruel when it is just the way things are for the whole of society. But when “don’t ask, don’t tell” shifts into becoming an ever more explicit imposition on a small group in the midst of a growing ease with “asking” and “telling” around them, you are heading for an artificially constructed trap. Not least because those on the outside can see ever more clearly what those on the inside have to pretend isn’t there. Think of the politically inspired imposition of an already socially moribund “don’t ask don’t tell” on our militaries in the 1990’s. The result was an increase in persecution, dismissals, fearfulness, vindictiveness, loss of talent, and power to the zealots.

However the biggest threat to the old safe space in which “acts” were evil, and “being” was not defined, came as science caught up with the evidence of people’s lives: evidence that a same-sex orientation is a more or less stable, regularly occurring, non-pathological minority variant in the human condition. What must it have been like for a gay cleric of the generation of Paul VI? You have lived through the social and psychological changes of the century, and you rejoice, as Vatican II did, at all that was positive in the post-war years. And yet at the same time the previous world’s “underside” (identification with which you might have been at some level fleeing for decades, and for good moral reasons), was about to creep not only into the open, in the carnavalesque sense of Stonewall and subsequent Pride movements, but into the soul as something that you just are.

It is no surprise that the first ever public use by the Roman Congregations of the word “homosexual” is in some short paragraphs (Persona Humana 1975) whose main thrust is to insist that no understanding of “being” should ever be allowed to justify “acts”. Although the link was not fully explained in 1975, the underlying reason is clear: the maintenance of the evil of the “acts” depends upon the status of “being that way” as somehow negative or anomalous. For if the “being” were a non-pathological minority variant, then of course, the “acts” might in some circumstances be an appropriately human expression. By 1986 the rationale needed to be made more explicit, and so the “homosexual tendency” had to be described as “objectively disordered” in order to maintain the “intrinsically evil” nature of the acts (Homosexualitatis Problema 1986). And with that description, an aprioristic deduction was made to trump any human scientific learning, and the once safe space became a definitional trap for any who had entered into it, and for all those entering into it henceforth.

Let me explain: Think of those coming into the seminary world between, say, 1960 and 1990. They will have been undergoing a shift in understanding from a world in which “acts” were bad, and “being” meant “not like them”, to a world in which “being” meant “actually quite like them, and so what?” and “acts” being fairly banal. Given that some realise they are gay when pre-pubertal, and others not until middle-age, you can imagine that a significant number of young men, unsure of themselves, and formed, at least in part, by traditional attitudes placing them at risk of hell, join the seminary half-believing in their disordered being. Eventually they find others like themselves, and it may only be years after ordination that, through love or learning, they discover that there is nothing wrong with their “being”.

If the discovery (that what their employer teaches them about themselves is wrong) be made early enough and they are bothered by it, they may leave. If the discovery occurs during their own personal and professional growing up as priests, they may realise that their commitments (i.e. to the discipline of celibacy or vows) are not valid. For such commitments were assumed while those making them were under the influence of a false teaching concerning themselves, a teaching imposed on them as if from God by their employer. So, loving the priesthood, they continue their work (some are too old to be able to leave without penury) and may entertain discreet relationships in good conscience.

Thus you have the bizarre situation in which a teaching which, in context, originally helped genuinely pious gay men of yesteryear who wanted to live chastely (and I imagine that at least a couple of recent Holy Fathers were of this sort) has become converted by “facts on the ground” (and the theological attempt to resist them) into a trap. Those gay clerics who become relatively healthy through their experience with others like themselves in their ecclesial belonging (and that’s not a few in every generation moving forward) learn discretely to ignore both a teaching based on a falsehood about who they are, and the formal commitments made while under the illusion of that false teaching, and it becomes functional for everyone to turn a blind eye. The same teaching is functional for those who are extremely unhealthy (it reinforces their refusal to accept who they are) and for opportunistic careerists, enabling these two latter types to become the most vociferous allies of the genuinely pious, but frightened, senior celibates in the maintenance of the appearance of the old world. Doesn’t that look like much of the senior clergy from, say, 1965 to 2013?

Tangentially, I hope it also hints at why such a mutually deceptive gay-heavy world has been so useless at dealing with child abuse. “Don’t ask don’t tell” can function as a way of genuine mercy among gay men who don’t want to cast stones in a glass house where the assumption is of relationships which may be illicit according to house rules, but are neither illegal nor pathological. But it can also be used (and certainly has been) as a cover for blackmail by those who have genuinely illegal and pathological behaviour to hide. The combination of these two has led to an inability to distinguish, in practice, between “naughty” gay men and “criminal” pedophiles. The instinct not to want to know, especially if senior people are involved, is very strong, as the Chilean debacle has demonstrated.

What is to be done, and what is quietly happening? In my view the first thing is for the laity to be encouraged in their fast growing majority acceptance of being gay as a normal part of life. This, despite fierce resistence from elements of the clerical closet. Pope Francis’ reported conversation with Juan Carlos Cruz (a gay man abused in his youth by the Chilean priest, Fr Karadima) is a gem in this area: “Look Juan Carlos, the pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you”. This remark led to much spluttering and explaining away from those who realise that the moment you say “God made you like this” then the game is up as regards the “intrinsic evil” of the acts.

Nevertheless, it is only when straightforward, and obviously true, Christian messaging like Francis’ becomes normal among the laity themselves that honesty can become the norm among the clergy. Otherwise we will continue with the absurd and pharisaical current situation in which there is one rule for the clergy (“doesn’t matter what you do so long as you don’t say so in public or challenge the teaching”) and another for the laity, passed off as “the teaching of the Church”, and brutally enforced, for instance, among employees of Catholic schools, parish organists, softball coaches and the like.

Only when it is clear (as it is increasingly) that the laity are quite confident in the (obviously true) view that “if you are this way, then learning to love appropriately is going to flow from, not despite, this” will it be possible to change, without scandal, the formal rules regarding the clergy. I bring this out since much was made of Francis’ reported answer to the Italian Bishops when asked if they should admit gay men to the seminary: “if you are in any doubt, no”. This was read as Francis being against gay men.

I read the remark differently: that of a wise and merciful man addressing a group of men, a significant proportion of whom are gay, and telling them, in effect, that only those among them who are capable of honesty in dealing with their future charges should induct people like themselves into the clergy. “Are you yourself going to vacillate in standing up publicly for the honesty of the young man? If so, don’t make his future dependent on your cowardice”.

It looks to me as though the Lord’s mercy, already reaching lay people as relief and as joy, is beginning to pierce the clerical closet in the shape of a firm, but gently upheld, demand for penitential first-person truthfulness as we are painfully let go from the systemic trap. The alternative, as Francis surely knows, is to continue with liars inducting liars into a game, the closet forming and enforcing the closet. And all of us finding that the Lord’s vineyard is very properly being taken away from us, its terrified tenants, and put into the hands of others, determined neither by sexual orientation, marital status or gender, who will produce its fruit.

James Alison
Madrid, July/August 2018

Voir encore:

James Alison. Prêtre, gay et inspiré par René Girard

Philosophie magazine

27/11/2019

n°135

Déc. 2019 – Jan. 2020

La façade jaune pâle est décrépite. Au-dessus d’un rideau métallique tagué, on peut lire : « Comunidad cristiana LGTB ». C’est ici, dans une ruelle du quartier de la Justicia, au centre de Madrid, que James Alison célèbre la messe pour les croyants LGBT depuis plus de quatre ans. « Je suis un prêtre clandestin », sourit-il. Une vie à parcourir le monde pour prêcher auprès des minorités sexuelles comme on traverse un désert. À Mexico, où il est entré dans l’ordre des dominicains en 1981, il a officié plus récemment dans des paroisses jésuites. À São Paulo, où il a vécu, il accueillait les fidèles dans son appartement. À Paris, où il est invité de temps en temps, il se rend dans l’atelier d’une famille amie pour délivrer la bonne parole.

Homosexuel – il tombe amoureux d’un garçon dès l’âge de 9 ans –, James Alison est issu d’un milieu anglican évangélique traditionaliste, « la ligne la plus dure ». Son père était un député conservateur, l’un des représentants de la droite religieuse britannique auprès de Margaret Thatcher. « À 18 ans, j’ai fait mon coming-out. Cela ne s’est pas bien passé. Au point que j’en suis venu à cette alternative : le suicide ou l’exil. » À 21 ans, il choisit l’exil. Il se convertit au catholicisme puis fuit son pays pour atterrir au Mexique. C’est là qu’il commence son parcours vers l’ordination.

S’engage alors une vie de luttes. « J’ai été accusé d’être un activiste homosexuel infiltré dans l’Église. Tout récemment, un archevêque a même voulu me défroquer. » C’est le pape en personne qui l’appelle pour le « confirmer » dans son sacerdoce. Face à l’intolérance de certains porte-parole religieux, James Alison organise des séminaires et des retraites pour permettre aux personnes LGBT de vivre leur foi. Plus encore, il engage un combat intellectuel de réinterprétation des textes bibliques dans le but d’édifier une doctrine catholique plus tolérante et inclusive. « Le point de départ a été la découverte de l’œuvre de René Girard, insiste-t-il. Avec sa lecture rigoureusement anthropologique du texte biblique, il a montré que l’on n’est face ni à une mythologie ni même à une théologie humaine mais, au contraire, à une anthropologie divine. »

James Alison renverse la table. « René Girard m’a aidé à prendre conscience que ce n’est pas Dieu qui est violent mais l’homme. Par exemple, le Christ n’est pas sacrifié par les hommes pour payer le prix exigé par un dieu sanguinaire. Que signifie alors la mort de Jésus ? Que les hommes sont violents. Et, ne se rebellant pas, Jésus s’est donné au milieu d’un de nos typiques épisodes de lynchage comme incarnant le pardon en tant que valeur divine. » Dieu n’exige rien. Il n’y a que des humains qui tentent d’assurer leur survie au prix du sacrifice de l’autre. Se dévoilent ainsi, à travers la pensée sacrificielle, les mécanismes victimaires dont le père Alison se délivre avant d’en libérer aussi ses fidèles. « La haine des autres est réelle mais je n’ai pas à me laisser définir par elle. Je cherche toujours à enseigner comment vivre au-delà du ressentiment. Devenir soi et pardonner, voici quelque chose au cœur de la foi chrétienne. »

Pardonner aussi parce que la haine – et donc la désignation de victimes – révèle toujours une peur, une faiblesse, une souffrance. « Si le rejet de l’homosexualité au sein de l’Église est si fort, c’est aussi parce qu’il y a tellement de gays mal à l’aise au sein du clergé », affirme-t-il, citant la récente enquête de Frédéric Martel, Sodoma (Robert Laffont, 2019), qui révèle l’ampleur de la communauté homosexuelle au sommet de l’Église catholique romaine. Plus globalement pour James Alison, face au retour du conservatisme social en Europe, à la Manif Pour Tous en France et aux résistances quant à l’ouverture de la procréation médicalement assistée aux couples de même sexe, les théologiens ouverts aux communautés LGBT doivent témoigner à la première personne. « Cette parole est trop rare et pourtant indispensable pour que les positions dogmatiques sur la famille ou sur l’homosexualité évoluent au sein de l’Église et de la société. »

Carte d’identité

Date de naissance : 4 octobre 1959, à Londres.

Profession : prêtre et théologien catholique.

Particularité : élevé dans la tradition anglicane, il a passé la plus grande partie de son existence en tant que prêtre catholique en Amérique latine.

Actualité : participe à la première édition du festival lyonnais de philosophie La philo éclaire la ville, du 23 au 26 janvier (en partenariat avec Philosophie magazine). Le thème du festival sera « Et si c’était la fin des temps ? ». James Alison y donnera une conférence, « Des notes pour une lecture girardienne du livre de l’Apocalypse », le samedi 25 janvier, à 18h30, au Collège supérieur (17, rue Mazagran, Lyon VII^e).

Voir par ailleurs:

« Quand tu m’auras mangé, je vivrai en toi » : enquête au pays des cannibales

Le cannibalisme, ultime tabou ? Pas pour tout le monde. Des milliers de personnes rêvent secrètement d’en dévorer une autre ou de passer à la casserole. Pour NEON, ils passent à table.

Mathias Chaillot

Néon

29 août 2018

Inna*, la petite trentaine et des cheveux blond vénitien, est ukrainienne et termine sa formation d’hôtesse de l’air. Elle aime le risotto et manger des jeunes hommes avec ses amis. Elle maîtrise déjà le risotto mais, pour la dernière partie, elle le reconnaît : c’est encore un projet. « J’ai parlé avec une femme qui m’a raconté avoir enlevé, découpé et mangé un homme avec plusieurs autres personnes. La partie chasse m’excite un peu », me confie-t-elle. La souriante Inna pourrait être votre voisine. Ils pourraient tous être vos voisins : Filgueras, qui cherche quelqu’un avec « une expérience médicale », pour être sûr d’être vivant quand on lui retirera les organes ; Thierry, qui aimerait se faire boulotter le nombril ; ou Mr and Mrs Apple, ces Californiens qui veulent être cuisinés ensemble. Même Poussière d’étoile pourrait être votre voisine, elle qui, à 18 ans, rêve de déguster un congénère. « Malheureusement, je suis trop frêle, et je ne saurais pas comment préparer la viande, modère la jeune Anglaise. Je ne pourrais jamais passer à l’acte ». Du moins, c’est ce qu’elle affirme.

On se fait engloutir d’un coup, gloups, comme le Petit Chaperon rouge, fantasme du retour au ventre de la mère, avant de ressortir indemne.

C’est bien le problème, sur internet : les gens racontent beaucoup de choses. Des choses pour se faire peur, ou pour se faire jouir, et parfois les deux se confondent. Il suffit de fouiller un peu sur le web pour s’en rendre compte. Commençons par le vore, une « paraphilie » (ce qu’on appelait autrefois « perversion », une pratique ou attirance considérée comme « anormale ») qui consiste à avaler ou être avalé par un animal ou un individu, sans effusion de sang ni violence. On se fait engloutir d’un coup, gloups, comme le Petit Chaperon rouge, fantasme du retour au ventre de la mère, avant de ressortir indemne. La plupart des sites pornos en proposent quelques vidéos, souvent une mauvaise 3D, le reste se passe dans la tête. Variantes : les giant vore, où des hommes minuscules se font ingurgiter par d’immenses maîtresses plantureuses ; ou le cock vore, lorsque la proie se fait avaler par un urètre géant, souvent à grands traits de style manga et avec des personnages indéterminés, quelque part entre l’humain et l’animal. Loin de ces supports masturbatoires, d’autres préfèrent une version plus réaliste : des vidéos façon snuff movies, où des membres plus vrais que nature grillent sur des barbecues. Devant lesquelles on se demande si c’est pour de faux, ou pas.

Ils ont un rapport sexuel, puis décident ensemble de couper le pénis de Bernd, de le faire flamber, de le goûter. Puis ils le font sauter à la poêle avant de le terminer.

Dans les Google Groupes, des topics spécialisés recensent les annonces de milliers de personnes « sérieuses » qui veulent manger, ou se faire manger, au milieu de dessins et montages grossiers de femmes avec une pomme dans la bouche et d’hommes avec une broche dans le derrière. Mais pour remonter à la source de l’imaginaire cannibale, il faut se rendre sur le forum DolcettGirls : fondé par un dessinateur canadien sous le pseudo de Perro Loco, il rassemble une communauté qui s’échange bons plans pornos, nouvelles érotiques, comics mordants et recettes. C’est à Perro Loco, aussi, qu’on doit le Cannibal Cafe Forum, institution fermée après un « terrible fait divers » : c’est là que l’informaticien allemand Armin Meiwes (aka le cannibale de Rotenbourg) a posté ses annonces pour trouver sa victime. En 2001, il reçoit la réponse de Bernd Jürgen Brandes, un Berlinois de 43 ans à la recherche de « l’excitation ultime ». Armin, qui rêve de « quelqu’un qui serait pour toujours avec lui », le reçoit. Ils ont un rapport sexuel, puis décident ensemble de couper le pénis de Bernd, de le faire flamber, de le goûter. Puis ils le font sauter à la poêle avant de le terminer. Armin tue ensuite Bernd de plusieurs coups de couteau, en découpe 30 kg et met « les meilleurs morceaux » au congélateur. « Ce qui a le plus choqué n’est pas le fait que Meiwes ait mangé une partie de Brandes, mais que Brandes ait consenti à être mangé », note le psychologue Mark Grifths, de la Nottingham Trent University : « On connaît peu la prévalence de ce type de comportements, bien que Meiwes affirme qu’au moins 800 personnes partageaient sa passion. » Alors Perro Loco a fermé le Cannibal Cafe et ouvert DolcettGirls, spécialisé dans les trips trash. Depuis cette affaire, il affirme que son site n’est qu’une plate-forme d’échanges de fantasmes, pas de rencontres meurtrières. Condamné à perpétuité, Armin est aujourd’hui en prison. Et végétarien.

« Cette broche a l’air bien, j’aimerais être sur la table, mais je préférerais un plus grand four. Là, on risque de brûler certaines zones, à cause de la résistance. » On parle sérieusement sur les forums cannibales. La plupart des visuels sont pourtant cartoonesques, souvent dessinés, parfois mal photoshopés, comme pour se distancier de l’horreur du sujet. On y décrit des fermes humaines où les hommes sont des cochons et les femmes de méchantes paysannes voraces. On compare les bienfaits de la grillade à ceux du court-bouillon. On réfléchit à l’accompagnement.

Il ne se considère que comme « de la viande », et de toute façon il ne « mourra pas » puisqu’il « vivra dans la personne qui le mangera ».

« As-tu déjà découpé une vache ? », me demande Beef Lover pour évaluer mes compétences. Il n’est pas difficile : « Tu n’as qu’à me couper la gorge et me manger morceau par morceau. Tu plonges la tête et les os dans l’acide, personne n’en saura rien. » Il dit chercher depuis des années, mais difficile de trouver un cannibale à Ankara. Il ne se considère que comme « de la viande », et de toute façon il ne « mourra pas » puisqu’il « vivra dans la personne qui le mangera ». Alors, la façon dont on le cuisine, peu importe. MisterMeat, beau gosse américain posant sur sa photo de profil avec un adorable chien à bouclettes, a un plan bien réglé : il veut se faire manger le sexe. Il m’envoie les photos de ce qu’il imagine. Sur la première, il a découpé un trou dans une assiette en carton pour y glisser son pénis. Sur une autre, il l’a posé dans un pain à hot dog. « Juste pour montrer » ce qui l’exciterait.

Comme l’explique Bill Schutt dans son livre Cannibalism, a Perfectly Natural History, la nature abonde de cas de cannibalisme. Les araignées Amaurobius ferox pondent dans l’unique but de nourrir leur portée. Quand les bébés deviennent trop gros et que les œufs viennent à manquer, maman se laisse dévorer, dernière étape avant que sa progéniture, une fois adulte, puisse reproduire le schéma. En se faisant cannibaliser, les mantes religieuses produisent plus de sperme. Et on ne vous parle pas des requins : les fœtus s’entredévorent dans l’utérus de la mère et seul naît le plus fort, ragaillardi par toutes ces protéines avalées. Difficile pourtant de généraliser : d’une région à une autre, ou même d’un groupe à un autre au sein d’une même espèce, le cannibalisme apparaît ou disparaît. Pas de déterminisme, simplement une stratégie contingente de survie et d’évolution.

Il en fut de même chez les humains : chez nous non plus, le cannibalisme n’a jamais été ancré, jamais des « sauvages » n’ont mangé leur prochain comme ils auraient savouré un steak d’élan. Chez nos ancêtres préhistoriques, on ne soupçonne que des cas isolés ; d’ailleurs l’espèce n’aurait pas survécu à un cannibalisme généralisé. Partout où l’anthropophagie s’est développée, elle était encadrée et liée à un contexte précis. Plus souvent, elle ne se résumait en réalité qu’à des fantasmes d’Occidentaux ou à des arguments inventés pour mieux éradiquer des populations (coucou Christophe Colomb).

Parfois autorisé, voire valorisé, le cannibalisme a très vite été rejeté par ceux qui ne le pratiquaient pas.

« Le cannibalisme survient toujours dans des sociétés en proie à des crises historiques, démographiques ou écologiques terribles. En plus, dès que les Européens arrivaient, ils décuplaient les crises, et vingt ans après les premiers contacts, le phénomène avait pris des proportions monumentales », explique l’anthropologue et chercheur au CNRS Georges Guille-Escuret. Parfois autorisé, voire valorisé (pour honorer un ancêtre ou saluer le courage d’un ennemi), le cannibalisme a très vite été rejeté par ceux qui ne le pratiquaient pas. « Nous vivons dans des sociétés qui ont décrété une rupture entre le monde de la nature et celui de la culture, analyse l’anthropologue. Dans la vision chinoise par exemple, cette césure n’existe pas : le cannibalisme va être progressivement prohibé pour maintenir les rapports sociaux, mais une anthropophagie pour raisons médicales ou sexuelles perdure encore, ce n’est pas un tabou ultime. » Chez nous, si. La faute aux Grecs, tout d’abord, qui jugeaient le cannibalisme incompatible avec le fonctionnement d’une cité, au même titre qu’un gouvernement de femmes. « Deux sociétés les effrayaient : les cannibales et les Amazones. D’ailleurs, partout où on a trouvé les premiers, on a subodoré les secondes. » Plus tard vient s’ajouter la phobie chrétienne : le fait de consommer de la chair humaine devient un sacrilège, l’homme ayant été créé « à l’image de Dieu ».

« Il y a aussi la règle de l’interdiction du “redoublement du même” : on ne peut pas mettre l’identique sur l’identique », développe l’anthropologue. En clair : on ne couche pas avec sa sœur car c’est le même sang, on ne mange pas un membre de notre espèce car c’est la même chair. « En Polynésie, on considère même que le cannibalisme est un inceste alimentaire. Mais le double tabou, la phobie politique grecque et la phobie cosmogonique chrétienne, peut créer une double fascination. Toute prohibition implique une contestation fantasmatique. On n’interdit pas sans provoquer le désir de transgression. »

Alors, dès qu’un cas est connu, tout le monde fait « beurk », mais tout le monde veut savoir. L’histoire du vol 571, où les survivants du crash ont dû manger leurs congénères pendant les deux mois qu’ont duré les recherches dans les Andes, a été adaptée au cinéma. Luka Rocco Magnotta, le dépeceur de Montréal, a son fan-club et va bientôt se marier. Issei Sagawa, l’étudiant japonais qui a mangé une Néerlandaise à Paris en 1981 (jugé irresponsable et libéré depuis), a écrit une douzaine de livres et tourné des pubs pour des restaurants de viande. Il a même participé à quelques pornos.

Et ce bébé joufflu, pourquoi mémé dit-elle qu’« on le mangerait » en embrassant ses petits petons ? «

« Il n’y a rien de plus excitant qu’une jolie fille en train de manger, quoi qu’elle mange. » Au restaurant, si Appetizing Kid en voit une en train de ronger une cuisse de poulet « ou une saucisse » avec les mains, le Croate de 28 ans reconnaît qu’il doit masquer son trouble avec sa serviette. « Je suis sûr que beaucoup imaginent pire, mais ils ne l’admettront jamais. » « La sexualité et l’alimentation sont des zones de métaphore l’une pour l’autre : c’est universel, comme Levi-Strauss l’avait remarqué, confirme Georges Guille-Escuret. Dans le cannibalisme, beaucoup de métaphores sexuelles s’expriment. Le va-et-vient est permanent. » Ne dit-on pas qu’il/elle est « à croquer » ? Au lit, qui ne s’est jamais fait mordiller une oreille ou un téton ? Et ce bébé joufflu, pourquoi mémé dit-elle qu’« on le mangerait » en embrassant ses petits petons ? « Bien sûr, je trouve excitant une cannibale qui mange une jambe ou la masculinité d’un mec, mais je préfère encore plus le vore classique, précise Appetizing Kid : un requin qui avale un surfeur, une géante qui mange un homme… » Alors quand Dinoshark ou Shark Attack passe à la télé, il sort le Sopalin. Des cannibales, des vrais, il affirme en avoir croisé. Il a vu des photos (je recevrai moi-même quelques images où le montage est difficile à prouver). Des gens dont il se tient éloigné. « J’aime l’art, l’imaginaire du cannibalisme, mais ça reste virtuel pour la plupart d’entre nous. On estime plus nos vies que nos fantasmes. »

Le degré d’horreur que nous ressentons vis-à-vis de l’anthropophagie dépend de notre attirance pour la victime.

Ce désir, le psychologue américain Steven J. Scher et son équipe l’ont analysé. Résultat : le degré d’horreur que nous ressentons vis-à-vis de l’anthropophagie dépend de notre attirance pour la victime. En demandant à leurs cobayes de choisir, parmi plusieurs personnes, qui ils embrasseraient et qui ils mangeraient, ils ont remarqué qu’on trouve moins dégoûtant de manger une personne de l’autre sexe, soit un potentiel partenaire. On trouve aussi moins répugnant de manger une personne « sexuellement attirante » qu’une moche, un adulte qu’un enfant. « La corrélation [entre désir et cannibalisme] est proche de 90 %, écrivent-ils dans leur étude. En général, ce qui provoque le dégoût à l’idée de manger une personne est aussi ce qui provoque le dégoût lorsqu’il s’agit de choisir un partenaire sexuel. »

A quel moment peut-on switcher de « tiens, si on faisait l’amour » à « tiens, si on se grignotait l’oignon » ? D’un point de vue purement sadomasochiste, on peut imaginer le fait de cannibaliser comme l’acte ultime de domination, et le fait d’être mangé comme celui de la soumission. En prenant les Trois Essais sur la théorie sexuelle de Freud au pied de la lettre, on peut aussi voir un retour/blocage au stade oral qui se traduit par une dévoration du sein de la mère (« stade cannibalique »). Ici, l’alimentation n’est pas séparée de la sexualité. Plus tard, pour décrire ce stade (fantasmatique) par lequel nous passons tous, le psychanalyste écrira que ses principaux aspects sont « l’amour, sous la forme du désir de prendre en soi l’objet aimé, la destruction qui accompagne sa consommation, la conservation et l’appropriation des qualités dudit objet ».

« Je ne suis pas très attaché à la vie, mais je ne suis pas suicidaire. Disons que si je devais mourir, je voudrais que ce soit comme ça. »

Mohamed pense qu’il passera un jour à l’acte : il voit cela comme un besoin d’accomplissement, un acte d’amour total, dénitif. J’ai donné rendez-vous à l’Egyptien de 26 ans au Cannibale Café, lors d’un de ses déplacements professionnels à Paris, mais il ne goûte pas mon humour : il a préféré une rencontre dans un parc, à l’air libre. Moins risqué. L’informaticien porte un jean mal coupé, un polo bleu, une paire de baskets et quelques kilos en trop. Il a une bouille toute lisse et un léger bégaiement sans doute provoqué par le stress : c’est la première fois qu’il en parle. « Personne ne comprendrait. Pas même un psy. » En faisant des ronds dans la poussière du bout de son pied, il m’explique : « Au début, je serai sans doute très excité, puis la panique prendra le dessus. J’essayerai sûrement de fuir, mais ce sera trop tard. Je ne veux pas trop souffrir, mais je veux le sentir. Maintenant, il faut que j’organise tout : que je trouve un/e cannibale, que je quitte le pays sans que personne n’en sache rien… » Un suicide ? A voix basse, Mohamed ajoute : « Je ne suis pas très attaché à la vie, mais je ne suis pas suicidaire. Disons que si je devais mourir, je voudrais que ce soit comme ça. » Il y pense depuis ses 10 ans. « J’ai entendu parler d’un site, j’ai fait des recherches. J’ai commencé à collecter des infos sur des criminels cannibales à travers le monde. Après, j’ai essayé d’arrêter, d’oublier, mais c’est impossible. Ça revient toujours. » Quand d’autres feuilletaient les SAS de tonton, lui a connu ses premiers émois avec les pages de Robinson Crusoé. Aujourd’hui, même si sa sexualité est, selon ses propres termes, « classique », le sujet s’invite dans sa tête quand il fait l’amour avec sa copine. « Ce que j’éprouve avec elle est très éloigné de ce que je ressens quand j’imagine qu’elle me mange », bafouille-t-il. Lors de nos conversations virtuelles, pourtant, il était plus disert : « Je veux être désiré au point d’être mangé. Je veux qu’un humain connaisse mon goût, m’explore au plus profond de mon être, qu’il se sente rassasié de moi. Imagine le plaisir de quelqu’un qui goûte un vin rare ou un mets extraordinaire : je veux qu’on ressente ça avec moi. »

Beaucoup affirment « être sérieux », tous s’effacent dans les limbes dès que ça chauffe un peu trop.

Dans les faits, le fantasme s’arrête souvent au moment où il faut quitter ses rêves humides pour passer au concret. Sur les forums, les « meat » se plaignent du nombre de « bouchers » mythomanes, et les « bouchers » restent sur leur faim face à toutes ces « meat » qui ne vont jamais au bout. Beaucoup affirment « être sérieux », tous s’effacent dans les limbes dès que ça chauffe un peu trop. Et ces gens-là, Pierre a une dent contre eux : ce Belge d’une soixantaine d’années a monté un petit groupe privé d’une vingtaine de personnes, âgées de 20 à 70 ans, qui se partagent les contacts de « cannibales sérieux ». « En général, ils demandent les photos de notre viande puis disparaissent, râle-t-il. Tous ces forums sont plein de fakes, de types qui veulent juste des jeux de rôle. » Une fois, ça a failli mordre : un homme leur a donné une date, mais il s’est, lui aussi, volatilisé.

Et puis un jour, Pierre m’a réécrit : « Contacte Maître538. Lui ne joue pas. » Un rapide tour sur Google avec son pseudo me permet de retrouver le profil, au Canada, d’un septuagénaire avec le sourire d’un condamné à mort. Au premier mail, il demande photos, statut sérologique, si je suis prêt à servir d’esclave avant d’être dévoré, diverses informations sur ma stature, et recommande d’effacer les traces de ce mail et de son adresse IP. Après ma demande d’interview en bonne et due forme, je ne recevrai plus jamais aucune réponse. Ni de Maître538 ni de Pierre. Mais après tout, ce ne sont que des histoires, non ?

* Tous les prénoms ou pseudonymes ont été modifiés.

Si toutes les valeurs sont relatives, alors le cannibalisme n’est plus qu’une affaire de goût. Leo Strauss (?)

Tu ne coucheras pas avec un homme comme on couche avec une femme. C’est une abomination. Lévitique 18:22

La vertu même devient vice, étant mal appliquée, et le vice est parfois ennobli par l’action. Frère Laurent (Roméo et Juliette, Shakespeare)

La liberté, c’est la liberté de dire que deux et deux font quatre. Lorsque cela est accordé, le reste suit. George Orwell (1984)

Parler de liberté n’a de sens qu’à condition que ce soit la liberté de dire aux gens ce qu’ils n’ont pas envie d’entendre. George Orwell

Il faut constamment se battre pour voir ce qui se trouve au bout de son nez. Orwell

Le plus difficile n’est pas de dire ce que l’on voit mais d’accepter de voir ce que l’on voit. Péguy

Si vous admettez qu’un homme revêtu de la toute-puissance peut en abuser contre ses adversaires, pourquoi n’admettez-vous pas la même chose pour une majorité? (…) Le pouvoir de tout faire, que je refuse à un seul de mes semblables, je ne l’accorderai jamais à plusieurs. Tocqueville

On a commencé avec la déconstruction du langage et on finit avec la déconstruction de l’être humain dans le laboratoire. (…) Elle est proposée par les mêmes qui d’un côté veulent prolonger la vie indéfiniment et nous disent de l’autre que le monde est surpeuplé. René Girard

En conclusion, nous devons nous demander pourquoi le principe de précaution si souvent mis en avant et dans tous les domaines, y compris à propos du maïs transgénique, ne devrait pas s’appliquer au projet de loi actuel. Maurice Berger

La lisibilité de la filiation, qui est dans l’intérêt de l’enfant, est sacrifiée au profit du bon vouloir des adultes et la loi finit par mentir sur l’origine de la vie. Conférence des évêques

He said, ‘Look Juan Carlos, the pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you. Juan Carlos Cruz

Why did god make me this way? Why did god make me wrong? Mia Lamay

It’s not how you act, or what you wear, or anything like that. It’s just how you really are inside. … You just feel like you just got put in the wrong body. Jacob Lemay

Aucune religion n’interdit le cannibalisme. Je ne trouve pas non plus de loi qui nous empêche de manger des gens. J’ai profité de l’espace entre la morale et la loi et c’est là-dessus que j’ai basé mon travail. Zhu Yu

Presidents run for re-election against real opponents, not public perceptions. For all the media hype, voters often pick the lesser of two evils, not their ideals of a perfect candidate. Victor Davis Hanson

Nine in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, a new high in Gallup’s four-decade trend. The latest figure bests the previous high of 88% recorded in 2003. Gallup

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove. Rasmussen (Feb. 10, 2020)