365Gay.com More News reports (8/10) that a well-known Roman Catholic scholar has found plentiful evidence of church-sanctioned same-sex unions. Alan Bray says “It’s in the churches themselves … . All you have to do is look at memorials dating from the 14th to the 19th centuries.” Tombs often commemorate passionate friendships where partners were often buried together. Bray cautions that not all the memorials may involve sexual relations, though some clearly do. Samples: In Oxford, a brass plaque (14th c.) of John Bloxham and John Whytton shows the two standing in prayer hand-in-hand. In Cambridge another brass plate celebrating the “connubium” (marriage) of John Finch and Thomas Baines (1684) ; also at Cambridge, Thomas Legge and John Gostlin are memorialized with an inscription, “Love joined them living, So may the earth join them in their burial. O Legge, Gostlin’s heart you have still with you.” (1619) ; Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, crusaders dying in Constantinople, have a monument showing their helmets kissing (1391) ; 17th c. Bishop Herbert Croft and cathedral dean George Benson buried within the cathedral’s communion rails with the inscription “In life united, in death not divided”; in Westminster Abbey, Mary Kendall’s tomb of 1710 is inscribed “That close Union and Friendship in which she lived with the Lady Catharine Jones, And in testimony of which she desired that even their Ashes after Death Might not be divided”; and in 1875 Cardinal John Henry Newman insisted he be buried with his closest friend, Ambrose St. John.
The Vatican has said nothing in reference to Bray’s findings.
From SRMSPRINT (8/10) La Tribuna of Honduras reports that chickens injected with growth hormones are causing homosexuality in men. A fact sheet from Cornel University quoted in the story says these hormones may cause early puberty in girls, and breast enlargement in children of both sexes, but says nothing of homosexuality. The story does not indicate whether La Tribuna is the Honduran equivalent of the Washington Post or the National Enquirer. Poultry cannot by law be treated with growth hormones in the U.S.
Both the Chicago Tribune (8/14) and the Chicago Sun-Times (8/14) wrote of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America undertaking a major study of whether to endorse the morality of homosexual relationships. Neither story emphasized any negative feelings toward the issue from Lutheran theologians or church members. The Sun-Times, in fact, reported that retired Presiding Bishop Herbert Shilstrom, who led the church council to ban gay clergy and not allow same-sex unions, has now changed his mind and wants the church to accept homosexual relationships.
The New York Times (8/14), in a story headed “For Gay Men, Health Care Concerns Move Beyond the Threat of AIDS,” lists health concerns of gays in the post-cocktail era: other diseases (hepatitis C), domestic violence, chronic fatigue syndrome, substance abuse, depression, stress from other’s homophobia, access to healthcare, lack of empathetic lesbigay doctors, and gay-bashing. The American Journal of Public Health reports, as an example of substance abuse, that 47.8% of gay males smoke…one and a half times the rate for all men. As an antidote for ignorance or homophobia on gay health issues, the article cites the SafeGuards Gay Men’s Health Project in Philadelphia which is developing a database of local gay and gay-friendly doctors.