Sodomy is condemned in the Quran without prescribing any specific punishment (Al-Quran 7: 80 & 81; 27: 54 & 55; 29: 28 & 29). I cannot recall any mention of lesbianism. The Quran, however, is not a penal code in which crimes and punishments would be listed as Articles, Sections, Subsections, Clauses, etc. Its tone is mostly that of general principles, admonitions, and guidelines. It is like the Constitution of a country rather than its Penal Code. After listing some of the fundamental attributes of true believers, Verses 5, 6 & 7 of Surah 23, and Verses 29 & 31 of Surah 70 define believers as those who guard their chastity except with their lawful spouses; so those who seek gratification beyond that are transgressors.
ALAF KHAN
Lesbianism and sodomy, thus, fall under Transgression Beyond Divine Intent. The complete destruction of Sodom and the annihilation of its inhabitants perhaps reflects the degree of Divine disapproval of homosexuality. The Quran decrees that both male as well as female fornicators be whipped one hundred lashes in public view, provided four reliable witnesses testify that they have seen the act of penetration with their own eyes. This is a virtually impossible requirement to fulfill. If someone accuses a woman of fornication and then cannot produce four such witnesses, he must be publicly whipped eighty lashes and disqualified for life as a witness (Al-Quran 24: 2, 4 & 23). Calumny, i.e. accusation without proof , is, according to the Quran, a grave offense, hence the harsh penal recipe.
A man accuses his wife of adultery but can’t produce witnesses other than himself. In that case he has to testify four times on oath that he is telling the truth and, fifthly, that he begs Allah to curse him if he is not truthful (Al-Quran 24: 5). Just the husband’s testimony? Sounds heavily loaded against the poor woman. Not quite. She stands absolved if she, in her defense, testifies four times on oath that her husband is lying, and the curse of Allah be upon her if he be truthful (Al-Quran 24: 7-9). It is hard, as always, to win against one’s wife. She, as usual, has the final word.
Sex, as mentioned earlier, is fundamental to the very existence of animals and plants on this globe. Saying No to sex is the declaration of a losing war against nature. Claims of lifelong celibacy are acceptable only from eunuchs or liars. More vows of celibacy by the clergy are broken than kept. Two Roman Catholic nuns, Federica and Isabel, became lesbian lovers while working in a rehab facility near Turin in Italy. They renounced their vocation, recanted their vows, and married each other in the Mayor’s office. A former priest, Frances Barbeso, later solemnized their marriage like the 19 other same-sex marriages that he had already solemnized (International Business Times, 29 September 2016).
Gay lifestyle and sexual abuse of children by the church Fathers have probably been endemic in the Roman Catholic church for centuries. Its pandemic nature was exposed when hundreds of thousands of people in all continents sued the R.C. churches for compensation on account of having been sexually abused by the priests. The term abuse is a polite name for rape. Shooting someone dead and calling it gun abuse won’t make the victim any less dead. Many Sisters (nuns) have lost their virginity at the hands etc. of the church’s Fathers. Sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests cost the American Church three billion dollars over 8 years until April 2014. Court cases and claims against the R.C. churches have shown a steep rise all over the world. The R.C. churches of the USA had, by 2014, paid 2.2 billion dollars on settling such claims out of court. Partial payment for one’s misdeeds goes by different names. We in Pakistan call it Plea Bargain; it is Out of Court Settlement elsewhere.
Melissa Eddy has narrated the revolting and sadistic physical and sexual torture inflicted by the priests on members of the church choir in the German town of Regensburg. The choir was run from 1964 to 94 by Georg Ratzinger who was the brother of Pope Benedict XVI (NYT International, 8 February 2016).
The Archdiocese of Seattle, Washington State. published of its own accord the names of 77 priests and church officials who had raped children and nuns during 1923 – 2008. The Archbishop expressed his deepest apology for these abuses. It sounds like a clever preemptive move to forestall claims in the courts for heavy compensation (Christian Science Monitor, 16 January 2016.
The BBC Urdu Service, on 5th October 2021, presented a documentary on the rape of 216,000 children by French Roman Catholic priests since 1959. Most of the victims were boys between 10 and 13 years of age. The Pope had expressed his disgust at the conduct of the Church Fathers.
The St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Roman Catholic Church occupied several acres of prime land in the Archdiocese of Boston. The archdiocese decided in 2004 CE to sell the entire property to pay the enormous bill relating to the long history of sexual abuse of children by at least 571 of its priests. The church’s parishioners kept a continuous day-and-night vigil for twelve years to prevent the sale of their church. The Supreme Court decided against the parishioners and allowed the archdiocese to sell its property. The vigil ended with a final service on 29 May 2016. Even the huge proceeds from this sale might not have met the costs of all the claims against the priests (The Guardian, London; 29 May 2016).
The problem faced by the Church of England was reported in The Guardian on 4 December 2015. The English Church paid 35,000 British pounds and an apology in compensation to a victim of sexual abuse by Bishop George Bell. Another high-ranking priest, Bishop Peter Ball, had been jailed for sexually abusing young boys. The former Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, Peter Jensen, regretted that ‘the Church’s ethos has been one of easy forgiveness in cases of child abuse by the clergymen’ (The Guardian; 15 December 2015). Mpho Tutu van Furth, daughter of the Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, was herself a priestess in the Anglican Church of South Africa. She abandoned her priesthood and married her female Dutch lover. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a vocal advocate of LGBTQ rights, publicly stated that he would prefer to go to hell instead of condemning homosexuality (The Guardian, 24 May 2015).
Garcia Ataulfo of Mexico is a high-ranking Roman Catholic priest who is infected with HIV. He has raped about thirty girls whose ages ranged from five to ten years. The Vatican swept the issue under the carpet. The mother of one of the girls wrote to the Pope who told her that the matter was now closed (Humansarefree.com; October 2018).
The English theologian James Alison is himself an open gay. He reckons more than 40 percent of Roman Catholic clergy are now gay. One recent study in the USA put the figure at 33 percent. Andrew Cain, a priest in the Church of England, openly married his male sex partner, Stephen Foreshew, in 2014. Cain estimated that a third of the clergy in London are gay (Telegraph. London, 1 March 2014). The same-sex conjugal lifestyle is spreading fast in the USA and Europe. Gay marriages of 150,000 couples were reported in the USA in 2009. Additionally, an estimated figure of 564,743 couples (1,129,486 persons) were reported as same-sex partners without being formally married.
Pope Francis, after his historic trip to South America, was interviewed on board his private jet by a crowded press corps. If someone, said His Holiness, is gay and searches for the Lord, who am I to judge? (The Guardian, London; 31 July 2013). The Pope did admit that there existed a powerful lobby of gay priests in the Vatican who used their power for gaining political clout to protect themselves.
Nicole Winfield reported the mass resignation of all Roman Catholic Bishops throughout Chile over the sex abuse cover-up scandal for ages (A.P., 18 May 2018).
The superstar in the LGBTQ galaxy who outshines all others is the 90-year-old former Senator, Harris Wofford, who married his 40-year-old male lover, Matthew Charlton, in April 2016 (New York Post, 25 April 2016). Wofford’s wife died in 1996 after bearing him three children. He served as Advisor to President J. F. Kennedy and also to the late Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s. He represented the state of Pennsylvania in the Senate during the early 1990s. It is reasonable to assume that the senile ex-Senator is the wife of the 40-year-old Matthew Charlton.
Sperm Banks selling donor sperm are already a multi-million dollar business. The Guardian (16 April 2016) reported the case of one donor whose sperm was sold to many infertile couples by Zytec with the assurance that the donor had an IQ higher than Einstein’s and was endowed with superhuman faculties in sciences and humanities Several couples, through prolonged Internet searches, discovered the identity, horrifying medical background, psychiatric history, and criminal record of the donor.
Surrogacy, i.e. hired wombs, is a fast-growing industry. New-life is an established agency dealing globally in surrogacy. The story of two gay men, Gordon Lake from America and Manuel Santos from Spain, is a ticklish one. Gordon Lake proudly spoke of Manuel Santos as his husband. The urge to have a baby took them to India where a surrogate woman gave them a boy. They then shifted to Bangkok to establish a surrogacy company and also to have another baby themselves. An ovum from an unknown woman was fertilized with Lake’s sperm and placed in the womb of another woman named Patidta Kulsolang. Two moms, one dad, and a baby — a family of a new kind. A healthy girl, Carmen, was born. The surrogate mother refused to hand over Carmen to Lake and Santos when she discovered that the two men were gay. She went to court but lost Carmen’s custody to Lake and Santos who flew out of Thailand with Carmen (The Guardian, London; 26 April 2016).
Homosexual marriages have the potential for causing population depletion to near extinction in a few centuries. Sperm banks and hired wombs might keep the human social machine running for some centuries, but for how long? Same-sex couples might be seized by the urge to raise babies of their own. One gay partner might hire a surrogate uterus, implant his sperm, and take over the baby when it is born. Who knows; the hired womb might have already received a dose of semen a day or so earlier from some other loving friend. Proving one’s paternity would become a tedious and costly job despite the availability of DNA matching.
Some nations have already sensed the danger of population depletion if a union between two adults of either sex remains the legal definition of marriage. The ruling Democratic Party of Romania has yielded to the popular demand for a referendum on restricting the constitutional definition of family. The amendment, if approved by the nation, shall legally ban same-sex marriage (NBC News, 7 June 2017; Reuter, 2 September 2017; Pink News, 3 September 2017). Media statements in August 2022 reported huge financial rewards by the Russian government to any woman who produced ten children or more to make up for the shrinkimg population.
