the polarization of the sexes. (In a society that admires male homosexuality, for instance, ancient Greece, these same acts are seen to heighten that polarization by glorifying maleness and so serve male
suprem acy. ) So Paul, in Romans, establishes that homosexuals—
lesbians named first— are full of m alignity and worthy of death and
then goes on to blame the failure of Jew s and Jew ish law for all that
is most odious in the world— nam ely, homosexuality first:
* Strindberg wrote in his diary when his third wife left him: “It is as if,
through her, I was entering into forbidden relationships with men. . .
This torments me, for I have always had a horror o f intimacy with my
own sex; so much so that I have broken off friendly relations when the
friendship offered became o f a sickly nature, resembling love. ” (See
August Strindberg,
bach [New York: Penguin Books, 1979], p. 314. ) He also quotes Schopenhauer: “M y thoughts are led through my woman to the sexual acts of an unknown man. In certain respects she makes a pervert o f me, indirectly
and against my w ill” (p. 310).
And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had
left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like
unto Gomorrha.
What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed
not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even
the righteousness which is of faith.
But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness,
hath not attained to the law of righteousness.
Romans 9: 29-31
The Jew is even insidiously likened to the Greek, that pederast of
universal fame: “For there is no difference between the Jew and the
Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon
him” (Romans 10: 12).
Then there is circumcision. According to Paul, it no longer signifies manly connection with God. Paul’s denunciation of Jewish law virtually effeminizes not only the law—ineffectual against sin
as it is—but the Jew , whose carnality could be restrained or governed by it. Paul’s repudiation of Jewish law sounds almost like a sexual boast: “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am
carnal, sold under sin” (Romans 7 : 14). Anti-Semitism has been so
versatile in so-called Christian societies because the Christians,
nominal or passionate, could exploit the Jews both as killers of
Christ (rapists*) or as overt or covert homosexuals (unmanly,
wicked, deceitful, full of strife, malignity, unnatural; intellectuals
tied to the abstract, ineffective law; smart as men who know the
law are and also devious the way men who know the law are; faithless to God because they engaged in homosexual acts, because women castrated or effeminized them by being lesbian, because
they socially tolerated homosexuality). Early on, Paul understood
that his pacifist God nailed in exemplary masochistic sexual passion
*The sadism o f this deicide establishes a basis for attributing to the Jews
the most vile acts of cruelty, all tinged with sexual sadism: slaughter of
infants to use their blood is a charge that, with rape, reappears cyclically.
to a cross had to offer converts masculinity: otherwise, C hrist’s
suffering would not play in Peoria. The sexual brilliance of the
