The Queer Thing About Sin: Why the West Came to Hate Queer Love

by Harry Tanner

Synopsis:

A gripping new journey through ancient history, uncovering the origins of homophobia and the untold stories of those who dared to love.

In the early days of ancient Greece, queer love was celebrated. The most famous warrior in antiquity loved another man, the poet whose lyrics were memorised by philosophers and kings sang of her desire for women. Men could swear oaths of undying love and live out the rest of their lives together in peace. What fragments survive of this ancient world all tell us one thing: it was not a sin to be queer.

In this extraordinary book, Harry Tanner sets out on a journey to discover the origins of homophobia in the West. From the rise of belligerent tyrants to civil unrest and the birth of radical new philosophies, Tanner follows the traces of this sinister idea as it swept across the ancient Mediterranean. Wherever he discovers the roots of homophobia taking hold, from ancient Judea to imperial Rome, Tanner finds a confluence of crises mirrored across the centuries. Inequality, fear and an obsession with self-control - this is how societies turn on their queer citizens, time and time again, since the dawn of history.

This is a powerful story that draws on the rich world of the ancients to reveal how homophobia infected Western religion and ideology - the consequences of which we are still living with today - and to that end how we can move forward and resist homophobia in the future.

Harry Tanner’s The Queer Thing About Sin traces the origins of homophobia in the modern world, going back to the classical world and ancient Mesopotamia to look for the roots of it, as well as for toleration and queer joy. What he finds is a mixed bag, not always supporting the picture we have of the ancient world (for instance, the older man/younger man mentor pairing is less a thing than people think).

He puts forward a theory: homophobia rises at times of greater economic inequality. He touches on this theme regularly, taking it as read by the end, and I think he’s fairly convincing that the correlation exists, though I’d like to see more examples, any counterexamples, and have a good think about potential confounding factors, to make it a fully fleshed-out argument.

I think the book is strongest when it discusses the Greek and Roman world, though I think it does at times get a little sidetracked into trying to figure out specific figures’ sexualities and thoughts on queerness. Sometimes that’s somewhat justified (Plato is massive in Western thought, and understanding where he came from is a reasonable aim) but could use being maybe a bit more clearly signalled as such, because some of the figures he discusses are significantly less key.

That said… the author was raised within evangelical Christianity and that definitely flavours the book, from the attitude toward and understanding of Jewish religion to the way that he seems to treat everything as leading up to Christianity (one gets the hint when he refers to the “Old Testament” when discussing the Torah). To say that Judaism as a religion has difficulty with ambiguities and questioning seems a bit weird and… honestly, like someone regurgitating someone else’s talking points without doing any research or thinking of their own. Judaism famously asks a lot of questions and examines its own ambiguities in a thorough and scholarly tradition.

There are some interesting comments on translations, but the ex-evangelical slant is really clear in these sections of the book — and it utterly fails to engage with Islam (or frankly any other religions), which I think would actually have been helpful if the purpose was really to discuss why “the West” has a problem with queerness.

Part if it may be the limits of a fairly slim book (200 pages of actual text), but I think it ought to have been significantly expanded to be really worthwhile. I think it likely the author bit off more than he could chew, having started just wanting to talk about why modern evangelical Christianity is often anti-queer, for deeply personal reasons.

It was still an interesting read, just flawed.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)