Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes

The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused of sodomy, are executed by burning before the walls of Zürich in 1482.

Ash Wednesday may hold special meaning for LGBT people and our allies as we take this occasion to remember and repent the sins of the church against queer people. .

Christians traditionally put ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance on Ash Wednesday, which is observed today (March 9) this year. The ashes can also serve as a sobering reminder of the many people who were burned at the stake by the church for homosexuality.

Terrence Weldon of the Queering the Church Blog presents the whole sad history of burning queer people in a well researched post titled “Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs.” He traces the roots of homophobia in the early church and pinpoints the fateful date when the atrocities began:

In 1120, the Church Council of Nablus specified burning at the stake for homosexual acts. Although this penalty may not immediately have been applied, other harsh condemnations followed rapidly. In 1212, the death penalty for sodomy was specified in in France. Before long the execution of supposed “sodomites”, often by burning at the stake, but also by other harsh means, had become regular practice in many areas.

Weldon details how the church killed thousands for homosexuality over the next 700 years. Witch burning occurred in the same period and claimed the lives of countless lesbian women whose non-conformity was condemned as witchcraft. (Current events in Uganda prove that some are STILL using Christianity to justify the death penalty for homosexuality up to the present day.) On Ash Wednesday it is especially appropriate to visit the Queering the Church Blog to read this part of our history. As Weldon concludes,

Obviously, the Catholic Church cannot be held directly responsible for the judicial sentences handed down by secular authorities in Protestant countries. It can, however, be held responsible for it part in fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred in the early part of the persecution, using the cloak of religion to provide cover for what was in reality based not on Scripture or the teaching of the early Church, but on simple intolerance and greed.

It is important as gay men, lesbians and transgendered that we remember the examples of the many who have in earlier times been honoured by the Church as saints or martyrs for the faith. It is also important that we remember the example of the many thousands who have been martyred by the churches – Catholic and other.

Fortunately churches have stopped burning queers at the stake. Now it is common to freeze LGBT people out of church leadership positions. Chris Glaser writes about the exclusion from clergy roles as a “fast imposed by others” in the following prayer based on the practice of fasting during Lent, the season of individual and collective repentance and reflection between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

One: Jesus,
     our fast has been imposed by others,
     our wilderness sojourn their choice more than ours.
Many: Our fast from the sacraments,
     our fast from ordination:
     our only choice was honesty.
One: With the scapegoats of the ancient Hebrews,
     sexual sins of generations
     have been heaped upon our backs,
     and we have been sent away,
     excommunicated, into the wilderness to die.
Many: Yet we choose life,
     even in our deprivation
One: Jesus, lead us to discern our call
     parallel to your own:
     rebelling against the boundaries,
     questioning the self-righteous authorities,
     breaking the Sabbath law
     to bring healing.


This prayer comes from “Rite for Lent” by Chris Glaser, published in Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations. Glaser spent 30 years struggling with the Presbyterian Church for the right to ordination as an openly gay man before he was ordained to the ministry in Metropolitan Community Churches in 2005. He recently launched a new blog for progressive Christian reflections at chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

It is horrifying to remember the "burning times," especially for those like me who count ourselves as part of the Christian tradition. Let us rise from the ashes with these verses from the Bible:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.
[Psalm 51: 10, 17]

Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a you to humble yourself?
Is it to bow down your head like a rush,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under you?
Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to God?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily.
[Isaiah 58:5-8]

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Image credits:
The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused sodomites, are executed by burning before the walls of Zürich in 1482. Source: Diebold Schilling, Chronik der Burgunderkriege, Schweizer Bilderchronik, Band 3, um 1483 (Zürich, Zentralbibliothek) via Wikimedia Commons.

Ash Wednesday Service in Westminster Cathedral
By Mazur at the Catholic Church in England and Wales