ABSTRACT
On different pages within the ever-revised project of the History of Sexuality, Foucault makes two suggestions about the history of Christian moral theology. The first suggestion is incidental to the notorious discussion of the ‘homosexual’ as a category invented in the 19th century. It is the claim that there is a decisive difference between a ‘sodomite’ and a ‘homosexual’. The second suggestion is central to the project of the unfinished analysis of sexuality in the early and medieval Christian churches. It is the claim that what distinguishes Christian teaching about sex is not specific ideals or prohibitions, but rather ‘new mechanisms of power for inculcating’ moral teachings about sex.1 The term Foucault borrows for the ensemble of these mechanisms is le pastorat, the pastorate or, more colloquially for Catholic ears, pastoral care. These two suggestions will be discussed, not as stages of revision, but as points where Foucault engages or fails to engage the Christian ‘mechanisms’ for creating sex-linked identities.2 The comparison between the 19th-century category of the ‘homosexual’ and the medieval theological category of the ‘sodomite’ will be pursued back to a deeper comparison, one between state power and church power. It will then be argued that this comparison of powers misleads us in at least one important way: it encourages us to overlook the extent to which ‘homosexual’ is both the product and the plaything of Christian theology – which hardly disappeared with the waning of the Middle Ages. The chapter concludes by trying to show why the theological contribution to ‘homosexuality’ ought to matter very much to us, whether we are Christian or not.
