The notion that sodomy is so detestable it must not be named crystallized in the phrase peccatum mutum. Commentators offered several reasons why sodomy was the "mute sin."

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The common-sense view was that the sodomite is mute because he hides his sin, by choice, or by necessity, or from fear. More popular was the view that the sin was so filthy it pollutes the mouth of the person who speaks it and the ears of those who hear it. It is one of those crimes so terrible the tongue is incapable of uttering it in confession. The devil himself blushes to hear it.

Most popular of all was this: "Sodoma has been well translated to mean mute, because this is a sin that renders men dumb on Judgment Day." Stupefied by the magnitude of their sin, sodomites will stand mute and helpless before the supreme Judge.

One of the earliest civil statutes against sodomy comes from Bologna in 1288. The text reads as follows: "If a man commits unchastity (stuprum) with a male, he shall be burned, whether he is the active or the passive party. But if the passive party was taken by force, he incurs no penalty, nor if his youth excuses him." A very dangerous epoch was in the offing.

Although it occasionally celebrates homosocial bonding, surviving medieval English literature is condemnatory of homosexual behavior.

Ranging from depictions of acts "against nature" to representations of sexual ambiguity, queer medieval art may be richer than is generally recognized.

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Inquisitions of Aragon and Portugal prosecuted almost 1500 trials for sodomy of various kinds.

Natural law--the reading into nature laws that are not merely descriptive, but prescriptive--actually depends on circular reasoning; it discovers in nature what its adherents already believe is the intention of the Christian God.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Church may be the institution most responsible for the suffering of individuals involved in same-sex sexual relationships.

First used to refer only to anal intercourse, sodomy was progressively defined by the Church Fathers, and many later lawmakers, to include all sexual acts that could not result in procreation.

A twelfth-century English abbot, Aelred of Rievaulx was a specialist in friendship who used the image of John, the beloved disciple, as an icon of masculine love.

Patristic Writers, also known as the Church Fathers, appropriated currents of hostility to homoeroticism in pagan thought and used them to strengthen the prohibitions of Leviticus and Paul, while also expressing their own hostile interpretations.