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Datum: Mittwoch, den 18. August 2004, um 21:32 Uhr
Betrifft: John C. Bennett und Homosexualität in der Frühgeschichte der Mormonen


Hi Folks,

in meinen alten Unterlagen fand ich diesen Teil eines sehr interessanten Artikels über Homosexualität in der Kirchengeschichte von Rocky O’Donovan, der auch über John C. Bennett einige sehr interessante Dinge zu sagen hatte:

Sodomy, Faggotry, and Heterosexual Panic in Early Mormonism

One of the most dramatic events in the history of Mormonism and homosexuality occurred in the 1840s. John C. Bennett, a recent convert to Mormonism, arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois (then LDS headquarters), and immediately began his rise to ecclesiastical prominence.(36) Within months of arriving, he became a chief advisor to Joseph Smith. After Sidney Rigdon’s refusal to allow his daughter to marry Smith polygamously, Bennett was given the title of Assistant President to the Church, placing him above either Smith’s first counselor Rigdon or church patriarch, Hyrum Smith. Bennett also became chancellor of the University of Nauvoo, mayor of Nauvoo, and a general in the Nauvoo Legion. But Bennett had a mysterious past, for he had risen to prominent positions in other cities, other social circles, only to be cast out and forced to move on. Rumors of Bennett’s past began to circulate in Nauvoo. Men were sent by Joseph Smith to other towns where Bennett had lived, and they returned with sober news: Bennett had a long history as a "homo-libertine," according to Mormon historian Sam Taylor.[37] When the news broke in the leading councils of the church, Bennett drank some poison in what appears to have been a carefully planned attempt at suicide. Being a physician, he would have known exactly how much to take to get sick but not to kill himself. This sham suicide attempt brought forgiveness and sympathy from both Joseph Smith and the church at large.
Soon, however, more rumors circulated of Bennett’s current practices in Nauvoo: that he was courting several women simultaneously, that he had performed abortions on various Mormon women, that he frequented "the brothel on the hill," and that he was giving out high-ranking positions in the Nauvoo Legion for sexual favors with men under his command. Rumors of sodomy even reached non-Mormons. The anti-Mormon Reverend W. M. King accused Nauvoo of being "as perfect a sink of debauchery and every species of abomination as ever was in Sodom and Nineveh." Sam Taylor felt that Bennett’s "sexual antics" with men of the Nauvoo Legion cast aspersions of sodomy on "hell knows how many revered pioneers."[38] However, another Mormon historian, T. Edgar Lyon, thought that Bennett could not have been homosexual since he was also accused of seducing women. "From my limited knowledge of homosexuals," Lyon wrote, "it seems to be out of character of the man [Bennett] to be so deeply involved with girls and women in town and at the same time practicing homosexuality."[39]
As Sam Taylor speculated, Joseph Smith could overlook just about anything but disloyalty. And Bennett turned disloyal, publicly espousing plural marriage, arguably Mormonism’s best kept secret during these years. Taylor also felt that Smith dared not use accusations of sodomy against Bennett for fear of destroying the reputations of the young men whom Bennett had seduced, as well as not wanting the public to know that their "prophet, seer, and revelator" had put a sodomite in such a high position. Instead, Smith claimed that Bennett had tried to enlist the Nauvoo Legion to assassinate Smith during one of their musters. After this alleged plot "failed," Bennett was publicly humiliated and privately threatened, then given the chance to recant. Fearing for his life, he signed a statement saying that Smith had never taught or practiced polygamy, and left Nauvoo in May 1842. He was immediately released as Assistant President, excommunicated from the church, and lost his university chancellery and mayorship. But Bennett went on to write one of Mormonism’s most scathing exposes, The History of the Saints.
Then in July 1842, Joseph’s brother, William Smith, editor of a Mormon newspaper in Nauvoo, The Wasp, tried to silence Bennett’s accusations by sarcastically writing that Bennett only saw Joseph Smith as "a great philanthropist as long as Bennett could practice adultery, fornication, and - we were going to say, (Buggery,) without being exposed."[40] Two years later a slander suit brought against Joseph Smith by Francis Higbee implied that he and his brother, Chauncey Higbee, had been sexually involved with Bennett through the Nauvoo Legion, where Higbee had been a colonel. During Higbee’s slander suit, Brigham Young testified that he had "told Dr. Bennett that one charge against him was leading young men into difficulty - he admitted it. If he had let young men and women alone it would have been better for him." Hyrum Smith also testified that Higbee had been "seduced" by Bennett. Other testimony indicated that Bennett "led the youth that he had influence over to tread in his unhallowed steps." Although deleted in the printed version, the original ecclesiastical notes indicate that in addition to charges of sex with women, other testimony about Bennett was deleted from the official minutes as being "too indelicate for the public eye and ear," an allusion to the "unspeakable crime" of sodomy.[41]
Accusations of buggery or sodomy, (and later of homosexuality), have been used throughout European and American history in religious and/or political attacks to malign one’s opponent. Bennett was vilified publicly as a bugger because he publicly admitted that Mormon leaders were practicing polygamy. This is an important factor in our understanding Mormon sexuality and Mormon heterosexual panic, as I call it. As stated earlier, Joseph Smith had just begun to deify heterosexuality with his doctrine of the Father and Mother in Heaven. Mormons found themselves in the ironic position of having to protect this deification, eternalization, and multiplication of heterosexuality by exposing Bennett’s acts of buggery with men. This is not the only time accusations of homosexuality, whether true or not, were used by Mormons in their political battles.
In 1886, Mormon leaders used homosexual accusations to politically destroy the character of one of their own elite. Thomas Taylor, the wealthy polygamous bishop of the Salt Lake 14th Ward, was excommunicated for masturbating with several young men in Southern Utah. Behind this accusation, however, lay years of conflict between Thomas Taylor and the church leaders. Twenty years earlier, Taylor had loaned the church $15,000 to help emigrate a group of Mormon converts from Europe to Utah, with the understanding that the church would later repay him. Brigham Young neglected to pay the sum back, and when Young died Taylor went to John Taylor (no relation) for the payment owed him. However, the new Mormon president judged Thomas Taylor’s claim to be invalid and asserted that Taylor had secured the money illegally in the first place. Thomas called this accusation libelous and through adjudication won payment of the money owed him. Then, not surprisingly, came the accusations from Richard Williams of Parowan, brothers Simeon W. Simkins and William W. Simkins of Cedar City, and a fourth, unnamed teenager who alleged that Thomas Taylor had on several occasions slept with them and during the night had used their hands to masturbate him.[42] Taylor was immediately disfellowshipped from the church, and news of the proceedings reached the columns of the anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune. The Tribune went so far as to accuse Taylor of being "guilty of a horrible and beastly sin" and interestingly reiterated that he was "a polygamist." In another editorial the Tribune asked if Taylor should be "prosecuted in the courts? Or is there no law against sodomy, either, in this most lawless of Territories."[43] Here the anti-Mormon Tribune identifies Taylor’s "beastly sin" as sodomy (which same-sex masturbation technically was not) and then obliquely compares sodomy to the "lawlessness" of Mormon polygamy.[44] In a letter to church president John Taylor on September 22, 1886, Thomas confessed his "sins" and asked to be reinstated into full fellowship with the church:

I am sending consent today for my [first] wife to obtain a divorce, she never has appreciated the addition of [other] wives to my family, and now I have sinned, her patience is exhausted, and I fear for my children. I am ashamed to think that I have been so weak and I feel to cry God be merciful to me, and I want my brethren to be merciful to me[.] I want to be humble and live so that I can purify my thoughts and words and actions...Oh, help me to come back to [God’s] favor. I expect to have offended you greatly[.] I humbly ask your forgiveness. I am suffering terribly. My nerves are unstrung[.] I have such throbbings of the heart, and headache[s]. I cannot sit still, nor sleep, when I doze off to sleep, I wake and see before me ["]excommunicated["], and my wife suffers almost if not quite as much as bad, and I feel for her because it is my doing and I ought to be alone the sufferer, and I will try to endure. I do not want to apostatize[.] I want to return to my allegiance to God and his work and I pray you to grant me this favor as soon as you can in righteousness, and I will try to live so as to be worthy of so great a favor.[45]
Despite this plea for forgiveness, none was forthcoming, for Thomas Taylor had committed two unspeakable crimes: he had challenged a church president, and he had dared to desire other men.

Quellenangaben aus dem Artikel

36. For all information on John C. Bennett, I am indebted to the Sam Taylor Papers, ms. 50, (Special Collections, University of Utah Marriott Library.
37. Samuel Taylor papers, handwritten notes on typed page of rough draft of Nightfall at Nauvoo unnumbered first page of Chapter VII, "Every Species of Abomination," ms. 50, Box 29, Bk. 3.
38. Taylor to Lyon, February , 1969.
39. T. Edgar Lyon to Sam Taylor, Taylor papers, February 4, 1969, p. 2.
40. "Bennettiana: or the Microscope with Double Diamond Lenses," The Wasp, July 27,1842, on microfilm at the University of Utah Marriott Library, emphasis is in original.
41. Sam Taylor to Dr. T. Edgar Lyon, Sam Taylor papers, January 31, 1969.
42. William H. Holyoak to John Taylor, October 9, 1886, quoted in correspondence of Raymond W. Taylor to Samuel W. Taylor, 7 June 1972, 2-3, Taylor Family Papers, box 20, file 3.
43. Salt Lake Tribune, 2 Aug. 1886/
44. For Taylor’s "excommunication" notice, see Deseret News, 28 Aug. 1886. For rumors published in the newspaper see "City and Neighborhood" column of the Salt Lake Tribune, 22, 24, 29 Aug., 2 Sep. 1886, and September 2, 1886.
45. Thomas Taylor to John Taylor, September 22, 1886, Taylor Family Papers, p. 5.

Quelle: http://www.affirmation.org/abomination.htm#45, der Artikel: „The Abominable And Detestable Crime Against Nature“- A Brief History of Homosexuality And Mormonism 1840-1980, geschrieben von Rocky O’Donovan

Es ist doch interessant zu sehen, wie Homosexualität bei “Generalautoritäten” der „ersten Stunde“, in der heutigen Kirchengeschichtsschreibung „vergessen“ wird! Oder hat schon jemand von euch in einem offiziellen Kirchengeschichtsbuch darüber gelesen? Oder, das im Jahre 1886 es für kurze Zeit eine kirchlich Initiative gab, Homosexualität in der Mormonensekte unter Strafe zu stellen, etwas, was schnell wieder fallen gelassen wurde? einfach, weil es damals „zu viele“ von uns im Territorium Deseret gab! Für nähere Informationen empfehle ich Euch die Seite von Affirmation, oder für Nichtenglisch lesende und verstehende Menschen die Seite von Henning (http://www.momoexmo.de/Minderheiten/).

Hexe

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