First order of business: definition of terms.
What is paganism?
"I would suggest that the essence of paganism can be usefully described as monism, the belief that one principle defines and unites all of reality. Thus all is one, humanity is one divine reality, and all religions are ultimately many expressions of the one monistic truth. At the heart of this theoretical religious paganism lies a particular and powerful mystical experience of oneness. Indeed, it is often claimed in today’s syncretistic age that at the core of all religions, beyond and behind their distinctive doctrines, is the same mystical encounter." (Peter Jones, Androgyny: The Pagan Sexual Ideal, JETS 43/3 [September 2000], 446)
What is the historical association of paganism and homosexuality?
"Throughout time and across space, the pagan cultus consistently, though not exclusively, holds out as its sexual representative the emasculated, androgynous priest." (ibid., 448)
Pagan religion, with virtual unanimity, "believed that homosexuals 'were vocationally mediums.' They also, with a certain logical consistency, held that heterosexual intercourse impaired the mediumistic talent" (ibid., 454).
However, "this is not to suggest some scarlet, conspiratorial thread connecting the dots. The connection is logical, theological, and inevitable. A monistic view of existence will work itself out in all the domains of human life, and especially in the domain of sexuality" (ibid., 457).
What is the religious significance between paganism and homosexuality?
"Therefore homosexuals are—though some unconsciously or only partially—true pagan monists, who have succeeded in translating spiritual theory into physical reality." (ibid., 462)
"The physico-theological mechanism seems to function as follows: androgynous persons, whether homosexual or bi-sexual, are able to express within themselves both sexual roles and identities. In the sex act they engage both as male and female, equally as penetrator and penetrated, the 'hard' and the 'soft'—and thus taste in some form or other both physical and spiritual androgyny." (ibid., 463)
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