A Gay Love Spell from Coptic Egypt Reaches Out Across 15 Centuries
How a single piece of archeology reveals the existence of gay men fifteen hundred years ago.
You might have heard of Pope Francis being caught using a few anti-gay slurs lately, which is quite interesting seeing that just last year the Catholic Church took a minuscule step toward changing its stance on homosexuality. Pope Francis himself declared in his Fiducia Supplicans that same-sex couples may be allowed to be blessed by church ministers, spontaneously and unofficially.
But still not accepted as they are, it seems.
However, this story is not about Rome.
But we need to give some context to the fraught unity dialogue between the Vatican and the Coptic Orthodox Church, which just suspended talks with Rome over that declaration from the pope.
Technically, it wasn’t because of that, according to the Coptic spokesperson, but reading between the lines, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Anyway, the Coptic Church, which is the Egyptian branch of Christianity that precedes Islam, was once the reigning religion in Egypt — during the post-pharaonic period and before the Islamic conquest of North Africa.
