Monday, June 8, 2015

Clement of Alexandria on Effeminacy in 195CE

Luxury has deranged all things; it has disgraced man. A luxurious niceness seeks everything, attempts everything, forces everything, coerces nature. Men play the part of women, and women that of men, contrary to nature; women are at once wives and husbands: no passage is closed against libidinousness; and their promiscuous lechery is a public institution, and luxury is domesticated. …

Such was predicted of old, and the result is notorious: the whole earth has now become full of fornication and wickedness. I admire the ancient legislators of the Romans: these detested effeminacy of conduct; and the giving of the body to feminine purposes, contrary to the law of nature. … What reason is there in the law’s prohibiting a man from “wearing woman’s clothing “? Is it not that it would have us to be manly, and not to be effeminate neither in person and actions, nor in thought and word? …


The apostle very firmly assails them. “Be not deceived; neither adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers,” and whatever else he adds to these, “shall inherit the kingdom of God.” And if we are called to the kingdom of God, let us walk worthy of the kingdom, loving God and our neighbor. … For the love meant is the love of God. “And this is the love of God,” says John, “that we keep His commandments.”

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