Recently I craved a better understanding of a specific word, a curiosity sparks when a word tickles my fancy. The word that triggered my craving this time happened to be “sodomy”. I usually associate that word with sperm from antiquity and other classical vulgarities. What can I say? I’m a classy guy. And to still my craving for “sodomy”, I found relief in its etymology.

I guess we can thank God for having to start this with the Book of Genesis. Whoever wrote the infamous chapter 19 on the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah must have had one hell of a sense of humor. Basically, God will punish the entire city for having a sex party, but if you try to walk away from it, you’ll regret it anyway. The story appears in the Tanakh, the New Testament and the Koran, which gives it a great republication rate for a scary story. Through time, sodomy became the collective term for sexual behavior beyond the normative standards. 

But let’s fast-forward a few millennia to the year 1730. The roots of Sodom had come to be reincarnated in the Dutch town of Utrecht. It was there that the local sacristan, a fellow called Josua, sued a man then of the Dom Church for the act of anal coitus. Utrecht authorities were skeptical of Josua’s word – Josua’s reputation as a notorious hooligan and being sentenced to jail for several fights didn’t help his “cause”. Hooligan or not, Josua’s accusations of men engaging in anal intercourse proved to be true. A few days later, the police discovered a network of homosexual men at the Dom Church. A crackdown on the behavior started in Utrecht and spread over the Netherlands after a soldier and an on-the-sly prostitute thought that outing those in the elite would save their own asses from prosecution. Approximately 70 Dutch homosexuals were sentenced to death – mostly through strangulation. Many more were tortured.

The senseless executions had lasting effects on the language, too. The word for a citizen of the town of Utrecht, Utrechtenaar, became a synonym for homosexual. Unfortunately, not in a flattering way. In the 1930s, the editor-in-chief of Utrecht’s local newspaper tried to rectify this perceived blight on the town’s character and renamed his fellow citizens Utrechter in print. As a result, an Utrechter became the demonym for all Dutch homosexuals as well. A peculiar moment of remembering the massacre finally came in 1999, when Utrecht’s city authorities acknowledged the tragedy through a commemoration stone to the convicted homosexuals, revealed at the Dom Church. The city had finally admitted that these homosexuals were victims. 

The complicated stories of the words “sodomite” and “Utrechter”, the latter having incredibly real and tragic roots, and what they became, has me quite angry. I demand a re-appropriation of the words “sodomite” and “Utrechter” as badges of homo honor. We are sodomites and Utrechters. Reappropriating these words could mean that the city of Utrecht is to be celebrated as one of the world’s early gay meccas. And the Dutchmen who paid with their lives for our kind of fun should then be considered martyrs. May they be given 72 virgins in Sodom and the sex life they deserved. Amen.

Image: Timely punishment depicted as a warning to godless and damnable sinners. Engraving depicting the Dutch massacre of sodomites. Published in Amsterdam, 1731.