Gay Popes: The Embarrassing Death of Paul II

I've been reading Martin Duberman's anthology, "Hidden From History", and in particular James Saslow on Homosexuality in the Renaissance. One of Saslow's key points is that at this time, men who had sex with men were not exclusive - in modern terms, they w0uld more likely be described as "bisexual". In a passage about how the rich and powerful freely made sexual use of their subordinates, I came across this throwaway reference:

Similar patterns prevailed among the clergy and educated humanists. Charges against Paul II and Julius II centred around their seduction of much younger men; Cellini's autobiography records a beautiful and talented youth, Luigi Pulci, who made a career out of service to Roman bishops.

Now, I knew about Julius II  - and for that matter, Julius III - but this was the first sexual gossip I have come across concerning Paul II, so I explored further.  This is what I found: it seems he died while being sodomized by  a page boy.

Paul II died, on July 26, 1471 of a stroke, allegedly whilst being sodomized by a page boy. After his death, one of his successors suggested that he should rather have been called Maria Pietissima, "Our Lady of Pity", because he was inclined to break into tears at times of crisis. Some historians have suggested the nickname was rather due either to Paul propensity to enjoy dressing up in sumptuous ecclesiastical finery, or his likely homosexuality.

Nor was he the only cleric who enjoyed some male company.  Here's Saslow again:

The intimate living arrangements of the all-male clerical world and the opportunities that educational and religious duties afforded for privacy and empiotional intimacy, while not themselves "causes" of of homosexuality, may have contributed circumstantially to their expression.  Priests in fifteenth century Venice and Stuart Sussex were convicted of sex with young parishioners, unpublished records of church trials in Loreto, Italy, in the 1570's detail the activities of a choirboy who slept successively with various older monks......

Remember, while Paul II was enjoying his adventures with co-operative pages, elsewhere in Italy and the rest of Europe, "sodomites" were being burned at the stake for their "sin".

Nor was it only Paul's interest in boys that got my attention.  On his election as pope back 1464, the cardinals tried to rein in papal power (and thus to increase their own), by imposing s range of tight conditions, which:

• bound the future pope to continue the Turkish war;
• forbade him to journey outside Rome without the consent of the cardinals;
• limited the number of cardinals to a maximum of twenty-four,
• all creations of new cardinals were to be made only with the consent of the College of Cardinals.
• Upon taking office, Paul II was to convene an ecumenical council within three years.

Alas, for the best laid plans of mice and men......

Paul II simply ignored these requirements, declaring  that election "capitulations", which cardinals had long been in the habit of affirming as rules of conduct for future popes, could affect a new pope only as counsels, not as binding obligations. He then created a whole slew of new cardinals from his own loyalists.

Now, a half a millenium and more later, why does all this sound so familiar?

(Among his "achievements", he was friendly to Christian scholars; he restored many ancient monuments; made a magnificent collection of antiquities and works of art; built the Palazzo di St. Marco, now the Palazzo di Venezia; and probably first introduced printing into Rome. Paul embellished the costume of the cardinals, and collected jewels for his own adornment.)

Pope Julius III

In his early career in the Church Julius established a reputation as an effective and trustworthy diplomat, and was elected to the Papacy as a compromise candidate when the Papal Conclave found itself deadlocked between the rival French and German factions. As Pope he lost, or failed to show, any of the qualities which had distinguished his previous career, devoting himself instead to a life of personal pleasure and indolence.  His lasting fame, or notoriety, rests rather on his relationship with the 17 year old boy whom he raised to the position of Cardinal-Nephew, and, it was said at the time, with whom he shared his bed

At the start of his reign Julius had desired seriously to bring about a reform of the Catholic Church and to reconvene the Council of Trent, but very little was actually achieved during his five years in office; apologists ascribe the inactivity of his last three years to severe gout.

In 1551, at the request of the Emperor Charles V, he consented to the reopening of the council of Trent and entered into a league against the duke of Parma and Henry II of France (1547–59), but soon afterwards made terms with his enemies and suspended the meetings of the council (1553). (For the history of papal conflicts with councils, see conciliar movement).

The Innocenzo scandal

Julius's particular failures were around his nepotism and favouritism. One notable scandal surrounded his adoptive nephew, Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte, a 13 or 14-year old beggar-boy whom the future Pope had picked up on the streets of Parma some years earlier and with whom he had allegedly fallen in love.On being elected to the Papacy Julius raised the now 17-year old but still uncouth and quasi-illiterate Innocenzo to the cardinalate, appointed him cardinal-nephew, and showering the boy with benefices

Artistic legacy

Julius spent the bulk of his time, and a great deal of Papal money, on entertainments at the Villa Giulia, created for him by Vignola. Julius extended his patronage to the great Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whom he brought to Rome as his maestro di cappella, Giorgio Vasari, who supervised the design of the Villa Giulia, and to Michelangelo, who worked there.

Gays in the Military: Japan

Now that DADT is finally under serious review, it is once again appropriate to consider how other military regimens deal or have dealt with with their queer members – or aspirant members.

As I have noted before, across the EU this is simply not a question at issue.  Gay men and lesbians serve routinely, just as any other servicemen and women. Here in the UK, every July some members routinely join the annual “London Pride” through the streets of London, either in uniform, in military squads, or as individuals in other groups of specific (non- military) interest. In South Africa, the constitution’s non-discrimination clause guarantees that sexual minorities should be able to serve on the same basis as anyone else. Last month, I was intrigued by this report from Peter Toscano, telling of a South African soldier who faced a gender identity issue by transitioning – and the military authorities provided a female officer as mentor and support to help her through the process.

In European history, gay soldiers were prominent in the Greek armies: notably in the Sacred Band of Thebes and its pairs of lovers (where only gay lovers were admitted), but also in other Greek fighting forces, where they were often crucial in creating or defending democracy.

Today, I want to discuss another renowned military culture with a strong homoerotic tradition – the Japanese shoguns and samurai.

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Samurai and Shoguns
For centuries, love and sex between men have been recorded and celebrated at the highest levels of Japanese society, including several emperors, and have especially associated with the military establishment and with the monasteries.
Back in the 12th century, the Japanese Emperor Go- Shirakawa (1156 – 1158), who was a devout Buddhist, fell in love with Fujiwara Nobuori. Then, in 1192,a later emperor Go-Shu named Minamoto Yoritomo as his military commander – i.e. “shogun”, who came to act in the name of the emperor. Yoritomo took as a lover a young officer, Yoshino.
Many succeeding shoguns followed this example, taking as lovers apprentice warriors known as “wakashu”, giving rise to the name for this type of relationship: “wakashudo”. The name given to the younger warrior lovers in these relationships were known as “gomotsu”:

“most of those who storm the battlefield, warding off the enemy and accompanying their lords to the end, are the lords’ male sex-partners.” (p 421)

“As in ancient Greece, Japanese culture idealised shudo as a source of morality and military courage.”

“In our empire of Japan, this way flourished from the time of the great Master Kobo particularly. And in the abbeys of Kyoto and Kamakura, and in the world of the nobles and the warriors, lovers would swear perfect and eternal love …..whether their partners were noble or common, rich or poor, was absolutely of no importance.

During the Ashikaga shogunate, (1338 – 2573), 6 shoguns out of 15 are known to have had wakashu lovers. Add in the succeeding Tokugawa shoguns (1573 - 1837), “at least half” of all shoguns had male love affairs.
eg. Yoshimochi, the fourth Ashikaga shogun (1395 -1428) loved a young samurai Akamatsu Mochisada, to whom he granted three provinces, simply for homosexual favour.
Yoshinori (1429 –1441 ) was a Buddhist monk from age 10 until he became shogun at 35. He invited temple entertainers to share his bed, and planned to bestow three provinces on a young man who tad taken his fancy – but this led to his death.

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The Chinese Emperor and the Cut Sleeve.

For most of Chinese history, male love and sexual relations between men have been celebrated in history and in literature, especially where they involved rulers, poets or scholars. In a highly literate society, careful historical records were kept. With an openness about recording sexual escapades unheard of in the West, these were faithfully recorded and preserved. From the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), three celebrated stories of male loves demonstrate an unselfconscious acceptance of male love that has characterised China throughout most of its subsequent history.

The story of the Cut Sleeve relates to the young Emperor Ai, who ruled from 6 BCE to 1 CE.

According to the Han historian Ban Gu, the emperor once sought to rise when his lover Dong Xian had fallen asleep on the sleeve of his robe. Rather than disturb him, he cut off his sleeve and appeared in public in this mutilated state. Thereafter, reputedly, his courtiers adopted similar abbreviations of clothing to celebrate the love affair.

Two related stories were those of the Shared Peach, and of Long yang and the Fish.

These three stories are repeatedly invoked in Chinese literary and historical works. For two thousand years homosexual love was regularly referred to as "the love of shared peach", or the "cut sleeve", and a favoured lover as a "Long Yang." An important anthology of stories and anecdotes was published in late imperial days was titled simply "Duan xiu pian (Records of the cut sleeve)

Crompton, Louis: Homosexuality and Civilization

Equality Struggle: Lessons From Latin America

Coming as I do from South Africa where I was born and lived for over half a century, I am acutely aware of the White South African tendency to think, speak and write from within a White mental framework, even as they live and work in an overwhelmingly Black country. South Africa though is in some key respects a remarkable microcosm of the world as a whole, and this is one of them: when we in the blogosphere write, many of us do so with a clear mental bias to the USA and Europe, paying scant attention to the remarkable advances elsewhere, notably in Latin America.

Pride Parade, Brazil

How do we explain this paradox of rapid political gains in a region where open intolerance and clear homophobia remain entrenched? What can we learn? Writing in Americas Quarterly (and reprinted at Huffpost, where I came acr0ss it) Javier Corrales has some thoughts on the political processes, which I will get to. First, I want to reflect on the significance to us in the Churches, that he is referring here to Latin America, the home of liberation theology.

Liberation theology, which was born in the slums of Latin America, had major impact on progressive thinking in the years before and immediately after Vatican II, until it met fierce resistance from the JPII/B16 partnership. The core ideas though, remain influential: that the Gospels are firmly on the side of the suffering and oppressed, and that by listening to their experiences, expressed in their own voices, the church can hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us for our times. Although the ideas emerged in the political context of Latin America, these ideas have also spread to other regions and spheres. They were hugely influential in South Africa, where the exponents were prominent in the long struggle for freedom, and also in Asia. It was also a formative influence on feminist theology, which in turn fed into gay and lesbian theology, and then queer theology. It is no coincidence that Marcella Althaus-Reid, one of the foremost exponents of queer theology (which she called "Indecent Theology"), came from South America. Her books exude the flavour and language of life in those Latin slums - and read like real life, far removed from the dry, distant theology that emerges from the Vatican ivory towers.

So, we as queer Christians have many lessons we can learn from the liberation theology of South America. Here is an edited summary of what Cabral has to say about the secular, political lessons:

From America Quarterly:

When most straight people are forced to think about gay people, they usually think of one thing first, sex. A political scientist might focus instead on a different question: how do gays perform in politics? Judged from their political achievements this past decade, the answer is, at least for Latin American gays: they're pretty good.

The political achievements of LGBT groups in Latin America in the 2000s are remarkable. Examples include: decriminalization of homosexuality (now complete in all Spanish-speaking countries and Brazil); laws against sexual-orientation discrimination (Brazil 2000, Mexico 2003, Peru in 2004); extending the same rights and obligations to same-sex couples as heterosexual couples (e.g., Buenos Aires 2002, Colombia in 2009); granting access to health benefits, inheritance, parenting and pension rights to all couples who have cohabited for at least five years (Uruguay); and constitutional bans against discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual identity or HIV status (Ecuador 2008). In the last two years alone the speed of change picked up, with most countries witnessing a significant legal change in the direction of more gay-friendliness, including the now famous Mexico City law recognizing gay marriage and adoption rights. [Please see index of chronology attached.]

Appropriately, he points to some specific lessons we can draw on methods to employ (emphasis is mine):

1. Embrace, not hate, globalization. Whereas the traditional left in Latin America has never quite come to terms with globalization, always responding to it with various forms of negativity ranging from suspicion to extreme repulsion--LGBT movements have adopted a more relaxed response: leverage globalization. LGBT groups systematically use resources provided by globalization and markets to enhance their bargaining leverage.

2. Party hard. A major mistake made by Latin American leftist social movements in the late 1990s was to disdain all things partisan. This generated a lot of unnecessary bad blood between parties and social movements that resulted in too much misallocated energy that helped neither group. LGBTs don't seem to display this hostility toward parties.

3. March hard. Like good old leftists, LGBT groups understand the power of a massive protest, especially in the streets. But their approach to taking the streets is not to go on strike, interrupt traffic during rush hour, shut down schools and hospitals, or vandalize private property, but rather, throw an annual gay pride march.

4. Wage wars peacefully. LGBT groups are engaged in an epic battle against homophobia. Like good old feminists, they are in a life-long struggle on behalf of gender and sexuality rights, and like good old human rights groups, they want equal treatment for all. But LGBT groups avoid two excesses associated with die-hard feminist and human-rights groups. They avoid launching wars against men in general, a problem that besets many feminist claims, and they avoid adopting too punitive an agenda.

5. Think anti-establishment; act intra-establishment. Like good old radicals, LGBT groups are motivated by anti-establishment, even utopian goals. To hope for a world free of homophobia has got to be one of the most idealistic goals of our times, and yet, all LGBT groups are committed to nothing less. LGBT political groups are thus as radical as they come. But their approach to changing the status quo is not exactly all that radical. Rather than destroy the status quo, they seek to work the status quo.

6. In battling conservatives, be fiercely conservative. The most significant development of LGBT politics in the Americas in the 2000s was the eruption of the marriage issue. This was never the top preference of LGBT groups, neither in the United States, where this issue began, nor in Latin America, where this issue has since become quite central in some of the larger countries. In terms of things for which to fight, LBGT across the Americas in the early 2000s would have preferred different battles, such as workplace discrimination. But LGBT groups immediately discovered the political advantage of embracing the marriage issue. It gave them a conservative argument to use against their conservative foes.

7. Draw business lessons. LGBT groups are succeeding in politics also because they are drawing lessons from the business world. From the ad industry, to give one example, LGBT groups have drawn the lesson that nothing sells like the creation of status symbols. Thus, LGBT groups have created the notion that being pro gay is a symbol of being modern, cosmopolitan, and hip.

8. Pop! Pop Culture is the new Populism. Like good political strategists, LGBT movements understand the advantages of appealing to all sectors of the population, and specifically, to both the privileged and the underprivileged. The old left in Latin America tries to create this cross-sectoral political alliance by promising too much from the state, a strategy that often flops and disappoints. LGBT groups have developed a less error-prone approach. They use pop culture as the new populism.

9. This revolution will be YouTubized. LGBTs not only do well as shapers of pop culture, but also as users of the latest medium to transmit pop culture: YouTube. Anytime there is an LGTB-related video out there, LGBT groups share it with hurricane force. Thus, a video about a hate crime in San Juan, or a video of a gay wedding in Argentina, or a video of a homophobic declaration by a bishop in Mexico is instantly watched and deconstructed in the LGBT cyber world.

10. The next gay revolution: Liberté, egalité, (p)maternité. The next LGBT revolution will not only be YouTubized, but it will also involve another remix of traditional and non-traditional icons of the Western world. LGBT groups know that their ideological forté is to focus on old-fashioned principles of the Enlightment--liberty and equality. Much of their success stems from their refusal to privilege one principle over the other, as the hard left and hard right often do, but rather, to always portray the fight for LGBT rights as a struggle for freedom and equality simultaneously. LGBT in the Americas are now launching their next struggle--the fight for p/maternal rights. Once again, they will use iconic emblems (liberty and equality) to transform a traditional aspiration of humans (the desire to raise a family) into a new democratic right: the right of LGBT people to adopt children.

In sum, what we have here is more than just amateurish politics. Like few other leftist social movements, LGBT groups have developed ingenious responses to some of the most pressing issues of our time: unrestrainable globalization (exploit it), strained political parties (respect them), unevenly-performing democratic institutions (fix them and work with the fixed ones), rising religiosity (talk the language), political cynicism (mobilize the young), attention deficit disorder for the written word (YouTubize everything), machismo and homophobia (rebrand the concept of gayness), increasing corporatization of citylife (buycotts). Most members of LGBT groups started out feeling ostracized, but they responded by working the system and building alliances with the system's untouchables. Because they are ideologically on the left and yet their responses to these challenges depart from traditional leftist responses, LGBT groups could very well be considered the first post-left leftists of the twenty-first century.

The strategies of LGBT groups, as with all innovations, are neither infallible nor immune to criticism. There is an inherent contradiction, for instance, in a movement that fights for equality by simultaneously relying on status categories of hipness and cosmopolitanism, to mention just one problem. It is not entirely clear either that all these strategies are especially impactful or appropriate for low-income communities. No doubt, philosophers have ample material here for debate in the years to come.

But there is no question that LGBT groups are emerging as the superstars of politics. Their approaches are succeeding in unexpected ways, especially considering the odds against them. LGBT groups will not win all their battles, but they have already revolutionized the way we ought to think about effective contestation in twenty-first-century democracies. As in so many other domains, LGBT folks in politics have proven to be, yet again, epochal trend-setters.

Read the full article at: Americas Quarterly.

APPENDIX : LGBT Victories in Latin America 2008-2009:

• - February 2008 - Venezuela. The Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court issues a ruling that, on the one hand, recognizes that discrimination against sexual orientation is unconstitutional, but on the other hand, states that there does not exist constitutional protection for same-sex partnerships; only the legislature can confer such protections.
• - March, 2008 - Nicaragua. A reform of the Penal Code legalizes same-sex relations and ends an anti-sodomy law.
• - March 2008 - Brazil. Police estimate that more 3 million people participated in the 12th annual Gay Pride March; both the Sao Paulo government and Petrobras sponsor the march.
• - June 2008 - Brazil. President Lula launches the "First National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Trasnsexuals in Brasilia.
• - June 2008 - Cuba. New president, Raúl Castro, authorizes offering free sex-change operations for qualifying citizens, a policy change advocated by Cuba's National Center for Sex Education (presided over by President Raúl Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro).
• - August 2008 - Panama. Government repeals a 1949 law criminalizing gay sex.
• - September 2008 - Ecuador. Voters approve the country's 20th constitution. Article 11 bans discrimination on the basis of "gender identity," "sexual orientation," and "HIV status" (but still defines marriage as the "union between man and woman," Art. 68).
• - December 2009 - United Nations. The United Nations General Assembly affirms that international human rights protections include sexual orientation and gender identity. The statement is read to the Assembly by Argentina; 12 of the 66 countries that signed on were Latin American.
• - January 2009 - Mexico. In a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court rules in favor of a man-to-woman transsexual requesting the reissuing of a new birth certificate that would not reveal the change in her sexual identity.
• - January 2009 - Colombia. The Constitutional Court upholds a lower court opinion that same-sex couples must be accorded the same benefits as heterosexual couples in common-law marriages. This ruling grants same-sex couples equal pension, survivor, immigration and property rights.
• - February 2009 - Bolivia. New constitution bans discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" (but only recognizes "marriage" and "free unions" as occurring "between a woman and a man").
• - February 2009 - Chile. The Unified Movement for Sexual Minorities (MUMS) organizes the first-ever mass wedding for sexual minorities in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral.
• - September 2009 - Uruguay. With a 17-6 vote the legislature approved a bill that ends restricting adoptions to married couples, what many interpreted as paving the way for adoptions by same-sex couples. Earlier, Archbishop Nicolás Cotugno of Montevideo condemned the bill as going "against human nature itself, and consequently, ... against the fundamental rights of the human being as a person."
• - November 2009 - Argentina. A Buenos Aires judge ruled that it was unconstitutional for civil law to stipulate that a marriage can exist only between a man and a woman. A marriage licence was then granted to Alex Freyre and José María Di Bello. This became the most controversial marriage in modern Argentine history, with debates on TV, marches, and hostile posters on billboards across the city. The archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio, publicly criticized the city's mayor, Mauricio Macri, for not appealing the judge's decision to grant the marriage licence.
• - December 2009 - Mexico. In a 39-to-20 vote with five abstentions, Mexico City's Legislative Assembly approved marriage rights for same-sex couples. In a separate vote, the Assembly also approved adoption rights by a vote of 31 to 24 with nine abstentions.

Source: Corrales, Javier and Mario Pecheny, eds. 2010. The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: a Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Prostitution in the Service of the Lord

From Australia, we have a story of a father who allegedly forced his 14 year old son to have sex with a prostitute, because he suspected the boy was gay. There is nothing new in enlisting the services of prostitutes to "cure" gay men: church and state alike have at times encouraged (female) prostitution in the defence of public morals.

"Augustine had argued that prostitution was a necessary evil that the state should tolerate to protect wives and virgins, and Aquinas had endorsed this view in his Summa".

-L Crompton, "Homosexuality & Civilization"

Backed by the authority of these eminent theologians, fifteenth century Venice licenced the activity, and the church accepted it. Crompton notes that Venice at that time was internationally renowned for its courtesans, and famous for its sexual opportunities. That emphatically did not include same-sex opportunities. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, several hundred men were executed for sexual activities with men, mostly by burning at the stake. At the heart of Venice's tourist route, the little square in front of beside the Doge's palace, beside St Mark's square, was the site of "more executions for sodomy than anywhere else in Europe, before Hitler." (Crompton)

Venice was not alone in supporting prostitution while prosecuting "sodomites." In Florence, where there were far more prosecutions than in Venice, the sentences were at least less severe. They were also more explicit in their support of prostitution as a remedy. Where Venice created a special magistracy to hunt down and prosecute sodomites, the Florence counterpart,which was called the "Office of Decency", was specifically set up to extirpate the vice of sodomy. But the method was to set up brothels, and to recruit women to work in them. Nearby, in Lucca, similar tactics were adopted, with the dedicated sodomy police specially authorized to promote female prostitution.

These examples show yet again how, in defence of their stand against the supposed "horror" of loving relationships between men, the church , and the secular authorities which relied on its support, were willing to ignore all respect for the dignity of women, and the pretence that sexual relationships could only be approved in marriage, for procreation.

The bigger picture, of the role of the church in the horrific executions of many thousands of men and women for loving relationships, is one I shall return to again.

********************

This is part of the news story that prompted the above. (Read the full report at "The Morning Bulletin").

Father 'forced son into sex with hooker'

A ROCKHAMPTON dad is accused of forcing his son to have sex with a prostitute because he feared the 14-year-old was gay.

During a family barbecue around Christmas time in 2007, the dad allegedly phoned a prostitute and arranged to meet her at a motel on Yaamba Road, North Rockhampton.

The father drove his son to the motel and paid the prostitute in $50 notes.

The prostitute took the boy into a motel room while the father waited on a balcony.

The dad walked in and out of the room to check on his son and told him he wanted to see a used condom as proof that they’d had sex. After the boy and the prostitute had finished the dad took his son home.

A magistrate yesterday found there was enough evidence against the father for him to stand trial for the rape of his son.

Giving evidence during the committal hearing in Rockhampton Magistrates Court, the boy’s mother testified she questioned the youngster about where his father had taken him.

Hijra Protest, Islamabad

Last month Indian authorities agreed to list eunuchs and transgender people by using the term "others", on official documents. I would have liked to draw attention to it then, but did not. Now, having missed the opportunity once, I get a second chance to take note of a major legal breakthrough for trans and other gendered people in Asia, as Pakistan is now headed in a similar direction, this time by court decision. In both India and Pakistan, the "Hijras" represent a distinct social group, but this will have significance and run-on effects beyond just these two countries.

Hijra Protest, Islamabad

From BBC News:

Pakistani eunuchs to have distinct gender

Pakistan's Supreme Court says eunuchs must be allowed to identify themselves as a distinct gender in order to ensure their rights.

The eunuchs, known as "hijras" in Pakistan, are men castrated at an early age for medical or social reasons. The court said they should be issued with national identity cards showing their distinct gender. The government has also been ordered to take steps to ensure they are entitled to inherit property.

'Respect and identity'

There are estimated to be about 300,000 hijras in Pakistan and they are generally shunned by the largely Muslim conservative society. They tend to live together in slum communities, surviving through begging and by dancing at weddings and carnivals. A hijra association has welcomed the order, saying it is "a major step giving respect and identity in society". Indian authorities last month agreed to list eunuchs and transgender people by using the term "others", distinct from males and females, on electoral rolls and voter identity cards, after a long-running campaign by the members of the community.