Dante on Hell for Pride Month

Why sodomy is worse than murder

Dante's 'Divine Comedy' is the greatest poem of the Christian West. We need its lessons on sexual morality now more than ever. When I took a course on it from the Italian literature department while studying English literature, I didn’t know I’d end up spending so much time writing about sexual morality to defend traditional masculinity. For Pride month, here’s why he puts sodomites deeper in Hell than murderers.

Dante’s realm of the damned starts in the 2nd circle of Hell. Violent winds whirl lustful heterosexuals around like helpless birds. A disgusting swill swamps gluttons and drunkards. These sinners couldn’t restrain their natural passions, so natural things punish them now.

But the lustful heterosexuals were merely incontinent, not violent. Like the gluttons and the wrathful, they were weak-willed. But deeper in Hell come those who wilfully rebelled AGAINST God’s order. And here’s where the demons and hellfire start…

Beyond a wall guarded by fallen angels, Dante finds sinners who insisted there was nothing after death. To sin badly, you FIRST have to delude yourself into thinking there’s no hell. "Just enjoy yourself!" Starting with Alexander the Great, the murderers come next..

Like a common robber, Alexander killed for gain. So they both boil in blood — but Alexander (the mass murderer) up to his eyebrows and the robber only to his ankles. Next come the suicides. They violated not only love of neighbour but ALSO the law of self-preservation.

Deeper still in Hell than the murders or the suicides are the sodomites. They violated not only love of neighbour and self but also family and community by sterility. So now they run on the same burning sands as the blasphemers, who assaulted spiritual community.

Dante’s friend Brunetto Latini represents the sodomites. He says he wanted to live on through fame, not children. These sodomite intellectuals raised themselves UP in the world using their talents, but they pulled each other DOWN into Hell.

Dante also shows the sodomites running in a large group. They aren’t PAIRED like the heterosexuals whirling in the storm winds. This is because sodomites have a big POOL of partners. The sodomite Brunetto laments that they are a "wretched mob.”

The sodomites are never allowed to stand still on the burning sand. As in life, they are compulsively restless in Hell. Because of the flakes of fiery rain falling on them, they jerk their hands constantly. It's not just camp flapping but spiritual torment. A sodomite colleague once told me at least he’d stay fit and get a tan, ironically showing exactly the obsessing with appearance that’s an aspect of the restlessness.

After the circle of the violent come the lowest circles of FRAUD. These sinners misused their intelligence to deceive. Unlike the simple frauds, however, the compound frauds also violated a trust. Judas is the lowest of all sinners. But paedophiles belong with him.

Like Judas, paedophiles belong in the deepest circle of Hell. They betray a special trust — usually either host-guest or parent-child. They use fraud to deceive an innocent owed protection. The centre of Hell is not fire but ICE: cold, merciless manipulation.