Netflix picked up the second season of Borgia (not the Showtime one) and it's been my new addiction, just like the last season was. The show has a lot of flaws and I somewhat completely hate Cesare Borgia, but I love watching the way the power/religion/politics places out. A Pope who has children as bargaining chips . . well, there is a good reason why they decided to end that. It gives him way too much power.
In the second episode of this season, the issue of homosexuality plays a key part in one of the plots. Early in the episode, the Pope has a man executed for being a 'Sodomite.' The execution is very brutal, involving torture in front of a crowd. It also gives the Pope's enemies some ideas. The Pope's closest friend and adviser, Francesc Gacet, is a man they really wish to be rid of. Gacet is practical, smart, and politically savvy. He is really the strength behind Rodrigo Borgia's power and without him, Rodrigo would probably fall.
The enemy Cardinals arrange to have Gacet accused of Sodomy in public. A young attractive bishop comes forward and claims that Gacet raped him. As the crowd is going wild, Gacet advises the Pope to have go ahead and put him in prison and let a trial happen. The Pope does as he says, vowing to make the charge go away.
Rodrigo Borgia is a manipulative man, so of course he manages to free his best friend in a way to where he is clearly innocent of the charge. It seems that everything is fine.
Later that night, Gacet informs the Pope that while he'd never had sex with the man accusing him of it, he was, in fact, a homosexual and always had been. Rodrigo told him that it couldn't be true because he just didn't have time to do that kind of thing. When Gacet insisted that his thoughts were filled with this sin, the Pope told him that the were not and to be quiet.
Gacet is speared, but you get the sense that he's conflicted about that. The Pope will kill gay people if he has no use for them, but because Gacet is his trusted adviser and basically his best friend, he is willing to overlook it. In a way, this is even more horrific, because it means that the Pope is only concerned with justifying torture and death of others if it doesn't involve him personally.
Even all these years later, this war between religion and homosexuality is still going on. People still use religion to justify their violence towards gay people. They use it to justify denying them equal rights. They use it as their excuse to form protests and sprew hatred. They use it to feed their own hate. And yet, when many of them are confronted with the fact that people around them, people they love, just happen to be homosexual, many of them change their tune and suddenly embrace the sodomy.
I get the fact that sometimes we don't understand something until it's in our own back yard. Maybe it does take realizing your son is gay before you get why gay marriage is okay. And honestly, embracing the idea is better than exiling this person from your life, just over an ideal.
At the same time, you have to face the fact that you've spent all this time talking about how horrible homosexuality is, saying who knows what about it, all the while this person you loved was sitting there, knowing they were a part of what you were condemning. It's probably a very sickening feeling when you realize how much harm you've been causing. No amount of 'no, honey, I didn't mean YOU when I said that' is going to really change things. The damage is done.
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