A writ of habeas corpus stuck to the gates of Sodom

Andry Romero, a Venezuelan citizen who has never been accused of or prosecuted for a crime in either Venezuela or the United States, was a guest in the United States. He arrived via a port of entry and sought asylum, claiming that he was not safe in Venezuela because of his sexuality. On August 29, 2024, at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, Romero underwent a “credible fear” interview—the gateway to formal asylum proceedings—which US officials determined he passed. He had done, as best we can tell, everything “right”.

Seized for no scrutable reason by the same government, Andry was sent to CECOT, a prison in El Salvador where he is not a citizen. CECOT is a prison for El Salvadoran gangsters (though heaven only knows how many are actually guilty since there are no trials). There are no confirmed cases of anyone ever being released. 14,000+ are kept in overcrowded conditions. A court directed the plane to be turned around while he was en route, but the pilots were told to continue in breach of the court order by government officials. It is certainly a violation of the guest-right to extradite a guest not accused of any crime to a prison in contravention of our own laws. The relevant classical metaphor would be selling a guest into slavery, seen as like murder, but perhaps a little worse.

The government claimed that Andry’s tattoos saying “Mum” and “Dad” were evidence that he was involved in Tren de Aragua. Tattoos are not used as membership signals for Tren de Aragua, and besides, it is facially absurd to suggest a gay hairdresser was a member of a Venezuelan gang, and wrong to make such a decision without trial.

Since then the Trump administration has claimed it cannot retrieve Andry- from its weak vassal state, to which it pays money for men like Andry to be kept. It thus compounded slaving and inhospitality with contempt of court, perjury, lying to the public, and cowardice.

I wrote this essay because I saw someone call Andry a sodomite because of his sexuality. In truth the man who called him a Sodomite is the real Sodomite for they supported the persecution of the guest, and so: 1. Committed the crimes of Sodom 2. Breached an injunction at the very root of ethics as we understand it, do not mistreat the guest. This is what distinguishes ethics as such from a mere fondness for, and alliance with, one’s extended relatives.

The only direct description of one of the sins of Sodom was trying to rape angels, whom they presumably thought were human visitors to the town:

Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house. They called out to Lot, saying, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can have relations with them!”

Lot went outside to meet them, shutting the door behind him. “Please, my brothers,” he pleaded, “don’t do such a wicked thing! Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them to you, and you can do to them as you please. But do not do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

“Get out of the way!” they replied. And they declared, “This one came here as a foreigner, and he is already acting like a judge! Now we will treat you worse than them.” And they pressed in on Lot and moved in to break down the door.

So the sin of Sodom, which the bible discusses most directly, is unprovoked violence against guests, a sin against hospitality of the gravest sort. Violence against guests has been seen as among the worst crimes for as long as there has been writing, because it is to take advantage of weakness, and moreover, vulnerability, which it is immediately apparent could befall any of us. It is near universally detestable and often analogised to a kind of bestial mockery of humanity.

I talk about Andry because of this odd little symmetry- that he was called a sodomite, but in so doing his accusers show themselves to be sodomites. However, I could have picked any of those subject to illegal rendition, or for that matter, the idealistic students persecuted for peaceful protest against the ongoing Gazan genocide. The principle is the same, although the crime may vary in detail and degree.

I think it’s worth reflecting on the depth of the rejection of human achievement inherent in sending Andry to a torture prison, and supporting the same. The sheer weight of history, of the human story that is here cast aside ‘to own the libs’. It is no exaggeration to say that a world in which we are not supposed to do things like this is the fruit of thousands of years of moralists, of millions who fought in the defence of human dignity. It goes straight to the base of human ethical achievement, because even before we recognised the essential humanity of women, slaves, etc., we knew that it was terribly wrong to punish the guest extra-legally. The guest was the foundation of everything else, of the idea of a morality that went beyond us versus them, and thus of morality itself.

The reason the guest grounds morality is simple enough. The sojourner directly poses this question: Do you believe in the moral status of those you have no prior relationships with? Who are not your friends, relations, or countrymen, who have no support in this place, but are, for all that, people like you? All the moral good we have done in the short existence of our species-or at any rate all the good we have done that goes beyond what a chimp might do, has amounted to a yes. Without a yes, all our technological wonders, our literature, our social goods and niceties fail; everything from constitutions to the supply chains that made the computer you are using are unthinkable without it, without at the very least refraining from violence and betrayal against the innocent traveller, especially one that you yourself have accepted. We could argue about how far the duty of hospitality extends, but no one has ever had a notion of hospitality upon which:

1. A wanderer

2. Who has not committed crimes here or abroad

3. Who claims to be fleeing persecution

4. Who you yourself have accepted as a guest

5. Can be sent to another country for permanent incarceration and slavery without trial in either country

That is a refusal of hospitality altogether in even a residual form. There have been a lot of poor hosts in history. Things this terrible have been done many times, but few cultures would be proud of this or would want to be known for it.

Unlike, say, the rejection of slavery (Gregory of Nyssa- 400s), the history of hospitality is far too old to be known. The idea that we owe at least tolerance and the keeping of our own promises to wanderers is so old as to be present in almost all surviving cultures, and it marks the moment we demanded better of ourselves than endless fighting and murder between ourselves. I suspect it came well before the first homo sapiens sapiens was born. Culturally, it is equated with humanity itself, and its rejection with bestialness. The usual mythic punishment for violating the laws of hospitality is death and worse. Sisyphus was condemned to roll that boulder up the hill for killing his guests. The inhospitable were among the main prey of The Furies.

In the Bible it is written: "You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." and ““You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” The point is reiterated in the New Testament: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”- echoing the inverse of the inhospitality to angels of Sodom. Zeus Xenios killed and punished those who betrayed guests. “Atithi Devo Bhava” in Sanskrit means “The Guest is God”. In an important hadith, it is written: “Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him honor his guest”. For the Norse, failure to acknowledge the guest right could lead to outlawry. From China, Sumeria, pre-colonial North America, and almost all places where a person can stand on the earth, these laws are grave.

No one should speak of Western civilization with Andry’s blood on their lips. A civilization built on Greece and Jerusalem, on Moses and Homer, must reject this. The five books of Moses are a meditation on hospitality and its failure, from Sodom to Pharaoh; the Odyssey attacks poor hospitality from Polyphemus to the Laestrygonians, very arguably, these are the central themes of both authors.

The treatment of Andry is thus A) An expression of nihilism in the sense of a rejection of value-systems “from the root”. B) A rejection of Western civilization C) A rejection of civilization D) A rejection of humanity. E) A rejection of all existing and past major religions. Its defenders are cowards, hypocrites and liars who defend the dreadful with the flippant.

Of course, there have always been those who violate the laws of hospitality, and just as they failed to recognise the humanity of their guests, so they were excised discursively from humanity. That history is littered with such monsters, hatefully remembered, gives no comfort to such people. At Herxheim in Germany, there is a mass neolithic grave- around 1000 individuals who were killed, butchered, and eaten by a community of perhaps 100. One controversial interpretation of the site is that they ambushed travellers. Such figures become half beasts in myths- from Rakshasas to Lycaon (turned into a wolf) to Grendel to Dracula to the aforementioned Polymepheus, to the yokels in Deliverance. While such figures- both historical and mythical- typically do such things for labor, treasure, and flesh, Trump, his cadre of supporters are instead socially cannibalizing Andry largely because they want to upset and shock their own countrymen. Above all else, they seem to want to win an argument with a nagging voice in their own heads that feels nothing but contempt for them.

What is striking about the defenders of this atrocity is that, enabled by social media, they are petulant and impish even as they do and defend these things, demanding respect and acceptance for themselves and their filthy little doings in front of the whole world, in the very moment they do them. Reveling in shock even as they sob that they are being treated so very unfairly. Weak hearts, weak minds, yet arms temporarily strong. They beg for respect with knives in their tongues and hands. We have accounts of such figures in Arendt and the like, but rarely is the simultaneity so exact. These are people who desperately want to be something less than people, and to be affirmed in it.

Habeas Corpus.