Any evidence that gays constituted "rivals to its monopoly over faith"?  I suspect it was more a case of scapegoating/deflecting tensions against a vulnerable minority.  While there may have been individual cases of homosexuality being used as a stick to beat a rival for power, my understanding is that gays did not become an identifiable sub group/sub culture until much later, and never constituted a threat to the Church's hold on the faithful (until now!).

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