[quote]flipcollar wrote:
It has not been tolerated by many societies in history? That’s just plain false. Crack open a book or two and read about Ancient Greece, the Renaissance period in Europe, the entire history of Asia, ancient Egypt, and ancient Rome, just to name some off the top of my head.
Just because you don’t know about homosexuality in world history doesn’t mean it’s not there.
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NOT TO JUMP in the middle of this, but the bit about Rome, Greece, Renaisance Europe, and Egypt tolerating homosexuality is a modern myth.
Typicaly ancient societies tolerated being the active (pitching) person, but the passice (catcher) was ostracized, would lose citizenship, and could even be put to death. The “catchers” were universally slaves or like class.
Breaking this down a bit by country (I’ve cut-and-pasted for speed – sorry):
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Rome (pagan Rome – pre 100CE)
Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves, prostitutes, and “entertainers” — whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of “infamia,” excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free.
Male sodomy of another male was seen as an act of dominance/submission, not so much “sex” – think prisoners and dogs.
With this idea of dominence in mind, sex among Roman soldiers or other free men (pitching or catching), violated the Roman decorum against intercourse with another freeborn male — becaue it was improper to be dominant over another freeman (or to allow yourself to be dominated).
(Sara Elise Phang, Roman Military Service" Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge University Press, 2008 p. 93).
A soldier who allowed himself to be sodomized or gave oral sex to another soldier was put to death.
(Thomas A.J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford University Press, 1998 p. 40.)
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Greece
Greeks were effectively the same as Rome, with certain caveats — again penetrative sex was seen as demeaning for the passive partner, and outside the socially accepted norm.
(Martha C. Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 1999 pp. 268, 307-308, 335)
The caveat is that Greeks preferred to commit what we would now call pedophilia, raping young boys — the cut off being when they first grew facial hair.
(Gloria Ferrari, Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece (University of Chicago Press, 2002 p. 144-5).
I can’t say any responsible person would want to follow the Greek example of molesting boys, and the romatization of the same is disgusting.
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Egypt
Of course, today, homosexuality is punishable by death in Eqypt, as it is in most moslim countries.
Evidence of acceptance of homosexuality in ancient Eqypt is scarce, if it exists.
There are several stories/myths involving homosexual acts by Eqyptian “gods,” but they involve dominance/trickery/enslavement.
Not exactly evidence of acceptance.
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Renaissance period in Europe
There certainly was homosexual sodomy in Europe, chiefly of the model where young apprentices “paid” for their apprenticeship by submiting to sodomy by thier masters, but it was not accepted in this heavily Roman Catholic period, and it was consistently illegal.
In fact, some of the first “labor regulation” was to protect appretences from sexual predation by their masters.
Florence was the San Fransico of the day, but sodomy was certainly illegal and not socially acceptable. For example, in Renaisance France, first-offending sodomites lost their testicles, second offenders lost their member, and third offenders were burned.
By the 1500s, sodomy was consitently a capital offence, punishable by death.
