(Historical data concerning the history of homosexuality
The two most principal areas of historical inquiry which have been studied by historians in relation to ancient occurrences of homosexuality are Greek homosexuality and Roman homosexuality (see also Romans 1) but to which other societies, ancient to modern, are included.
It should be noted here that most of the research for the information referenced here comes through pro-homosexual writers, who sometimes interpret obscure or indefinite data as positively denoting homosexuality, while tending to render negative comments on homosexuality as being due to homophobia. And or as Boswell)
[18] they may seek to contrive a history more usable to them,[19] (which they are not alone in doing). Some assert that in some cases, pro-homosexual authors have extrapolated prevalent homosexuality out of little real evidence.[20] The inclusion of these sources is for reference purposes, and not as recommended reading. However, much clear data is provided which testifies to some degree of acceptance of homoeroticism (mostly pederastic), concomitant with idolatry. Biblically, this also included Israel at times when they forsook worship of "the living and true God" (1Thes. 1:9) of the Bible, who uniquely forbade such. A primary source on the subject of history and homosexuality, pro homosexual author Dr. David E. Greenberg, noted that, other than the Jews, "none of the archaic civilizations prohibited homosexuality per se",[21] (though he himself forced homosexuality into the story of David and Jonathan).
Dynes and Donaldson also note that the literary and archaeological records of Mediterranean societies have overall revealed that the ancient patterns of same-gender sexual behavior
did not, for the most part, conform to the androphile model of modern industrial societies — a model that involves pairs of adults, both considered to be of the same gender, of roughly equal social status, and reciprocal and their behavior. Instead they generally adhered to gender-and-age differentiated patterns, Egypt being a partial exception. The best known types are the male temple prostitution of the near east and the institutionalized pederasty of Greece. [22]
Homosexuality in Greece
The largest amount of material pertinent to the history of homosexuality is from Greece, from notable philosophers and writers such as Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, and pseudo-Lucian, to plays by Aristophanes, to Greek artwork and vases. James B. De Young notes that homosexuality seems to have existed more widely among the ancient Greeks more than among any other ancient culture. The main form of this was pederasty, a custom that seems to have been practiced mostly among the upper classes, in which an older man (the erastest) would make a young free boy (the eromenos) his sex partner, and become his mentor. This was regulated by the State as an institution. However, this practice was usually a supplement to marriage,[23] and thus is seen as being done by bisexuals. The practice of pederasty is mentioned in Homer's Illiad, and is evidenced to have existed at least 4500 years ago in ancient Egypt.[24]
For a more detailed treatment, see Greek Homosexuality.
Homosexuality in Rome
After Greece, Rome is the next most significant entity in the history of homosexuality, and this cultural practice in both is understood by scholars as being what the apostle Paul is immediately referring to in condemning homosexuality in Romans 1.[25] Romans emperors were sometimes the most notorious examples of homosexuality. Edward Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote that "of the first fifteen emperors Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct (not homo-sexual].[26]
Juvenal (60-140 A.D.) and Martial (c. 40-102 A.D.) wrote of formal marriage unions between homosexuals. Some moral philosophers around the time of the apostle Paul questioned the merits of homosexual behaviors. Seneca (4 B.C-65 A.D.), a statesmen and tutor to the homosexual emperor Nero, reproved homosexual exploitation, such which which forced a slave to shave his beard, and dress and behave as a women,[27] though Nero himself castrated a boy, and dressed him as female and married him, after killing his wife.[28] Dio Chrysostom (A.D. 40) likewise condemned such exploitation, and commended natural intercourse" and union of the male and female.[29] Later, in 226 B.C., the Lex Scantinia (149 B.C.) is understood to have penalized homosexual practice.
According to psychiatrist and sexual historian Norman Sussman, "In contrast to the self-conscious and elaborate efforts of the Greeks to glorify and idealize homosexuality, the Romans simply accepted it as a matter of fact and as an inevitable part of human sexual life. Pederasty was just another sexual activity. Many of the most prominent men in Roman society were bisexual if not homosexual. Julius Caesar was called by his contemporaries every woman's man and every man's woman."[30]
Many see Rome realizing a deleterious change in aspects of social morality beginning in the second century B.C, due to the influence and adaptation of "Asiatic luxury and Greek manners", including homosexuality, resulting in a "moral crises from which she never recovered (historian D. Earl)[31]
Edward Gibbon, stated in his “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire� that marital faithfulness in the Roman Empire was virtually unknown, and that “The dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians.�[32]
Homosexuality in China
Art, poetry, historical and legal documents infer or attest to the practice of homosexuality in China (the type or degree of which is often somewhat dependent on the bias of the researcher, with most major works today being by by pro homosexual writers). The earliest references to such are from the period of the Han Dynasty (Western: 202 B.C. to 9 A.D; Eastern: 25 to 22 A.D.) The Da-le-fu by Bo Xingjian (775-826) in an official ancient medical text History of the Former Hans Dynasty is seen by some to speak of homoeroticism, especially among emperors, in highly euphemistic language.
Heissig states that in the fourteenth century, the Chinese found homosexual Tibetan religious rites practiced at the court of a Mongol emperor.[33]
Sex historian Arno Karlen reports that "two Arab travelers trekked through India and China m the ninth century, and in tneir chronicle said the Chinese were addicted to sodomy and even performed it in their shrines."[34]
During the Song dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) Tao Gu noted in his Records of the Extraordinary
Everywhere people single out Nanhai for its 'Misty Moon Worships, a term referring the custom of esteeming lewdness. Nowadays those in the capital those who sell themselves number more than ten thousand . As to the men who offer their bodies for sale, then enter and leave place shamelessly. A law later enacted during Xhenghe reign (1111-1118) which punished male prostitutes with "one hundred strokes of a bamboo rod and a fine of fifty thousand in cash." However, it seems to have fallen into disuse over time.
Male prostitutes were known to have their own god, Tcheou--Wang.[35]
During the latter part of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), Xie Zhaozhe, (1567-1624) - a contemporary of Shakespeare - recorded in his encyclopedia, the Wu za zu (Fivehold Miscellany),
In today's Peking, there are young boys singers who go to all the gentry's wine parties, and no matter how many official prohibitions there are, everybody uses them.
A fuller description of homosexual relations, and one that may be likened to same-sex marriage, is found in the writings of Ming commentator Shen Defu (1578-1642), which tells of homosexual relationships which sometimes were part of the family order in the southern province of Fujian. He states that among all social ranks and physical attractiveness, Fujianese men found a same sex partner of their status, with the older becoming a "brother" to the younger (a custom termed nanfeng) and paying for his later marriage to a female. "And that at the age of thirty they are still sleeping in the same bed like husband and wife." However, this is not known to have lasted more than twenty years, as they were to later marry a female.
In the latter part of the 16th century Roman Catholic missionaries commented on the perverse homosexual practices they saw in China. In a book published in 1569, Dominican Gaspar da Cruz attributed the earthquakes which had recently shaken China (its most fatal earthquake in history was in 1556[4]) to being due to their indifference to sodomy. Shortly after his arrival in 1583, noted Jesuit astronomer Matteo Ricci found that male prostitution was lawful and practiced openly:
there are public streets full of boys dressed up like prostitutes. And there are people who buy these boys and teach them to play music, sing and dance. And than, gallantly dressed up and made up with rouge like women, these miserable men are initiated into this terrible vice.[36]
He also wrote to his superior lamenting "the horrible sin to which everyone here is much given, and about which there seems to be no shame or impediment." No long before his death in 1610, he grieved that such was "neither forbidden by law nor thought to be illicit, nor even a cause of shame. It is spoken of in public, practiced everywhere, without there being anyone to prevent it."
An official Chinese historian named Mao Qiling (1623- 1716) wrote in a supplementary historical account regarding Emperor Wuzong (1491-1521), that had a passion of military uniforms and maneuvers, and broke precedent by sleeping at his new Leopard House, which accommodated his generals. He had so close friendship with one general in particular,that is recorded that they sleep and rose with together (tong wo-qi).
Open sexual expression was expanded under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), but increasing moral disorder, and invasion by warriors who captured Peking in 1644, establishing the Qing Dynasty, worked to somewhat morally awaken China, and resulted in laws for moral reform. Chinese conservatives labored to restore the more chaste values of orthodox Confucianism, while the Manchu conquerors sought to discourage fornication, including sexual offenses between males. The second Qing Emperor, Kang Xi, was an esteemed ruler who was hostile to pederasty and child prostitution, and declared that he himself was not waited on by "pretty boys."
In 1679 extensive legislation was written and confirmed in the Qing code of 1740, which made the abduction and rape of boys under twelve a capital crime, and penalized consensual sodomy with one hundred strokes of the heavy bamboo, and the wearing of the cangue (a flat wooden board) for one month. As in Biblical law, it appears that actually being caught in the act was required, and enforcement seems to have been rather selective. However, Kang Xi's own son and heir to the throne was found to be sexually involved with palace officials, and was executed. [37]
Despite these reforms, later some Qing rulers are said to have engaged in homosexual relationships, and China saw a resurgence of homosexuality. Even during the reign of Kang Xi a contemporary writer wrote that "it is considered bad taste not to have singing boys around when inviting guests for dinner." Art began to abandoned its discrete nature in relation to sexual expression, and began to make the sexual act explicit.[38]
Englishman John Barrow, secretary to the Macartney Embassy of 1793, and later the founder of the Royal Geographical Society, stated in Travels in China (1806),
Many of the first officers of state seemed to make no hesitation in publicly avowing [homosexuality]!"<ref<Sir John Barrow. Travels in China. T. Cadell & W. Davics (London), 1804 Cited In Karlen, op. cit . p. 229</ref>
Barrows also wrote that the exclusion of women had the effect of
"promoting that sort of connexion which, being one of the greatest violations of nature, ought to be considered among the first of moral crimes - a connexion that sinks a man many degrees below the brute. The commission of this detestable and unnatural act is attended to with so little sense of shame, or feeling of delicacy, that many first officers of state seemed to make no hesitation in publicly avowing it. Each of these officer is attended to by his pipe-bearer, who is generally a handsome boy, from fourteen to eighteen years of age, and is always well dressed.[39]
In Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality, Dennis Prager also notes that the low state of women has been linked to widespread homosexuality, and writes that a French physician reported from China in the nineteenth century that, "Chinese women were such docile, homebound dullards that the men, like those of ancient Greece, sought courtesans and boys."
In contrast, a commentator of Napoleonic France provided commendation for such.[40]
Sir Richard Burton summed up the Chinese in these words: "their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats and other animals is equaled only by their pederasty."[41]
Eberhardt understands that "Chinese Buddhism considered homosexuality to be a minor transgression." [42]
A western visitor to the port city of Tianjin estimated that there were approximately eight hundred boys in its thirty-five brothels, trained for pederastic prostitution.[43]
However, homoeroticism apparently was not a religious part of Chinese folk religion, as "the Chinese were shocked and indignant at the homoerotic Tibetan rites practiced at the court of Shun-Ti Heissig, the last Mongul emperor in the fourteenth century."[44]
During the Chinese cultural revolution (1966 - 76), government considered homosexuality to be a social offense or a form of mental illness, and homosexuality is said to been punished more than in all previous times.
In 1989 the "Chinese Classification and Diagnostic Criteria of Mental Disorders", released by the Chinese Psychiatric Association, defined homosexuality as a "psychiatric disorder of sexuality", providing more tolerance toward this class of sin.[45]
Homosexuality in Japan
Greenberg understands that during the feudal age in Japan, homosexuality flourished among military aristocracy, "with samurai sometimes fighting duels on behalf of their lovers",[46] and that Japanese Buddhism appears to have disregarded homosexuality.[47]
Buddhist monks are said to not have allowed intercourse with women, though "male partners were not explicitly prohibited, and that many monks took youthful male lovers, a practice that was considered quite acceptable..." "Legal codes of the period do not even mention homosexuality." [48]
Homosexuality among the Celts
Aristotle stated that the Celts esteemed homosexuality."[49] In addition, Diodorus Siculus wrote in the first century B.C., "The men are much keener on their own sex; they lie around on animal skins and enjoy themselves, with a lover on each side. Furthermore, this isn't looked down on, or regarded in any way disgraceful."[50]
Homosexuality among the America Indians
Pre-Columbian Americas: In North America, the Spanish and French explorers and missionaries who visited the New World quickly became aware of widespread Indian transvestism (men dressing as women) and homosexuality. Writing in 1776, Father Charlevoix, a Jesuit priest, found the Iroquois to have “an excess of effeminacy and lewdness. There are men unashamed to wear women’s clothing and to practice all the occupations of women, from which follows corruption that I cannot express. They pretend that its usage comes from their religion. These effeminates never marry and abandon themselves to the most infamous passions.�
Greenberg reports that there was widespread male homosexuality among the Mayans in Central America: “A strong homosexual component pervades close friendships of young married Mayan men as well as bachelors in southern Mexico and among Guatemalan Indians.�
Among the Aztecs, “Sodomy was virtually universal, involving even children as young as six. Cortez also found sodomy to be widespread among the Aztecs, and admonished them to give it up – along with human sacrifice and cannibalism. One of the Aztec gods, Xochipili, was the patron of male homosexuality and male prostitution.�[51]
Homosexuality in ancient Mesopotamia
Certain other ancient societies provide some evidence in regards to the history of homosexuality. Gordon J Wenham in "The Old Testament Attitude to Homosexuality" refers to Homosexualität Reallexicon der Assyriologie (4. 559-68) as a prime source, and states,
From iconographic evidence dating from 3000 BC to the Christian era it is clear that homosexual practice was an accepted part of the Mesopotamian scene. This conclusion is confirmed by many literary and legal texts in which homosexual activity is mentioned.[52]
Within the Middle Assyrian Laws (c. 1450-1250 B.C.) does seem to provide one or two relevant laws. MAL 19 provides a penalty for false accusation of passive homosexuality, requiring the false witness to be beaten, fined and suffer a mark of shame on him.[53]
MAL 20 is more specific, "If a man has lain with his male friend and a charge is brought and proved against him, the same thing shall be done to him and he shall be made a eunuch."[54]
Wenham comments,
This is what Cardascia, Les lois assyriennes, 134-35 suggests. Bottero and Petschow in Reallexicon der Assyriologie 4, 462 are more dogmatic. 'The verb niku/ náku ... implies a certain constraint on the part of the protagonist. Its literal translation would be "to do violence to" and almost "violate". It is precisely because the victim submits to violence that obliges its author to submit in his turn to violence himself.[55] Unlike in the Bible where both parties are guilty and are to be punished, (Lv. 18:22; 20:13) here only the active male partner is punished.
He further states,
Nor were homosexuals shut away in Mesopotamia. There were homosexual cult prostitutes, who took part in public processions, singing, dancing, wearing costumes, sometimes wearing women's clothes and carrying female symbols, even at times pretending to give birth...Sometimes they are called 'dogs'. 'It therefore appears that these types of person, as in other places and periods including our own, formed a shady sub-culture where all sorts of ambiguities, mixtures and transformations were possible.[56]
Greenberg states that in Mesopotamiam Hammurabi, the author of the famous legal code bearing his name, had male lovers (Greenberg, p. 126)
In addition, it is understood that Assyrian men prayed for divine blessing on homosexual love.[57] This is seen to stand in contrast to the Bible, which nowhere offers sanction for homoeroticism, in contrast to its explicit Divine blessing on heterosexual relations in marriage. The Bible is also seen to separately forbid homosexual activity near the Temple, (Dt. 23:17,18) this likely being homosexual prostitutes, called dogs.
The Reallexicon der Assyriologie concludes:
Homosexuality in itself is thus nowhere condemned as licentiousness, as immorality, as social disorder, or as transgressing any human or divine law. Anyone could practise it freely, just as anyone could visit a prostitute, provided it was done without violence and without compulsion, and preferably as far as taking the passive role was concerned, with specialists. [58]
The Bible states that because of such immorality the Lord drove out the people whose land Israel possessed. (Dt. 9:3-5; 18:12)
Among the Hittites, Law 189 states, If a man violates his daughter it is a capital crime. If a man violates his son, it is a capital crime. However, the violation here may be more due to its incestuous nature, than the homosexual aspect.[59]
Homosexuality among the Jews
As Leviticus 18 and other texts evidence, homosexuality was forbidden among the Jews, with violation being a capital offense. In providing Israel with a superior moral standard, as well in other areas, God invoked the example of immoral nations, fitted for destruction, as manifesting the behavior which Israel was not to follow. This means of contrast, which does not limit the forbidden behavior to only that culture, is seen in the New Testament as well. (Rm. 1:19-32; Eph. 5:1-7) 1Pt. 4:2-4)
Israel was established as an overall victorious nation as they overall followed God, as He promised. (Dt. 28) However, when Israel backslid into idolatry then homosexuality was seen among them, though it is not evidenced to have degenerated past the stage of idolatrous ceremony, (Dt. 23:17,18) into pederasty and household homoeroticism. What was sanctioned by the temple set the moral example for the rest of the nation, and when Israel responded to the chastening of God under good kings, then cultic prostitutes were driven out of the land. (1Kg. 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2Kg. 23:7)
The terrible chastisements Israel suffered, after being warned by God for hundreds of years to return to obedient faith, appears to have cured them from outward idolatry, and homosexuality in any form. The author of the Syballine Oracles, thought to be an Egyptian Jew (approx. 163 - 45 B.C.), compared Jews to the other nations, stating,
The Jews "are mindful of holy wedlock, and they do not engage in impious intercourse with male children, as do Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Romans, specious Greece and many nations of others, Persians and Galatians and all Asia."[60]
In contemporary times, according to sex researcher sex historian Arno Karlen Alfred Kinsey stated that "homosexuality was phenomenally rare among Orthodox Jews" (even though his flawed research otherwise exaggerated the number of homosexuals).
60. ↑ Greenberg, p. 200, footnote 88
↑ A Further Look at Pro-Homosexual Theology, by Derrick K. Olliff and Dewey H. Hodges
↑ Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe
↑ Gay Marriage: Reimagining Church History Robin Darling Young
↑
http://homosexualityinancientgreece.wordpress.com/
↑ Greenberg, "The Construction of Homosexuality" p. 124
↑ Wayne R. Dynes, Stephen Donaldson Homosexuality in the ancient world, p. 7
↑ Dover, K.J., Greek Homosexuality (Harvard University Press, 1989, as summarized in "Homosexuality," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, August 2002)
↑ Homosexuality, By James B. DeYoung p. 322
↑ Homosexuality by James B. DeYoung, pp. 152-192ff
↑ Edward Gibbon. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 1, London. 1898, p. 313. note 40
↑ Moral epistles 47.7-8
↑ Suetonius "Nero," XVIII-XVIX De Vita Caeasarum; Dio Cassius, LXII, xvii
↑ Discourse, 7.133, 135; 151-52; 21:6-10; 77/78.36
↑ Sussman p. 19
↑ Young, Homosexuality, p. 153
↑ The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. p. 478, by Edward Gibbon, John Bagnell Bury
↑ Walther Heissig, A Lost Civilization
↑ Arno Kjrlen. Sexuality and Homosexuality. 1971, Norton, p. 229
↑ The Construction of Homosexuality, by David F. Greenberg, pp. 161-62
↑ Spence (1984: p. 220)
↑ Homosexuality & Civilization, pp. 224-228,237-239, by Louis Crompton (pro homosexual)
↑ Passions of the Cut Sleeve, p. 146, by Bret Hinsch
↑ Hinsch, p. 141
↑ Crompton, pp. 239-240
↑ Sir Richard Burton, The Erotic Traveler, 1967. Norton. Cited in Karlen p. 230
↑ Wolfram Eberhardt, Guilt and Sin in Traditional China. 1967. University of California, pp. 29-32. Cited in Greenberg, p. 26l. note 101
↑ Hinsch, p. 141
↑ 1996; pp. 52-54, referenced by Greenberg, p. 161
↑ Shanghai Star October 4, 2002
↑ Greenberg, p 260
↑ Greenberg, p. 261, note 101
↑ Greenberg, p. 261
↑ Politics 2 9 7 Cited in Greenberg, p 111
↑ Cited in Gerhard Herm. The Celts. St Martin's. 1977. p 58.
↑ Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality -- Part 2, referencing Greenberg
↑ Wenham, The Old Testament Attitude to Homosexuality, p. 360
↑ So G. Cardascia, Les lois assyriennes (du Cerf [1969]), p. 130.
↑ H.W.F Saggs, The Greatest That was Babylon, (New York: Hawthorn, 1962), p. 212
↑ Wenham, footnote #8
↑ ibid. Wenham
↑ [Reallexicon der Assyriologie p. 465
↑ Reallexicon der Assyriologie pp. 4, 467, 68
↑ H. A. Hoffner, 'Incest, Sodomy, and Bestiality in the Ancient Near East' in (Orient and Occident: Essays in Honor of C. H. Gordon, Neukirchen, Neukirchener Verlag [1973]), 83