Classical antiquity Ancient Celts According to
Aristotle, although most "belligerent nations" were strongly influenced by their women, the Celts were unusual among them because their men openly preferred male lovers (
Politics II 1269b). H. D. Rankin in
Celts and the Classical World notes that "Athenaeus echoes this comment (603a) and so does
Ammianus (30.9). It seems to be the general opinion of antiquity." In book XIII of his
Deipnosophists, the Roman Greek rhetorician and grammarian
Athenaeus, repeating assertions made by
Diodorus Siculus in the first century BCE (
Bibliotheca historica 5:32), wrote that Celtic women were beautiful but that the men preferred to sleep together. Diodorus went further, stating that "the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused". Rankin argues that the ultimate source of these assertions is likely to be
Poseidonius and speculates that these authors may be recording alleged male "bonding rituals" that require abstinence from women.
Ancient Greece and the same-aged
Hephaestion) but the older man would usually be the
erastes (lover) to a young
eromenos (loved one).
Kenneth J. Dover, followed by
Michel Foucault and
Halperin, assumed that it was considered improper for the eromenos to feel desire, as that would not be masculine. However, Dover's claim has been questioned in light of evidence of
love poetry which suggests a more emotional connection than earlier researchers liked to acknowledge. The ideal held that both partners would be inspired by love symbolized by
Eros, the erastes unselfishly providing education, guidance, and appropriate gifts to his eromenos, who became his devoted pupil and assistant, while the sexuality theoretically remained short of penetrative acts and supposedly would consist primarily of the act of
frottage or
intercrural sex.
Men could also seek adolescent boys as partners as shown by some of the earliest documents concerning same-sex pederastic relationships, which come from ancient Greece. Often they were favored over women. Though slave boys could be bought, free boys had to be courted, and ancient materials suggest that the father also had to consent to the relationship.
Same-sex relationships were a social institution variously constructed over time and from one city to another. The formal practice, an erotic yet often restrained relationship between a free adult male and a free adolescent was valued for its
pedagogic benefits and as a means of population control, though occasionally was blamed for causing disorder.
Plato praised its benefits in his early writings [e.g., Phaedrus in the
Symposium (385–370 BCE)] but in his late works proposed its prohibition [e.g., in
Laws (636D & 835E)]). In the
Symposium (182B-D), Plato equates acceptance of homosexuality with
democracy and its suppression with
despotism, and wrote that homosexuality "is shameful to barbarians because of their despotic governments, just as philosophy and athletics are, since it is apparently not in best interests of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or physical unions, all of which love is particularly apt to produce".
Aristotle, in the
Politics, dismissed Plato's ideas about abolishing homosexuality; he explains that barbarians like the
Celts accorded it a special honor, while the
Cretans used it to regulate the population. Sappho's poetry centers on passion and love for various personages and both genders. The narrators of many of her poems speak of
infatuations and
love (sometimes requited, sometimes not) for various females, but descriptions of physical acts
between women are few and subject to debate.
Ancient Rome the young male body remained a focus of male sexual attention, but relationships were between older free men and slaves or freed youths who took the receptive role in sex. The Hellenophile emperor
Hadrian is renowned for his relationship with
Antinous. In Roman patriarchal society, it was socially acceptable for an
adult male citizen to take the penetrative role in same-sex relations.
Freeborn male minors were strictly protected from sexual predators (see
Lex Scantinia), and men who willingly played the "passive" role in homosexual relations were disparaged. No law or moral censure was directed against homosexual behaviors as such, as long as the citizen took the dominant role with a partner
of lower status such as a
slave,
prostitute, or someone considered
infamis, of no social standing. The
Roman emperor Elagabalus is depicted as
transgender by some modern writers. Elagabalus was said to be "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of
Hierocles." Supposedly, great wealth was offered to any surgeon who was able to give Elagabalus female genitalia. During the
Renaissance, wealthy cities in northern Italy—
Florence and
Venice in particular—were renowned for their widespread practice of same-sex love, engaged in by a considerable part of the male population and constructed along the classical pattern of Greece and Rome. Attitudes toward homosexual behavior changed when the Empire fell under Christian rule; see for instance
legislation of Justinian I.
Middle Ages According to
John Boswell, author of
Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, there were same-sex Christian monastic communities and other
religious orders in which homosexuality thrived. According to Chauncey et al. (1989), the book "offered a revolutionary interpretation of the
Western tradition, arguing that the
Roman Catholic Church had not condemned
gay people throughout its history, but rather, at least until the twelfth century, had alternately evinced no special concern about homosexuality or actually celebrated love between men." Boswell was also the author of
Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (New York: Villard, 1994) in which he argues that the
adelphopoiia liturgy was evidence that attitude of the Christian church towards homosexuality has changed over time, and that
early Christians did on occasion accept same-sex relationships. His work attracted great controversy, as it was seen by many as merely an attempt for Boswell to justify his homosexuality and Roman Catholic faith. For instance, R. W. Southern points out that homosexuality had been condemned extensively by religious leaders and medieval scholars well before the 12th century; he also points to the
penitentials which were common in early medieval society, and many of which include homosexuality as among the serious sins. Bennett and Froide, in
Singlewomen in the European Past, note: "Other single women found emotional comfort and
sexual pleasure with women. The history of same-sex relations between women in medieval and early modern Europe is exceedingly difficult to study, but there can be no doubt of its existence. Church leaders worried about lesbian sex; women expressed, practiced, and were sometimes imprisoned or even executed for same-sex love; and some women cross-dressed in order to live with other women as married couples." They go on to note that even the seemingly modern word "lesbian" has been traced back as far as 1732, and discuss lesbian subcultures, but add, "Nevertheless, we certainly should not equate the single state with lesbian practices." While same-sex relationships among men were highly documented and condemned, "Moral theologians did not pay much attention to the question of what we would today call lesbian sex, perhaps because anything that did not involve a phallus did not fall within the bounds of their understanding of the sexual. Some legislation against lesbian relations can be adduced for the period, mainly involving the use of 'instruments,' in other words,
dildoes." Throughout the majority of
Christian history, most
Christian theologians and
denominations have considered homosexual behavior as
immoral or
sinful. Persecutions against homosexuality rose during the
High Middle Ages, reaching their height during the
Medieval Inquisitions, when the sects of
Cathars and
Waldensians were accused of fornication and sodomy, alongside accusations of satanism. In 1307, accusations of sodomy and homosexuality were major charges leveled during the
Trial of the Knights Templar. The theologian
Thomas Aquinas was influential in linking condemnations of homosexuality with the idea of
natural law, arguing that "special sins are against nature, as, for instance, those that run counter to the intercourse of male and female natural to animals, and so are peculiarly qualified as unnatural vices."
Renaissance The
Renaissance saw intense oppression of homosexual relationships by the
Roman Catholic Church. Homosexual activity radically passes from being completely legal in most of Europe to incurring the death penalty in most European states. In
France, first-offending sodomites lost their testicles, second offenders lost their penis, and third offenders were burned. Women caught in same-sex acts would be mutilated and executed as well.
Thomas Aquinas argued that sodomy was second only to murder in the ranking of sins.
Florence had a homosexual subculture, which included age-structured relationships. In 1432, the city established
Gli Ufficiali di Notte (The Officers of the Night) to root out the practice of sodomy. From that year until 1502, the number of men charged with sodomy numbered more than 17,000, of whom 3,000 were convicted. This number also included heterosexual sodomy. The association of foreignness with homosexuality gradually became a cornerstone of homophobic rhetoric throughout Europe, and it was used in a calumnious perspective. For example, the French would call "homosexuality" the "Italian vice" in the 16th and 17th centuries, the "English vice" in the 18th century, the '''' (oriental mores) in the 19th century, and the "German vice" starting from 1870 and into the 20th century.
Modern Europe and against
§175—a copy from the library of the
Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee, confiscated on 6 May 1933, annotated on the endpaper: ''"Destined
for destruction in accordance with the
Reichspresident's
decree of 28 February 1933!"'' and hidden from the public (label "Secr.") as
Nazi plunder at the
Prussian State Library.
Psychology and terminology shifts The developing field of psychology was the first way homosexuality could be directly addressed aside from Biblical condemnation. In Europe, homosexuality had been part of case studies since the 1790s with Johann Valentin Müller's work. The studies of this era tended to be rigorous examination of "criminals", looking to confirm guilt and establish patterns for future prosecutions. Ambroise Tardieu in France believed he could identify "pederasts" affirming that the sex organs are altered by homosexuality in his 1857 publishing. François Charles's exposé, '''' ("The Two Prostitutions: Study of the Social Pathology"), developed methods for police to persecute through meticulous documentation of homosexuality. Others include Johann Caspar and Otto Westphal,
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 publication,
Psychopathia Sexualis, was the most widely translated work of this kind. He and Ulrichs believed that homosexuality was congenitally based, but Krafft-Ebing differed; in that, he asserted that homosexuality was a symptom of other psychopathic behavior that he viewed to be an inherited disposition to degeneracy. Degeneracy became a widely acknowledged theory for homosexuality during the 1870s and 1880s. It spoke to the eugenic and Social Darwinist theories of the late 19th century.
Benedict Augustin Morel is considered the father of degeneracy theory. His theories posit that physical, intellectual, and moral abnormalities come from disease, urban over-population, malnutrition, alcohol, and other failures of his contemporary society. An important shift in the terminology of homosexuality was brought about by the development of psychology's inquisition into homosexuality. "Contrary sexual feeling", as Westphal's phrased it, and the word "homosexual" itself made their way into the Western lexicons. Homosexuality had a name aside from the ambiguous term "sodomy" and the elusive "abomination". As Michel Foucault phrases it, "the sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species."
Homosexuality in Modern Great Britain Following the codification of
anti-sodomy laws with the
Buggery Act 1533, homosexual sex and relationships were greatly looked down upon and civilly prosecuted. Although section 61 of the
Offences Against the Person Act 1861 removed the death penalty for homosexuality, male homosexual acts remained illegal and were punishable by imprisonment. In one Scottish court case, a judge deemed sexual relationships between two women imaginary. Only in cases where women broke gender roles and crossed into masculinity were they punished with public whippings and banishment, much less severe than their gay male counterparts. However, Ballads celebrating
cross-dressing female soldiers circulated during the
Napoleonic Wars, frequently depicting women donning male garb flirting with men and occasionally even "female husbands" would appear. Various authors wrote on the topic of homosexuality. In 1735, Conyers Place wrote "Reason Insufficient Guide to Conduct Mankind in Religion". In 1749,
Thomas Cannon wrote "Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified". In August, 1772,
The Morning Chronicle publishes a series of letters to the editor about the trial of Captain Robert Jones. In 1773, Charles Crawford wrote "A Dissertation on the Phaedon of Plato".
Molly houses appeared in 18th century London and other large cities. A
Molly house is an archaic 18th century English term for a tavern or private room where homosexual and cross-dressing men could meet each other and possible sexual partners. Patrons of the Molly house would sometimes enact mock weddings, sometimes with the bride giving birth.
Margaret Clap, better known as
Mother Clap, ran such a Molly house from 1724 to 1726 in
Holborn, London. She was also heavily involved in the ensuing legal battles after her premises were raided by the police and shut down. Molly houses were perhaps the first precursors to the modern
gay bar. In the 19th and 20th centuries, male commentary on lesbian relationships became more common and increasingly eroticized. The publication of
Anne Lister's diaries revealed that as early as 1820, educated women had covert sexual and romantic relationships with other women, often while married to men and presenting as close female friendships. However, modern scholars suspect that lesbian subscripts exist within much of the literature published by women, as female characters yearn romantically after other female characters, but that passion is silenced. This is reflected by a large body of same-sex love poetry was written by women.
Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde, the Irish author and playwright, played an important role in bringing homosexuality into the public eye. The scandal in British society and subsequent court case from 1895 to 1896 was highly discussed not only in Europe, but also in America, although newspapers like
The New York Times concentrated on the question of blackmail, only alluding to the homosexual aspects as having "a curious meaning", in the first publication on April 4, 1895. After Wilde's arrest, the April 6
New York Times discussed Wilde's case as a question of "immorality" and did not specifically address homosexuality, discussing the men "some as young as 18" that were brought up as witnesses. Inspired by Wilde's renown and homosexuality, gay activist
Craig Rodwell founded the first United States LGBTQ bookstore on November 24, 1967, and called it the
Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop.
Alan Turing In Britain, the view of homosexuality as the mark of a deviant mind was not limited to the psychiatric wards of hospitals but also the courts. An extremely famous case was that of
Alan Turing, a British mathematician and theoretician. During WWII, Turing worked at
Bletchley Park and was one of the major architects of the
Colossus computer, designed to break the Enigma codes of the Nazi war machine. For the success of this, he was made an
Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1945. In spite of all his brilliance and the services rendered to his country, Turing was also openly homosexual and in the early 1950s this fact came to the attention of the British government when he was arrested under section 11 of an
1885 statute on "gross indecency". At the time there was great fear that Turing's sexuality could be exploited by Soviet spies, and so he was sentenced to choosing between jail and injections of synthetic estrogen. The choice of the latter led him to massive depression and dying at the age of 41 after biting into an allegedly poisoned apple. Although it is popularly believed that Turing committed suicide, his death was also consistent with accidental poisoning. It is estimated that an additional 50–75,000 men were persecuted under this law, with only partial repeal taking place in 1967 and the final measure of it in 2003.
Decriminalization of homosexuality in France Written on July 21, 1776, the Letter LXIII became infamous for its frank talk of human sexuality.
Mathieu-François Pidansat de Mairobert published the letter in his 1779 book, ''L'Espion Anglois, Ou Secrete Entre Milord All'eye et Milord Alle'ar
(aka L'Observateur Anglais or L'Espion Anglais
) (The English Spy, or Secret Correspondence Between My Lord All'eye and My Lord Alle'ar
[aka The English Observer or The English Spy'']). In 1791,
Revolutionary France (and Andorra) adopted the
French Penal Code of 1791 which no longer criminalized sodomy. France thus became the first West European country to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults. Globally, various countries such as
Madagascar have never criminalized homosexual activity.
Soviet Union The Soviet government of the
Russian Soviet Republic decriminalized homosexuality in December 1917, following the October Revolution and the discarding of the Legal Code of Tsarist Russia. The legalization of homosexuality was confirmed in the RSFSR Penal Code of 1922, and following its redrafting in 1926. According to Dan Healey, archival material that became widely available following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 "demonstrates a principled intent to decriminalize the act between consenting adults, expressed from the earliest efforts to write a socialist criminal code in 1918 to the eventual adoption of legislation in 1922." The Bolsheviks also rescinded Tsarist legal bans on homosexual civil and political rights, especially in the area of state employment. In 1918,
Georgy Chicherin, a homosexual man who kept his homosexuality hidden, was appointed as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR. In 1923, Chicherin was also appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, a position he held until 1930. In the early 1920s, the Soviet government and scientific community took a great deal of interest in sexual research, sexual emancipation and homosexual emancipation. In January 1923, the Soviet Union sent delegates from the Commissariat of Health led by Commissar of Health Semashko to the German
Institute for Sexual Research as well as to some international conferences on human sexuality between 1921 and 1930, where they expressed support for the legalization of adult, private and consensual homosexual relations and the improvement of homosexual rights in all nations.
Modern Germany Emancipation movement (1890s–1934) (1932) in
Berlin '', 1928 Prior to the
Third Reich, Berlin was a
liberal city, with many gay bars, nightclubs and cabarets. There were even many
drag bars where tourists
straight and gay would enjoy
female impersonation acts.
Hitler decried cultural degeneration,
prostitution and
syphilis in his book
Mein Kampf, blaming at least some of the
phenomena on Jews.
Berlin also had the most active
LGBTQ rights movements in the world at the time. Jewish doctor
Magnus Hirschfeld had co-founded the
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Berlin in 1897 to campaign against the notorious "
Paragraph 175" of the Penal Code that made
sex between men illegal. It also sought social recognition of homosexual and transgender men and women. It was the first public gay rights organization. The Committee had branches in several other countries, thereby being the first international LGBTQ organization, although on a small scale. In 1919, Hirschfeld had also co-founded the
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research), a private
sexology research institute. It had a
research library and a large archive, and included a marriage and sex counseling office. In addition, the institute was a pioneer worldwide in the call for
civil rights and social acceptance for homosexual and transgender people. As a leading city for homosexuals during the 1920s, Berlin had clubs and even newspapers for both lesbians and
gay men. The lesbian magazine
Die Freundin was started by
Friedrich Radszuweit and the gay men's magazine
Der Eigene had already started in 1896 as the world's first gay magazine. The first gay demonstration ever took place in
Nollendorfplatz in 1922 in Berlin, gathering 400 homosexuals.
Nazi Germany Under the rule of
Nazi Germany, about 50,000 men were sentenced because of their homosexuality and thousands of them died in concentration camps. Gay men were viewed as "inferior" and "animalistic". Conditions for gay men in the camps were especially rough; they faced not only persecution from German soldiers, but also other prisoners, and many gay men were reported to die of beatings. Female homosexuality was not, technically, a crime and thus gay women were generally not treated as harshly as gay men. Although there are some scattered reports that gay women were sometimes imprisoned for their sexuality, most would have been imprisoned for other reasons, i.e. "anti-social".
Decriminalization of homosexuality in Germany West Germany inherited
Paragraph 175 after World War II, which remained on the books until 1969. The first kiss between two men on German television was shown in Rosa von Praunheim's film
It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1971). This film marks the beginning of the German modern gay liberation movement. In 1993, the last parts of Paragraph 175 were deleted and Germany enacted an equal
age of consent. ==United States==