Homosexuality - History

History

Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place, from expecting all males to engage in same-sex relationships, to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death.

In a detailed compilation of historical and ethnographic materials of Preindustrial Cultures, "strong disapproval of homosexuality was reported for 41% of 42 cultures; it was accepted or ignored by 21%, and 12% reported no such concept. Of 70 ethnographies, 59% reported homosexuality absent or rare in frequency and 41% reported it present or not uncommon."

In cultures influenced by Abrahamic religions, the law and the church established sodomy as a transgression against divine law or a crime against nature. The condemnation of anal sex between males, however, predates Christian belief. It was frequent in ancient Greece; "unnatural" can be traced back to Plato.

Many historical figures, including Socrates, Lord Byron, Edward II, and Hadrian, have had terms such as gay or bisexual applied to them; some scholars, such as Michel Foucault, have regarded this as risking the anachronistic introduction of a contemporary construction of sexuality foreign to their times, though others challenge this.

Regarding homosexuality nature and historic expression there are two seemingly opposite positions. These are represented by a constructionist and an essentialist approach. In general Social constructionism considers that there are "social constructions" resulting from the many characteristics of a particular social group, and not from some essential nature of the individual self. On the other hand Essentialists defend the existence of real essences that define the individual’s expressions, and social learned aspects are only secondary. David M. Halperin devotes a chapter:Homosexuality: a cultural construct of his work One Hundred Years of Homosexuality to this subject. He says that the essentialism applied to sexual categories means that the terms like "gay" or "straight" refer to culturally not modifiable, essentially personal traits. On the contrary, Constructionists mean that these terms are the names of social processes. Halperin leans towards this last position, as he considers that sexuality, including homosexuality, has been expressed in essentially different ways in different historic societies, as it is in present day ones. He, nevertheless, cites Esteven Epstein that compares the controversy between essentialists and constructionists to the general Nature versus Nurture debate. As one of the main representatives of essentialists he cites John Boswell, and Michel Foucault as a prominent constructionist.

Gay generally refers to male homosexuality, but may be used in a broader sense to refer to all LGBT people. In the context of sexuality, lesbian refers only to female homosexuality. The word "lesbian" is derived from the name of the Greek island Lesbos, where the poet Sappho wrote largely about her emotional relationships with young women.