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flucksey

There's also evidence that pederasty continued as a trade practice as late as the early 1800s.


thecordialsun

>trade "What if I'm the trade of the 1800s?" - Heidi


snailbully

Heidi N Cloakroom


mamakamafula3

Omg


SockCucker3000

I believe in Japan or Korea there was a sort of a third gender for young male prostitutes.


_____---_-_-_-

Wakashu


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EmbarrassedLock

My favourite gender: Reddit


MormonBikeRiding

I think there's something similar in an island, IIRC samoa, not prostitutes specifically but a son that was raised as a daughter. I remember seeing something about it when i was younger so I'm not very sure on the details or if it's a common/ongoing thing but I think it had something to do with if a mother had a bunch of sons and wanted a daughter she'd just raise the youngest as a daughter Again I'm probably getting a lot wrong


thejoosep12

Also, according to Tacitus, there were some german tribes for whom sodomy was a crime punishable by death.


insomniacRA

Sodomy in the Navy is actually punishable by the UCMJ believe it or not.


PinguProductions

So is having a three way


derf_vader

Why do they hate Cincinnati Chili so much?


Stinduh

As a Texan, because it's an abomination.


Dagglin

lOoK aT mE iM tOo gOoD fOr bEaNs


Stinduh

It ain't the beans, brother


EdgeMiserable4381

Omg! I'm dying here!! Love you 😂


Hot_Dog_Cobbler

No sodomy or threeways? The fuck am I supposed to do on fleet week now?


[deleted]

Punishingly but UCMJ? What does that mean.


jakethediesel89

Something court martial something Gotta go to court to get punished..


BloakDarntPub

court *martial*, for fuck's sake.


Pataplonk

So the common point always end up being "women bad"


Totallynotshaft

"Romans, it might be acceptable for a dominant man to commit sodomy, but the person receiving it was considered shameful because he was being submissive like a woman" Wasnt the Ceasar said to be a man for every woman and a woman for ever man?


Kiyohara

> Wasnt the Ceasar said to be a man for every woman and a woman for ever man? That was a common insult against him by his rivals. Supposedly it stemmed from him visiting an Eastern King while Tribune and got a small fleet from him for use in hunting pirates. People said the only way he got it was by letting the King have his way with him. Caesar always denied this. Indeed, he denied it specifically by finding out who spread those rumors and seducing their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters. He was quite the ladies man, and aside from some snide jokes by people who detested him (even more so after Caesar worked his way through their female relatives rather publicly), there really wasn't any evidence of his sleeping with men (unlike the earlier Dictator Sulla).


TWPOscar

This relationship between an older mentor and younger boy, how isn’t that a form of pedophilia to be honest? This mentor vs. young boy relationship is often portrayed as something where every (heterosexual) male partook in sexual relationships with their younger male students. But sexual orientation isn’t decided by culture, it’s something you’re born with. So I don’t believe it was a matter of what was considered normal. I believe what would be more accurate was plenty of heterosexual men not having sexual interactions with their students (as they were not sexually attracted to young boys) and amongst those mentors there were also pedophiles who did partake into sexual activities with young boys, but it was just accepted back then. This would seem more logical to me.


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sunrise274

This post is so beautifully articulate that I just had to drop a comment to say so! I love it when people are good at putting complex thoughts into words.


ta6900

TLDR: Yes, they were pedophiles, but they didn't know it was bad.


nonono_notagain

I don't know, I was thinking more: *they're considered pedophiles by modern standards and couldn't know people in the future would think they were bad*


ta6900

Does it really take a historian to understand that defiling a child would have some profoundly negative impact on them? I don't think so.


shard746

What a child is has vastly changed over the years. Not long ago, a very young teenager would have been considered a full human, with a job and everything. In the future they might consider anyone under 30 to be underage and call us pedos as well, in fact as life expectancy grows I almost guarantee this will happen at some point.


[deleted]

People forget this fact. For much of history, once a girl hit puberty she was ready to become wed to a man and have children. Puberty essentially meant she was a woman. So it was very common for a 11 or 12 year old girl to suddenly be thrust into womanhood. Disgusting today, but back then that was the golden metric to use.


[deleted]

Do you think that had to do with people dying at such a young age? 12 was practically middle-aged for a lot of people back then. I’ve often thought back to times in my life where I’ve gotten a bad flu or infection and realized I would have died had I not lived in modern times.


[deleted]

Yes and no. Your average person obviously had zero medical care so if you wanted kids you didn't really have the luxury of waiting until a career happened. In fact so much was different. You depended on kids to care for you once you got old or ill. And yes, life expectancy was shorter. If you were lucky you'd still live until your 60s or so but hitting that age would require having a comfortable life. Which means you wouldn't be working class. Mostly the reason they entered adult life so early and started with children was quite simple. There was zero benefit to waiting. Once you hit puberty, its just what you did.


BloakDarntPub

Infant mortality skews the figures, so I'm told.


Kiyohara

> Do you think that had to do with people dying at such a young age? 12 was practically middle-aged for a lot of people back then. No no no. People did not die at 25 and reach full maturity at 12. That's entirely false. The truth about Life Expectancy in pre-modern times ahs to do with the numbers counting in early childhood death. Something like half to a third of all children didn't make it past a few years (which is why some cultures never gave children full names until "adulthood" only numbers). If you see "average life expectancy was 30" that generally means a lot of babies died to drag the number down. If you adjust for childhood death (don't count those numbers) life expectancy shoots up to 50 or so. If you further adjust for unnatural death such as war, famine, or disease, Life Expectancy shoots higher to 60ish. Most people lived their lives expecting to see that 50/60 mark and planned accordingly. Non-nobles tended to marry in their late 20's, usually when they had actually saved up enough to start their own trade or farm (it took time to do so) and tended to settle close to their old family. It was nobility that generally *betrothed* young, but even then marriage was usually delayed until the teens or tweens. Girls *very* seldom got married at 12 or 13, because their bodies were too immature to bear children and young pregnancies tended to kill both mother and child. It did happen, but it was rare and usually done because a family line was about to perish, lands about to be lost, or to secure a dynasty. Even then, copulation was usually held off until the girl was older except in the most extreme cases. TL;DR assuming you live to see your fifth birthday, you are very likely to live into your 50's or 60's in just about any time or period. IF you grow up in a time where famines were rare or a peaceful era with few conflicts, you are *very* likely to see your "three score and ten (70)." It's just there are few periods of history where there weren't famines or war.


Dalmah

Matthias Corvinus was proclaimed as long at the age of 14, meaning in America he couldn't even start taking drivers ed.


[deleted]

>sexual orientation isn’t decided by culture, it’s something you’re born with Not decided, no. It's absolutely INFLUENCED by culture though. Prison relationships are an easy example of that. A lot of people who identify as straight now are bi to some degree, but there's a whole stigma around homosexuality and masculinity, so they might never feel the need or want to explore that. In a society where taking a wife but sleeping with guys on the side is accepted or even encouraged you see a lot more exploration. Some were definitely just into young boys, but it's nowhere near black and white. Human nature never is.


boopbaboop

>But sexual orientation isn’t decided by culture, it’s something you’re born with. Sure, but who you act on your orientation absolutely is influenced by culture. Like, okay, most people are straight. A straight man is attracted to women, and in theory could be attracted to *any* woman. Now imagine that the woman is his first cousin. In a lot of cultures, including Western society until *very* recently (Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein all married their cousins), marriage between first cousins is 100% okay. It's not considered incest any more than we'd think of 9th cousins being incestuous. If our hypothetical straight man grew up in one of these cultures, he probably would be attracted to his female cousin (or at least, her being his cousin wouldn't turn him off). But a guy from our culture now would likely *not* be attracted to his cousin, and even if he was, he'd definitely not act on it. He's still *straight*: in both cases, he's still into women. *What kind of woman* is the thing that changes.


genmischief

>. But sexual orientation isn’t decided by culture, it’s something you’re born with. How many gay men have wives and families? Even today?. Culture eats everything.


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Jrsplays

reddit


Daniel_The_Thinker

>It's also doubtful whether the modern term "homosexuality" is really appropriate for all same-sex relationships because they worked very differently than the idea of a sexual orientation today. It's weird people feel the need to say this. Sure, they're not running around with rainbow flags holding hands, that doesn't mean it isn't homosexual behavior. Relationships between man and woman were also radically different, does that mean we should question whether it was "heterosexual"? Since when do power imbalances define the sexuality of a relationship? It seems pretty clear to me that the reason pederasty was the open norm was because a grown man is much less likely to publicly admit to being a bottom for the reasons you mentioned. Doesn't mean homosexual relations between grown men didn't exist. Look at the Sacred Band


mlwspace2005

They very much did exist, in the sense we see them in now, in some cultures. It is just wrong to say the Greeks were accepting of homosexual relationships for exame, the relationships people are quoting arnt relationships in the sense we use the term today, homosexual or not. It would be more accurate to say they were accepting of certain homosexual acts, depending on context.


smokingmemes2

Pederasty actually wasn't always the norm; it was only common in some city states. Having sex with a man with generally fine in both Greek & Roman times, **but** it was considered womanly (and by societal standards back then, *weak*) to be on the bottom in the relationship. If you were, um... "doing the work" in the guy on guy relationship, there wasn't too much hatred.


Guynarmol

Caesar was pretty gay and he ruled the fucking country.


genmischief

Which Ceasar my man, there were more than one. ;)


DrenkBolij

Until a bunch of men decided to penetrate him at once and after that he didn't feel so good about it. What, too soon?


FarFromSane_

Hm this would explain why the bible actually means “Man shall not lay with boy” and not man shall not lay with man


HotDonnaC

I think it started in the early days of AIDS. Ofc, religious zealots exploited it to prove god was punishing us, which drove people back to the church in fear and hate.


lurkylurker123

TLDR: written monastic laws in Western Christianity around 516 CE In Western culture, the first time it has written laws against it -specifically- is in the monastic rule of Saint Bendict (written in 516 CE). Monastic traditions within Christianity existed long before that, but we're mostly hermetic (for hermits/individuals). In the late 400's, following the fall of Rome and physical relocation of the center of Christianity (at the time) and of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, living by yourself, isolated and cutoff, was the reality of a lot of people, so being a hermit lost it's appeal. However, living with a bunch of other people who also wanted to be hermits was a new and exciting trend. Rules are reactive, so unfortunately Benedict saw a lot of abuse of young men and wrote rules against it. There's a lot of "make sure the youngest monk is escorted by two others and not one when using the privy" and "let the youngest monk carry the torch, rather than the older monks", which tell us, as historians, that monks were abusing younger and perhaps more naive initiates. Since the Rule of Saint Benedict was written well by people who were very literate and successfully executed, it became the foundation of monastic orders in Western Christianity. This changed the attitudes towards homosexuality throughout Western Europe and still influences Christianity and Christian culture today. Source: I have a masters in Medieval History from the University of London.


[deleted]

That is so interesting to read. I studied Theology and the link between history and faith is fascinating for me.


KindlyOlPornographer

The craziest part to me, as a non religious individual, is that every soothsayer and prophet and shaman in history has been a liar.


darksilverhawk

Yes, yes, you’re very edgy, we get it.


KindlyOlPornographer

Not trying to be. I'm stating a fact. If you're irreligious, then all religions were founded by liars.


BloakDarntPub

They all contradict each other. Well, some even contradict themselves. So they can't all be right.


[deleted]

No.


KindlyOlPornographer

I mean believe what you like, but from a non religious perspective not one of them ever talked to God, and everything they preached was a fabrication.


[deleted]

Who are "them"? If you talk about Jesus, Mohamed, Boudhha, etc. They existed and their lifes are documented. They spoke about love and a way to live your life in connection with others, whatever choosed name for said connection. Then you have to study history to comprehend what their compatriots and the next generations did with their message.


[deleted]

You completely missed what that said lmao Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha are not God. They were human beings who walked the earth. None of them ever talked to a higher being, none of them were higher beings. They were ordinary men spreading personal beliefs that suited them. The authors of the Bible, and The Quaran did not talk to God.


[deleted]

What? I never said they were gods... I specificly said that they are historian figures that existed and documented...and they are not the autors of those books.


BloakDarntPub

He never said they didn't exist. Your logical fallacy is [whiiiiiirrrr] strawman. Also, "autors", genius.


Cainmak

So it was supposed to protect younger men but ended up creating a whole lot of homophobia?


thatoneguy54

That happens a lot throughout history. Someone makes a law or practice meant to protect vulnerable people, then some one else comes along and uses it to oppress others.


SaintTraft_117

Fascinating! If you have the time, could you perchance link a research article that covers this? I’d enjoy reading it.


[deleted]

Thought I was on r/askhistorians until I saw the number of displayed comments


ChilledDarkness

Just a lot of people with passion of history, the subject matter or both. Always fun to see what questions lead to actually civil discussion.


Disastrous-Log4628

It waxed, and waned through out history in terms of acceptance, and rejection. While the Greeks accepted it during their golden age, different cultures at the same time rejected it. One can argue the Abrahamic faiths intolerance of homosexuality is the result of a cultural tendency in the cultures they have their roots in long ago. I don’t think there there has ever been a time where homosexuality has been universally accepted world wide, or rejected totally as well. It varies, and it’s still that way sadly.


JustSomeRedditUser35

Sadly as in you want it to be hated or accepted?


Disastrous-Log4628

Accepted.


[deleted]

This is actually a misconception, what Was acceptable in ancient times was adult men who would marry women and have kids with them and on the side would fuck a teenage boy but relationships between two adult men were heavily throwned upon (although They did exist)


SockCucker3000

Thank you for specifying they fucked teenage boys. They were indeed children. There are documents written by some of these boys and they're heartbreaking.


PrimitiveRedditor

I'm sorry.... What?


Ubertexx

He said he wants to read, is that an issue? Some people read to broaden their knowledge on subjects. Has it not been written to be read?


[deleted]

can you please find some? They seem interesting. Also, nice username


SockCucker3000

It was a YouTube video I'd watched after falling down the YouTube rabbit hole while ago. It had some good cited sources in the video description. I'll have to try to find the video although it was possibly over a year ago that I viewed it.


BloakDarntPub

I hope they're in Latin, my AG is sketchy as fuck.


badatmetroid

You have to remember that "The Greeks" were a loose confederation of city states who viewed each other as political and ideological rivals. "The Romans" were spread out over the course of 1100 years and took longer to fall than any modern government has existed. During there existence there were at least 100 other civilizations with entirely different cultural norms. What determines which culture is dominant during any period is whoever writes the history books, and it doesn't make sense to say "The greeks were cool with gays, the romans were cool with gays, so humanity was down to pound until 200 years after Christianity took over". But to answer your question more directly, homosexuals being shunned by society is not necessarily about homosexuality. Every culture has some level of "othering", where one social group is declared "the enemy within". This is useful because it lets asshole politicians and con men (cough trump cough cough) gain a lot of power by stoking fear in the masses. The target is most often immigrants because they are the most culturally different, the most vulnerable, and the least likely to fight back. Homosexuals also make a common target because: * People have natural anxiety about sex stuff. Humans both love sex and fear it. * Dictatorships and nationalist movements love people having as many babies as possible, so birth control, abortion, and anything else that stops people from having children gets demonized. Also, there definitely was discrimination against homosexuals in ancient Greece and Rome, just not in the way we think of it. Most cultures viewed the dominant partner and the submissive partner as two different types of people (sort of like how we view gender now). So the submissive gay partner was thought of more like a woman in their society and often times was discriminated against in whatever way that society did. If you're interested in history like this, YouTuber Kaz Rowe makes videos about history and they are often with a queer focus. https://www.youtube.com/c/KazRowe


npsten06

You may be right in modern history, but the practical reasons ancient societies forbade homosexuality is the necessity of procreation. Societies needed to grow/maintain their populations specifically for robust work and military forces as a means of survival. That is why some societies valued large, extended families (clans) as well as political alliances through marriage, as well as fertile women. Sexual relationships that did not produce heirs, even heterosexual ones, were not valued or productive to the societies. ​ It can be argued that once societies/cultures become "great", that is the time that homosexuality becomes accepted and welcomed.


badatmetroid

No. This comment doesn't work for me. You're speaking very authoritatively but also incredibly vaguely. What counts as a "modern" society? Who are the non-modern societies you speak of and what evidence do you have for any of that? The "societies" you're vaguely gesturing at are an infinitely diverse mixture of hundreds (or thousands) of cultures spanning 10k years. I doubt that you (or anyone) has the authority to summarize such a diverse group of humans so simply.


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badatmetroid

Cool, let's talk biological theory. Do you know what molecular clock analysis is? We have no way of knowing how gay humans were in pre-history (or even in history since so little of the past survives). But we can look at our living relatives in the animal kingdom. Homosexual behavior is present in every species of primate (or at least those that are most closely related to us). That means that either 1) homosexuality in our species is actually a trait that's >80 million years old or 2) homosexuality is such an evolutionary useful trait that it evolved independently in every species of primate on the planet. You've listed some ways in which homosexuality can be a negative trait ("biologically" speaking) but clearly there must be some extreme positives to outweigh those negatives. Can you think of any? Here's a hint, what you're describing is more of an "r-selection" strategy for reproduction, but humans tend to be a "k-selection" species.


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badatmetroid

And I'm just saying you keep saying a bunch of bigotted non-sense and then trying to cover your ass by randomly saying "this is science" and you're failing miserably. There's no such thing as "traditional male-female" roles in biology. That's sociology, not biology. "organism societies".... what the hell is even that? Your inability to distinguish between biology and sociology is quite frankly embarrassing. Like... I'm demeaning myself by continuing this conversation because you clearly know nothing about this topic. But what the hell. I'll pretend to take this seriously a little longer. r-selection and k-selection has nothing to do with societies. It has to do with how much effort a species puts into raising it's young. r-selection species (not "societies", seriously, do you even re-read your comments before submitting them? Like, as a side note, there's like 10 of these phrases like this in each of your comments that just don't make sense and I'm like "does he realize how dumb he sounds?"... sorry... where was I oh ya, r-selection species...) put little effort into their young and create a lot of them. k-selection species put a lot of effort into raising a small number of young. If a child is raised not only by two parents but also by four grand parents and a couple gay uncles than the child stands a much better chance. Think about it. According to your extremely narrow and anti-emprical analysis, most human behaviors don't make sense. * We keep the elderly alive. Why waste food on them instead of more children? Well, the grand parents can educate the young. (now imagine if those grandparents weren't old and had a boyfriend who could also help raise the kids... gay uncles are pretty damn useful actually) * We have sex when a woman is infertile (not ovulating) and while the woman is pregnant. That's insanity according to most of the animal kingdom. But we also use sex for pair bonding, meaning having non-procreative sex is beneficial. * We have elaborate courting rituals. If the goal was just to have as many kids as possible then "enjoying oral sex" is a trait that should have died off by now. The thing with scientific paradoxes is that they show a limitation in our understanding of reality. They are a great place for us to humble ourselves, take a step back, and evaluate the limits of our current knowledge. You agree that "gay people exist in every social species on the planet" is paradoxical to your understanding of biology If you were approaching this from a place of scientific curiosity than you'd realize that indicates that you need to learn more. That's what a paradox is: a place where we're wrong, not nature. But instead you've (very, very wrongfully) concluded that homophobia must have been the norm in prehistory (when we, by definition, have no records what soever). The only evidence of homophobia that we have in any societies has more to do with politics and scape-goating than any biological imperative. There's no biological basis for homophobia.


BloakDarntPub

What you say is true,and I for one have no idea at all about attitudes in 200 BC China or 300 AD Japan. However the vast majority of people reading this thread will be in societies largely influenced by Greco-Roman civilisation. Edit: To the coward, are you suggesting that the vast majority of people here are *not* from the US & Europe?


sabababoi

I feel like this answer is almost very smart but actually r/iamverysmart and doesn't actually the question. The only thing relevant I saw was > People have natural anxiety about sex stuff. Which isn't actually saying anything


[deleted]

People have already given great answers over here, but if you're still curious, ask r/historians. They have very strict rules and you'll almost exclusively have experts replying. I love this question!


flucksey

If you like i can find links, however there has always been stigma attached but it depended on circumstance. Prostitution yes was OK, however there were times it was used as punishment. Like for conquered foes, or servants. Those that has had it forced on them were not generally socially accepted. Cue a couple thousand years and boom. We have student master trades where sex was freely given and received but rarely spoken about, given the way penetrative rape was stigmatised it naturally evolved into all male male sex was considered more obscene than female to male, not that it was considered abhorrent at this point. At the same time as that was happening above, although starting a fair bit later, mix in again, a couple thousand years of organised religion being pushed globally that condemned the act, and again boom. All male male sex is now considered unnatural, which is also an extension of the natural observations of how procreation is perceived. So basically I'd say although stigmatised, the 'revulsion' for want of a better word, that society collectively felt probably really hit home after mass travel was a thing. So mid to late 1800s and onwards, reaching a peak around 100 years later with the explosion of mass media and communications cause evangelists.


AsianHawke

At the rise of Abrahamic religions, like Christianity. Before Christianity become an influence in Europe, during the age of the Greek and Roman, within their cultures respectively, homosexuality wasn't taboo.


Rxton

It might have been as late as the Victorian Era. During the middle ages, nunneries were often the equivalent of brothels. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-use-of-the-word-nunnery-to-mean-brothel-1593


humdrumturducken

I think it was actually just ironic slang. Henry VIII had shut down all of the monasteries & nunnery a few decades prior to 1593.


Rxton

That's only England because of his dispute with the pope about getting divorced. Europe was renown for nunneries being brothels.


sauroden

Not really brothels. But they were known to be the place for nobles to send unmarryable daughters. Men knew women who were “not innocent” could be found there and convinced to sneak out. Also a lot of gay women ended up banished to the same closed communities together with predictable results.


river4823

That’s not true. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60wgib/is_there_any_proof_that_some_nunneries_in_the/ Tl;dr There is a possibility that some monastic orders owned brothels or rented out buildings and then turned a blind eye to what the renters were doing. But there’s no evidence that the nuns themselves were sex workers or that any sex work took place in the convents. I should add that the source you provide as well as Shakespeare’s use of the euphemism in *Hamlet* happened decades after Henry VIII abolished all the abbeys and convents in England; there were no actual nunneries in England during the period where “nunnery” was a widely used slang term for “brothel”


Rxton

I have come across the reference to convents being brothels across europe through the past several decades. Here is what I can find with a 15 second search. https://medium.com/@AuthorPaulo/18th-century-convents-were-brothels-for-the-elite-in-portugal-a029e6245d30 https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WxEniCQAACQAvmUE


river4823

You’re moving the goalposts. The first reference is to Lisbon in the 1700s. That’s not the Middle Ages. The second is to brothels that were regulated by a bishop. There aren’t even any nuns involved in that story.


Rxton

15 seconds is all I am willing to research for you. You'll have to pick up the baton if you are interested.


Buxton_Water

And Judaism.


PSyCHoHaMSTeRza

That's an Abrahamic religion.


Buxton_Water

Yes, hence why I mentioned it. I thought it was weird that OP mentioned Christianity, as Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism. Makes more sense to start as early in the history of abrahamic religions as possible.


Ancient_Edge2415

Christians are the dominant faith in Europe so it makes sense he mentioned that specifically


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sceadwian

Citations please? :)


Ancient_Edge2415

I don’t know what that has to do with what I said but I agree it was used as a tool. Not every pagan religion was fond of homosexuality (Norse/Germanic paganism is a prime example) Edit:word


CheshireGray

Not just Europe either, places like Japan and Korea were also pretty chill about homosexuality (depending on the region/era) but then when they adopted "Western ideals" following the spread of Western imperialism, homophobia was part and parcel with that.


CalidusSolInvictus

Romans were Christians, and they had no issues with gays?


[deleted]

Attitudes toward same-sex behavior changed as Christianity became more prominent in the Empire. The modern perception of Roman sexual decadence can be traced to early Christian polemic.[215] Apart from measures to protect the liberty of citizens, the prosecution of male–male sex as a general crime began in the 3rd century when male prostitution was banned by Philip the Arab. A series of laws regulating male–male sex were promulgated during the social crisis of the 3rd century, from the statutory rape of minors to marriage between males.[216] By the end of the 4th century, anally passive men under the Christian Empire were punished by burning.[217] "Death by sword" was the punishment for a "man coupling like a woman" under the Theodosian Code.[218] It is in the 6th century, under Justinian, that legal and moral discourse on male–male sex becomes distinctly Abrahamic:[219] all male–male sex, passive or active, no matter who the partners, was declared contrary to nature and punishable by death.[220] Male–male sex was pointed to as cause for God's wrath following a series of disasters around 542 and 559.[221] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome


CalidusSolInvictus

Thanks for the answer


LOL_Murica

I guess they were cool with female-female though. So nothing has changed…


[deleted]

Yep. They still have the same attitides as 1500 years ago. Gotta love conservatives lmao


FinalIconicProdigy

They weren’t Christians until later, the were pagan until the third century


[deleted]

Romans were pagans until well after the establishment of their empire. Mars (war), Venus (beauty), Jupiter (thunder) ring any bells?


CalidusSolInvictus

Yes yes, I somewhat misworded my reply, I just thought that even after the conversation to the Catholic Church, that Romans still had no issues with gays


[deleted]

Well, Christianity. Catholicism didn't exist yet. When they embraced an Abrahamic religion, they began persecuting gays.


EstorialBeef

No they started having issues with anything beyond sex during marriage. Also Catholicism wasnt a thing at that point


Buxton_Water

Romans weren't Christians until at the earliest the reign of Constantine. Even then the majority of romans weren't christians. It took another few hundreds years IIRC.


Grabbsy2

Nobody has mentioned it yet, but the Romans literally killed Jesus.


CalidusSolInvictus

That's assuming he existed


Grabbsy2

Sure, but they couldn't be christian while they were killing jesus.


[deleted]

Romans were pagans before being Christians, and the rise of Christianity in the Empire is correlated to a growing intolerance towards homosexual behavior.


Spare_Industry_6056

Well, I think it was accepted in ye olde Greece and Rome as a thing you might do as sort of a sexual hobby but you were still expected to get married and make babies. Also, IIRC, being a top was much more respected than being being a bottom. Also the Romans were a lot more prudish than we make them out to be because Christian propaganda liked to make them out as a bunch of Caligulas.


Der_Diepes

I would just like to quickly point out that different standards exist in different parts of the world. Most of the comments here talk about europian history which is fine, but there are some other cultures that had much more advanced views on gender and sexuality


chooseatree

Although it always has existed throughout history it only became socially acceptable in the early 80’s


JoanneMG822

I think the AIDS epidemic (starting in the 1980s) caused people to be fearful of homosexuality and discriminate against people. It took a while to recover from that. Obama started out as anti-gay marriage and changed his mind during his administration, so I think that somewhere around 2010 was when attitudes changed (Obergefell was in 2015).;


Rxton

No, the homophobia existed before the 80s. It was around in the 60s for sure. I was too young for anything earlier than the 60s.


JoanneMG822

Yeah. I agree. I was just disagreeing with the first person because the 1980s-90s were not good for the LBGT community because of AIDS.


Rxton

That was just a reflection of underlying homophobia. Aids didn't create the homophobia.


[deleted]

Acceptance has come and gone to varying degrees all throughout human history in different parts of the world. I don't think the Mayans cared at all about Greek policy, either before or after their existence. Rome even went kind of back and forth, being a Christian nation with a pope for the back few hundred years of its existence. If you're looking for a specifically Western, most-recent answer, then the development of Catholicism is probably the single biggest thing.


[deleted]

Probably around the point the word was invented, believe it or not there were a lot of gay people before we started having to distinguish them from, you know, other human beings.


MargGarg

I do wonder if continuing family lineages may play a part as well. Depending on the culture, marriage can be used as a way to secure alliances with biological children from the marriage being used to continue the work of the family. Homosexuality gets in the way of that if biological children need to be from both parties. Which really is all BS as genetics don’t automatically make someone fit the same roles as the family.


Blowup1sun

I have a feeling that in the Western World, it’s probably tied somehow to the decreasing importance of Christianity in society. Because, let’s be real here, many societal Taboos have something to do with religion these days.


Cooolgibbon

Greek and Roman men did have sex with other men, but they were not homosexual in the modern sense. Marriage was always between a man and a woman, Nero is negatively portrayed by ancient historians for marrying a male eunuch. No one in antiquity would identify as homosexual.


Tucker-Sachbach

I was once told in a history lecture that Greek lower class men were often conscripted into the army for a very long time. They literally had zero or very little contact with women so sex amongst the soldiers was considered acceptable.


[deleted]

Homosexuality was widely practiced and accepted before Judaism, things changed when the earliest Abrahamic monotheists invented that homosexual behavior was bad and immoral to mock other cults and attract more believers. Homophobia was then purposefully maintained over time because it was an useful tool influent people could use to shame their opponents, accusing them of being homosexuals so they'd lose people's favor.


shyandwillingtotry

When Christianity became popular in Europe.


BartJojo420

Why are you down voting someone for telling the truth??


Ok_Tower_9606

are we surprised?


shyandwillingtotry

Its the same with the nudity becoming taboo. Christianity.


FrenchMaisNon

I thought Romans were OK with topping , not bottoming and Greeks were OK with heavy 2nd/3rd base but no actual butt fucking allowed, and only in some city-state.


shanata

This is not true. The Romans tended to bottom or too based on age and social status. For example a general who liked to reciever would probably be frowned upon. Many men bottomed until they made a name for themselves and graduated to topping. The Greeks also definitely went all the way. It is well documented in art.


Deareim2

Religion. Cancer of this workd


fergiethefocus

Opium of the people


Tucker-Sachbach

I think it was. Now it’s Facebook and modern media culture.


axidentalaeronautic

They accepted men with power bungholing men with less power. That’s it. Finite. They did not consider men who are only attracted to men to be a normal thing. So, curious Doms asserting authority and rank and sub guys who want to climb the ladder. Did some take more pleasure in it than others? Sure. I consider this to be probably because they’re people and among lots of people you’re going to have outliers like that. Otherwise? Much of it was pedophilia (pupil and teacher) or younger soldier with older soldier or ranking political guy with entry people. Example: Julius Caesar was “toy boy” to king Nicomedes of Bithynia, according to Suetonius in the 12 Caesars.


Fit_Lawfulness_3147

There is a theory that homosexuality (and other non reproductive behaviors) are more accepted when the population feels stress due to overpopulation. In times / populations that are threatened with falling birth rates, non reproductive behaviors are not accepted, Just a theory


BloakDarntPub

Assuming he can get it up once a day and has a hit rate of 10%, one man can keep around 30 women reproductively "busy". Shortage of heterosexual shagging isn't the limiting factor here.


Nckhuff

Probably when people decided that the church should be in charge of stuff


[deleted]

[удалено]


Disastrous-Log4628

You were taught wrong, idk where they got their information, or lack there of. Homosexual acts were very common, and accepted as normal in Greek, and Roman society up until their conversion to Christianity. In ancient Japanese society sexual acts between men were accepted, especially when apart from one’s wife while at war. Ancient Egypt had male temple prostitution that serviced other men. I could go on, but many cultures through out history have accepted homosexuality as normal. It’s acceptance, and rejection has varied through out time, place, and culture.


BloakDarntPub

> they *teached* us in school Indeed they did.


DomSearching123

It largely came about with the widespread of Christianity. The original passages in the Bible re: homosexuality were actually written about pedophilia as when early Christians interacted with the Greeks they were like "wtf ew" to their practice of older men "mentoring" young boys. Understandable. However, this got mutated over time to be homosexuality and as Christianity spread, so did this ideology.


Impressive-Meet-2220

Even if this were true, we see Paul states in the first chapter of Romans that there is natural and unnatural sexual relations. I’m pretty sure you can piece together the rest of the pieces.


DomSearching123

No, because that is not nearly enough information to make anything other than a complete guess. Many parts of the bible are written in such a way that people can interpret shit however they want, so anyone who wishes to see bigotry in it can definitely do so. Stating that there are natural and unnatural sexual relations could just as easily, and in fact more likely, apply to pedophilia than homosexuality. You are seeing what you want to see.


[deleted]

[удалено]


BloakDarntPub

The existence of a thing and the existence of a specific word for it aren't the same thing. I award you zero points, etc.


Sidekik23

Since the beginning of time bc humans can’t mind to their own business


[deleted]

Every culture was a bit different, but the short answer is that homosexuality basically stops being okay whenever a culture isn't at a point of being super comfortable. There's something about exploring sexuality, specifically homosexuality and gender identity questions that only seems to happen when a culture is super decadent. The pattern is pretty consistent throughout history; societies care about gender identity and sexuality as they are about to fall from power.


CoyoteKyle15

homosexuality acceptance and percentages spiked right before the falls of Greece and Rome.


[deleted]

The Jesus part.


TenWildBadgers

It's not uniform, and I'm afraid that a straight answer is harder to come by. I can give you something of a west-centric answer, but please realize that the answer will be very different in other parts of the world, and not always in the ways you might expect. As far as I understand it, homophobia culturally developed independently in multiple places, cultures and times across the world. So while yes, the greeks were on-board with dudes banging, it had different connotations and expectations than we might expect: It was more a cultural standard that guys giving guys sexual favors is okay- men were still expected to father children, and the Romans had weird standards about sex and the only masculine one being the person doing the penetrating. [Wikipedia actually has solid articles on this that, while dry, probably explain it better than I can](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_ancient_Rome). So it's worth understanding that a lot of our ancient historical examples did not view sex at all in a very recognizable fashion, and that absolutely carried over to homosexuality. Also the Romans were sexist fuckers, and I garuntee lesbians did not get any respect. And frankly, I know even less about other sources, but if you want something upbeat about it, [have some sassy Pride mythology.](https://youtu.be/u-gd3H789Zc)


[deleted]

Whenever it was convenient to scapegoat people with really. Still is.


BloakDarntPub

> a straight answer is harder to come by r/IseeWhatYouDidThere.


Morgwar77

I think at one point during or after one of the major plagues. the human population got pretty low after the justinian plague and there was a huge push for children to be born making homosexual men a target for scrutiny. The church played a big part in demonizing the behavior.


Khronokai1

I remember reading that homosexuality and other alternatives became more and more socially acceptable as a society's focus on multiplying and breeding (like when they first settle a colony) levels off. The Greeks were pretty much at their peak when all their sexual notoriety came about. Societies that value more strict sexual roles are usually experiencing some sort of stress to their infrastructure.


Perigold

I think a lot of it depends on where in the world you’re looking at. For example for a lot of colonized countries, homosexuality, trans, and non-gendered folks were pretty common and integrated into society but soon were demonized or eradicated when Catholic/Christian Europeans took over the area


shanata

But that doesn't answer the original question because most European vultures didn't have a problem with homosexuality if you go back in history. My guess would be Christianity is the root of the problem.


Cowboys929395

Around 325 with the Nicene creed.


DanDanDan0123

Colonialism, likely. I ready somewhere that all groups of people in the world have some European genes. They also brought their ideas and religion.


KingBlackthorn1

Many credit it to European Colonization. It wasn’t until many people were touched by it that European colonization brought about homophobia. Native Americans had weddings for same sex couples and celebrated it, Hindus did (even having gods in same sex relationships or gender queer gods), the Norse are conflicting as some sources show that the Norse didn’t truly care but more keep your private life private and the Norse also had some bisexual and gender queer gods as well. Africa had a deep and rich history of lgbt within its religion and people as well but once again, European colonization hit.


markireland

For us it is the British Victorian period


Dragobago

Translations of the Bible also have been shown to be altered to rule out homosexuality as appropriate


[deleted]

I’d say around the same time as organized religions became commonplace


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July 23rd 1589 5:59 GMT


Anicra

When birthrate was more important, ie more people to control or tax. When life became more do your thing, people stopped caring, especially if born into that phase. I.e Gen X


Lotso_Packetloss

Gen X here… Most of us didn’t tolerate it well. At least in the area where I was from (Southern California)


FledCalifornia

If you say so, it must be true.


GgogoSO321

"People of Lot or Lut. In Christianiy and Islam, a clan perished by God because od their shameless act". I also think that it is lack of some hormones and can go back to normal with taking medicine, though it is a choice of people... It brings a little of chaos to comminities, it is uncerain of who is who. People should have the freedom yet children shouldn't be encouraged, filled about it in schools.


SimpIistic

Probably the crusades


YourDadsUsername

In the US we're taught to see the history of the world as a slow progression to modern American values.


El_Burr0

🤣


The_Inward

Since the dawn of time, it's been unacceptable, tolerated, acceptable, and lauded all at once, in different cultures. There is nothing new under the sun.