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Keywords:: History, Homosexuality, Bisexuality, Sexual Orientation, Rome, Greece, Inquisition | ||||||||
The history of gay and lesbian people is not an easy thing to trace, to be sure. Through human history what it means to have romantic attraction to your same sex has varied greatly and those who were apparently gay or lesbian have often been persecuted, leaving their history in hostile hands. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of historical evidence to give us a tolerable outline of gays and lesbians through times past.
In this article, we will skim the history of gays and lesbians in western civilization and politics. Elsewhere we have outlined cases of both socially accepted and resisted same-sex marriages, in particular, throughout history (related isocrat.org article). Here we will focus on the general attitudes regarding homosexuality. We will be primarily using the Homosexuality and Civilization, by Crompton (1).
Contents:
- The Ancient Western World - ( < 100 AD) A time when and place where being gay was far from a problem.
- An Assault of Traditional Values - (100 AD to 478 AD) A violent sea change for gay men and women.
- The Fall of an Empire - The role of homosexuality in the fall of the Roman Empire, among others.
- A New Traditional Value for Gays - (500 AD - 1200 AD) Finding the majority's use for a 'sin' only a minority want.
- Defending the New Traditional Values - (1250 AD - 1600 AD) The inquisitions and homosexuality.
Figure 1. Various Images of Same-sex Interactions in Ancient Art. a) Greece, 540 BC. b) "Hercules having sex with another man," Etruscan, 550 BC. c) Greek, orgy scene. d) Greek male couple embracing. e) Fresco from the Tomb of Diver, Greek, 475 BC. f) The Warren Cup, Roman Empire, 10 AD.
Gay men and women were certainly present before recorded history; we see homosexual behavior in most every society, time, and even species, including our closest genetic relatives, the bonobos (Related isocrat.org article). However, within the limits of recorded history, we will begin with and around ancient Greece.
The civilization of ancient Greece has almost taken on a mythological quality, and for good reason. They were the inventors of Democracy, the source of many enduring works of art and philosophy, and became one of the first great human empires. One notable fact of greek culture through out its rise and pinnacle is its familiarity with and friendly attitude towards same-sex love. Poems, pottery, plays and more from the ancient world have all been shown to depict and describe same-sex romantic relationships, right along with heterosexual unions. Figure 1 shows some examples (Please, forgive the explicit nature of some of these images. A common maneuver of anti-gay rights activists is to claim expressions of same-sex love in history are meant to be only expressions of friendship and not sexual in nature. It was felt that the less explicit images would be similarly rejected).
It is important to note that the ancient greeks seemingly did not have a word for a person who is attracted primarily to their same sex in general. They saw romantic relationships between men as being between an active, more masculine participant (the erastes, or lover), and a younger, more passive participant (the eromenos, or beloved). This way of viewing same sex relationships causes confusion and complicates issues of bisexuality and pederasty into the topic.
Of course, the Greek tolerance for sexual relations involving minors should go down in history as part of the dark side of Greek civilization, along with their often poor treatment of women and use of slavery. Nevertheless, relationships between erastes and eromenos were not necessarily involving minors, as much as involving a younger and an older man (Note, for example, the proportions and builds of the men involved in sexual acts in Figure 1). Sometimes, for their insistence on viewing gay relationships in these masculine/feminine terms, arguments even arose in the ancient greeks as to which man took which role in some couples. For example, Phaedrus addresses and contradicts Aeschylus' assertion that Achilles was the erastes in his relationship with Patroclus in Homer's Iliad.
Regarding Homer's Iliad, it is important to note that this work, written around the 8th century BC, contained a great deal of tenderness and emotion in Achilles' relationship with Patroclus, but explicit sexual components were absent, and were assumed into the relationship by later Greek commentators. It is thought greater openness to such love was brought to Homer's Ionian culture from surrounding cultures, just after the authorship of the Iliad, as Greece was exiting its so-called dark ages.
Crete, for example, seemed to have an elaborate tradition surrounding the initiation of same-sex relationships. The philetor (lover) would arrange with the friends of his beloved kleinos (distinguished) to put on a mock abduction. If the lover was "equal or superior in rank or other respects" the friends would pretend to resist "in a very gentile way" after which they would "cheerfully turn him over." Otherwise the relationship was forbidden.
The city of Elis, the originators of the Olympic Games, was described by Plato, Plutarch, and Xenophon as a city that actively encouraged male-male romantic relationships. The Dorian city of Magara was known for its festival, Dioicleia, which celebrated the warrior Diocles, who died defending his male lover in battle. This festival included a male beauty contest, and kissing contest.
While the lives of females are somewhat hidden by the patriarchal greek civilization, the poet Sappho, of Lesbos, does give some account lesbian relationships. For one of many examples, when writing of a married woman, Sappho pines
For when I look at you for a moment,
then it is no longer possible for me to speak;
my tongue has snapped,
at once a subtle fire has stolen beneath my flesh,
I see nothing with my eyes, my ears hum, sweat pours from me,
a trembling seizes me all over,
I am greener than grass,
and it seems to me that I am little short of dying.
It is important to note that Sappho's work was not something resisted, or hidden by her culture. She was in fact a celebrated poet in her time, the "tenth muse" according to Plato, and found on coinage.
Some interesting insights to how same-sex love was regarded in the 4th century BC come from Plato's Symposium. Here Plato, who himself had described personal homosexual love, has Aristophanes, propose the well-known mythology of humans being created as double creatures--some male-male, some male-female, and some female-female--who were eventually split in two by Zeus. The highest form of love was said to be found in the union of these two once-separated halves. This description of human love is particularly notable for the way Plato uses it to distinguish between men who love both women and boys, and men who fall in love with men and "pass their whole lives together". This may be one of the earliest descriptions of what we would call a gay man today, a man who is not attracted to the feminine looks of young men or women, but attracted to men throughout their life. There were some examples of such men throughout the existence of the Platonic Academy, such as Polemo and Crates, Crantor and Arcesilaus.
There are many other examples of same-sex love in the rulers and philosophers of the Greek Civilization, in their folk tales, and in their religious traditions (Every male God save Ares has been described as having a same-sex love at some point). One could go on a good deal regarding the Sacred Band of Thebes, or Alexander the Great alone, but we will skip over much of such information and move on to look at how acceptance was converted into hostility.
An Assault on Traditional Values
It seemed a certain stoic asceticism had been gaining in popularity, a pleasure in the austere, and this line of thinking began aiming at all sorts of human joys.
Ironically, in Plato, one can see hints of the tide turning against same-sex relations, in particular. In contrast to his earlier works, he makes arguments against such love in The Laws, his last work, which was left unfinished upon his death at the age of eighty. Here the creation of a totalitarian fascist city is discussed, as being a practical next-best to the “Utopia” described in The Republic. Plato hopes to restrict all non-reproductive sexual activity, along with business, and the accumulation of private wealth, and ban travel and trade. He also calls homosexuality unnatural reasoning that it is not seen in other animals, a fact that is clearly false (related isocrat.org article). Regardless, he will be quoted and used by future theologians hoping to add his name to justify their anti-gay argument (while, ignoring any pro-gay content in his writings).
Just barely stepping into the first century, we have the Jewish Philo. To get an idea of how his culture was, we can read his complaint. He wrote "it [gay love] is now a matter of boasting, not only to the active but to the passive partner" in the Roman Empire. Public opinion in Rome clearly first turned against the "passive" partner in a same-sex relationship.
Once the early christian church began to grow, Clement of Alexandria (~200 AD) became prominent in the leadership. He was a fan of Plato's asceticism and taught that, even in marriage. sex for pleasure was a sin and to "outrage nature". Clement similarly expressed anger that Roman law allowed gays to live openly and freely, and, likely using hyperbole, that it was almost obligatory to have male relations. His contemporary, Tertulian (155-230 AD) then gave one of the earliest records of a public Christian hope to enact the Levitical death penalty for gays in Roman law.
Like most losses of rights to government, those for gays were eroded in increments. During the reign of the pagan emperor Severus (222-235 AD), the prolific Julius Paulus, and his colleague Ulpian handed out judgments lowering the social standing of the “passive” gay partner to “infamous”, a status that put him in league with gladiators, thereby limiting his right to vote and hold office. The right to practice law was also taken and certain inheritance laws were limited. Gay relations were becoming illegal, in the empire on whole.
Once Constantine (272-337 AD) was in power and converted to Christianity, these anti-gay opinions took a much larger political step, beginning with the state-sanctioned killings of primarily homosexuals in pagan cults. In fact, the campaigns against paganism and homosexuality were purposefully chained together, just as Paul had posed them in his letter to the Romans.
Around 300 AD, Firmicus Maternus, a Roman senator, was instrumental to this end. After his conversion, Maternus began an attack on all pagan religions, with his creation of The Errors of the Pagan Religions, his justification being Deuteronomy 13. Along with his assault on the pagans, he tried to strongly link homosexuality to the new culture war. For example, in his assault on the faith in the goddess Tanit, he complained about male priests “letting themselves be handled as women”, being “divorced from masculinity” and relishing in “dishonor of their polluted bodies”.
At this same time Constantine’s sons took the helm, and implemented edicts giving “exquisite punishment” to the “passive” homosexual only, in 342:
“When a man marries as a woman who offers yourself to man, what does he wish, when sex has lost its significance; when the crime is one which is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed into another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, a lot of the armed with an avenging sword, but those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.”
Regarding this law, Senator Firmicus, of course, expresses his appreciation.
This transition was not completely smooth, though. There was initial pagan and social resistance to the new use of Mosaic Law, and one recorded related riot, a sort of grassroots swell of traditional culture warriors, one might say. Perhaps due to such resistance, the anti-gay laws were seen by religious leaders to have been weakly enforced at first. Saint John Chrysostom, in 380 AD, complained about the “new and lawless lust” of homosexuality. New! Saint John was apparently attempting to divorce same-sex love from his culture's history. He prodded the government to toughen the laws as “no one is afraid, no one trembles; No benefit comes from law courts.”
He would get his wish. They would tremble and much worse.
Theodosius (347-395 AD) stepped up the conflict. He made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and began a strong, bloody assault on pagan faiths. He finally, in 390 AD, implemented the full Mosaic Law condemning all male homosexuals to death, not merely the “passive” partner.
Early theologians helped out with the public relations campaign of such a cultural change. In The City of God, 412 AD, St. Augustine (354-430 AD) is one of the first to make homosexuality the primary sin of Sodom (related isocrat.org article), which sets up the justification for future governments to rid themselves of gays as a means of pretended self-preservation from the wrath of God. He also poses homosexuality as a crime directly against God, which will lead some future theologians to claim consensual gay sex should be dealt with more harshly than even rape. After all, God, not merely a human woman, is the victim.
The importance of this move should not be lost. It is not easy to get people to overlook their sense of ethics, the Golden Rule, without using some sort of moral sleight of hand, or offering them something in return. Here the evil of killing gays, who have no victims, is made to seem good by posing God as their victim. All the victims of natural disasters were also piled on, being a supernatural sodomitical result of gays in their midst. In return, people got to feel like they were doing God’s will with a disposable and perpetual minority, and that they would get all the afterlife bonuses that faith tells them come with obedience. It is a tool humanity uses to this day to get good people to justify wrong.
Going beyond Saint Augustine, Saint Chrysostom makes homosexuality the only sin of Sodom. He called homosexuals “monstrous” and “satanic”, guilty of the most grievous sin, and their defenders “even worse than murderers.” The punishment he advocated was stoning.
The Fall of an Empire
This is about the point at which the Roman empire fell, typically dated to be in 478 AD, once Odoacer, a Teutonic chieftain, deposed the last roman emperor, Romulus Augustus. The causes of this empire's decline are thought to be great in number and complexity, ranging from malaria to the vulnerability of a slave economy, but some anti-gay activists have hoped to pin this event on homosexuality's acceptance in the empire. For its use as a political tool today, the claim will be addressed here.
What should first be apparent is that the law of Rome began punishing homosexuality a couple centuries before the empire's fall. Consider all that has occurred, for example, since the early 18 hundreds in the United States alone. At the time of the fall, homosexuality was met with "exquisite punishment" and often death and had been for about a century. Furthermore, Rome had been ruled by christian emperors for over a century. During that century in which the empire had it's most dramatic declines, Christianity was the official religion and other faiths were violently suppressed.
This is not to turn the tables and say Christianity was the cause of Rome's fall, but it has been proposed by historians as one possible cause (2). Besides, most versions of Christianity have improved to such an extent over the years that to compare them to their original implementation would be problematic. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that in the years of Rome's decline they transformed their society from a pagan empire where many people had many choices in their faith, from Jupiter to Venus to Mithraism, to persecuting the traditional religions and implementing official monotheism. People not conforming to the new mystery religion were bound to be upset and become less invested in their society.
While the violent persecution of Christians by pagan emperors when christianity was an emerging minority and the empire strong was certainly morally appalling, it was not a sea change in the religious lives and freedoms of the majority. Once the Christians began persecuting the Pagans, to an astonishingly similar degree to what they experienced, they were purging centuries of ingrained faith on which many had built their lives. Furthermore, just before the decline, the empire began seeking out for punishment homosexuals, and alienating them and their supporters. Such moves, which made the state the enemy to the love lives and religions of a significant portion of its populace, could be seen to exacerbate already existing problems in the Roman Empire.
While on the topic, one should go back an empire and mention the Greeks here as well. They are also sometimes offered up as an example of supposed culturally eroding effects of homosexuality. This "fall" is sometimes put at the loss of Athenian self-governance to the Macedonians. The Macedonians, though, were every bit as tolerant of homosexuality and bisexuality as their Grecian opponents.
Furthermore, consider, as we will in the next section in more detail, the Byzantine Empire, a midlevel continuation of the Greek and Roman Empires, though now under tight Christian rule and with strong anti-homosexual laws. This empire was ended in 1453 AD when Muhammad II, of the Ottoman Turks, took Constantinople. Additionally, the Ottomans were a significantly less homophobic culture.
Simply there is no good evidence to claim homosexuality is a destroyer of empires; empires seem to have inevitable life cycles of their own.
A New Traditional Value for Homosexuals
Justinian became the Byzantine emperor around 527 AD. He commissioned the Code of Justinian, and it was finalized by 534. This body of law incorporated the 342 law of Constantine’s sons, mentioned above, once again making clear gay sex meant death for both partners. Record exists of this policy being implemented even upon two bishops. They were tortured and castrated (which most often in those times meant a protracted form of capital punishment). An 18th century historian, Edward Gibbons, who refers to homosexuality as a “moral pestilence” (just so we know his stands against homosexuals), reported:
Justinian declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly lust. In defiance of every principle of justice, he stretched to past as well as future offences for the operation of his edicts… A painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp reeds…
Any compassionate human must be wondering, why? Those were cruel times in general, to start, but there were events to be explained and spun under the new world view of Christianity. The devil, Sodom, sin, and the supernatural were found to be very useful tools of government. For an example, after a series of natural calamities, Justinian gave his Novella 77 warning homosexual acts:
incur the just anger of God, and bring about the destruction of cities along with their inhabitants. Therefore we order all men to avoid such offences as for crimes of this description cause famine, earthquake, and pestilence.”
If it were truth, those would be some supposedly religious reasons to scapegoat and kill homosexuals. Famine, for example, isn't something cyclical their government could help with in good planning; famines were caused by homosexuals. Such explanations for why God sends calamity, to harm even followers and children, are not even absent from modern preachers today.
Two decades later, in 557 AD, Constantinople experienced a deadly earthquake followed by a plague. Seemingly in reaction, Novella 141 was created (559 AD) and put the blame on “Men-corruptors”. The citizens were abused by nature and they act eerily similar to an abuse victim, as if spirits were listening in with God’s hammer at the ready:
As we are always in need of the benevolence and kindness of God, and above all, at this time, when we have provoked Him to anger in many ways… Wherefore it would not be just for us to treat with contempt His abounding kindness, His tolerance, and His infinite patience, lest, avoiding repentance, our hearts may become hardened, and we may accumulate His anger upon our heads…there are persons who are guilty of abominable offences, which are deservedly detested by God. We have reference to the corruption of males, a crime which some persons have the sacrilegious audacity to perpetrate”
This justification of random tragedy in a city will become one of the repeating uses for the ever-present gay man or woman in any city, and the reason Sodom was best used after being morphed into a gay city. Calamity is not primarily because some people lie, or steal, or skip religious services, just like any man could. God did it to get at the gay men hiding in our midst, the people who we, the majority, never have been, nor will be, nor ever wish to be. He wants to rid us of the sin we have no interest in, and we're just victims of friendly fire. It was a useful tool of explanation and crowd placation.
Justinian’s rule is also recorded as one using gay-fear to raise money for the state. The mere accusation could be used to fill coffers. A specially appointed magistrate took the job of finding out homosexuals, and his underlings would exhort money upon threat. Procopius records: “the subordinates would neither bring forth accusers nor submit witnesses…. the unfortunates who fell in their way continued, without having been accused or convicted, and with great secrecy, to be murdered as well as robbed of their money.”
At about 1000 AD we have Saint Damian, who wrote the Book of Gomorrah, calling homosexuality the vice that “surpasses the enormity of all vices”, worse than anything else. This is also one of the early examples of the twins of 1. fascinations with and 2. abhorrence of gay sex. Damian went into uncomfortable detail as to what he imagined the “gay lifestyle” to be. To his credit, Pope Leo disagreed with the Saint’s harshness; possibly because the Book of Gomorrah was primarily attacking gay men in the clergy.
Adding to Saint Damian, the revered Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD), a man who writes of his own same-sex attraction in his youth, holds homosexuality up as the worst of all sexual sins. You jail a man for rape because he harms another human, but homosexual sex is imagined to harm God and the law was bound to react.
Imagine all the other horrible things a human can do and then imagine how you have to bend your ethics to put adult consensual sex on top of all that. It is little wonder it has taken so long to undo the harm done to gay men and women in the public imagination. It was a perfect storm of history: the pagan competition element, the Old Testament with its own old reasons, the need for bodies to grow the church, the reflexive ick-factor most heterosexual people feel at the notion of such sex, the fact that it makes the majority feel more moral by not experiencing such “vial afflictions”, and the political use of having a perpetual minority to blame for natural calamities and even military failures. Regardless, a new value for gay and lesbian relationships was realized and, as the next section will outline, it was defended vigorously.
Defending the New Traditional Values
In 1233 Pope Gregory IX set up the Papal Inquisition. Here it’s a bit confusing as to who was a condemned homosexual and who was a condemned heretic; homosexuality had been tied so tight to being a heretic that the same word was often used for both. However, in 1255 the Head of the Dominican order began aiming particularly for “sodomites”, a word that now meant what most think today, and in 1260 Bologna’s laws made the Dominicans officially responsible for hunting down homosexuals.
In 1252 Pope Innocent IV okayed torture in inquisition trials, but it was not to be done by clerics; a layman must dirty their hands. In 1256 though, Alexander IV allowed clergy inquisitors to absolve each other for their acts of torture.
"Templars burned at the stake", (1384 AD)
In the 14th century, we have the events surrounding the Templars, a monastic order of knights, under allegiance to the Pope. It is debatable if even an abnormal number of them were gay men, or heretics, or if they were simply on the wrong end of politics, but homosexuality and apostasy were the crimes of which Philip IV accused them, playing on popular rumors in what appears to be an attempt to gain power over the church. Pope Clement V (1264-1314 AD), under coercion and not wanting to be treated by Philip as his predecessor, Boniface VIII, had been, acquiesced and instructed the bishops and inquisitors to interrogate the Templars. Most of the “confessions” gained were eventually retracted, but many knights were quickly burned anyway and the Pope ended the Templars, in part for “the execrable outrage of sodomy”.
The use of homosexuality against political obstacles was clear.
"Two old priests showing the application of torture under the supervision of the Inquisition."
While it is the state which carried out most all these sentences, and that does give some absolution to the Catholic Church, the church and state cannot effectively be separated here. The church would extract a sodomite’s confession and then, as they referred to it, “relax” him into the custody of the state executioner. Ostensibly they still felt christian love for the sodomite and were only doing what was best for him and the society. In their faith, they were “helping” him get a far better chance at heaven, absolved and then quickly killed, and as a great example to other sinners. If their faith were truth, it could be seen by them as moral: an infinitely tiny sliver of torment for an eternity of heaven.
Good intentions about the supernatural have historically been a common but poor excuse. The church, though, knew what the effects of their judgments would be and the laws of the state were clearly based in doctrine. In the Netherlands, for example, the punishment for “breaking the law of Octavianus [referring to the Lex Julia of Augustus criminalizing male relations] and Moses and the whole world” could be either 1. being burned 2. buried alive or 3. self-castration. In the Etablissements de Saint Louis (book 1 ch 90), it states “if anyone is suspected of bougrerie [homosexuality] the magistrate shall apprehend him and send him to the bishop; and if it is proved he shall be burned; and all his goods shall go to the baron.” The same fate is then given for heretics.
Also, again, “all his goods go to the baron.” Finding a “sodomite” (gay or not) meant a good deal of money at times, and homophobia was used for monetary gains.
The (unexpected) Spanish inquisition began in 1478 AD. The rights of secular bodies to do such things as burn homosexuals based on Papal claims were spelled out in the Directorium Inquisitorum, by Nicolas Eymeric. Here the church is said to be able to punish even the heathens violating “natural law”; the proof given is the now fully transformed Sodom story. It concludes, “the judgments of God are our example! Consequently, why should the Pope not proceed, if he has means, as God proceeds!” Why not?
In 1524 Pope Clement VII gave license to three tribunals set up to specifically try “sodomites” in the Spanish Inquisition, claiming “among the children of the infidels [the Moors] the horrendous and detestable crime of sodomy has begun to spread and that if these debased kinds of men are not isolated they can drag down the faithful into this corruption.” This of course was another useful political maneuver.
To his credit, Pope Clement VII did specify that typical inquisition rules did not apply to the edict, and thus local laws allowing for confrontation of witnesses and the forbiddance of torture were in play. Nevertheless, torture was still used and when objection to it was finally made in 1593, it was excused as “custom”.
By the end of the Spanish Inquisition it is estimated 100 men were found and put to death for homosexuality, and on top of that are those tortured and receiving lesser punishments (only an estimated 1 in 5 were put to death). Also, that does not count those put to death in secular courts for sodomy, which is estimated to be about as numerous for the same period, placing the total of gay men killed around the number of protestant christian heretics killed.
The religious pageantry of the autos showcasing these punishments is a terrifying thing. On top of those victims one must consider the countless others in secret fear for their lives in the audience.
There are also the victims of incitement to mob violence that should be considered. In 1519 Luis Castelloli, a Franciscan Friar, in a fierce sermon, attributed a plague to homosexuality. The Friar did such a job that a mob formed. They burned 4 of 5 suspects alive. One man was a member of the clergy and was initially given leniency, but was eventually strangled to death, then burned.
"Balboa Throws the Indians Who Have Committed the Abominable Crime of Sodomy to be Torn to Bits by Dogs." Theodore de Bry, Engraving for America, 1590.
Briefly, in the new world, we are told by the letters of Spanish explorers and missionaries that "sodomy", was common and far from unacceptable among the natives (native pottery depicting sexual acts seems to back this claim up in part). Hernan Cortes (1485-1547 AD) reported to Charls V "we have learnt and been informed for sure that they [Vera Cruz natives] are all sodomites..." Surely an exaggeration, but this was one of the justifications for their murder. We have depictions of the torture of such natives who had the misfortune of having their alleged "sodomy" come to the attentions of the Spanish conquerors. This represents, of course, another example of a political use of posing homosexuality as an egregious sin.
We will end this history with a record of same-sex marriages performed in Rome, in 1578. The Venetian Ambassador reported,
“Eleven Portuguese and Spaniards have been captured. They had assembled in a church near Saint John Lateran where they had performed some ceremonies of horrible wickedness which sullied the sacred name of matrimony, marrying each other and being joined as husbands and wife. Twenty-seven or more, it is said, were discovered altogether on another occasion, but they were not able to capture more than eleven, who were given to the fire as they deserved.”
On an optimistic note, that pretty much sums up the difference in the times and points out how much the Christian faiths have evolved along with gay culture through out history. Merely a religious ceremony of gay marriage meant being burned alive and you had much theological opinion backing up, inspiring, and encouraging the authorities. It has taken centuries for humanity to step back from those superstitions surrounding gays and lesbians and look at them seriously, through the lenses of modern principles of democracy and equity. It has taken as long for governments to give up those useful tools of gay-scapegoat. The world is changing, though; we should all, gay or straight, Christian or not, be grateful.
REFERENCES ::
1. Crompton, L.. Homosexuality and Civilization. The Belknap Press, Cambridge. (2003).
2. Gibbons, E.. The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Penguin, New York. (1994).
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isocrat > history > gay_hist
Created: 2008-08-13; Last Edited: 2008-08-13; (ID396)