Edward Westermarck’s 1906 book The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas included a chapter presenting the world with an overview of the occurrence of homosexuality and gender fluidity around the world, showing their frequent association with the spiritual aspects of communal life, and their widespread acceptance in pre-Christian cultures as natural parts of God’s creation.
He also explained why the Old Testament prohibitions of same sex love and cross-dressing came about:
“…the Hebrew’s abhorrence of sodomy was largely due to their hatred of a foreign cult. According to Genesis, unnatural vice was the sin of a people who were not the Lord’s people…. we know sodomy entered as an element in their religion. Besides kedeshoth, or female prostitutes, there were kedeshim, or male prostitutes, attached to their temples. The word Kadesh, translated ‘sodomite’, properly denotes a man dedicated to a deity; and it appears that such men were consecrated to the mother of the gods, the famous Dea Syria, whose priests or devotees they were considered to be…. the sodomitic acts committed with these temple prostitutes may, like the connections with priestesses, have had in view to transfer blessings to the worshippers.”
This is still not a commonly known fact – the abomination word still influences the attitudes of many religious people towards gays, and of gays towards religion. I wish all queer people today knew that the roots of religious homophobia come from the deep association between our sexuality and pagan spirituality that honoured the body and sexuality as sacred.
In recent times other writers have covered this territory – in books such as Blossom of Bone by Randy P. Connor and Tomas Prower’s Queer Magic. To most modern queers this history of sacred sexuality comes as a big surprise, which it really shouldn’t since back in the early 1900s Westermarck was already laying out this bigger picture.
Here are some extracted sections of Westermarck’s chapter on homosexual love, published 1906:
In America, homosexual customs have been observed among a great number of native tribes. In nearly every part of the continent there seem to have been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions of women, and living with other men as their concubines or wives…
Homosexual practices are, or have been, very prominent among the peoples in the neighbourhood of the Behring Sea… Dr Bogoras gives the following account of a … practice prevalent among the Chukchi: “It happens frequently that, under a supernatural influence of one of their shamans, or priests, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts a woman’s sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts a woman’s attire, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself altogether to female occupation. Furthermore, this disowner of his sex takes a husband into the Yurt and does all the work which is usually incumbent on the wife… These abnormal changes of sex imply the most abject immorality in the community, and appear to be strongly encouraged by the shamans who interpret such cases as an injunction of their individual deity.
The change of sex was usually accompanied by future shamanship; indeed nearly all shamans were former delinquents of their sex. Among the Chukchi male shamans who are clothed in woman’s attire and are believed to be transformed physically into woman are still quite common; and traces of the change of a shaman’s sex into that of a woman may be found among many other Siberian tribes….
In the Malay archipelago, homosexual love is common… It is widely spread among the Bataks of Sumatra. In Bali it is practised openly, and there are persons who make it a profession. The basir of the Dyaks are men who make their living by witchcraft and debauchery…. Homosexual love is reported as common among the Marshall Islanders and in Hawaii. From Tahiti we hear of a set of men called by the natives mahoos, who ‘assume the dress, attitude and manners of women…”
In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have intercourse with men, paying those men who please them…. Men behaving like women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German Southwest Africa and the Diakite-Sarracolese in the French Soudan… Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons…
In North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns; they are frequently among the peasants of Egypt and universal among the Jbala inhabiting the Northern mountains of Moroccco. ..
Homosexual love is spread over Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. It is very prevalent among the Tartars and Karatchai of the Caucasus, the Persians, Sikhs, and Afghans.. Old travellers make reference to its enormous frequency among the Mohammedans of India… In China, where it is also extremely common, there are special houses devoted to male prostitution… In Japan, pederasty is said by some to have prevailed since ancient times, whereas others are of the opinion that it was introduced by Buddhism about the sixth century of our era. The monks used to live with handsome youths, to whom they were often passionately devoted; and in feudal times nearly every knight had as his favourite a young man with whom he entertained relations of the most intimate kind, and on behalf of whom he was always ready to fight a duel when occasion occurred. Tea-houses with male gheishas were found in Japan till the middle of the nineteenth century….
No reference is made to pederasty in the Homeric poems or by Hesiod, but later on we meet with it almost as a national institution. It was known in Rome and other parts of Italy at an early period; but here also it became much more frequent in the course of time. At the close of the sixth century, Polybius tells us, many Romans paid a talent for the possession of a beautiful youth… During the Empire.. formal marriages between men were introduced with all the solemnities of ordinary nuptials. Homosexual practices occurred among the Celts, and were by no means unknown to the ancient Scandinavians, who had a whole nomenclature of the subject.
There is no indication that the North American aborigines attached any opprobrium to men who had intercourse with those members of their own sex who had assumed the dress and habits of women. In Kadiak such a companion was on the contrary regarded as a great acquisition; and the effeminate men themselves, far from being despised, were held in repute by the people, most of them being wizards…
Among the Illinois and Neudowessies, the effeminate men assist in all the Juggleries and the solemn dance in honour of the calumet, or sacred tobacco pipe, for which the Indians have such a deference… They are called into the councils of the Indians, and nothing can be decided upon without their advice; for because of their extraordinary manner of living they are looked upon as manitous, or supernatural beings, and persons of consequence. The Sioux, Sacs and Fox Indians give once a year, or oftener if they choose, a feast to the Berdache, or I-coo-coo-a, who is a man dressed in woman’s clothes, as he has been all his life…
In ancient Peru, also, homosexual practices seem to have entered in the religious cult…
Las Casas tells us that in several of the more remote provinces of Mexico, sodomy was tolerated.. because the people believed that their gods were addicted to it; and it is not improbable that in earlier times the same was the case in the entire empire.
These statements chiefly refer to homosexual practices between men, but similar practices also occur between women. Among the American aborigines there are not only men who behave like women, but women who behave like men…. Homosexual practices are said to be common among Hottentot and Herero women. In Zanzibar there are women who wear men’s clothes in private, show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclination, or else among normal women who are won over by presents or other means. In Egyptian harems every woman is said to have a ‘friend’. In Bali, homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men… and the same seems to be the case in India…
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