In the 1970s Michel Foucault wrote these lines that have influenced the discussion of same-sex love and culture ever since, with many accepting today the notion that same-sex lovers and gender-variant people did not begin to self-identify as a sub-group of the wider culture until the late 19th century:
“Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy into a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.”
Foucault’s statement has been accepted by many, but since the 70s some historians have searched for evidence of self-aware gay subcultures further back in time, and I believe we now have enough unearthed material to make the case that that men who desired other men were indeed recognised, and given names – such as cinaedi, ganymedes, mollis, pathics... and of course sodomites… throughout european history – and that they recognised themselves as something of a species apart, as different from the mass of humanity. This recognition went largely underground from the 4th century CE until the 19th, but those who carried knowledge of the history through those dark centuries left signs along the way.
Homosexual, like sodomite are words applied to ‘queer’ people from the outside. There have been other terms preferred by same-sex lovers themselves over the centuries, and I propose that the reason that ‘homosexual’ did not appear until so late in history is that no educated gay/queer person would have defined themselves in a way that limited their nature to something simply sexual. To be gay, lesbian or gender-fluid is to be a whole person – our sexuality or gender identity is a doorway to our soul, it is a spiritual quality, it does not define who we are, though it may be a sign pointing to other aspects of our nature…
19th century intellectuals such as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds were aware of the reductive nature of ‘homosexual’ and preferred the term Uranian, which was first used by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in Germany, making reference to the Goddess Aphrodite Urania, the patron of same sex love mentioned in Plato’s Symposium. Same sex love had been one of the pillars of the golden age of Greek civilisation, where philosophy, art, physical fitness and love between men were highly regarded, and the educated men of Europe in the Middle Ages, especially after the 15th century Renaissance, were well aware of the many references to same sex love in classical literature and mythology.
[The shoots of the virulent homophobia that was to infect Europe from the late Middle Ages were also present in the time of Plato’s works of the 5th century BCE. “Taking a male lover,” Plato wrote, “is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which male-male love is particularly apt to produce.”]
Eunuchs: the modern mind has fallen for the idea that the large number of eunuchs in the ancient world were all castrated men. This is incorrect – Greek and Latin texts distinguish between ‘natural eunuchs’ and ‘man-made eunuchs’, with the former referring to men who did not want to have sex with women. Jesus refers to three kinds of eunuchs in Matthew 19 verse 12: “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” Basilides, a Gnostic Christian in Alexandria sometime between 125 and 150, claimed that Jesus was referring to three types of male celibates: those with a natural revulsion to women; those who practice asceticism out of a desire for glory from their peers; and those who remain unmarried to better do the work of the kingdom. Eunuchs were seen as a kind of third gender until the Middle Ages.
Over many centuries what we now might call a hetero-centric model of life on earth has tried to wipe out genderfluid and same sex attracted people, and when this ultmately proved impossible it attempted to co-opt gay men and lesbians into the ‘family’ model by hiding our history from the new generations. Most queer people think our history is simply a modern one because the attempt to wipe out the memory of our place in the ancient world has been so fierce. In fact, Mr Foucault, nobody’s sexuality was defined until the scientific 19th century – sexuality was probably for many or most people a rather fluid thing, and we should remember that the term heterosexual was actually invented after homosexual! Ancient languages had no term for people who were only inclined to the opposite sex, those we now call heterosexual, but had plenty of terms for men and women who engaged in same sex erotic activities!
From The Man Who Would Be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism by Michael Bailey (2003):
“…the record we have shows that some Greeks recognized that at least some people had a homosexual preference. For example, Aristophanes portrayed Agathon as a feminine man who en-joyed receptive anal sex. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes related a creation myth in which originally there were three sexes: men, women, and a combination of the two. Zeus cut each sex in half, and from that point, each person was driven to find the missing half. Thus, the man created by cleaving a complete man in half was homosexual, whereas heterosexual men and women were created by cutting the original androgyne in half…
“The Romans, just a few centuries later, had a word to describe feminine, exclusively homosexual men: cinaedi. These men were so common that the Apostle Paul offered homosexual behavior as his chief example of the capital’s decadence. They appear to have shared a flamboyant style of distinctive dress, hairstyles, and mannerisms, as well as regular cruising grounds, and typical occupations.”
4th century Church Father John Chrysostom recorded that gay sex was rampant in the Christian society of 4th century Antioch (in modern Turkey): “There is some danger that womenkind will become unnecessary in the future with young men instead fulfilling all the needs women used to… No-one is ashamed, no one blushes, but rather they take pride in their little game”.
A dialogue called “Affairs of the Heart” from the early 4th century, like others at the time, debated the pleasures of gay versus straight love affairs, starting from a equanimous place that viewed “women at their fairest and young men in the flower of manhood” as two sides of the same coin, but concluding that the love of boys is preferable! This work heralds same sex love as having “a hallowed and lawful heritage”. It argues that:
“Marriages are devised as a means of ensuring succession, which was necessary, but only the love of men is a noble undertaking of the philosopher’s soul” and that “Human wisdom coupled with knowledge has after frequent experiments chosen what is best, and has formed the opinion that male-male love is the most stable of loves”.
However, times were already changing – the author of Affairs of the Heart describes lovers of the same gender as “strangers cut off in a foreign land”, but declares: “We shall not, all the same, be overcome by fear and betray the truth”.
Baudri of Bourgeuil (1050-1130) an abbot then later archbishop, wrote many affectionate verses, such as to Ralph the Monk whom he called his “Other self, or myself, if two spirits may be one, And if two bodies may actually become one”. His words reveal that he was aware of the dangers but did not believe the official line:
“What we are is a crime, if it is a crime to love,
For the God who made me live made me love”.
12th century Benedictine monk Bernard of Cluny in France wrote that same sex lovers “are as numerous as grains of barley, as many as the shells of the sea, or the sand of the shore”, complaining that cities were “awash” with gay sexuality – the terms he used were Sodomes and Ganymedes.
Chronicler Richard of Devizes wrote a description of London in 1192 which listed Ganymedes and ‘effeminate sodomites’ among its deviant characters.
One of the most popular poems of the 12th century – the ‘Debate between Ganymede and Helen‘, survives in manuscripts from England to Italy. Unlike the similar Greek debates a millennium earlier, the fertility of heterosexuality wins out over the gay “waste of seed”, but we learn from the poem that gayness was very common amongst important, influential people, and that the very people who call it a sin also are engaged in it. “Some are drawn by Helen, others by Ganymede” says the poem.
A similar debate between Ganymede and Hebe claims that the boy’s beauty eclipses Hebe “as the sun outshines the moon”. Ganymede’s lines in the poem strongly suggest that gay people of the time saw their sexual and romantic preferences as innate and natural. A copy of this debate from Leiden has these words written into it:
“The indiscriminate Venus grasps at any remedy,
But the wise one rejoices with the tender Ganymede.
I have heard it said that he plays Venus more than she,
But Venus is happy, since he stuffs only boys…
Venus kindles all fires, but the greatest heat
Is in sex with males, whoever has tried it knows it.”
“Fifteenth-century Florence had a reputation as a bastion of “sodomites.” (This is why “Florenzer” in German meant “sodomite.”) In 1432 the city created a commission, “the Office of the Night,” to solicit and investigate charges of sodomy. For example, boxes were placed so that people could make anonymous accusations. The population of Florence was 40,000, and the Office of the Night lasted 70 years. During that time, 17,000 men were implicated. Assuming there were 20,000 men in Florence at any one time, and that 70 years means two complete generations, 17,000 is nearly half of the men of Florence during that time. Florentines generally accepted sodomy as a common misdemeanor, to be punished with a fine, rather than as a serious crime. Fewer than 3,000 of the 17,000 accused men were convicted.
“The primary historian of homosexuality in fifteenth-century Florence, Michael Rocke, emphasized the social constructionist line, that these men were not considered “homosexual.” However, at least some clearly were. One man confessed to his acquaintance, Machiavelli, that had his father “known my natural inclinations and ways, [he] would never have tied me to a wife.” There was a core minority of “notorious sodomites” who committed a disproportionate number of offences. And accused men were more likely to be bachelors than married men. All this argues that some men preferred men to women.” From The Man Who Would Be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism by Michael Bailey (2003)
Also in Italy, Antonio Vignali’s La Cazzaria, sometimes anachronistically referred to as ‘the first gay novel’, written in 1525 and circulated in manuscript in a limited form, was composed in the form of a Platonic dialogue. It focuses plenty on the pleasure of anal penetration vs vaginal and makes the case that “if nature had wanted men not to engage in buggery, she would not have made the experience so enjoyable; or she would have made it physiologically impossible”.
Renaissance genius Michelangelo (1475-1564) wrote in a poem,
And if the vulgar and malignant crowd
Misunderstand the love with which we’re blessed,
Its worth is not affected in the least;
Our faith and honest love can still feel proud.
English King James I (reigned 1603-1625) spoke up in Parliament in response to criticism of his intimate relationship with his ‘Favourite’, the Duke of Buckingham, citing the Bible to demonstrate its validity, saying, “I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John, and I have my George.”
David Greenberg in his influential book The Construction of Homosexuality (1988) proposed that, as a consequence of the materialist philosophy of the Enlightenment of the 17-18th centuries, sodomites began to think that if all actions are governed by natural laws, could be nothing unnatural about their conduct. Then, if we go along with Foucault, in the late 19th century the homosexual identity emerged – but the examples above tell a different story – that self-conscious same-sex oriented people have always around.
Greenberg writes that Paris police records of arrests for same sex activities in the 1720s record people saying things like “He had this taste all his life,” “…from an early age he did not do anything else but amuse himself with men; these pleasures were in his blood,” which shows there was recognition of stable homosexual orientation.
In 1739 Ombre de Deschaug-fours, an anonymous homophile play, features characters discussing causes of homosexual tastes: “In nature everyone has his own inclination”. One speaker contends that the direction of this inclination is formed at birth. But as we have seen, classical and medieval texts had already said the same.
Writing in 1749, in a book called Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d/A Contradiction in Terms, author Thomas Cannon dared to question the prejudice of his age (and was arrested for it, released on bail he fled abroad for 3 years until his mother successfully petitioned the Duke of Newcastle for a pardon). The book’s printer was fined, put in jail for a month and in the pillory to be subjected to public humiliation.
“Among the many Unspeakable Benefits which redound to the World from the Christian Religion, no one makes a more conspicuous Figure than the Demolition of Pederasty. That celebrated Passion, Seal’d by Sensualists, espoused by Philosophers, enshrin’d by Kings, is now exploded with one Accord and Disown’d by the meanest Beggar.”
Cannon asked,
“What Charm then held so many Sages and Emperors, clear Heads and hale Hearts? Inform me, what was that which like a chrystal expanded Lake drew all Mankind to bathe entranc’d in Joys, too mighty every one for our poor Utterance? Not the Flavour of forbidden Fruit: Every Dabbler knows by his Classics, that it was pursu’d and prais’d with the Heighth of Liberty… Let the Adepts in the Abominable Practice pronounce. With wond’rous Boast curst Pederasts advance, that Boy-love ever was the top Refinement of most enlighten’d Ages… When polish’d Greece bow’d her once laurell’d Head to all-subduing Rome, frequent Journeys to and fro wore a capacious Channel, thro’ which to the great Victrix roll’d the proud Streams of Learning, Taste, and Pederasty. The Theology of the Ancients plainly Shews, they preferr’d the horrible Passion to the Love of Women; blooming Hebe resigns to dazzling Ganymede, who ever after enjoys the Place of Cup-bearer to Jupiter.”
In the book Cannon gave voice to a man he describes as “an abhorred, and too polish’d Pederast”, who makes the case that same sex desire is simply part of nature:
“Unnatural Desire is a Contradiction in Terms; downright Nonsense. Desire is an amatory Impulse of the inmost human Parts: Are not they, however constructed, and consequently impelling, Nature? Whatever Modes of Thinking the Mind from Objects receives, whatever Sensations pervade the Body, are not the Mind and Body Parcels of Nature, necessarily receiving those Thoughts, necessarily pervaded by these Sensations? Nature sometimes assumes an unusual Appearance; But the extraordinary Pederast seeking Fru-t-on, is as naturally acted as the ordinary Woman’s Man in that Pursuit.”
His arguments went further, and reveal knowledge of the widespread acceptance of same sex relationships in Asia:
“Licens’d Pederasty, you say, would at least defeat Nature’s manifest Design of continuing Mankind. This is the scarce specious Rant of those, who, by Reflection, know not themselves; nor by Observation the wide World. Man’s ruling Passion is the Love of Variety; you might safely trust this single Principle with peopling the Globe. But are we not Self-Admirers? Then we shou’d covet to see our sweet Faces reflected in little Pratlers. Further, are we not insatiable Hoarders? Upon that Account we must rejoice to keep griping the useless Accumulate by its vesting in our second Selves. That these Reasons do in Fact influence Man, all China swarming with Inhabitants, yet warmly pursuing uncontroul’d Pederasty, beyond contradiction demonstrates.”
(Jesuit Matteo Ricci had visited Peking 1583 and 1609, where he found male prostitution to be lawful and open, “there are public streets full of boys got up like prostitutes. And there are people who buy these boys and teach them to play music, sing and dance.” To his dismay no-one thought anything wrong with this. Several hundred years later, European travellers still reported that no-one was ashamed of homosexuality and that male brothels were common.)
An essay by the Marquis De Sade in 1795 defends the normalcy of all nature’s works and denounces the savagery of punishing same sex relations:
“It makes absolutely no difference whether one enjoys a boy or a girl… no inclinations can exist in us save the ones we have from Nature… she is too wise and too consistent to have given us any which could ever offend her…. Regardless of how it is viewed, it is her work, and in every instance, what she inspires in us must be respected by men.”
“Heinrich Hössli (6 August 1784 in Glarus – 24 December 1864 in Winterthur), sometimes written as Hößli, was a Swiss hatter and author. His book Eros Die Männerliebe der Griechen (2 vols., 1836, 1838) surveyed references to same-sex love in ancient Greek literature and more recent research, and was one of the first works in the 19th century that defended love between men. ‘Eros. Die Männerliebe der Griechen’ might seem an obscure and chaotic work, but it had a lively effect on later developments. It was an inspiration to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and a major source for Albert Moll’s influential study of 1891. Hössli, whose second son was homosexual, had been horrified by the torture and execution of a lawyer in Berne in 1817. Franz Desgouttes had murdered his young secretary, but the court’s unusual cruelty was clearly motivated by Desgouttes’s homosexual passion for his victim. Hössli asked the popular writer Heinrich Zschokke to write a novella on the subject but was disappointed with the result: Der Eros, ‘a conversation about love’, was a disquisition rather than a defence. Hössli decided to write his own Eros. His main ideas were that human laws were not the same as Nature’s laws, that ‘Greek love’ had been maligned by Christian propagandists, and that ‘sexual nature’ is not a matter of choice. But the real force of his book lay in the anthology of texts which presented homosexuality as something civilized and beautiful: Aristotle, Socrates, Horace, Saadi, etc. Hössli’s shopful of texts must have been a revelation to his readers. From a historical point of view, the book itself is probably less significant than the fact that a man who made hats for a living and had no obvious talent for writing spent several years and a lot of money trying to write and publish it.” From http://www.elisarolle.com/
English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) applied his utilitarian view to same sex love and wrote his conclusions in a work on Pederasty in 1795, which was not published because he knew the predictable hostile reaction to it would hinder his other reform efforts. He wrote that in the sayings of Jesus no “mark of reprobation towards the mode of sexuality in question been found as may be seen in such abundance in the epistles of Paul.”
Bentham made the “case for sexual liberty on the grounds that the gratification of the sexual appetite constituted the purest form of pleasure, in opposition to the traditional Christian view that the only morally acceptable form of sexual activity was between one man and one woman, within the confines of marriage, for the purpose of procreation. Bentham offers classical Greece and Rome, where certain male same-sex relationships were regarded as normal, as alternative models of sexual morality, condemns the hostile portrayal of homosexuals in eighteenth-century literature, and calls for the removal of sanctions, whether imposed by religion, law, or public opinion, from all forms of consensual sexual activity, at least in so far as practised in private. Bentham was, moreover, persuaded by Malthus’s argument that population growth tended to outstrip food supply. In these circumstances, non-procreative sexual activity had the additional benefit of not contributing to an increase in the size of the population.” Kris Gint on Bentham Project website.
Unlike in France, where laws against sexual relations between men were repealed in 1791, repression of male-male relations continue throughout 19th century Britain– in 1861 the death penalty was removed, but imprisonment and harsh punishments remained. After 1885 any sexual act between men, not simply sodomy, could be prosecuted as gross indecency. When in 1883 English writer John Addington Symonds compiled materials on ancient Greece to try to show homosexuality could be noble and dignified when valued by society rather than repressed, his work was published in very limited editions.
In the early 20th century Edward Carpenter published more openly, books on themes such as ‘The Intermediate Sex’. He collected reports by travelers and anthropologists about homosexuality around world, claimed homosexuals tended to have exceptional mental and spiritual abilities, forseeing an important future role for them in the uplifting of humanity to a new age of sexual and spiritual liberation.
I believe that history shows very clearly that there have always been people attracted to the same sex, self-aware and proud to be made that way and recognised for that by others. And it shows that the true potential, the deepest qualities, of gay nature, may have hardly been tapped.
rainbow messenger 