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“Whether homosexuality is good or bad, chosen or determined, natural or unnatural, healthy or sick is debated, for such opinions are in the realm of ideology and thus subject to contestation, and we are living at a time when a previously dominant ideological position, that homosexuality is immoral or pathological, faces a powerful and increasingly successful challenge from an alternative ideology, which regards homosexuality as neutral, healthy, or even good. But the underlying premise of that debate—that some people are homosexuals, and that all people are either homosexuals, heterosexuals, or bisexuals—is hardly questioned.”

— George Chauncey, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940”

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Louis Crompton gives a lecture on his book, Homosexuality and Civilization

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"It is often assumed that the history of American sexuality is one of linear progress, moving from a time of benighted homophobia to our present-day enlightenment. However, the further back one looks, the more it seems to be a story of incoherence before intolerance, of "not knowing" before “not accepting.”"

— Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn Was Queer

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"It is often assumed that the history of American sexuality is one of linear progress, moving from a time of benighted homophobia to our pre

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The Tacitus Lie

"An observation of the Roman writer Tacitus has sometimes been used to claim the Germanic tribes condemned homosexuality. Tacitus stated that the Germans drowned in swamps those who were ignavos et imbelles et corpore infames, usually translated as "slothful and unwarlike like and infamous in body." The latter expression has been taken by some to mean passive homosexuals, perhaps those above a certain age. However, this seems to be a superficial reading which comports nicely with the anti-homosexual prejudice of its adherents, including the Nazis, who used the passage to justify their persecution of homosexuals. To apply the phrase, "those of infamous bodies" to homosexuals would not have made any sense to readers of the period in which Tacitus wrote, the Roman Empire of the first century A.D., where homosexuality was taken for granted, participated in by a vast majority of the population at some point in their lives, and where male homosexual prostitutes were so well established that their earnings were taxed and they had their own national holiday.

A description of homosexuals as corpore infames, in fact, resembles more the anti-homosexual preaching of ascetic Christian clerics of later periods. The phrase more likely was meant by Tacitus to refer to the deformed, or those who avoided military service by maiming themselves," which would be consistent with the first two categories of individuals named by Tacitus, the slothful and unwarlike, and who would be people who would have no place in the rigidly ordered scheme of things contemplated templated by the Germanic military ethic."

— James Neil, The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies

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"It is often assumed that the history of American sexuality is one of linear progress, moving from a time of benighted homophobia to our present-day enlightenment. However, the further back one looks, the more it seems to be a story of incoherence before intolerance, of "not knowing" before “not accepting.”"

— Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn Was Queer

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"The old “double standard” [that male promiscuity is more acceptable to female promiscuity] gave men a sexual liberty denied to women. Marxist feminists reduce the historical cult of woman’s virginity to her property value, her worth on the male marriage market. I would argue instead that there was and is a biologic basis to the double standard. The first medical reports on the disease killing male homosexuals indicated men most at risk were those with a thousand partners over their lifetime. Incredulity. Who could such people be? Why, it turned out, everyone one knew. Serious, kind, literate men, not bums or thugs. What an abyss divides the sexes! Let us abandon the pretense of sexual sameness and admit the terrible duality of gender.

Male sex is quest romance, exploration and speculation. Promiscuity in men may cheapen love but sharpen thought. Promiscuity in women is illness, a leakage of identity. The promiscuous woman is self-contaminated and incapable of clear ideas. She has ruptured the ritual integrity of her body. It is in nature’s best interests to goad dominant males into indiscriminate spreading of their seed. But nature also profits from female purity. Even in the liberated or lesbian woman there is some biologic restraint whispering: keep the birth canal clean. In judiciously withholding herself, woman protects an invisible fetus. Perhaps this is the reason for the archetypal horror (rather than socialized fear) that many otherwise bold women have of spiders and other rapidly crawling insects. Women hold themselves in reserve because the female body is a reservoir, a virgin patch of still, pooled water where the fetus comes to term. Male chase and female flight are not just a social game. The double standard may be one of nature’s organic laws."

(Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae)

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It would appear that Paglia's observation is correct, intimately knowing how constructive and creative the male sex drive is. The "quest romance" of many lovers has been an attribute to creative male genius, which otherwise couldn't achieve Platonic redirection of sexual prowess to something just as vital. Many, if not most, indeed cannot "sharpen thought" under chastity and continence.

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"The old “double standard” [that male promiscuity is more acceptable to female promiscuity] gave men a sexual liberty denied to women. Marxist feminists reduce the historical cult of woman’s virginity to her property value, her worth on the male marriage market. I would argue instead that there was and is a biologic basis to the double standard. The first medical reports on the disease killing male homosexuals indicated men most at risk were those with a thousand partners over their lifetime. Incredulity. Who could such people be? Why, it turned out, everyone one knew. Serious, kind, literate men, not bums or thugs. What an abyss divides the sexes! Let us abandon the pretense of sexual sameness and admit the terrible duality of gender.

Male sex is quest romance, exploration and speculation. Promiscuity in men may cheapen love but sharpen thought. Promiscuity in women is illness, a leakage of identity. The promiscuous woman is self-contaminated and incapable of clear ideas. She has ruptured the ritual integrity of her body. It is in nature’s best interests to goad dominant males into indiscriminate spreading of their seed. But nature also profits from female purity. Even in the liberated or lesbian woman there is some biologic restraint whispering: keep the birth canal clean. In judiciously withholding herself, woman protects an invisible fetus. Perhaps this is the reason for the archetypal horror (rather than socialized fear) that many otherwise bold women have of spiders and other rapidly crawling insects. Women hold themselves in reserve because the female body is a reservoir, a virgin patch of still, pooled water where the fetus comes to term. Male chase and female flight are not just a social game. The double standard may be one of nature’s organic laws."

(Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae)

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'Kinsey's findings, as well as the work of other sex researchers, has shown that the demarcation between "gay" and "straight" is not as clear-cut as many assume, but one with many shades of gray. The reason this is not more apparent in contemporary society is because of the intense opprobrium attached to the expression of homosexual desire, which discourages those who could otherwise act out the homosexual side of their bisexuality from any public display that could be perceived as queer. Thus, in modern ern society the only visible proponents of homosexual expression have been those on the far end of Kinsey's scale, predominantly or exclusively homosexual individuals, who, unlike many in the bisexual middle portion of Kinsey's scale, have no other viable sexual alternative but to go against the grain of social attitudes on acceptable sexual behavior."

(James Neill, The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies)

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"However, an increasing number of scholars are now persuaded that the homosexual traditions ditions of the classical Greeks evolved from homosexual initiation rites among the Indo-European pean ancestors of the Greeks similar to those found among aboriginal cultures in historic times. Indeed, the customs among the Greeks which come closest to the ritual homosexuality ity of Melanesian tribes, the initiatory practices of Dorians of Crete and Sparta, show unmistakable takable signs of descent from initiatory ritual of earlier tribal periods. The fact that similar initiatory homosexuality was observed among warriors of other Indo-European groups strongly suggests that these homosexual traditions are among the many shared cultural traits that the Greeks and the other Indo-Europeans inherited from their common Neolithic ancestors."

(James Neill, The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies)

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Kingship, sexuality and courtly masculinity: Frederick the Great and Prussia on the cusp of modernity - ANUHJ

The recent discovery in Berlin of a poem briefly reignited a long-running debate as to the sexual identity of the Prussian King Frederick II

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"An incident involving a plot to assassinate Alexander demonstrates that homosexuality was not a practice limited to royal circles, but was apparently commonplace among the Macedonian donian military aristocracy. For some unknown reason a small group of young Macedonians aristocrats in the army became disenchanted with Alexander's leadership and so formed a plot to assassinate the king. The plot came to light when one of the conspirators, a Macedonian youth named Dimnus, told his lover, Nicomachus, about the plot. He in turn told another officer, Cebalinus, who then went to a high-ranking court official named Philotas with the information and asked for an audience with the king. Philotas told him that the king was too busy, but gave Cebalinus assurances that he would inform the king of the situation. When Cebalinus discovered the next day that the king had still not heard about it, he himself told the king the news. When an angry Alexander demanded to know why Philotas had delayed in telling him about the plot, Philotas explained that he had lent no credence to the information mation because of its source, and claimed he was reluctant to say anything out of "fear that he would be ridiculed for taking a lover's quarrel too The casual way in which the homosexual relationship of the young plotter was mentioned illustrates how ordinary such relationships must have seemed at the time."

(James Neill, The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies)

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“To hate excellence is to hate the gods.” ― Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

(photo redacted)

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athenian homosexuality

Selections from The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies by James Neill

"The youth, under the sponsorship and guidance of a noble adult lover, is introduced into membership in adult male society, symbolized by the symposium, the social descendant of the Indo-European warriors' associations, where he is educated in the values of his elders, and passes from the apprentice status of wine-pourer to full fledged membership, signified by his gaining the privilege of drinking wine with the other men from a cup, the ritual descendant of the skull. The symposium, transformed from a warrior's association into a stage for political and philosophical discussion and cultural activities, was the setting for one of Plato's most famous dialogues, not coincidentally dealing with homosexual love."

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"[T]he youths Greek men considered most attractive from a sexual standpoint were those who were the equivalent of college-aged males in today's society. When a young man had reached his mid-twenties, however, he was expected to reverse roles, to stop taking the passive role in sex, and to begin to pursue the active role with a younger lover of his own. By the time a young man reached the age of thirty, marriage to a woman and the fathering of children were the norm, though it is clear that the pursuit of younger males rarely stopped there."

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"The refined mores that the Athenians attached to homosexual love were apparently not shared by all the Greek city-states. A character in Plato's Symposium alludes to the variations in attitudes to homosexual love among the other Greek states when he contrasts the situation in Athens, which he characterizes as "complicated" due to the restraints imposed upon the partners, with the customs in Elis and Boetia, where he says homosexual love is unfettered by the sort of moral considerations present in Athens. Xenophon, in fact, wrote that in Boetia and other Greek states homosexuality was so unrestrained that men and boys 'were living together like married couples.'"

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Androphile Archives

Androphile Archives. 9 likes · 5 talking about this. A blog on the homoerotic ideal and selections from various accounts on the historical n

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The first experiences of male intimacy, for many, happen in sport or play when we are young. It was no coincidence that the ancient Greeks went to the gymnasium or the palaestra to look for a lover. Wrestling and weight training often had, and still persists with, erotic undercurrents. The movie Summer Storm (2014) reminded me of how I discovered my appreciation for the male physique at quite an early age.

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spartan homosexuality

Selections from The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies by James Neil.

"As a consequence of these beliefs, the sexual relationships which the Spartans saw as responsible for the development of arete in their youth were not private affairs, but were regarded as of great importance by the state, and were supervised by its legal authorities."

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"According to Xenophon, the Spartan leader Lycurgus considered it important for men of quality and nobility to seek the love of youths so that their qualities, their arete, could be passed on. In fact, a noble warrior could face punishment for not taking a youth as a lover. The Greek historian Aelian wrote of an incident where the Spartan authorities punished a man, who in his virtue and arete was suitable as a tutor, but who did not want the trouble and responsibilities involved in a pederastic relationship. Similarly, a youth could be punished for refusing to take on a lover, or for preferring a rich, but base man to a poor though noble man."

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"Thus, to the Dorians, the attainment of their highest social aims was intertwined with sex, which is one reason many traditional scholars have found the homosexuality of the Greeks so perplexing: the expression and achievement of the greatest of ideals was found though the pursuit of sexual relations these scholars found repugnant and antithetical to their concepts of virtue."

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"[T]he Greeks intuitively understood the role that emotions stirred by love played in inspiring virtue and excellence in both the lover and the beloved."

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"There is no doubt that the homosexuality that was central to Spartan military education played a role in the heroic achievements of the Spartan army. Not only would the beloved have striven for excellence in his training to please his lover, but the older lover, in order to maintain the admiration of his beloved, was inspired to live by the highest standards, and to demonstrate the greatest courage in battle, lest his beloved see him falter. Accordingly, before a battle, the Spartans offered sacrifices not to Ares, the god of war, but to Eros, the god of love."

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"Homosexuals, now as then, recognize each other by a mysterious hard meeting of the eyes, a trope of western aggression."

— Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae

(Photo: Maurice, 1987)