Mr Khan said:
Someone really should take a look at it, because as far as i know it's only the Judeo-Christian tradition that has a particular grudge against homosexuality, and that largely stems from this strong sense of self-preservation among the ancient Hebrews (and other Semitic tribes), that also caused them to ban a lot of other things (and it wasn't an issue of: homosexuality is bad because it's not reproductively effecient, but rather homosexuality is bad because that's what the other cultures around us do, and we're not like them, same reason they won't eat shellfish. It also may have had something to do with preserving civil order, as adult men were almost always married, so them having sex with each other was going to lead to family fueds and such) Point being, what have other societies actually said. We've here described the Semites, Mediterraneans, and Japanese, but what of the Chinese, Indians, Africans, and Native Americans? |
In traditional Chinese culture (contemporarily it's kind of ambiguous) it was important to have sons - Confucianism said this was one of your primary duties - but as long as you were able to raise a family, you were generally allowed to have male lovers. It was you affair, and I'm not aware of any Chinese religions that treated homosexuality as a sin.
Sexular ancient Indian society proscribed all homosexual activity, but that's because pretty much all sex was taboo - and two people of the same sense getting it on would incur only a small fine, whereas a man "polluting" a woman would get a huge fine and lose two of his fingers. It can't be claimed that secular Indian society was particularly opposed to homosexuality - and the spiritual side if the Kama Sutra is any indication, treated homosexuality as a natural and healthy component of general human sexuality.
I don't really know anyting about gayness in Africa, I have to admit. Surviving texts out of stuff like Egypt don't really mentioon much about homosexuality, though according to Wikipedia the oldest recorded homosexual couple was living in Egypt in 2400 BCE, so it couldnt't have been too taboo.
Before the Spanish conquered, ancient Peru had some homosexuality up ins and it was treated as being very natural.
The Romans were all about gay sex.
To the best of my knowledge, the Saxxons, the Francs - pretty much all of Europe didn't really care about whether or not you were banging men until the Roman Catholic Church took over everything.
Point is this: different cultures are different in a lot of ways, including how they approach sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. Claiming that homosexuality was proscribed through all of human history is blatantly wrong.
