A leg up on culture?

Not to neglect today's events, but I think the following might be of general interest, and I would have posted on it earlier but for the dramatic news of Saddam Hussein's capture.

Is homosexuality is associated with the inner workings of civilization itself?

Arthur Silber (a meticulous guy who always does his homework) links to this book review from the New York Times (and I know what a hassle it can be to fill out the damned form to read these things, so I'll quote generously):

[I]n Louis Crompton's sober, searching and somber new history, "Homosexuality and Civilization," homosexuality is associated with the inner workings of civilization itself....

....

In ancient Greece, homosexuality was philosophically praised and institutionally sanctioned, associated with virtues of courage and mentorship. In ancient Rome, it was primarily cultivated in relationships between masters and slaves, but homosexual behavior was common to Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavius. "Of the first 15 emperors," Gibbon pointed out, "Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct."

Why did such indulgence, tolerance and even sanction disappear? Mr. Crompton offers a very different interpretation from the influential theory outlined by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. In Mr. Crompton's view, the concept of homosexuality was not something created in 19th-century Europe when it was first considered a medical condition, nor was it, despite cultural variations, so drastically different in other times and places.

Mr. Crompton argues that Christianity created the most radical change in attitudes toward homosexuality. "The debt owed by civilization to Christianity is enormous," he writes; but so, he believes, have been Christianity's sins. In Japan, for example, before the mid-19th-century Western influence, homosexuality was "an honored way of life among the country's religious and military leaders so that its acceptance paralleled, and in some respects even surpassed, ancient Athens." It was common among Buddhist sages, part of samurai culture and an accepted aspect of the Kabuki theater world.

Christianity attacked such customs when it gained access, Mr. Crompton argues, but its assault began in the West as early as the 4th century (not the 12th century, he says, as the historian John Boswell believed).

Mr. Crompton traces Christian hostility to Leviticus, which may have been written around 550 B.C., at the very time that homoerotic poetry was thriving in Greece. It mandated death for homosexual acts. Mr. Crompton suggests that this law was an attempt to differentiate the Jews from Mediterranean cults in which transvestite priests, eunuchs and sexual activity played a central role in ritual and worship.

As filtered through the severity of the writings of the Apostle Paul, though, that condemnation became central to Christianity, strictly distinguishing it from Roman and pagan cultures.

I have posted -- repeatedly -- about the difficulties posed in analyzing the ancients' attitude towards homosexuality in modern terms. To say that they did not stigmatize it misses the point. They did not see it as different. Rather, it was a part of human sexual expression; sexual desire. Something to be perhaps commented upon in passing, but not something which would separate people who did it as remarkable, different, or (particularly) in any way less human than anyone else. While it is tough to draw a modern analogy, the closest example I can give would be the way a heterosexual man who liked legs (I guess that's safe enough) would be called "a leg man." No stigma, because this is simply seen as sexual variation.

Homosexuality was as unremarkable to the ancients as an interest in legs would be to heterosexuals today. To speak of America's "tolerance" for men who enjoy women's legs would strike us as totally absurd.

Similarly, to talk about the ancients' attitude towards homosexuality, by presuming that there is an attitude, runs the risk of contamination by alien observation.

Still, the question remains: why the stigma? Certainly, it makes little sense solely to blame Leviticus. Jews have not stoned homosexuals for thousands of years, and, notwithstanding St. Paul's disapproval of homosexuality, the Council of Jerusalem specifically distanced Christianity from the Leviticus prohibitions. Thus, at some point in time, Christianity "discovered" a new stigma -- or perhaps reinvented and misintepreted ancient Jewish laws even though Jews no longer applied them as written.

Were Justinian and Theodora the culprits? Maybe I should ask a genuine scholar of the Byzantine period (and one of my favorite bloggers) Michael McNeil. (His latest post -- The Byzantine Crusades is a real gem!)

I don't think there was any one cause. Different ideas spring up among different peoples, times, and places. (It has long fascinated me, for example, how homosexuality could be the essence of masculinity in some cultures, and the essence of effeminacy in others. And they didn't get the latter idea from Leviticus!)

Given enough time, such ideas become so entrenched that no one knows how they started.

Like foot binding.

(You never know; it might have started with a leg man.....)


UPDATE: I know that not everyone reads comments, so I wanted to share this link -- absolutely loaded with material on ancient Roman attitudes -- with all who are interested. . (Thank you, Dave Tepper.)

posted by Eric on 12.14.03 at 05:56 PM





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Comments

Well, homosexuality in the broadest sense of "same-sex coitus" may have been okay in ancient times, but at least in ancient Rome, it was seen as shameful to be a cinaedus, a pathicus, or a cunnilingus; far better to be a fututor, pedicator, or irrumator.

Or roughly, passivity during sex was seen as embarrassing, while activeness during sex was considered manly, at least according to this article. There are still sexual inequalities within at least Roman society (I know very little about ancient Greece), but they seem to fall along an active-passive axis rather than a hetero-homo one.

And I just like saying the word "irrumator".

Dave   ·  December 14, 2003 07:43 PM

Interesting article -- which shows how much debate there is about ancient attitudes. The bottom line, however (if you can forgive my use of the term), is that there were no criminal penalties, nor was there anything resembling the modern notion of sexuality as a "sin." Roman writers had many personal opinions -- some based on social position, some based on satire, some on honor. The fact that even emperors were known to have favored the passive role in same sex relations makes me suspect that social disapproval ran more to considerations of taste than to what we would consider genuine morality. (Once again, I am reminded of heterosexual fetishes -- which can cause raised eyebrows, but not major social ostracism -- to say nothing of death or imprisonment....)

Thanks for that link, Dave!

Eric Scheie   ·  December 14, 2003 08:06 PM

I recently read an article on anti-Semitism which wound up suggesting the same things you suggest about homophobia: that it is protean, has many sources, and excuses itself creatively.

Humans seem to come equipped with an emotional inheritance from the baboon: free-floating hostility toward strangers. This hostility can coalesce on any object. Jews and queers have been mere targets of opportunity.

Alan Sullivan   ·  December 15, 2003 02:21 PM

Fascinating. Just a few thoughts that occured to me:
1. Anti-Semitism and anti-homosexualism are exactly parallel. Jews and homosexuals are both creative elite minorities, each about 1-3% of the population, tending to be more affluent and educated than the majority, and having produced a disproportionate number of geniuses and great leaders throughout history -- and for precisely those reasons, envied, feared, and hated by many, especially when this envy is whipped up by demagogues.
2. According to the article, the Romans seemed to look somewhat askance at Sapphism (Lesbianism) as a deviation from woman's proper role vis-avis the male, and associated it with the Greeks, who they saw as rather effete and decadent. Spenglerian parallel: Romans = Americans, Greeks = Europeans?
3. As to this ancient active/passive (Yang/Yin) polarity: Might this be what Jesus meant when he told his disciples "It is more blessed to give than to receive"? Hmmm....

Steven Malcolm Anderson   ·  December 15, 2003 03:20 PM
NY Times: "In ancient Greece, homosexuality was philosophically praised and institutionally sanctioned, associated with virtues of courage and mentorship."

Eric: "[The ancients] did not see [homosexuality] as different. .... Homosexuality was as unremarkable to the ancients as an interest in legs would be to heterosexuals today. To speak of America's 'tolerance' for men who enjoy women's legs would strike us as totally absurd."

I don't think the picture is quite so simple. Take a look at this Lingua Franca article about Plato's use of the term "enormity" to describe homosexual acts.
Michael   ·  December 22, 2003 01:50 AM

Michael --

Thanks for visiting -- and for that link, which is very interesting.

I am not a classical scholar, however, and translation of ancient Greek is beyond my competence. However, I think most people would agree that the pictures on ancient Greek plates speak for themselves -- perhaps not very "Platonically"....


Example:

http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/priam.htm

Eric Scheie   ·  December 22, 2003 08:55 AM


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