History of homosexuality

Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place. Attitudes to male homosexuality have varied from requiring males to engage in same-sex relationships to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death. In addition, it has varied as to whether any negative attitudes towards men who have sex with men have extended to all participants, as has been common in Abrahamic religions, or only to passive (penetrated) participants, as was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Female homosexuality has historically been given less acknowledgment, explicit acceptance, and opposition. The widespread concept of homosexuality as a sexual orientation and sexual identity is a relatively recent development, with the word itself being coined in the 19th century.

Homosexuality was generally accepted in many ancient eastern cultures such as those influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. It is thought that ancient Assyria (2nd millennium BC to 1st millennium AD) viewed homosexuality as negative and at least criminal, with the religious codes of Zoroastrianism forbidding homosexuality, and the rise of Judaism, Christianity and Islam supplanting homophobia in much of the western world; the majority of the ancient sources prior to the onset of the Abrahamic religions present homosexuality in the form of male domination or rape. The LGBTQ rights movement is associated with the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York.

Many male historical figures, including Socrates, Lord Byron, Edward II, and Hadrian, have had terms such as gay or bisexual applied to them; some scholars, such as Michel Foucault, have regarded this as risking the anachronistic introduction of a contemporary social construct of sexuality foreign to their times, though others challenge this. A common thread of constructionist argument is that no one in antiquity or the Middle Ages experienced homosexuality as an exclusive, permanent, or defining mode of sexuality. John Boswell has countered this argument by citing ancient Greek writings by Plato, which describe individuals exhibiting exclusive homosexuality.