Then to Judea 900 BCE-600 BCE: Leviticus, Sodom and all that. Associating love between men with free politics was a rhetorical commonplace in classical Greece: including a popular drinking song sung for at least seven centuries after the original act (Pp25ff). Two same-sex lovers, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the original tyrannicides, were the enduring icons of Athenian democracy. Which is enough to be getting on with.Ĭrompton starts with Early Greece 776-480 BCE, taking us through literature and biography. In his words whatever the vocabulary, two elements are present-the sexual fact and the possibility of human love and devotion (p.xiv). But that is still an enormous range, which he covers magnificently, clearly the results of decades of research.Ī fundamental problem in covering homosexuality across such a cultural and historical range is the problem of definition-is homosexuality just a social construction or is there a continuing human type? Crompton focuses on the enduring. The author restricts himself to classical Antiquity, Christendom, medieval Islam, Imperial China and pre-Meiji Japan. His Homosexuality and Civilization cannot, of course, cover its declared subject matter. (The persistence of this view can be seen here.) But, as Crompton says, it was a reminder of sodomy as peccatum mutum, the silent sin (p.xi). He helped organise perhaps the first such course in 1970, which prompted a state legislator to propose a bill that would ban such courses except at the state medical school (the bill failed). EruditoLouis Crompton is a pioneer of gay studies.
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