AHC: Earlier Gay Rights

BlondieBC

Banned
Ahhh, so that's what's up with that.

It suggests - to me at least - that the best way to get homosexuality (defined for discussion's sake as "sexual activity primarily with one's own gender") accepted earlier is to have who you do it with not considered important.

Like the comic (warning: pony art) below:
http://twentypercentcooler.net/post/show/21741/alicorn-baked_goods-blue_body-blue_eyes-blue_hair-

Well, probably true. The problem is about taboo. Pretty much anytime I look at a religion or a societies moral underpinnings, I find food and sex taboos. It kind of makes sense. To avoid poisoning yourself, you have to have food rules. I.e. food taboos. No pork for Mohammed made sense. Not best animal in arid environment and they also fed human feces to pigs. Now 1400 years later in China, probably not a good rule.

And you have to have sexual rules for society to survive. You need some way to help insure that men/society provides adequate resources for babies to reach adulthood. Also, even if you could agree to raise children in common and it worked perfectly, you can't have unlimited sex. As the average number of partners goes up, infection rates of STD goes up faster. Much faster. And disease like gonorrhea cause infertility in women. So lets say that you have a society when the average 13 year old male gets his dream of having sex with scores of women over the next two years. What happens? The society collapses due to infertile women. Or dies off due to AIDS. or Syphillus. So in some ways, powerful men in societies are trying to balance lots of sexual opportunities for them with limiting STDs. Even if they never think in those terms.

I am not sure what he thread author wants is possible in the long term without modern medicine. I suspect, but can't prove, that if there are no homosexual taboos and taboos about older men having sex with post puberty men/boys that most young boys will have substantial experimentation with homosexual numerous male partners. And as a result, the STD rate climbs high enough to collapse society. Lets get back to Rome. Part of the instability was due to too low a birth rate in the ruling 7 families where the elites (emperors, generals, trained technicians) came from. It was recognized as a problem, and actions were taken to correct. At one point if you were a high class women, and you raised 6 sons (maybe counted daughters) to puberty, you got an award at the Coliseum. So when you give at high awards for giving birth in much the same way you give out high military awards, you know you have a birth rate problem. Note: I can't prove what actually cause the low birth rates due to lack of records. We don't know for sure.

My sister believes that a lot of the sex taboo in Christianity are rules copied because of the sustained birth rate crisis in the ruling class of Rome. Or put another way, the early Christian emperors used the new religion to try to correct a problem they had been trying to fix for a couple of centuries.

Sexual rules in society are always complicated.
 
Well, probably true. The problem is about taboo. Pretty much anytime I look at a religion or a societies moral underpinnings, I find food and sex taboos. It kind of makes sense. To avoid poisoning yourself, you have to have food rules. I.e. food taboos. No pork for Mohammed made sense. Not best animal in arid environment and they also fed human feces to pigs. Now 1400 years later in China, probably not a good rule.

And you have to have sexual rules for society to survive. You need some way to help insure that men/society provides adequate resources for babies to reach adulthood. Also, even if you could agree to raise children in common and it worked perfectly, you can't have unlimited sex. As the average number of partners goes up, infection rates of STD goes up faster. Much faster. And disease like gonorrhea cause infertility in women. So lets say that you have a society when the average 13 year old male gets his dream of having sex with scores of women over the next two years. What happens? The society collapses due to infertile women. Or dies off due to AIDS. or Syphillus. So in some ways, powerful men in societies are trying to balance lots of sexual opportunities for them with limiting STDs. Even if they never think in those terms.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "taboos will exist" and "taboos against doing it with other men" and other, in a word, arbitrary taboos. Pork being filthy is something any idiot can see, and I say this as a Western European. Linking STDs and having male sex partners comes from trying to rationalize hostility after the fact.


Note: Focusing on "doing it with other men" because the European societies we're looking at are patriarchal.

I am not sure what he thread author wants is possible in the long term without modern medicine. I suspect, but can't prove, that if there are no homosexual taboos and taboos about older men having sex with post puberty men/boys that most young boys will have substantial experimentation with homosexual numerous male partners.
Because most men will pursue sexual relations with younger males . . . why again?

And as a result, the STD rate climbs high enough to collapse society. Lets get back to Rome. Part of the instability was due to too low a birth rate in the ruling 7 families where the elites (emperors, generals, trained technicians) came from. It was recognized as a problem, and actions were taken to correct. At one point if you were a high class women, and you raised 6 sons (maybe counted daughters) to puberty, you got an award at the Coliseum. So when you give at high awards for giving birth in much the same way you give out high military awards, you know you have a birth rate problem. Note: I can't prove what actually cause the low birth rates due to lack of records. We don't know for sure.
Having seven ruling families, presumably either inbred or at least limited in their breeding partners, is not going to be less of a problem with homosexuality punished by summary execution - picked as the most permanent of punishments.
 
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My sister got a Roman History degree as an undergrad. Here is her explanation. The concept of homosexuality did not really exist in Rome. It was based on penetration theory. If you were penetrated, you were female. If not, male.

The Romans were perfectly aware of the myriad exceptions to their ridiculous societal conceit and even had terms for them. Mostly to ridicule and whatever. But they were aware such things existed.

I am not sure what he thread author wants is possible in the long term without modern medicine. I suspect, but can't prove, that if there are no homosexual taboos and taboos about older men having sex with post puberty men/boys that most young boys will have substantial experimentation with homosexual numerous male partners. And as a result, the STD rate climbs high enough to collapse society.

This makes zero sense to me probably because this makes zero sense in general. Ancient societies always had a huge chunk of their population marginalised and involved in sex trade. Rape rates were astronomical. Human wares were cheap. If you're using the AIDS parallel, it was precisely because of gay exclusivity (small pool of partners) combined with quick exchange (the 70/80s were pretty promiscuous) that the situation snowballed. But promiscuity among the upper and even middle classes was always in terms of unequal power dynamics prior to the 20th (maybe 19th) century, and not with each other.

If there's entire nations being brought in by the tens of thousands yearly into Rome to work as slaves (and a good chunk for sexual purposes), there isn't the effect of concentration the same way the gay community experienced historically. The Romans were perfectly happy to let marginalized populations die by the tens of thousands yearly, too. That's you basic answer for why they took out their sexual needs on other people and not on each other, not even in the shape of the boring old upper-class pederasty.

Finally, other than AIDS there are no other STDs that would disproportionately affect men who had sex with men unless once again there was a very limited pool where most of the participants got exposed quickly. And there is (very likely) no Syphilis pre-Columbian contact.

Lets get back to Rome. Part of the instability was due to too low a birth rate in the ruling 7 families where the elites (emperors, generals, trained technicians) came from. It was recognized as a problem, and actions were taken to correct. At one point if you were a high class women, and you raised 6 sons (maybe counted daughters) to puberty, you got an award at the Coliseum. So when you give at high awards for giving birth in much the same way you give out high military awards, you know you have a birth rate problem. Note: I can't prove what actually cause the low birth rates due to lack of records. We don't know for sure.

Aristocrats always have lower birth rates than peasants for the same reasons Germans have lower birth rates than Nigerians today. I'm not sure what you're getting at, other than it was always an anxiety of the ruling classes that they'd be outbred.
 
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BlondieBC

Banned
This makes zero sense to me probably because this makes zero sense in general. Ancient societies always had a huge chunk of their population marginalised and involved in sex trade. Rape rates were astronomical. Human wares were cheap. If you're using the AIDS parallel, it was precisely because of gay exclusivity (small pool of partners) combined with quick exchange (the 70/80s were pretty promiscuous) that the situation snowballed. But promiscuity among the upper and even middle classes was always in terms of unequal power dynamics prior to the 20th (maybe 19th) century, and not with each other.

If there's entire nations being brought in by the tens of thousands yearly into Rome to work as slaves (and a good chunk for sexual purposes), there isn't the effect of concentration the same way the gay community experienced historically. The Romans were perfectly happy to let marginalized populations die by the tens of thousands yearly, too. That's you basic answer for why they took out their sexual needs on other people and not on each other, not even in the shape of the boring old upper-class pederasty.

Finally, other than AIDS there are no other STDs that would disproportionately affect men who had sex with men unless once again there was a very limited pool where most of the participants got exposed quickly. And there is (very likely) no Syphilis pre-Columbian contact.

Most cities and often larger empires had negative organic growth rates. Part of the explanation is fewer STD's. In rural areas, you tended to marry the girls young (within 2 years of puberty). The men lack the financial/wealth resources to have many extramarital affairs or prostitutes. These areas would tend to have lower STD rates than cities, therefore higher birth rates (gonerrhea). Now unless we find some ways to sample STD rates in ancient civilizations, we will never know for sure. This theory has as much support as higher wealth was reason for birth rates in Rome. We have so little information, it is mainly coming up with plausible hypothesis.

I do not accept your assertion that all ancient societies had "huge numbers of prostitutes". Do you have any support for that? And how many is huge? 0.1%, 1%. 5%, 10%. I appreciate the beauty of your rhetorical flourish, but with more specifics, it does not add much to the discussion.

I am using AIDS as the most know example of a sexual disease. AIDS is not and never has been a primarily gay disease. You seem to be confused here. The reason I am discussing gay sex, gay sex is the topic of the thread. If we were discussing the effect of Thai brothels on STD rates, I would discuss heterosexual sex. You are too sensitive here.


AIDS never had a major OVERALL demographic effect in the USA. Yes in gay community, but not overall. But in Southern Africa, it has been devastating. And lets look at transmission pattern. Older men marry often marry much younger female partners with many fewer partners. The problem becomes that the average marriage age men has had sex with so many partners that it was almost guaranteed he was infected. And to a large extent, places like Botswana have been gutted. If there was a hostile power nearby, they would have been conquered. Note: It does not matter if the partners are men or women outside of the various infection rates difference between different sex acts. Often the risk transmitting sexual disease is not symetrical.

On Rome, you miss the point. Something collapse birth rates among the powerful/educated classes need to maintain an empire. STD is a possible explanation. The importance of male sex partners is not they are male, but that homosexual men have A LOT more sex partners than heterosexuals in Modern times. We like data on ancient Rome, but a similar pattern is likely. What I proposes is a simple WI. If you get a society where men on men sex is common, especially if we jump age groups (over 10 year gap in age) and we get a large number of partners per person (over 10 or so), we have the makings of an STD epidemic. I don't think it will be stable in the long term due to birth rates. There is a reason that the Abrahamic religions try to suppress the number of sex partners per person per lifetime. It has to be done to some extent to avoid epidemics that will tend to crash society. Just as teaching against prostitutes helps lower the number of sex partners, so does suppression of male on male sex. I am not saying it is right or wrong, just explaining why it tends to happen.


Aristocrats always have lower birth rates than peasants for the same reasons Germans have lower birth rates than Nigerians today. I'm not sure what you're getting at, other than it was always an anxiety of the ruling classes that they'd be outbred.

Yes, higher income do tend to led to lower birth rates, but this is not the only reason. You are only looking at a part of the explanation.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Yeah, but there's a difference between "taboos will exist" and "taboos against doing it with other men" and other, in a word, arbitrary taboos. Pork being filthy is something any idiot can see, and I say this as a Western European. Linking STDs and having male sex partners comes from trying to rationalize hostility after the fact.


Note: Focusing on "doing it with other men" because the European societies we're looking at are patriarchal.

Because most men will pursue sexual relations with younger males . . . why again?

Having seven ruling families, presumably either inbred or at least limited in their breeding partners, is not going to be less of a problem with homosexuality punished by summary execution - picked as the most permanent of punishments.

Older men (the often have more power/money) seek sex with younger mates. It is both homosexual and a heterosexual behavior. I am bit surprised you see this as surprising. Then we can look at some of the ancient society such as Rome or Greece. Middle age men having sex with younger men was common, if not encouraged.

Sure, the ruling families could have been inbred. And your theory may be right. But so could my theory. We know something happened, we lack the details to test. I doubt we know even more than 1% of the names of individuals of the elite families of Rome. Much less detailed demographic data.

Well, I don't see much of a difference. Sexual taboo will exist. Sometimes they will be against what we currently define as gay sex. There are a limited number of sexual acts and sexual partner combinations. Out of this limited menu, any given society is likely to pick some taboos against what we currently define as homosexual. Sure it could be Masterbation (Victorian) or Brothels (Modern USA) or sex between middle age men and people of the 12-18 age group (Modern USA) or giving a blow job (Rome) or sex outside of marriage between man and woman (Saudis), but it can also be against homosexual conduct. In fact if you take the modern definition of what defines the LGB community, I have trouble thinking of any civilization that would not have a taboo against some part of there society. Modern Saudis are ok with behind close door homosexual, but not the flashing public acknowledgement. Rome would have found the penetration part ok, but it would always be taboo for a high Roman male citizen to be penetrated. It may be surprising, but much of the Victorian age was ok with Lesbians but male homosexual were not ok. The Royal Navy appeared to be ok with male sodomy at sea among enlisted men in the age of sail. But not ok for these men to do in home English ports.

Since the modern LGB community accepts a wide % of all possible sex acts, any given randomly selected society is likely to have taboos against some of it.

Note: All societies have taboo breakers.
 
Indeed.

Incidentally Homosexuality was legalized in quite alot of places before the 20th century, including France, the Benelux countries, Italy, Brazil and Japan (where it was only illegal for a few years in the late 19th century).

Here's a map of the legalization of homosexual activity by country over time;
Not a bad map, but I have one quibble with it. Homosexuality is not illegal in Bahrain anymore.
 
Older men (the often have more power/money) seek sex with younger mates. It is both homosexual and a heterosexual behavior. I am bit surprised you see this as surprising. Then we can look at some of the ancient society such as Rome or Greece. Middle age men having sex with younger men was common, if not encouraged.

I am surprised that you think that having no taboos against homosexual activity is going to make men who are otherwise not going to be interested in male partners pursue male partners simply because they're now available.

Sure, the ruling families could have been inbred. And your theory may be right. But so could my theory. We know something happened, we lack the details to test. I doubt we know even more than 1% of the names of individuals of the elite families of Rome. Much less detailed demographic data.

I don't think that saying homosexuality had something to do with it makes a lot of sense unless homosexuality is more common than heterosexualityi n this circle, which is different than somehow homosexuality is more likely than random females to produce fertility-destroying STDs in this circle.

Since the modern LGB community accepts a wide % of all possible sex acts, any given randomly selected society is likely to have taboos against some of it.

Note: All societies have taboo breakers.

Yeah, but having a taboo against oral sex - whoever is doing it - and having a taboo against homosexuality (definition-used-for-convenience as stated in a previous post) are not the same thing.
 
Not a bad map, but I have one quibble with it. Homosexuality is not illegal in Bahrain anymore.

I always end-up missing one or two small places on these maps.

Looking at the wiki it seems it was legalized in 1976, would that be correct?
 
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