Homosexuality in Society

A lot of people are quick to judge someone who is completely different from them. Why, because they just don’t know and they aren’t accustomed to the unknown. And when it comes to sexuality people are quick to judge faster than an actual judge themselves. But sexuality has always been a problematic topic to discuss, and there are many reasons why.

Sexuality has been a thing, it was never brought up out of nowhere just simply ignored. Because of social standards and as well as religious beliefs sexuality has been neglected.

Those who spoke out on it or were comfortable with their sexuality was looked down upon. But there was a time ages ago were sexuality was normal and no one was judged, until a certain point in history.

Homosexuality has never been something new with it comes to its history. Homosexuality date’s all the way back to Ancient Greece, where it was very much normal and frequent. In a citing, done by John Boswell, of Ancient Greek literature by Plato. He describes homosexuality as something individuals exhibited in. In the Week magazine, an article called “The Origins of Homosexuality”, indicates that “Homosexuality was prevalent in many early religions”.

Such as the Hindu god Samba, Zeus and Ganymede from Greek mythology, and in Buddhism. It was common in the Aztecs, many Native American tribes where they accepted homosexuals and still do to this day, and in England in the year 744 where writing from St. Boniface indicate homosexuality, he said “many men had a gay double life”. Before colonization in the Americas, indigenous people participated in the ceremonies and social roles of homosexual and bisexual.

In East Asia same-sex love has been recorded since 600 BCE, while in South Asia same-sex love was referred to as a “third sex” or the Law of Manu (the code of conduct for inter-caste relationships in India). Many men in South Asia was known to even marry one another, in ancient India the sculptures of the Khajuraho temple depict same-sex saying that it was broadly accepted in society. Before the influence of colonization and religion, homosexuality was accepted in society by every region. And then the church stepped in.

Religious groups believed that homosexuality is a choice, a sinful and immoral choice. They believed that a homo can be changed by the power of god, and one that participates in such activities are consumed by evil and will be damned to hell. Homosexuality was seen as a psychological disorder in the first half of the last century, seen that if one was gay the reason behind it was poor parenting. Because the church sees marriages as men and women the thought of same sex marriage is a sin and invalid or same sex relationships, many people believe that the church is homophobic.

Which is untrue in some ways, the desires of homosexual behavior aren’t sinful but the act of homosexuality is because they violate the natural law of God. Religious people live by the words of the bible and whatever is said in the bible is the way God intended us to live by. “All of Scripture teaches the unacceptability of homosexual behavior. But the rejection of this behavior is not an arbitrary prohibition. It, like other moral imperatives, is rooted in natural law—the design that God has built into human nature.” (Catholic Answers article “Homosexuality”).

Henry Gerber the very first man to start the gay rights movement in 1924, he founded in Chicago the first Society for Human Rights, a gay rights organization is the United States and since then the gay rights movement has been in progress. He published a few issues in the newspaper called “Friendship and Freedom”, but with riots and police raids Gerber’s small gay rights group had to disband the very next year. Gerber’s bravery gave hope towards other individuals and slowly more and more started to continue the movement.

After Gerber, in 1950, Harry Hay founded the “Mattachine Foundation” which was the nation’s first gay rights group. The group was only to protect and improve the lives of gay men until the arrestment of Dale Jennings’s in 1952, he formed his own organization called One, Inc., that welcomed women. In the 1960 the movement improved with Illinois being the first state to decimalize homosexuality and later California airing the first documentary on homosexuality called The Rejected.

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