Homosexuality

WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Homosexuality, sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex. The term gay is
frequently used as a synonym for homosexual; female homosexuality is often referred to as lesbianism.

At different times and in different cultures, homosexual behaviour has been variously approved of,
tolerated, punished, and banned. Homosexuality was not uncommon in ancient Greece and Rome, and
the relationships between adult and adolescent males in particular have become a chief focus of
Western classicists in recent years. Judeo-Christian as well as Muslim cultures have generally
perceived homosexual behaviour as sinful.

Many Jewish and Christian leaders, however, have gone to great lengths to make clear that it is the
acts and not the individuals or even their “inclination” or “orientation” that their faiths proscribe. Others
—from factions within mainstream Protestantism to organizations of Reform rabbis—have advocated,
on theological as well as social grounds, the full acceptance of homosexuals and their relationships.
The topic has threatened to cause outright schisms in some denominations.

Modern Developments
Attitudes toward homosexuality are generally in flux, partially as a result of increased political activism
(see gay rights movement) and efforts by homosexuals to be seen not as aberrant personalities but as
differing from “normal” individuals only in their sexual orientation. The conflicting views of
homosexuality—as a variant but normal human sexual behaviour on one hand, and as
psychologically deviant behaviour on the other—remain present in most societies in the 21st century,
but they have been largely resolved (in the professional sense) in most developed countries.
The American Psychiatric Association, for example, declassified “ego-syntonic homosexuality” (the
condition of a person content with his or her homosexuality) as a mental illness in 1973. Nonetheless,
some religious groups continue to emphasize reparative therapy in the attempt to “cure” homosexuality
through prayer, counseling, and behaviour modification. Their claims of success, however, are
controversial. Wherever opinion can be freely expressed, debates about homosexuality will likely
continue.

Selected Theories Of Homosexuality

Psychologists in the 19th and 20th centuries, most of whom classified homosexuality as a form of
mental illness, developed a variety of theories on its origin. The 19th-century psychologist Richard von
Krafft-Ebing, whose Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) included masturbation, sado-masochism, and “lust-
murder” in its list of sexual perversions, saw it as originating in heredity. His contemporary Sigmund
Freud characterized it as a result of conflicts of psychosexual development, including identification with
the parent of the opposite sex. Others have looked at social influences and physiological events in fetal
development as possible origins. It is likely that many instances of homosexuality result from a
combination of inborn or constitutional factors and environmental or social influences.

By the 21st century, many societies had been discussing sexuality and sexual practices with increased
candour. Together with a growing acceptance of homosexuality as a common expression of human
sexuality, long-standing beliefs about homosexuals had begun to lose credence. The stereotypes of
male homosexuals as weak and effeminate and lesbians as masculine and aggressive, which were
widespread in the West as recently as the 1950s and early ’60s, have largely been discarded.
In the 20th-century United States, a field known as sex research was established among the social and
behavioral sciences in an effort to investigate actual sexual practice. (See sexology.) Researchers such
as Alfred Kinsey reported that homosexual activity was a frequent pattern in adolescence, among both
males and females. The Kinsey report of 1948, for example, found that 30 percent of adult American
males among Kinsey’s subjects had engaged in some homosexual activity and that 10 percent reported
that their sexual practice had been exclusively homosexual for a period of at least three years between
the ages of 16 and 55. About half as many women in the study reported predominantly homosexual
activity. Kinsey’s research methods and conclusions have been much criticized, however, and further
studies have produced somewhat different and varying results. A range of more recent surveys,
concerning predominantly homosexual behaviour as well as same-gender sexual contact in adulthood,
have yielded results that are both higher and lower than those identified by Kinsey. Instead of
categorizing people in absolute terms as either homosexual or heterosexual, Kinsey observed a
spectrum of sexual activity, of which exclusive orientations of either type make up the extremes. Most
people can be identified at a point on either side of the midpoint of the spectrum, with bisexuals (those
who respond sexually to persons of either sex) situated in the middle. Situational homosexual activity
tends to occur in environments such as prisons, where there are no opportunities for heterosexual
contact.

Contemporary Issues
As mentioned above, different societies respond differently to homosexuality. In most of Africa, Asia,
and Latin America, both the subject and the behaviour are considered taboo, with some slight
exception made in urban areas. In Western countries, attitudes were somewhat more liberal. Although
the topic of homosexuality was little discussed in the public forum during the early part of the 20th
century, it became a political issue in many Western countries during the late 20th century. This was
particularly true in the United States, where the gay rights movement is often seen as a late offshoot of
various civil rights movements of the 1960s. After the 1969 Stonewall riots, in which New York
City policemen raided a gay bar and met with sustained resistance, many homosexuals were
emboldened to identify themselves as gay men or lesbians to friends, to relatives, and even to the
public at large. In much of North America and western Europe, the heterosexual population became
aware of gay and lesbian communities for the first time. Many gay men and lesbians began to demand
equal treatment in employment practices, housing, and public policy. In response to their activism,
many jurisdictions enacted laws banning discrimination against homosexuals, and an increasing
number of employers in America and European countries agreed to offer “domestic partner” benefits
similar to the health care, life insurance and, in some cases, pension benefits available to heterosexual
married couples. Although conditions for gay people had generally improved in most of Europe and
North America at the turn of the 21st century, elsewhere in the world violence against gay people
continued. In Namibia, for example, police officers were instructed to “eliminate” homosexuals. Gay
students at Jamaica’s Northern Caribbean University were beaten, and an anti-gay group in Brazil by
the name of Acorda Coracao (“Wake Up, Dear”) was blamed for murdering several gay people. In
Ecuador a gay rights group called Quitogay received so much threatening e-mail that it was given
support by Amnesty International.

Even in parts of the world where physical violence is absent, intolerance of homosexuality often

persists. There are, however, some signs of change. In one such instance, Albania repealed
its sodomy statutes in 1995, and gay couples in Amsterdam in 2001 were legally married under the
same laws that govern heterosexual marriage (rather than under laws that allowed them to “register” or
form “domestic” partnerships). In the late 20th century gay men and lesbians proudly revealed their
sexual orientation in increasing numbers. Still others, notably those in the public eye, had their sexual
orientation revealed in the media and against their will by activists either for or against gay rights—a
controversial practice known as “outing.”
One of the issues that loomed largest for gay men in the last two decades of the 20th century and
beyond was AIDS. Elsewhere in the world AIDS was transmitted principally by heterosexual sex, but in
the United States and in some European centres it was particularly prevalent in urban gay
communities. As a result homosexuals were at the forefront of advocacy for research into the disease
and support for its victims through groups such as Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City. Novelist
and playwright Larry Kramer, who believed a more aggressive presence was needed, founded
the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which began promoting political action, including
outing, through local chapters in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington,
D.C., and Paris. The disease also took a heavy toll on the arts communities in these centres, and
virtually none of the artistic output of gay men in the late 20th century was untouched by the topic and
the sense of great loss.
Lesbians, especially those uninvolved with intravenous drugs and the sex trade, were probably
the demographic group least affected by AIDS. However, most shared with gay men the desire to have
a secure place in the world community at large, unchallenged by the fear of violence, the struggle for
equal treatment under the law, the attempt to silence, and any other form of civil behaviour that
imposes second-class citizenship.

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