It now seems natural for us to think of sexuality as neatly divided into hetero-, homo- and the more debated bisexual. But this is a rather new construction, the word “homosexual” was first used in 1869. How did earlier times think about same-sex relations, and sexuality on the whole? Is there really such a thing as homosexuality, or is this thinking an oversimplification of human sexual behavior and feelings?

WEB RESOURCES

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article discussing the historic occurrence of homosexual acts, with some mention on what thoughts about definitions of sexuality that was used at the time.

• Wikipedia’s article on sexual orientation quotes research that do not divide human sexuality in homo- and heterosexual,  but place it on a continuous scale.

• The extensive document People With a History discusses both the prevalence of homosexual acts throughout history, and how they were viewed.

• The personal home-page of Richard Ramsay at the University of Calgary carries a very large collection of links about homosexuality in history.

• The book “The history of sexuality” by the philosopher Michel Foucault was the first to argue that both homosexuality and other sexual phenomena are social constructed phenomenon, and cannot be applied to earlier times.

• The article “A Review of The Social Construction of Sexuality” by Steven Seidman carries a similar argumentation.

• Richard Norton’s book “The Myth of the Modern Homosexual” questions the theories of Foucault and others, arguing for the existence of homosexuals throughout history.

• In the Edward Carpenter book “Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship”, writings on same-sex love throughout history is collected.

• In the book “A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition” Gregory Woods has collected homoerotic literature from ancient times to today.

• “The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature” is a similar collection, also outlining developments in the thinking about sexuality. An outline of the book is found at the Gay & Lesbian Reading Group.

If you know about other interesting websites about this question, please give me a tip, and I’ll put the resource on this page.

INDICATIONS FROM THE INVESTIGATION

There seems to be no doubt that homosexual acts has been prevalent throughout history. There is also frequent occurrences of literature that not only mention homosexual acts, but same-sex love, indicating a possible homosexual orientation of the writer. The theories about sexual orientation are recent, however, and cannot with any correctness be applied to earlier times.

The investigation further shows that the thinking about homosexual acts has varied considerably throughout history, from something good for most men some times, something many men could be tempted to in special situations, to today’s popular thinking about sexual orientations. The changing penal laws for homosexual acts has been reflected this thinking. It therefore seems to the investigation that the popular view on sexual orientation do not correctly reflect human sexual urge. The use research make of a continuous scale as a description of sexual orientation seems likely to be a better model of explanation.