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Attitudes towards homosexuality have ranged from tolerance to savage punishment, according to the era. People who are homosexual are sexually attracted only or mainly to people of the same sex. In a society which has traditionally been based mainly on marriage between the sexes, homosexuals have often met strong barriers to an open expression of their sexuality.
These attitudes have often shown themselves as hostility, violence and persecution. Many gay people describe instances of verbal abuse or physical violence.
The lay also discriminates against homosexuals in a number of significant areas. For instance, consensual contact between two males can be a criminal activity. It is punishable by imprisonment if either is under 21. By contrast, heterosexuals may legally have sex at the age of 16. There is also a reluctance to accept homosexuality in many official spheres. The army, for instance, can expel homosexual men and women.
Some of the hostility towards homosexuality is thought to be rooted in Christian teaching. Many Christians interpret a number of Biblical passages, especially St Paul's letters, as outlawing sexual activity apart from intercourse between men and women in order to produce children. ("non-procreative"-sex, sex that doesn't aim at producing children)
The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, which seeks to persuade Christians to re-think their attitudes towards gay people, says that the Church's teaching, that sex was "good" only when used for conceiving children, emerged 500 years after Christ. There are even accounts of homosexuality between monks and nuns in medieval monasteries and convents. Increasingly from the 14th to the 19th centuries, homosexuality was regarded across Europe as a sin and a crime contrary to nature. The penalty in many different areas and times was death. For no clear reason the law overlooked lesbian sex.
Ancient Greece is frequently cited as an example of more tolerant attitudes. Greek men appreciated both male and female beauty, and apparently combined marriage with physical love for younger men. There was no disapproval towards older men who pursued younger men for their looks, but there was some disapproval, however, for younger men who succumbed to these sexual advances. So it seems as if sexual conduct wasn't subjected to prohibitions but to codes of good taste. According to some scholars, the Greeks didn't approve of sexual acts between mature men because these implied that one partner had to play the woman's role. This association of homosexuality with "feminine" behaviour is sill present today.
The first law in Britain aimed at punishing homosexuality was passed by Henry VIII in 1533, directed against certain sexual acts rather than specific people.
The term "homosexuality" itself - from the Greek homos, meaning "same", and not from the Latin word homo, meaning "man" - was first recorded in 1892. So it is only in the last century that people have been identified specifically as homosexuals. So until the 19th century homosexuality wasn't seen as a completely distinct tendency.
In the 18th century a distinct homosexual subculture developed in Britain. The homosexual groups developed slang that outsiders failed to understand. The language reinforced a sense of community and helped protect them from outsider's interference.
The ban on sex between men remained in force until 1967 when the law was relaxed. It now permitted homosexual activity in private between consenting men over the age of 21.
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