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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Sep 13, 2024 • Article History Table of Contents
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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.
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.
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.
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.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Meg Matthias.
