State Sponsored Homophobia: World Homosexuality Laws

[Alnitak]

You're right; he was having non-serious debate about something which none of us have any (or much) documentary evidence about.

No, you are really just ignorant, which is why you and other people consistently lose arguments with me. I'm a voracious book worm and a walking encyclopedia. I have read more in the last 10 years than you have or ever will in your whole life.

On the subject there is TONS of documentation.

FEATURE: "21 VARIETIES OF TRADITIONAL AFRICAN HOMOSEXUALITY"

"Amongst Bantu-speaking Pouhain farmers (Bene, Bulu, Fang, Jaunde, Mokuk, Mwele, Ntum and Pangwe) in present-day Gabon and Cameroon, homosexual intercourse was known as bian nkû”ma– a medicine for wealth which was transmitted through sexual activity between men."

- "Similarly in Uganda, amongst the Nilotico Lango, men who assumed ‘‘alternative gender status” were known as mukodo dako. They were treated as women and were permitted to marry other men."

- "Among Cape Bantu, lesbianism was ascribed to women who were in the process of becoming chief diviners, known as isanuses."

- "the Baganda. King Mwanga II, the Baganda monarch, was widely reported to have engaged in sexual relations with his male subjects."

The British introduced Section 377 of the Penal Code into Africa and Asia.

It is still actually law, or inspired, in 33 countries and for 2 billion people.

 

[xbuzzerx]

^ Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships" called motsoalle. E. E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely took on young male lovers between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in intercrural sex with their older husbands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Africa#Africa

 

[TX-Beau]

Yes, you are right-- bottoming was viewed as the passive/receptive/feminine role in sex, but my point was that this was all in step with the Roman view of gender, power in sex, and the relationship of class stature to appropriate sexual relations. I am not asserting that the Roman Empire was an idyllic haven for homosexual people. But it was a society known (even in its artwork) for its open expression of same-gender sexual activity, but did not regard homosexual people as a separate sexual class of people with a body of legislation aimed either for or against them. Homosexual sex was viewed within the lens of how sex and class were regulated universally within Roman society, which was undoubtedly male-power-oriented and class-oriented.

I tend to bring this up when someone brings up Rome or Greece (who are a better fit for what you're looking for - even though their worship of the male form came from extreme misogyny) because our modern gay culture so routinely misrepresents their cultures - we are still largely a product of extreme societal AND legal homosexual repression, so much so that we see them as being very gay "friendly." But really, they were pretty ambivalent about the whole business by and large, and just didn't have our Christian traditions of ACTIVE societal and legal discrimination.

The separation of "homosexual" as a distinct category is a child of formal repression. Which is why the Romans had no word for "homosexual."

That doesn't make them PFLAG. I know, you're not saying that, just explaining myself. Frankly I'd prefer to take SOME of the Roman tradition over the traditions we have, and I'd also like to feed a few Christians to some hungry lions while I'm at it.

 

[pat grimshaw]

I'd love to see some pre-18th century documents by the Bantu-speaking Pouhain farmers (Bene, Bulu, Fang, Jaunde, Mokuk, Mwele, Ntum and Pangwe), the Nilotico Lango, Cape Bantu, Baganda.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I tend to bring this up when someone brings up Rome or Greece (who are a better fit for what you're looking for - even though their worship of the male form came from extreme misogyny) because our modern gay culture so routinely misrepresents their cultures - we are still largely a product of extreme societal AND legal homosexual repression, so much so that we see them as being very gay "friendly." But really, they were pretty ambivalent about the whole business by and large, and just didn't have our Christian traditions of ACTIVE societal and legal discrimination.

The separation of "homosexual" as a distinct category is a child of formal repression. Which is why the Romans had no word for "homosexual."

That doesn't make them PFLAG. I know, you're not saying that, just explaining myself. Frankly I'd prefer to take SOME of the Roman tradition over the traditions we have, and I'd also like to feed a few Christians to some hungry lions while I'm at it.

But certainly Tx-Beau we can regard some degree of open social acceptance, even if it falls short of the standard we would today establish for "complete acceptance", as vastly better than the death penalties and burnings that accompanied the formal Christian influence of legislation on the topic in formerly Roman European societies, and African societies.

It seems to me that you are responding to the "gay community's myth" of a gay utopia in the ancient world but I have never been under such an impression.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I'd love to see some pre-18th century documents by the Bantu-speaking Pouhain farmers (Bene, Bulu, Fang, Jaunde, Mokuk, Mwele, Ntum and Pangwe), the Nilotico Lango, Cape Bantu, Baganda.

I think you're under the misimpression that anyone believes you are swayed by facts or evidence. You are merely manipulating goalposts so that you can continue to maintain a position in spite of any evidence.

 

[pat grimshaw]

I see that Evans-Pritchard argued that the main issue facing anthropologists was one of translation -- finding a way to translate one's own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one's own culture.

And that Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe are 20th century gay Americans.

 

[TX-Beau]

But certainly Tx-Beau we can regard some degree of open social acceptance, even if it falls short of the standard we would today establish for "complete acceptance", as vastly better than the death penalties and burnings that accompanied the formal Christian influence of legislation on the topic in formerly Roman European societies, and African societies.

It seems to me that you are responding to the "gay community's myth" of a gay utopia in the ancient world but I have never been under such an impression.

Of course we can, just like gay people even under centuries of Christian executions and persecution had varying degrees of visibility and tolerance. Wealth and power are great mitigating factors of social disapprobation for example. But I would contend that our idea of total acceptance would be very foreign to a Roman, as their tradition really is to us.

It sounded like you were saying that they were a "gay friendly" society in your first statement, if that's not what you meant, OK.

 

[xbuzzerx]

I see that Evans-Pritchard argued that the main issue facing anthropologists was one of translation -- finding a way to translate one's own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one's own culture.

That is a never-ending filter problem in Anthropology, which is precisely why the greater valuation of largely western-maintained recording or documentation of events over even oral accounts from people about their own culture, the mindset you yourself are demonstrating in this thread, is highly problematic and a very well discussed topic within the fields of Anthro and Sociology.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Of course we can, just like gay people even under centuries of Christian executions and persecution had varying degrees of visibility and tolerance. Wealth and power are great mitigating factors of social disapprobation for example. But I would contend that our idea of total acceptance would be very foreign to a Roman, as their tradition really is to us.

It sounded like you were saying that they were a "gay friendly" society in your first statement, if that's not what you meant, OK.

I would describe Roman society as, like you did, misogynistic to such a degree that homosexual relations were forced to conform to what Romans would find 'acceptable' as resembling a male domination of a female, such as a much higher class male penetrating a much lower class male slave. The power structure needed to conform to how they conceived of the much lesser power of a female in relation to a male. Not at all a gay utopia.

 

[pat grimshaw]

... unless the global situation improves significantly, then the LGBT community as a whole, should seriously contemplate the idea of nationhood, not for the sake of those who are privileged enough to live in the West...

That would be interesting. Two politicians in my country separately suggested that the desert land in the west of my country should be a 'homeland' for Japanese and for Jews one hundred years ago.

 

[pat grimshaw]

...oral accounts from people about their own culture...is highly problematic...

Yes indeed. How can one value an oral account from people who don't write and who have "lost" their own language.

 

[Alnitak]

I see that Evans-Pritchard argued that the main issue facing anthropologists was one of translation -- finding a way to translate one's own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one's own culture.

And that Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe are 20th century gay Americans.

See page seven. They cite to work done by others.

http://www.iranti-org.co.za/content... Bill/SMUG alternative to criminalisation.pdf

 

[xbuzzerx]

Yes indeed. How can one value an oral account from people who don't write and who have "lost" their own language.

The question should instead be "How can you consider a written source inherently more reliable in all cases, even when its author was an alien to the culture of which he was writing, and was influenced by his own cultural and religious norms, simply because it is written down?" And especially to hold that valuation to such an extreme that one completely disregards oral tradition entirely in any question of any conflict with any written source.

Or even worse, as you are doing: to assert that the lack of a recorded western perspective is evidence of utterly no data of any kind whatsoever.

Though of course, as Alnitak has pointed out, there IS such evidence, and you are merely ignoring it. As usual.

 

[TX-Beau]

I would describe Roman society as, like you did, misogynistic to such a degree that homosexual relations were forced to conform to what Romans would find 'acceptable' as resembling a male domination of a female, such as a much higher class male penetrating a much lower class male slave. The power structure needed to conform to how they conceived of the much lesser power of a female in relation to a male. Not at all a gay utopia.

What's really interesting is the transition from classical ideas about homosexuality, to medieval ideas about homosexuality. The marriage of eastern religious legalism, with the western homophobic misogyny.

 

[TX-Beau]

Yes indeed. How can one value an oral account from people who don't write and who have "lost" their own language.

Books are oral accounts on paper, they change less, but aren't any more trustworthy.

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The question should instead be "How can you consider a written source inherently more reliable in all cases, even when its author was an alien to the culture of which he was writing, and was influenced by his own cultural and religious norms, simply because it is written down?" And especially to hold that valuation to such an extreme that one completely disregards oral tradition entirely in any question of any conflict with any written source.

BASTARD! Beat me to it.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Books are oral accounts on paper, they change less, but aren't any more trustworthy.

- - - Updated - - -



BASTARD! Beat me to it.

And it certainly isn't just some problem mothballed to the early days of "cowboy anthropology" a century back, either. When I was in college a Native art display came under controversy when the non-Native anthropologist presenting the artwork had labelled a particular sculpture showing a sexual scene with the term "adultery" because it was extramarital in its depiction. The entire concept of the term adultery itself is Judeo-Christian in origin and the notion did not translate whatsoever within the culture depicted in the artwork, and was used as a case in point at the time of cultural contamination risk inherent to foreign study of another culture.

 

[pat grimshaw]

...when its author was an alien to the culture of which he was writing, and was influenced by his own cultural and religious norms, simply because it is written down?...

Yes that is very true. And I reckon one should weigh up the accounts from a variety of people. And I'm wary of most things prior to 1850 because most people were illiterate and inconsistent spellers.

Look what happened in the Margaret Mead/Derek Freeman 'scandal'— lots of argy-bargy but how much reliable stuff was gained?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Freeman

 

[pat grimshaw]

http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode12.htm

 

[xbuzzerx]

http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode12.htm

"Student of Franz Boas" is as far as anyone knowledgeable would need to go to disregard Mead. We're talking about someone who wrote an anthropological guidebook entitled "Differences between the Civilized and Primitive Mind."