Conceptions of Homosexuality and Sodomy in Western History

This essay explores recent attempts to write the history of homosexuality and identifies two distinct approaches: the biographical approach, which reports on the private lives of individuals and charts the formation of homosexual subcultures; and the approach that studies the labeling and treatment of homosexual men and women by the heterosexual majority and examines the reasons why hatred of homosexuality increases and decreases over time. The author warns against applying modern definitions to words that have had different connotations. An an example of the possible confusion, the author discusses the two meanings of the work sodomy: unspecified sexual relations between males; and the act of anal intercourse, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Western civilization's association of the anus with evil, the devil, and bestiality is examined.