# Other cultures attitudes toward homosexuality **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 20, 2004, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-cultures-attitudes-toward-homosexuality/235470 "2004-03-20T22:59:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-cultures-attitudes-toward-homosexuality/235470/21 "2004-03-24T04:36:26Z")
In Korea, I was told on several occasions that there were **no** Korean homosexuals. A somewhat more honest person told me that it was very, very rare for anyone to be openly gay anywhere but Seoul. ---
**Author:** ![Hamish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a5b964/32.png) [@Hamish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamish)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-cultures-attitudes-toward-homosexuality/235470/22 "2004-03-24T19:45:37Z")
> [@ava](#): > > Actually, a great many of these societies had a term for what we know call “gay” and “homosexual.” Most people in the society who did things with members of the same sex did so for convenience or a temporary fling. However, there were certain members of the society who were known for only loving those of the same sex and some even built up communities and areas where like-minded people could hang out. I’d like to second that even in societies that construct sexual identity differently, there are always exceptions. In Plato’s _Symposium_, Aristophanes mentions both men who never take a boy lover, and men who never marry a woman. In fact, the party is being hosted by Agathon and his male lover, Pausanias, who seem to have started out as as the boy/man couple, and were said to have stayed together as an exclusive, monogamous couple all of their lives, never marrying. This was considered unsual of course, and in a play by Aristophanes, Agathon is made fun of as a man-woman, or effeminate. But there were no laws against it – it was just considered out of the ordinary and a little funny. In a 3rd-century story called [_The Erotes_](http://www.androphile.org/preview/Library/Debate/lucian/lucian.html), there’s a portrait of an exclusively homosexual man, and an exclusively heterosexual man, arguing over whose sexuality is superior. I’m not aware of any actual communities, but I’d be interested to hear about them, **ava**. ---
**Author:** ![Hamish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a5b964/32.png) [@Hamish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamish)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2004, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-cultures-attitudes-toward-homosexuality/235470/23 "2004-03-24T19:52:12Z")
Also, maybe I should address the OP: > [@Lumpy](#): > > To hear some talk about it, you would think that the Judeo-Christian ethic was uniquely bigoted and intolerant in considering homosexuality abnormal or morally wrong; and that most other cultures tolerate or accomodate male-male sex. There have certainly been cultures outside of the J/C/I tradition that punished homosexuality with death, or that punished it under certain circumstances with death. I think what Christianity added was the concept of sin and eternal damnation. The historian John Boswell has made a good case that homosexuality was tolerated by early Medieval Christianity, and only got bad in the late middle ages. The historian Byrne Fone (whose _Homophobia: A History_ I highly recommend) argues convincingly that homophobia is at least partly rooted in Roman machismo, and Greek aescetic philosophies (Cynicism, Stoicism, Platonism), which took a dim view of sex and pleasure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-cultures-attitudes-toward-homosexuality/235470.md?page=1)