What is known about attitudes toward gay sex in New Testament times?

Factual Questions
1

Romans was written around 60AD I think, and contains the clearest examples of condemnation of gay sex in the NT. My question is, what do we know about attitudes toward gay sex in that time and place more generally (i.e. outside Christian circles).

My impression is that it was generally disapproved, but was engaged in as a religious practice via “temple prostitution,” and also that some “man-boy” relationships were winked at among the military and nobility, and that sex acts in both contexts (i.e. temple, and nobility/military) were likely to be at least implicitly coercive.

Is that a completely skewed impression? I have no idea where I got it.

2

I’m not an expert at all, but I do know it was a pretty strict taboo in Judaism at the time and is prohibited in Mosaic law. That attitude of course carried over into the early (and much of the modern) Christian church.

As you say, in other contemporary cultures, gay sex may have been accepted or even expected. Not in terms of a relationship of equals like we would think of today, but between men and younger protégé’s or temple prostitutes. That’s my recollection anyway.

3

Wikipedia’s article on the history of homosexuality is a good starting point, with links to longer articles for different regions and time periods.