Homosexuality: Sin, Crime, Pathology, Identity, Behavior*

Abstract

It was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that men who had sexual relations with other men were viewed as a class apart, as individuals who, because of their behavior, were seen as deviant (Foucault, 1978). Prior to that time, it was the act of sex between males and the act of anal sex, whether between two men or between a man and a woman, that was shunned and in some way penalized. Judaism Adherents to Judaism and Christianity have frequently looked to specific passages in the Old/First Testament as authority for the characterization of male-male sex as a sin against God. Within Judaism and Christianity, it has been argued, for example, that because Genesis 1:26-29 "commands" man and woman to "be fruitful and multiple," it establishes a blueprint or parameters for human sexual relations: Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:26-29; NRSV) 1 1 All passages from the Old and New Testaments are from Coogan, 2007. *With contributions by Madison Carithers.