Pursuing the origins of “Sex against Nature”: a genealogical study of the development of Graeco-Roman and Christian thinking concerning male same-sex sexuality

Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History.This research is aimed to explain the origins and evolution of the philosophical antagonism to male same -sex sexuality under the argument that same-sex relations were contra naturam. It spans from classical Greece through the early middle-ages, and covers Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Greek Stoicism, Roman Judaism, Neoplatonism, and Christianity. A recurrent presence behind all antagonism to male same-sex sexuality was the Socratic ethics of abstention, and notions natural supernatural teleology. Other contributors were negative social connotations of passivity in adult men, and the intrinsic power differences that existed within the male same-sex relationships of antiquity. The argument that same-sex relations go against nature seems to fare worse under more modern understandings of the universe, animal sex-life, and the evidence against intelligent design in evolution of life forms