BMCR 2004.09.45, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and

Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization.  Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2003.  Pp. xv, 623.  ISBN 0-674-01197-X.
$35.00.

Reviewed by Fiona Hobden, University of Liverpool (f.hobden@xxxxxxxxx)
Word count:  1455 words
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Crompton's Homosexuality and Civilization explores the history of
same-sex relationships and attitudes towards them across a variety of
periods and places. Beginning with Judea, Greece and Rome, the
so-called founding cultures of western society, it documents evidence
for homosexual activity amongst men and (where the evidence permits)
women and examines cultural responses to it. The investigations
continues into dark-age and medieval Europe, Italy during the
Renaissance, Spain, France and England in the 1500-1700s, and finally
eighteenth-century Europe. This narrative on 'western civilization' is
interrupted by two sojourns eastward, to imperial China and pre-Meiji
Japan. With this broad but predominantly western focus, the author
embarks on a wide-ranging and detailed investigation which
simultaneously constructs a powerful pink polemic. By examining the
origins and development of negative assessments of homosexuality,
exposing the cruelty of homophobic persecutions, and demonstrating
alternative (positive) responses to those which until recently
dominated Europe and North America, Crompton challenges the notion of
homosexuality as 'unnatural'. Homosexuality is a constant which we
might universally embrace, if only we allow ourselves to step beyond,
by implication, the impositions of our cultural heritage.

Crompton's work compiles a wealth of evidence for same-sex
relationships and desires from the past. The religious texts, poetry,
drama, letters, philosophical treatises and artwork of the societies
under consideration demonstrate the pervasiveness of homosexuality
throughout the period, whether openly discussed and admired, forbidden,
or flaunted in rebellion against condemnatory norms. Moreover, this
same material yields information concerning the development of societal
attitudes towards homosexuality. Arguing for the prevalence of a
general tolerance towards same-sex relationships amongst the Greeks and
Romans, the author proposes that the spread of Jewish-influenced
religious and cultural authority constructed a discourse in which
homosexuality became aligned against good Christian conduct (chapters
1-6). This resulted ultimately in violent and widespread persecutions
across medieval Europe (chapters 7, 9, 10). This vehement intolerance
placed the countries of Europe in stark contrast with contemporary
China (500 BCE to 1849 CE) and Japan (800 to 1868 CE) (chapters 8, 13;
see also chapter 6, pp. 161-172 on 'Love in Arab Spain'). While
homosexual behaviour and its persecution were drawn into the power
struggles within the European church and states, the courts, religions,
poetry and drama of these two Asian countries celebrated passion
between males. Furthermore, in modern Europe, while France, the
Netherlands and Britain stepped up their policing and persecution of
homosexual deviancy, relationships between men and between women
flourished (chapters 12, 14, 15). Meanwhile, through inconsistency,
omission and open campaigning, prominent intellectual figures of the
Enlightenment used their plays, poems and moral-political writings to
challenge the official line on sexuality (chapter 16). Yet, it was
Napoleon's decriminalisation of homosexuality, followed by a few
liberal-minded contemporaries, which provided the first practical
movement away from persecution and intolerance.

This framework is reinforced by a dazzling and colourful tour of Europe
and the Far East, from the boudoirs of the Han dynasty to the torture
chambers of the Spanish Inquisition, from the courts of medieval kings
to the workshops of renaissance artists, and from Shakespearean England
to the Japanese kabuki stage. Two key notions underlie the relationship
between homosexuality and civilization which Crompton thus constructs.
On the one hand, he seeks to convince his reader of the universality of
homosexual experience, a constant across cultures. On the other, the
developments in thought, practice and belief which he traces emphasise
the culturally contingent facet of responses to homosexuality:
relationships between members of the same sex may permeate many
societies, but attitudes towards them are determined by the societies
in which they operate. Hostility originally arose within the
Judaeo-Christian movement through misunderstanding of earlier Jewish
proscriptions against gentile cults involving temple prostitution and
transvestism; gradually, these views interacted with ambivalent Roman
attitudes towards effeminacy, associations between paganism and
Hellenic homosexuality, and the affiliation of church with state,
provoking violent reactions to the 'sin' of homosexuality. Embedded as
it was in the general psyche as morally repugnant and manipulated by
kings and courtiers to political ends, only when intellectual thinking
challenged established hierarchies such as the relationship between the
church and state and the morality of sexuality did homosexual activity
escape state-sponsored persecution. In the 'private' arena, the
movement towards tolerance is, of course, still an on-going process.

The scale and scope of this reading presents a nuanced account of how,
under the influence of the Christian Church, sexual behaviour became
bound up in discourses of power and was placed at the mercy of
political thinking and religious moralizing. In this respect,
Homosexuality and Civilization makes an important contribution to
on-going scholarly debates.  However, the universalizing component of
the work impinges on Crompton's thesis in two respects. Firstly,
rejecting Foucault's assertion that the 'homosexual' is a modern
invention, the author prefers to join all practitioners of same-sex
relationships into one distinct and pervasive segment of all societies,
claiming that over the years, only perceptions of homosexuals have
changed.[[1]] Since this assumption is crucial to his entire
enterprise, Crompton denies the cultural differences which are so
apparent in the reactions and responses of the societies he studies.
For example, a Greek man who had sex with young boys at the training
ground or drinking party may have constructed a personal and communal
identity for himself through the sexual act. However, he did so within
the wider framework of the gymnasion or the symposion, participation
within which itself contributed towards his sense of identity. Thus, he
may have loved and desired males, but his cultural sphere of reference
was completely different from that of the modern 'homosexual'. Further,
Crompton does not address the distinction that some cultures (not only
modern ones but also the ancient Greeks) find important based on the
age of the parties involved in the same-sex relationship. Omitting this
distinction seems at odds with the author's more political intentions.
Over the last century the association between pederasty and
homosexuality in the public imagination has been a key feature in the
demonization of male homosexuals. While upper-class intellectuals of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may have been keen to view
themselves as disciples of 'Greek love', how many gay men today would
feel comfortable with this association?

In addition, by positing the Judaeo-Christian tradition as the ultimate
source of homophobia in the west, Crompton downplays ambiguities within
at least one of the societies he discusses: classical Greece. For
example, following Dover, Crompton observes that sexual relations
between males in fifth- and fourth-century Athens were problematic for
the pathic partner: his male citizen status was threatened through his
penetration by another man. The Athenians made allowances for this by
assigning this role to youths who would grow up and become penetrators
themselves. Yet, recent studies have suggested that insults and jokes
relating to homosexual activity are concerned with more than just
demasculization. For Hubbard, they are tied to Athens' social make-up:
pederasty is an elite vice ridiculed by comic writers for amusement of
lower status audiences. Alternatively, Davidson connects accusation of
'wide-buttockery' to moral concerns with moderation and
self-control.[[2]] In addition, Crompton focuses on Plato's Symposium
as evidence for the general acceptance of homosexuality. But, although
he notes carefully some problems surrounding the dialogues' utility as
a source, he does not notice that Pausanias' speech reinforces the
problematics associated with pedersatic relationships: while promoting
his own ideal of 'heavenly' love between man and youth, Pausanias
criticizes men who take as their lovers boys of the wrong age. For
Crompton, the existence of such men support the existence of
'homosexuality' in ancient Athens, but he ignores the censorious nature
of the statement, reinforced by Pausanias' complaint that fathers and
friends conspire against young men who want to satisfy their older
lovers.[[3]]

Certainly, Crompton's chapter on classical Greece emphasizes the
diversity of possible homosexual experience within Greece; but it
underplays the complexity of attitudes towards such activities. On the
one hand, the scope of Crompton's work necessitates such
simplification. However, the possible ambiguities and contradictions
within Greek society (and perhaps other societies covered which are
outside the reviewer's ken) could add greater resonance and colour to
his argument concerning the clash between 'homosexuals' and the
societies within which they have lived over the past 2,500 years.

Homosexuality and Civilization is a lively, diverse and coherent work
with much to offer popular and academic readers as it introduces them
to a huge variety of people and places, literary texts and artistic
works, thus providing them with a synthesis of material relevant to the
history of sexuality. But perhaps most importantly, given the author's
overtly political agenda, it highlights strongly the cultural
contingency of contemporary attitudes towards homosexuals and
homosexuality; it awakens the Western reader to the manifold horrors
perpetrated by his or her ancestors and reminds them that there can be
another way.

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Notes:


1.   Crompton, 2004, pages xiv, 173-4. Contra Foucault, M., 1985, The
History of Sexuality, volume 2: The Use of Pleasure, New York.

2.   Dover, K., 1974, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and
Aristotle, Oxford; Hubbard, T., 1998, 'Popular Conceptions of Elite
Homosexuality in Classical Athens', Arion n.s. 6: 48-78; Davidson, J.,
1997, Courtesans and Fishcakes. The Consuming Passions of Classical
Athens, London.

3.   Crompton, 2004: 56-57, 59. Plato, Symposium 180c-185c.