Ancient Rome Doesn't Have A Concept Of Homosexuality

Liberals and progressives always touted that during the heght of the Roman Empire, homosexuality was allowed and widespread. This is false because Romans doesn't have a concept of sexual orientation then as we do now.

Rather than aqour hetero-normative society, they were a bi-normative society, in which men were supposed to sleep with women for reproduction and other men for pleasure.

Romans sexual mores also operated on "prison rules". A man may penetrate a woman because she is lower in social status than him. A man may also penetrate another man if he is of a lower station. But a man may not be penetrated by another man of lower status. He may not be penetrated by someone poorer, less connected, or even younger than him because that’s gay.

These same sexual mores survive in modern day prisons. Men, heterosexual men, will develop "situational homosexuality" in an all male environment. And that situational homosexuality will be used to construct a social hierarchy. This is essentially what happened in Rome. Rome was a very patriarchal society, in which women were considered property, and in which women and men didn’t interact much unless they were married.

Homosexual sex became the preferred means of recreational sex, because it didn’t risk pregnancy, and it didn’t "de-value" someone’s daughter.

Everything slowly change when Christianity, or rather when Judaism, was introduced. Many cultures had some acceptable form of homosexuality during this time, except for Judaism. The religion had a pretty blanket ban on the matter.

Some historians surmised that the ban on homosexual activity was related to the idea that sex should produce children. It should be noted that Rome was, at one point, was beset on all sides by enemies, suffered from a high mortality rate, and a high infant mortality rate. And so the ban on homosexuality emerged as a means of ensuring the survival of the tribe.

When Christianity was founded from the teachings of Judaism, it immediately spread throughout the Roman Empire, and eventually to Europe. It carried with it the Jewish sexual mores. Soon after, Medieval Europe had a ban on homosexuality, just like Judaism.

Even today, if you look at many extremely conservative Abrahamic groups, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, they have a ban on both homosexuality and contraceptives. And they’re both rooted in the same fundamental concept. That sex is supposed to produce children.