by Trudy Ring (Advocate.com)
(Shutterstock)
Someone should tell Speaker Mike Johnson that while the Roman Empire was pretty queer, according to historians, that wasn't what caused its fall.
Almost every day since Mike Johnson was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, some evidence of his virulently anti-LGBTQ+ views has emerged. Among the latest is that he promoted the familiar trope that the fall of the Roman Empire was caused by homosexuality.
Homophobes have been parroting this for years, while historians have debated just how queer the empire was. Most historians have concluded that there was some acceptance of gay sex in ancient Rome, but they vary in opinions about the degree of acceptance — and they’re pretty much in agreement that no, the gays didn’t cause the great empire to crash.
Same-sex activity in the empire was all tied up with issues of class and who was doing what to whom, according to some notable historians.
“Men were free to engage in homosexual relationships, so long as they were the active partner with the penetrative power, and the submissive partner was considered to be lower in society than them,” ancient history expert Ollie Burns wrote in a 2021 blog post for the University of Birmingham in the U.K.
“For example, a free Roman man would not be subject to any form of discrimination if he engaged in sexual activity with a male slave, former slave, prostitute, or actor, but coitus with another man of the same social class would be taboo, as the act of being penetrated as a male was seen to encroach on a man’s integrity and compromised his status.” It was seen as feminine — the gods forbid!
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Reposted from Advocate. To read the full article go to: https://www.advocate.com/history/how-queer-was-roman-empire
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