For much of human history, whether two people could openly love each other depended on more than their feelings. Their freedom could depend on their social position, the laws of their country, their religion and the expectations of the people around them.

A relationship accepted in one society could lead to imprisonment or even execution in another. Sometimes the same society celebrated a powerful man’s male lover while punishing an ordinary man for similar behaviour.

The reasons also changed over time. Ancient societies often judged sexual behaviour according to social status and gender roles. Religious authorities later gave greater attention to whether particular sexual acts were sinful. Governments introduced criminal penalties, while doctors eventually began treating same-sex attraction as a medical condition.

None of these changes happened everywhere at once. Different beliefs and legal systems existed alongside one another, and periods of greater freedom were sometimes followed by renewed persecution.

Understanding this history requires us to ask three different questions: What did people feel? How did society judge their relationships? And what could happen to them because of those judgements?

This article follows those questions from the ancient Mediterranean world to the modern period. It focuses mainly on Europe and North America, with examples from other societies where they help explain the wider history.

1. Ancient Greece and Rome: Social Status Mattered More Than Sexual Identity

Today, we commonly distinguish people by sexual orientation. This means the pattern of romantic or sexual attraction a person experiences.

A heterosexual person is attracted to people of a different sex, a homosexual person to people of the same sex, and a bisexual person to more than one sex or gender.

Ancient Greeks and Romans generally did not organise sexuality using these modern categories.

They recognised attraction between people of the same sex, but often judged sexual behaviour according to a different set of rules: a person’s age, social position, freedom and role within a sexual relationship.

Ancient Greece: A relationship could be accepted or condemned depending on who was involved

Ancient Greece consisted of separate city-states, including Athens, Sparta and Thebes. Each had its own customs and institutions, so there was no single Greek attitude towards same-sex relationships.

In several Greek communities, relationships between adult men and adolescent boys were recognised socially. Some were presented as relationships in which an older man helped a younger person learn about public life, education and expected behaviour.

However, these relationships involved differences in age and power. They should not be confused with the equal relationships between consenting adults that we commonly discuss today.

In Athens, a free adult male citizen was expected to maintain his independence and social standing. Sexual conduct that appeared to place him in a submissive or dishonourable position could damage his reputation.

This concern could also have legal consequences.

In the fourth century BC, approximately 2,400 years ago, an Athenian politician named Aeschines prosecuted another citizen, Timarchus. He accused Timarchus of having prostituted himself, meaning that he had exchanged sexual services for payment or other benefits.

Aeschines cited a law that prevented citizens convicted of such conduct from holding certain public offices or addressing the political assembly, where citizens debated public decisions. A person who violated these restrictions could face severe punishment.

The law did not automatically punish every man who experienced same-sex attraction. It addressed particular conduct and its consequences for a citizen’s public standing.

We know this from Aeschines’ surviving speech, Against Timarchus. (1)

The distinction is important. Athens did not simply divide people into heterosexual and homosexual groups. It also judged whether their conduct matched the expectations attached to their social position.

Ancient Rome: Freedom and social class shaped sexual rules

Roman society placed great importance on the distinction between free citizens and enslaved people.

A freeborn Roman male citizen was expected to preserve his independence and masculine standing. Taking a sexual role considered submissive could attract criticism, particularly if it appeared inconsistent with his social position.

Enslaved people had far fewer legal protections and were vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Their ability to refuse sexual demands was severely restricted by their lack of freedom.

As a result, two relationships involving men could be judged very differently, even when the sexual acts were similar.

Roman society was therefore not simply tolerant or intolerant of same-sex relationships. Its rules reflected a wider system in which people did not possess equal rights.

Yet relationships between men could also be publicly visible at the highest levels of power.

The Roman emperor Hadrian, who ruled from AD 117 to 138, had a close relationship with a young man named Antinous.

When Antinous died in AD 130, Hadrian honoured him in extraordinary ways. He founded the Egyptian city of Antinoöpolis in his memory, commissioned statues and supported his worship as a god.

These events are documented by English Heritage’s research on Hadrian. (2)

Hadrian’s relationship demonstrates that affection between men could receive public recognition. However, the emperor’s exceptional power allowed him freedoms that ordinary people did not necessarily enjoy.

The central feature of Greek and Roman sexual rules was therefore not modern sexual orientation. It was the connection between sexuality, social hierarchy and the expected behaviour of people occupying different positions in society.

2. Christianity and Medieval Europe: Sexual Behaviour Became a Question of Sin and Law

As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, its teachings increasingly influenced how sexual behaviour was judged.

Christian authorities generally taught that sexual relations belonged within marriage between a man and a woman. Many also argued that sexual activity should be connected to having children.

This created objections not only to sex between men, but also to other sexual acts considered outside the approved purpose of marriage.

The Bible contains passages concerning sexual relations between men, notably Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, alongside passages in the New Testament whose interpretation remains debated.

Over several centuries, Christian writers and religious authorities developed broader teachings about acceptable sexual behaviour.

These teachings gradually influenced criminal law.

During the later Roman Empire, Christian emperors introduced increasingly severe penalties for certain sexual acts between men.

In the Middle Ages, approximately AD 500 to 1500, Western European laws and religious rules continued to develop.

The process was uneven.

For example, severe penalties for sodomy appeared in several thirteenth-century European legal texts. Sodomy was a historical legal and religious term for sexual acts considered forbidden or unnatural. Its meaning varied, and it did not always refer exclusively to sex between men.

Some texts prescribed mutilation or execution.

But a written punishment is not proof that people were regularly subjected to it. Medieval books sometimes described what an author believed the law should require rather than the rules courts actually enforced.

In later medieval towns, particularly in parts of Italy, surviving court records provide clearer evidence of investigations and prosecutions involving male same-sex activity.

Historian Ruth Mazo Karras examines these distinctions in her 2020 research, The Regulation of “Sodomy” in the Latin East and West. (3)

Her research shows why it is necessary to distinguish religious beliefs, written laws and actual court decisions.

England: From religious condemnation to criminal prosecution

In 1533, during the reign of Henry VIII, England introduced the Buggery Act.

The law made buggery a serious criminal offence punishable by death. It applied to particular sexual acts rather than to a person’s sexual orientation.

The legislation was introduced during Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church, when the Crown was also increasing its authority over legal and religious affairs.

The death penalty remained part of English law for this offence for centuries.

On 27 November 1835, James Pratt and John Smith were hanged for sodomy. They were the last two men executed for that offence in England.

The death penalty for buggery was eventually abolished in 1861, although criminal penalties remained.

Historic England’s account of the law documents these events. (4)

This history reveals an important difference between the absence of executions and genuine freedom. Ending the death penalty did not make consensual sexual relationships between men lawful.

How European laws spread beyond Europe

European colonial expansion carried some of these criminal laws to other parts of the world.

Colonialism occurs when one country controls another territory and its people, often imposing its own political and legal institutions.

The British Empire was particularly influential in spreading laws that criminalised certain sexual acts.

One important example was Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860. It prohibited sexual acts classified as being against the order of nature and was used to prosecute consensual same-sex activity.

Related provisions influenced criminal codes in other British-controlled territories.

Consequently, some laws later defended as longstanding local traditions were partly products of European colonial government.

Human Rights Watch traces this development in its historical study, This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism. (5)

Religious teaching, government policy and colonial expansion therefore all contributed to shaping sexual laws. Their relative importance differed from one place to another.

3. Life Behind the Law: How People Found Love and Community

Criminal laws reveal what governments attempted to prohibit. They do not tell us everything about how people actually lived.

Even in societies with severe penalties, people formed relationships, found partners and created places where they could meet others.

The surviving evidence shows that legal repression and active same-sex communities could exist at the same time.

London’s hidden meeting places

By the early eighteenth century, London had meeting places known as molly houses.

These were often rooms in taverns, coffee houses or private establishments where men interested in other men could socialise.

People met to talk, drink, dance and form relationships. Some gatherings included dressing in clothing associated with another gender and using alternative names.

These places provided a sense of belonging within a society where exposure could lead to arrest and public humiliation.

They were also vulnerable to police investigations and raids.

The London Museum reports that approximately 20 molly houses were under investigation by a moral-reform organisation during the later 1720s.

In 1726, a raid on a gathering place associated with Margaret Clap led to arrests and severe punishments. Some of the men caught in this wider campaign were executed.

The London Museum’s history of molly houses provides details of these communities and the records left by their prosecution. (6)

The existence of these meeting places shows that people were able to recognise others with similar desires and develop shared social customs long before the modern gay-rights movement.

Women’s relationships: The evidence of Anne Lister

Women’s same-sex relationships also existed, although they are often harder to reconstruct because historical records were less likely to document women’s private lives.

One particularly valuable source is the diary of Anne Lister, born in 1791.

Lister was an English landowner who recorded her relationships with women in extensive diaries, partly written in a private code.

Her writings reveal romantic love, sexual intimacy and a clear understanding of her attraction to women.

In 1834, she and her partner Ann Walker celebrated their commitment through personal rituals, including exchanging rings and attending church together.

They subsequently shared a home and combined important parts of their lives.

Their partnership was not legally recognised as a marriage, but they understood it as a serious personal commitment.

Historic England’s research on Anne Lister draws on her diaries and the surviving history of Shibden Hall. (7)

Lister’s life reveals something that criminal records alone cannot: same-sex relationships were not only about sexual activity or encounters with the law. They could involve affection, commitment, shared finances and the wish to build a life together.

4. The Nineteenth Century: Sexuality Became a Medical Question

During the nineteenth century, doctors and researchers began studying sexual attraction more systematically.

As medicine gained influence, it introduced new ways of describing people who were attracted to their own sex.

This produced a major change in thinking.

Earlier legal and religious authorities had often concentrated on forbidden acts. Medical writers increasingly tried to explain a person’s pattern of attraction as a lasting personal characteristic.

The development of modern terminology

In the late 1860s, the writer Karl Maria Kertbeny introduced terms that developed into today’s words homosexual and heterosexual.

Kertbeny opposed laws criminalising sexual relations between men.

His terminology helped describe patterns of attraction separately from particular sexual acts.

The historian Jonathan Ned Katz documents Kertbeny’s use of these terms in correspondence from 1868. The surviving historical evidence is discussed here. (8)

This terminology eventually became influential in medicine, law and everyday language.

But giving an experience a name did not create the experience itself. People had formed same-sex relationships throughout earlier periods without using these modern categories.

When doctors classified homosexuality as an illness

In 1886, the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing published Psychopathia Sexualis, a major medical work examining sexual behaviour.

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine concerned with mental health and mental disorders.

Krafft-Ebing and other researchers attempted to classify patterns of sexual attraction and behaviour. Many nineteenth-century doctors regarded same-sex attraction as a medical abnormality.

Some attributed it to inherited defects or supposed problems in human development. These explanations were often based on weak evidence or speculative theories.

Medical classification had conflicting consequences.

Recognising attraction as something a person did not simply choose could support arguments against criminal punishment. Yet describing that attraction as an illness also encouraged attempts to treat or suppress it.

Over the following decades, such efforts included psychological interventions, aversion treatments using unpleasant stimuli and drugs intended to reduce sexual desire.

These practices varied, but the belief that homosexuality required medical correction caused substantial harm.

The Wellcome Collection preserves Krafft-Ebing’s medical papers, while the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains how medical approaches changed the understanding of sexuality. (9, 10)

Oscar Wilde: The consequences of public exposure

The prosecution of Oscar Wilde in 1895 demonstrates how dangerous public exposure could remain.

Wilde was a celebrated writer whose relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas became central to a series of legal proceedings.

After Wilde unsuccessfully sued Douglas’s father for libel—making a damaging allegation about someone that the law recognises as potentially defamatory—Wilde himself was prosecuted for sexual offences.

He was convicted and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour, the maximum sentence available for the offence.

His imprisonment damaged his health, career and public standing. He died in 1900, aged 46.

The proceedings attracted extensive public attention and exposed the dangers faced by men whose intimate lives became the subject of criminal investigation.

The UK National Archives preserves records of Wilde’s trials. (11)

By the end of the nineteenth century, people attracted to their own sex could therefore face several kinds of judgement at once: religious condemnation, criminal punishment, medical treatment and social exclusion.

5. The Twentieth Century: Governments Used Sexuality to Control People

The twentieth century brought major scientific and political changes, but these did not automatically produce greater freedom.

Governments with very different political beliefs continued to restrict same-sex relationships.

The reasons included ideas about national strength, family life, population growth, acceptable gender behaviour and loyalty to the state.

Nazi Germany: Sexuality and the state’s idea of national strength

Before the Nazi takeover in 1933, Berlin had a visible gay and lesbian culture, including bars, clubs, publications and organisations.

The physician Magnus Hirschfeld had co-founded a campaign for sexual-law reform in 1897 and established the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin in 1919.

The institute conducted research, provided medical services and advocated greater understanding of sexual and gender diversity.

The Nazi regime attacked this work.

In May 1933, Nazi supporters ransacked Hirschfeld’s institute. Material taken from it was burned during the Nazi book burnings.

The government also intensified the prosecution of men accused of violating Paragraph 175, a German criminal law concerning sexual acts between men.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazi authorities made approximately 100,000 arrests under this law. Around 53,400 resulted in convictions.

These are numbers of arrests and convictions, not necessarily different individuals, since some people were prosecuted more than once.

Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps as homosexual offenders. Many experienced forced labour, violence and death.

A concentration camp was a place where the Nazi regime imprisoned people outside ordinary protections and subjected them to harsh, often deadly conditions.

Nazi leaders regarded homosexuality among men as a threat to their expectations about masculinity, reproduction and the future population.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents the persecution and its connection to Nazi racial and political policy. (12)

The Soviet Union: Criminal punishment under Stalin

The Soviet Union followed a different political system, officially based on communism.

Communism, as a political and economic ideal, seeks a society without divisions between economic classes. The Soviet government claimed to pursue this ideal through a state-controlled economy and one-party political rule.

After the Russian Revolution, the early Soviet legal system in some republics removed the former criminal prohibition on consensual sexual acts between men.

The position changed under Joseph Stalin.

In 1934, Soviet criminal law again prohibited sexual relations between men. Conviction could result in imprisonment and forced labour.

The state also treated some same-sex social networks with suspicion, associating them with behaviour considered dangerous or undesirable.

Historian Laura Engelstein examines these changes in Soviet Policy toward Male Homosexuality: Its Origins and Historical Roots. (13)

The Soviet example demonstrates that removing older religious or royal authority did not necessarily remove sexual restrictions.

Cuba: Forced labour and compulsory conformity

After the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro’s government introduced its own expectations about political loyalty and acceptable personal behaviour.

From 1965 to 1968, Cuba operated forced-labour camps called the Military Units to Aid Production.

People sent to these camps included gay men, religious believers and others whom the authorities considered socially or politically unsuitable.

Historian Andy Alfonso’s research estimates that approximately 25,000 to 35,000 people from these various groups were confined in the camps over their period of operation.

Detainees were subjected to agricultural labour and, in some cases, physical punishment and attempts to change their beliefs or behaviour.

The camps were closed in 1968.

The evidence is examined in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. (14)

The Soviet and Cuban systems were communist, whereas Nazi Germany was a fascist dictatorship built around extreme nationalism, racial hierarchy and authoritarian rule.

Their ideologies were different. Yet each government used its power to punish people who did not meet particular expectations about sexuality or gender.

This shows that persecution was not confined to one religious tradition or political system.

The United States: Sexuality became a national-security issue

In the United States, the Cold War created another form of government discrimination.

The Cold War was the long period of political and military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after the Second World War.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, introducing security requirements for federal employment.

The order listed conduct described as sexual perversion among the factors considered in security investigations.

Gay and lesbian employees could lose their jobs or be excluded from federal service.

Officials argued that people who concealed their sexuality might be vulnerable to blackmail, making them potential security risks.

But criminalisation and social discrimination themselves created much of the pressure to keep sexuality secret.

This period became known as the Lavender Scare, referring to the investigation and removal of people suspected of being homosexual from government employment.

The US National Archives preserves the original executive order. (15)

The common feature across these different governments was the use of state authority to enforce particular standards of personal behaviour. Their political explanations differed, but the consequences could include lost employment, imprisonment, forced labour and exclusion from public life.

During the twentieth century, people increasingly organised to challenge these restrictions.

They formed groups, challenged laws in court, published research and demanded equal treatment.

Their central argument was that consensual relationships between adults should not be punished simply because the partners were of the same sex.

Consent means freely agreeing to something. In an intimate relationship, it requires that everyone involved can make their own decision without force or coercion.

Organised movements before the 1960s

In the United States, organisations such as the Mattachine Society, founded in the early 1950s, campaigned for the rights of gay men.

The Daughters of Bilitis, founded in San Francisco in 1955, became an important organisation for lesbian women.

Its publication, The Ladder, helped women share information and experiences at a time when public discussion of lesbian relationships was limited.

These organisations developed community support, challenged discriminatory policies and established foundations for later campaigns.

The Library of Congress documents their history. (16)

The Stonewall uprising and public protest

On 28 June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City.

Patrons and other members of the surrounding community resisted, leading to several days of protest.

The events became known as the Stonewall uprising.

Stonewall did not begin the campaign for gay rights. Activists had already been organising for decades. However, it became an important turning point in the visibility and growth of the movement.

In June 1970, thousands participated in a New York march commemorating the events. It helped establish the tradition of public Pride marches.

The Library of Congress provides historical records of Stonewall and early Pride events. (17)

Law and medicine began to change

Political activism developed alongside legal and scientific reform.

Several milestones demonstrate the gradual nature of this progress.

Year Change Significance
1967 England and Wales partially decriminalised sexual acts between men Consensual acts between two men aged over 21 became lawful under specified private conditions.
1973 The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its classification of mental disorders Homosexuality itself was no longer officially regarded as a psychiatric illness by the association.
1980 Scotland changed its criminal law Consensual sexual acts between men were partially decriminalised.
1982 Northern Ireland changed its criminal law Similar partial decriminalisation took effect.
2003 The United States Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas Laws criminalising private, consensual sexual activity between adults of the same sex were ruled unconstitutional.
2014 Same-sex marriages began in England, Wales and Scotland Same-sex couples gained access to legal marriage in these parts of the United Kingdom.

Sources: UK Parliament’s legislative history (18), American Psychological Association’s historical statement (19), Lawrence v. Texas (20), and UK government marriage records (21).

These milestones reflect different kinds of progress.

Decriminalisation means that a particular action is no longer treated as a crime. It does not necessarily prevent employers, landlords or other institutions from discriminating against someone.

Removing homosexuality from a list of mental disorders changed its medical classification. It did not immediately eliminate prejudice within healthcare or society.

Legal marriage provided another form of recognition, allowing same-sex couples to enter a relationship with legal rights and responsibilities.

Changes in criminal law, medicine and civil rights were therefore connected, but they were not identical. Each required its own reforms.

7. What Historical Evidence Can Tell Us About Love

One difficulty remains when studying same-sex relationships in earlier periods: we cannot directly ask people from the past how they understood themselves.

Historians must use the evidence they left behind.

This includes personal letters, diaries, legal records, artwork, literature and accounts written by other people.

Different sources tell us different things.

A criminal trial may reveal that a relationship existed, but the information was recorded through an accusation. A private diary may reveal someone’s feelings, but only from that person’s point of view. A painting may suggest intimacy without explaining the exact relationship between the people shown.

These limitations matter when we try to identify someone’s sexual orientation using modern terms.

Anne Lister’s diaries provide unusually strong evidence because she wrote directly about her attraction to women and her relationships with them.

Hadrian’s public honours for Antinous provide strong evidence of an important personal relationship. However, they do not tell us how Hadrian would have described his own sexual identity using today’s categories.

Other historical relationships remain much less certain.

The goal is neither to assume that everyone in a close same-sex relationship was homosexual nor to dismiss the possibility of romantic love simply because historical records used the word friendship.

Both approaches can produce misleading conclusions.

Historical interpretation is strongest when it distinguishes what the evidence establishes from what remains possible but unproved.

The Library of Congress’s collection of historical letters and records illustrates how historians investigate relationships that were not always openly acknowledged. (22)

8. What This History Reveals About Society

The history of same-sex relationships is not simply a history of increasing acceptance.

It is a history of changing social rules, the institutions that enforced them and the people who lived under those rules.

Ancient Greek and Roman societies often linked sexual behaviour to social status and expected gender roles. Christian moral teaching subsequently influenced European attitudes and laws. Governments developed criminal penalties, some of which spread through colonial expansion.

Meanwhile, people continued to form relationships and communities, even when doing so could place them in danger.

Modern medicine introduced new ways to describe sexual attraction, but also classified homosexuality as an illness for much of its early history.

In the twentieth century, governments with very different political ideologies used laws and institutions to control people’s private lives.

Organised civil-rights movements eventually challenged many of these restrictions, producing substantial changes in criminal law, medicine and legal recognition.

Several conclusions follow from this history.

Social attitudes towards same-sex relationships were never identical across every society or period. A relationship could be accepted under one set of circumstances and condemned under another.

Criminal law was also only one part of people’s experience. The absence of prosecution did not guarantee social acceptance, just as criminalisation did not prevent people from forming relationships.

Most importantly, the historical record demonstrates how strongly society can influence the freedom people have to live according to their feelings.

The desire to form intimate relationships is a human experience. The rules governing whose relationships receive protection, recognition or punishment are made by societies—and, as history shows, those rules can change.

Understanding this distinction helps us see the central question running through the centuries: not simply whether same-sex relationships existed, but why societies treated people differently because of whom they loved.

References

  1. Fordham University, “Aeschines: Against Timarchus (346 BCE)”.
  2. English Heritage, “Emperor Hadrian”.
  3. Ruth Mazo Karras, “The Regulation of ‘Sodomy’ in the Latin East and West”.
  4. Historic England, “Law and Oppression”.
  5. Human Rights Watch, “This Alien Legacy: The Origins of ‘Sodomy’ Laws in British Colonialism”.
  6. London Museum, “Molly houses & queer subculture in Georgian London”.
  7. Historic England, “Anne Lister and Shibden Hall”.
  8. Jonathan Ned Katz, OutHistory, “1868, May 6: Karl Maria Kertbeny: ‘Homosexual,’ ‘Heterosexual’”.
  9. Wellcome Collection, “Krafft-Ebing, Professor Richard Freiherr von”.
  10. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Homosexuality”.
  11. The National Archives, “The life and court trials of Oscar Wilde”.
  12. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Gay Men under the Nazi Regime”.
  13. Laura Engelstein, “Soviet Policy toward Male Homosexuality: Its Origins and Historical Roots”.
  14. Andy Alfonso, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, “A Short Introduction to the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), Cuba, 1965–1968”.
  15. US National Archives, “Executive Order 10450—Security requirements for Government employment”.
  16. Library of Congress, “Before Stonewall: The Homophile Movement”.
  17. Library of Congress, “1969: The Stonewall Uprising”.
  18. UK Parliament, “Regulating sex and sexuality: the 20th century”.
  19. American Psychological Association, “Discrimination Against Homosexuals”.
  20. Oyez, “Lawrence v. Texas”.
  21. UK Government, “Marriage and Civil Partnership: Conversion Entitlements”.
  22. Library of Congress, “LGBTQ Activism and Contributions”.