Ancient Sex Blog Spotlight: Homosexuality

Question: What are the various pantheons' perceptions of and reactions to homosexuality in both their pantheons and the human world?

Wow, what a giant, complicated ball of wax of a question. This post is going to use a lot of sex terminology, just so's y'all know. It is the mother of all Ancient Sex Blog Posts.

In most cases, we assume that pantheons have the same general social outlooks as did their societies in their heyday; that is, one of the Aesir is most likely to typify the social mores of Viking society rather than those of modern-day Iceland, though of course it can vary from god to god depending on their feelings and personality. So the answer to that question is more a discussion of how various ancient societies viewed homosexuality and how that might translate into divine assumptions and norms.

So we'll take them one at a time and hopefully you'll be able to find something that you can run with in a game if you feel so inclined. These are very small snapshots of cultural behavior, however; many scholars spend their entire careers investigating and writing about ancient homosexuality, so if there's a specific culture or two you're interested in learning about, you may want to just find a more in-depth treatment on the subject and work with that.

I'd also like to note here that while there's usually plenty of evidence regarding what ancient cultures thought about male homosexuality, there's often not a peep out of them about females who dig other females. It's not that I'm ignoring the ladies; it's that lots of ancient societies apparently did (or, more accurately, that they simply didn't consider sex without penetration to actually be sex, so therefore there was no such thing as women having sex with other women).


The Aesir: The ancient Norse were not big fans of homosexuality (which is going to be a big theme for most ancient cultures, I'm afraid); it's not addressed much, but when it is it's usually derisively. From what we can tell, there's a divide in what's okay homosexual behavior and what's not; a man in the "top" role would not be considered to be behaving improperly even if he were having sex with another man, because he'd still be in charge of penetration - i.e., what a dude's supposed to be doing during sex. A man in the receiving role, however, was highly stigmatized; accusing a man of being on the receiving end of homosexual sex was pretty much one of the worst insults you could levy against him, because of the perception that he was intentionally taking on the female role of being penetrated and was therefore intentionally womanizing himself (with all the connotations of manipulation, cowardice and physical weakness that entails - alas, ancient cultures are not very feminist).

The ancient Norse can get very creative with accusations or implication that other men are taking on the wrong homosexual role and therefore effeminate and pathetic failures at life. You actually get to watch that play out in the Lokasenna itself; Odin's (and Njord's, when he repeats it later) public reminder to everyone that Loki has borne a child (Sleipnir) is a very intentional attempt to shame him for having been in that female position, while Loki's accusation to Odin that he practices seidr, womens' magic, is a veiled suggestion that Odin therefore takes on the "woman's role" in all things, presumably including sex. Essentially, that part of the poem is about a bunch of gods calling each other gay and then getting really pissed off about it.

So in terms of the Aesir in Scion, I'd assume it's something they probably wouldn't even notice in terms of lesbianism, but heaven help the poor son of Thor if his father finds out he's in a loving relationship with another dude. It wasn't against the law to be homosexual for the Vikings, but it was heavily stigmatized, so an openly homosexual (or bisexual) god or Scion among the Aesir is going to have a very rough time of it with his peers.

The Amatsukami: These guys are actually much less cranky about the idea of male homosexual love, provided that it occurs within what they consider acceptable parameters. There's no stigma or religious prohibition against homosexuality in Shintoism, and in fact some of Japan's most famous stories (The Tale of Genji being the most notable) involve the male hero sleeping with boys as well as with women without any suggestion that such a thing was not accepted. Much like the Greeks (who we will get to later), Japanese culture not only accepted the idea of men having sex with younger boys, they actually heavily romanticized it, painting such youngsters as beautiful and desirable (in some cases more than women). It was common for samurai (and others who emulated them) to have a younger man as a consort, usually in a mutually affectionate relationship.

It was not, however, normal for an older man to be on the receiving end of homosexual sex with a younger one; again, ancient cultures are very particular about penetration, who's in charge of it and what that means about their social role. Younger men in such a relationship are always the receivers and, until comparatively recently, were not considered adults. It was assumed that grown men would not be having sex with other grown men, nor with older men than themselves; there's no particular stigma or horror attached, but it's something that simply wasn't done (and things that simply aren't done carry a lot of weight in the formal, regimented society of the Amatsukami).

Alas, again nobody bothers to address lesbianism. Sorry, ladies.

I would assume that having male lovers would be absolutely fine with the Amatsukami and in fact they wouldn't even notice it as strange - as long, of course, as you're the top and he's younger than you are. (In fact, some of the Kami, including Hachiman, were considered to be sort of defenders of homosexuality in their day and might have their own harems or lovers without having any issue with it.) Other kinds of homosexual relationships are a lot more likely to raise eyebrows among the Japanese gods, however - not necessarily because of stigma against them, but just because the Kami are notorious for their resistance to change and disdain of modern ideas that clash with their traditional values.

The Aztlanti: Unfortunately, this one's pretty easy: homosexuality was flatly illegal in Aztec society. And, like most things that are illegal in Aztec society, it was pretty harshly punishable, up to and including executing the offender (again, more likely to be harshest on the receiving partner, but neither role was acceptable and burning, impalement and hanging have all been recorded as punisments for convicted homosexuals). Aztec society was in many ways extremely harshly dedicated to the societal unit, so if you happened to be refusing to be a contributing part of it - i.e., not having children because you were wasting your time having sex with other dudes - they'd pretty much remove you to free up resources for someone who would.

But hey, here's a culture that notices lesbians! And by notices I mean sentences them to death by strangulation. Alas.

It should be noted that there is a lot of material out there describing the Aztecs as wanton sodomites; most of it can't be taken at face value, as it was written by Christian conquerors with a long historical habit of calling all natives sodomites and cannibals regardless of what they were actually doing. What few scraps of Aztec law and practice we still have make it very clear that they were not cool with the gay.

Aztec (specifically Mexica) intolerance of homosexuality is actually pretty interesting, because other Mesoamerican cultures in the area didn't necessarily agree. The pre-Aztec Toltecs had something of a reputation for homosexuality being openly accepted, and the Maya seem to have had a fairly thriving practice of the nobility indulging when they were interested. In fact, while the Mexica were fully willing to kill you in the face for being homosexual, other areas that they conquered weren't necessarily, which led to some variation across the empire, especially at the fringes where they were far removed from the ruling core of the Mexica in Tenochtitlan.

So being homosexual is probably a dangerous situation among the Aztlanti. The very Mexican gods, including Huitzilopochtli and Tlazolteotl, are likely to be no-holds-barred fully hostile, possibly up to the point of killing a Scion that was openly interested in the same sex; you might find some more slack in dudes like Quetzalcoatl, who as a former member of the more tolerant Toltecs might be inclined to look the other way.

Oddly enough, there is actually one open god of homosexuality among the Aztecs: Xochipilli, "the flower prince", who is the patron of homosexuals along with other interesting things like psychedelic drugs and mushrooms. Most scholarly treatments on him that I've read assume that he's a holdover from the Toltec pantheon and was at least half-considered a sort of contemptuous symbol of them (though, as a fertility god, he also still got his due of worship lest things go catastrophically wrong). He probably does not have the most fun life, stuck around a bunch of extremely intolerant Aztec gods; one of our PCs has currently made it his mission to, along with Xochipilli, try to convince the Aztlanti that their ban on same-sex love is archaic and they should abandon it. I'm not sure if he's going to succeed, but you've got to give the kid props for trying.

The Celestial Bureaucracy: As far as we can tell, the ancient Chinese were pretty much chill with homosexuality. It was considered just as reasonable a kind of relationship as heterosexuality, and probably occurred fairly frequently, with records of even government officials and high-ranking men preferring men to women with no apparent backlash from the rest of their society. (Incidentally, lesbianism is vaguely addressed in ancient Chinese literature, but it's usually presented as something women do to while away the time when not married, not as a serious kind of relationship in its own right.) Taoism has no opinion on homosexuality, nor does Confucianism, though both note it as a neutral behavior that has no particular pros or cons attached; Buddhism is actually pretty pro-homosexuality, at least in terms of priests and their younger charges. In general, everybody is okay with it before the seventeenth century or so, when pressure from the outside world (particularly Christianity and Islam) begins to stigmatize homosexuality.

The Shen, I think, are actually a really interesting place to play with this idea, because their gods run the gamut from really, really old to relatively recently deified, and as a result might have vastly different opinions on the subject. Each god's personality probably has a lot to do with what they think about homosexuality and bisexuality and whether or not they view it as acceptable or even something they practice themselves, and I'd also probably have a good time with the continuum of their origins, with the older gods more tolerant or uncaring, while the younger a god is, the more likely they are to have modern ideas of homosexuality as shameful or undesirable. And, of course, there are also their loaner deities that have been borrowed from nearby religions, which brings us to...

The Devas: Despite the fact that modern Hinduism is not terribly excited about homosexuality, ancient Indian society appears not to have had much of a problem with it. There's plenty of art and literature depicting homosexuals (both male and female) in romantic situations, and no indictment of them anywhere to speak of (in fact, some scholars on the subject think that the Vedas are subtly encouraging to homosexuals as part of the natural variety of the world).

Considering that Vishnu and Shiva have actually had sex themselves (while Vishnu was in a female incarnation, Mohini, but it still must be an awkward story to bring up at parties), I can't imagine that they'd bat much of an eye at homosexuality among their worshipers or children.

The Dodekatheon: Ah, there they are - probably the most famous ancient culture for widespread acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality. From the Athenian practice of the older mentor with younger eromenos to the Spartan warriors who eschew women entirely to celebrate their masculinity with other men to the famous lesbian poet Sappho and her rhapsodic odes to the goddesses, homosexuality was clearly widespread, accepted and even lauded in ancient Greek culture. As always, there are conditions, however; adult men were considered to be behaving shamefully if they were the receiving partner in a homosexual relationship (though it was perfectly fine for boys, adults were supposed to have outgrown that - again, everybody is all about who's doing the penetrating), unless they were in the military together, in which case it was more acceptable. And depending where in the Greek lands you are, lesbianism was suppressed more strongly in some areas than in others to encourage young women to be ready to bear children.

Things get more stern by the time Rome has risen to power; again, it's now okay for men to have sex with boys or other men, but only if they're in the position of penetrator, and any adult male who takes on what they considered the "passive" or "female" role was ridiculed and socially considered to be a sexual deviant. But, however mocked they might have been, there have also been many records of Roman marriages between two men, which is something pretty much unheard of in most of the ancient world. Lesbianism is actually much more noted in writings than it was in Greece, but it's generally derided as weird and unnatural, and Roman ideas about what it even entails (including the bizarre assumption that lesbians must be born with a giant clitoris in order to be able to penetrate other women, because, of course, if there's no penetration it isn't actually sex in ancient Rome) range from comical to depressing.

But as far as the Dodekatheon themselves go, I'd assume that homosexuality is not only accepted, it's in many cases preferred or considered the norm. There's loads of homosexuality going on in Greek myth; Apollo is famous for his huge number of male lovers, Zeus kidnapped the beautiful youth Ganymede just as he's wont to kidnap and sleep with females that catch his eye, Heracles was famously worshiped along with male lovers Hylas and Iolaus, Poseidon took his chariot-driver Nerites as a lover, Hermes was the lover of Krokos (and, depending on who you believe, possibly Perseus as well), and of course Achilles, despite his enjoyment of the females fair, is much more famous for his love of Patroclus (and his disastrous attempts to woo the youth Troilus many years before). Male homosexuality, at least, is commonplace among the Dodekatheon, and we tend to play them as assuming that's the norm for everybody (one PC has to keep explaining to a well-meaning Hermes that, no, really, he does not need some beautiful boys in his Sanctum to go with his harem of lady friends). Lesbianism is more problematic, but given the Greeks' generally open sexual behavior, I'd assume they wouldn't pitch too much of a fit about it.

The Loa: Since the Loa have gone through so very many changes and versions of themselves, their views are hard to pin down since they're major forces in several very different cultures. In most traditional African religions, homosexuality is viewed as a defect or a deviation; many have myths explaining that such people were accidentally created "wrong", often because a creator deity was drunk or not paying attention at the time (this is also a frequent explanation for the creation of people with deformities or physical handicaps as well). But there doesn't seem to be much of a stigma attached to homosexuals as a result; rather, many traditional African religions view them as specially connected to the spirit world thanks to their dual nature, so despite being considered aberrations they are still accorded a certain amount of respect.

Off in the New World, things are a little bit different. The Loa of vaudun are extremely sexually uninhibited and there are quite a few of them that are said to be openly bisexual and to encourage and protect homosexuality and bisexuality in their worshipers (particularly Erzulie and the Barons). Down south a ways in the thriving Brazilian religions of Candomble and its associates, things are a little more stilted, but homosexual behavior, particularly within the context of religious rituals or possession, is still considered something that is a natural part of sacred worship.

So you have a lot of options for the Loa, and they most likely have divergent opinions. Purely New World Loa that don't exist in Africa like Erzulie or the Baron are likely to have no problem whatsoever with homosexuality; old-school African gods like Shango or Ogoun, however, might still think of it as something that accidentally went wrong somewhere (though even they aren't likely to be unreasonably hostile about it).

The Nemetondevos: As is usual with the continental Celts, we don't have a lot to go on for them. They didn't leave behind any written record or art depicting homosexuality, so we have to once again take the Romans mostly at their word, meaning that we're stuck trying to figure out how much of the Roman reports of the Gauls frequently having homosexual relationships is reliable and how much is just them trying to paint their enemies as effeminate or deviant. Though he denied it and it was loudly decried as a mere manufactured scandal, I'm a pretty big fan of the rumor that a young Julius Caesar was the homosexual lover of King Nicomedes of Gaul when he stayed at his court; it's an interesting place to look for stories. As usual, there's no mention of lesbianism going on here, so one must assume the Romans either didn't notice it or didn't feel there was any point to slandering a different culture's womenfolks.

So, really, it comes down to individual Storyteller call on the Nemetondevos. None of them have any homosexual connotations that I know of, but what they might think of that type of relationship or how they might react to it in their children I really have no idea (though some of the more thoroughly Romanized among them, like Epona, might tend toward Roman thoughts on the subject).

The Pesedjet: You're probably tired of hearing it by now, but it's the same song: female homosexuality is totally ignored because sex can't exist without a penis, while male homosexuality depends entirely on who's pitching and who's catching. We don't have a lot of historical evidence for the ancient Egyptians, simply because they lived so very long ago and so many of their relics were destroyed by other cultures and religions, but from a few accounts of dudes having to sneak to one anothers' houses at night without anyone finding out, it's clear that it wasn't a publicly accepted practice.

Horus and Set, actually, are the biggest prime exhibit of Egyptian attitudes toward homosexuality; they have very explicit sex in Egyptian myth, when Set invites Horus over for dinner and hangouts and they have some sexytimes afterward. However, because Set doesn't actually get to "finalize" having sex with Horus, who manages to sneakily avoid letting the other god ejaculate during the sex act itself, he ends up screwed (heh) at the end of the story when Horus feeds some of his own semen to him in a salad and then uses magic to demonstrate to the gods that Set has Horus' semen within his body, while Horus is seed-free. Not only do both Set and Horus (and all the other gods, too) obviously assume that which one of them was on the receiving end is vitally important to determining which one is fit to be king and which isn't, but there's no stigma attached to Horus, even though he was also participating in homosexual sex. All the disdain is heaped on Set, the supposed "bottom", for having taken on the unmanly role, while Horus gets away with no aspersions cast upon his character.

I would assume that most of the Pesedjet would probably stick with that general assessment of homosexuality, though some, particularly those who had very strong Greek cults, might be a little more lenient due to having mixed with that less disapproving culture. I would also assume that if you have the misfortune to be a gay male son of either Horus or Set, you'd better either give up any hope of ever being out of the closet safely or decide how you're going to broach that incredibly touchy subject; neither one of them is likely to react well, though what they decide to do about it and how a Scion could manage the fallout would of course vary from character to character.

The Tuatha de Danann: Since ancient Ireland didn't bother with such boring pursuits as "writing" and "history" and "sitting down instead of stabbing each other", we don't know much about them before the arrival of Christian missionaries and we don't have a very clear picture of their views on homosexuality. As usual, there's no evidence one way or the other for lesbianism and the culture's thoughts on it, but there are fragments in enough stories that some scholars believe that homosexuality wasn't particularly odd in men, particularly warriors (in fact, a strong scholarly case is often made that Cu Chulainn and Ferdiad, whom he kissed multiple times on the battlefield and with whom he admits to sharing a bed, was his lover as well as his foster-brother). Other than that, however, there's just nothing to go on one way or the other.

Considering that the Tuatha tend to be all about doing whatever the fuck they want, I'd assume they probably don't care who you're sleeping with as long as you're doing it in an awesome and heroic manner.

The Yazata: And here, to round things out, is another pantheon that is not even remotely okay with homosexuality. While Persian culture itself was not always historically opposed to homosexuality, Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Yazata and Ahura Mazda, quite thoroughly is. The Avesta (the holy scriptures of Zoroastrianism) explicitly states that male homosexuality is an evil act and is tantamount to supporting the daevas in their crusade against righteousness; Ahriman himself engages in homosexual intercourse (with himself, because he is kinky that way) in order to create evil, and the idea is never visited in anything less than violently disapproving terms. (As usual, lesbianism is unrepresented. Silly ancient cultures.)

So one can't help but assume that the Yazata are not going to react well to homosexuals in their midst, since their own rhetoric states that they're Working for the Enemy. It might be interesting to contrast them with the Devas, their ancient frenemies, who don't seem to have much of a problem with homosexuality and whose acceptance of it may have in part caused the Persian backlash against it during that time period when Zoroastrianism decided to hate everything India had ever done and vice versa. We actually do have a homosexual Yazata Scion as a PC at the moment (though I'm not allowed to say which one, because In-Game Secrets), and I'm very interested to see how or if that character manages to deal with the inevitable censure in store if they ever try to find their way out of the deeply-recessed closet in which they currently live.

This was probably a way longer and more detailed response than you were looking for, question-asker, and I apologize for that, but it's just a smidgen of an answer even so; there's just so much going on in the global history of sex and cultural perception of it that you'd have to read a ton more books and write a ton more papers on it than I have to cover all the ground that needs covering. There are exceptions to lots of the rules above, and of course many of the other cultures you're likely to run up against in Scion may have yet different views again.

I know some Storytellers like to keep their games sex-free, but for those that don't, Scion is a veritable cornucopia of sexually-based plot hooks and ideas, spinning off with a vengeance from the clash of various different cultures' laws and ideas and the conflict between ancient traditions and modern morals.

I can't quite imagine running a game that ignores all that, but then again, maybe I'm just dirty.