[102] Ibid. p. 116. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 244.
[103] Plato, Leges, i. 636. Cf. Plutarch, Amatorius, v. 9.
[104] Plato, Symposium, p. 192.
[105] ‘State of Female Society in Greece,’ in Quarterly Review, xxii. 172 sqq. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 287. Döllinger, op. cit. ii. 234.
[106] Plato, Symposium, p. 181. That the low state of the Greek women was instrumental to pederasty has been pointed out by Döllinger (op. cit. ii. 244) and Symonds (loc. cit. pp. 77, 100, 101, 116 sqq.).
[107] Plato, Symposium, p. 181.
[108] Matignon, in Archives d’anthropologie criminelle, xiv. 41.
We have hitherto dealt with homosexual love as a fact; we shall now pass to the moral valuation to which it is subject. Where it occurs as a national habit we may assume that no censure, or no severe censure, is passed on it. Among the Bataks of Sumatra there is no punishment for it.[109] Of the bazirs among the Ngajus of Pula Patak, in Borneo, Dr. Schwaner says that “in spite of their loathsome calling they escape well-merited contempt.”[110] The Society Islanders had for their homosexual practices “not only the sanction of their priests, but the direct example of their respective deities.”[111] The tsekats of Madagascar maintained that they were serving the deity by leading a feminine life;[112] but we are told that at Ankisimane and in Nossi-Bé, opposite to it, pederasts are objects of public contempt.[113] Father Veniaminof says of the Atkha Aleuts that “sodomy and too early cohabitation with a betrothed or intended wife are called among them grave sins”;[114] but apart from the fact that his account of these natives in general gives the impression of being somewhat eulogistic, the details stated by him only show that the acts in question were considered to require a simple ceremony of purification.[115] There is no indication that the North American aborigines attached any opprobrium to men who had intercourse with those members of their own sex who had assumed the dress and habits of women. In Kadiak such a companion was on the contrary regarded as a great acquisition; and the effeminate men themselves, far from being despised, were held in repute by the people, most of them being wizards.[116] We have previously noticed the connection between homosexual practices and shamanism among various Siberian peoples; and it is said that such shamans as had changed their sex were greatly feared by the people, being regarded as very powerful.[117] Among the Illinois and Naudowessies the effeminate men assist in all the juggleries and the solemn dance in honour of the calumet, or sacred tobacco pipe, for which the Indians have such a deference that one may call it “the god of peace and war, and the arbiter of life and death”; but they are not permitted either to dance or sing. They are called into the councils of the Indians, and nothing can be decided upon without their advice; for because of their extraordinary manner of living they are looked upon as manitous, or supernatural beings, and persons of consequence.[118] The Sioux, Sacs, and Fox Indians give once a year, or oftener if they choose, a feast to the Berdashe, or I-coo-coo-a, who is a man dressed in woman’s clothes, as he has been all his life. “For extraordinary privileges which he is known to possess, he is driven to the most servile and degrading duties, which he is not allowed to escape; and he being the only one of the tribe submitting to this disgraceful degradation, is looked upon as ‘medicine’ and sacred, and a feast is given to him annually; and initiatory to it, a dance by those few young men of the tribe who can … dance forward and publicly make their boast (without the denial of the Berdashe)…. Such, and such only, are allowed to enter the dance and partake of the feast.”[119] Among some American tribes, however, these effeminate men are said to be despised, especially by the women.[120] In ancient Peru, also, homosexual practices seem to have entered in the religious cult. In some particular places, says Cieza de Leon, boys were kept as priests in the temples, with whom it was rumoured that the lords joined in company on days of festivity. They did not meditate, he adds, the committing of such sin, but only the offering of sacrifice to the demon. If the Incas by chance had some knowledge of such proceedings in the temple, they might have ignored them out of religious tolerance.[121] But the Incas themselves were not only free from such practices in their own persons, they would not even permit any one who was guilty of them to remain in the royal houses or palaces. And Cieza heard it related that, if it came to their knowledge that somebody had committed an offence of that kind, they punished it with such a severity that it was known to all.[122] Las Casas tells us that in several of the more remote provinces of Mexico sodomy was tolerated, if not actually permitted, because the people believed that their gods were addicted to it; and it is not improbable that in earlier times the same was the case in the entire empire.[123] But in a later age severe measures were adopted by legislators in order to suppress the practice. In Mexico people found guilty of it were killed.[124] In Nicaragua it was punished capitally by stoning,[125] and none of the Maya nations was without strict laws against it.[126] Among the Chibchas of Bogota the punishment for it was the infliction of a painful death.[127] However, it should be remembered that the ancient culture nations of America were generally extravagant in their punishments, and that their penal codes in the first place expressed rather the will of their rulers than the feelings of the people at large.[128]
[109] Junghuhn, op. cit. ii. 157, n.
[110] Schwaner, op. cit. i. 186.