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As you look across history at descriptions of homosexuality there seems to be no pattern to what is described, either in the reports of people's behaviour, or in society's attitudes to the behaviour.

• In some cultures homosexual people are valued, in others they are despised.
• In some cultures only a small proportion of people seem to be active in same-sex behaviour, in other cultures nearly everybody is involved, especially when young.
• The word homosexual is itself contested. It means different things to different people, and the definitions used in academic study have changed over time.

The three videos in this theme are my attempt to make sense of this and find a way forward through the confusion.

TAH1 - THE FULL HISTORY OF THE WORD HOMOSEXUAL

• Planned for upload winter 2025

Many gay people dislike the word homosexual because they believe the term was invented by doctors to describe pathological or abnormal behaviour. But this origin story is wrong. Like so much gay history the true story has been supressed by anti-gay prejudice.

The terms homosexual and heterosexual were created by Karl Maria Kertbeny writing to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs about Prussian law reform in 1868. This pair could be described as the first gay activists of the modern era. They used the word homosexual to describe an innate disposition, something inborn.

It was only 20 years later that doctors like Richard Kraft-Ebing took over the term and described homosexuality as pathological or abnormal. But even then gay scholars such as Edward Carpenter criticised Kraft-Ebing as being too influenced by his Eurocentric medical experience. Carpenter argued instead that homosexuality was "a phenomenon widespread through the human race and enduring in history", and should be seen as an entirely natural, healthy and valuable factor of human life.

In the video I will expand on this story and bring it up-to-date. I want to explain how unhelpful definitions of homosexuality have been imposed on us by straight people, and describe the more helpful definitions given to us by gay scholars.

TAH2 - WHAT EXACTLY IS HOMOSEXUALITY - IS IT INNATE AND INBORN?

• Planned for upload spring 2026

There seems to be no stable pattern to descriptions of homosexuality in history. The behaviours and understandings vary from society to society. Some scholars use this to argue that homosexuality is not an innate human disposition but a learned/chosen behaviour, driven by the surrounding culture.

In this video I will be arguing against this by exploring two issues.

• Firstly, I will show how if you look carefully at the historical evidence, many of these apparently different behaviours show the same innate patterns if one pays close attention to the detail.
• Secondly, I will describe fascinating research on macaque and bonobo monkey clans where scholars describe how the comradeship/mutual support between certain monkeys, reinforced by erotic/sexual behaviour, gives them an advantage within the clan.
• Such benefits may explain the evolutionary cause of homosexuality.
• In certain ways, these primate same-sex behaviours seem to match reported human same-sex companionship behaviours in some pre-patriarchal, indigenous cultures.

If your research into homosexualty only studies same-sex sex then you will get the wrong answers. But if you see homosexuality primarily as a supportive companionship, but a companionship reinforced by the sex, then the science falls into place. One can see how homosexuality may have an evolutionary benefit, and have developed as an innate factor in human life.

TAH3 - THE FULL HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY - FROM PREHISTORY TO THE PRESENT

• Planned for upload spring 2026

Much of the writing and scholarship about homosexuality looks only at what has happened within a western, Christian culture. Such scholarship appears not to care about the pre-patriarchal, pre-Christian stories of same-sex loving behaviour reported right across the world and right across history.

These are the stories I explore in great detail in my Intermediate Types and Queer Ministry themed videos.

This video is simply a short summary of that scholarship. It tells the story of how in past times, Intermediate Type (LGBTQ) people often lived openly within their society, and commonly they were were valued for their contributions in spirituality or warfare.

These same societies were often gender egalitarian, with men and women sharing authority and leadership. It is important to understand this gender egalitarian story. The two issues go hand-in-hand. Pre-patriarchal cultures in which a woman's status was valued had no problem valuing the status of homosexual or transgender people.

Sadly, a few thousand years ago, changes in technology led to the development of patriarchal cultures which adopted ideas around male dominance and the suppression of female and intermediate type freedom. These new patriarchal cultures developed slowly in Europe and Asia over 3-4000 years BCE, and were almost fully developed by the time of the late Roman Empire and its adoption of Christianity as the state religion. Homosexual lives were attacked and suppressed as patriarchy and Christianity diffused outwards.

Outside these areas however, in large parts of the Americas, India, Africa and Polynesia, these gender egalitarian and gay friendly cultures were unaffected. They were only wiped out by the imposition of patriarchal Christian doctrines during European colonial expansion in the 16th-20th Century.

This is a complex story, which entails bringing together scholarship from different academic areas:

• Homosexual and transgender history
• The history of Gender relations and Matriarchy/Biarchy
• The history and timing of how Patriarchy developed and spread across the world.
• Colonial History

Much of the scholarship is quite recent. For example research about matriarchy and biarchy has been transformed by gender DNA analysis of skeletons only possible for the last 10 years. Our attitudes to Colonial history are also changing rapidly as the "victims" of colonialism are empowered to give their side of the story. If one pays attention to this developing scholarship it is possible to develop a much fuller history of homosexuality in the world. We can see how homosexuality and gender variance was widespread and valued right across pre-patriarchal history, and then how it was later suppressed, and the memory of these earlier cultures all but forgotten.