The Gay Society / Social Reconstruction

Just as a building or a house is constructed, society is constructed by culture, words, values, knowledge and power. With the diversity of society there can be a multitude of tenets and beliefs about how society should be constructed. For the “true believers” there can be no alternative to how society is built. Just as the framers of the constitution believed that the truths therein were “self evident” the social theorist will see the essentials of society as self evident and laced with the effects outlying from their practice. There are two different accounts of the construction and origin of homosexuality. The first is called “Essentialism”. This belief states that “orientation is deeply rooted in the persons psychological / genetic makeup. This orientation is a given fact of the human species, ergo it shows up in both ancient and modern societies” (Mohr, 1997). The other account is “Constructionism”. This belief has also been touted as postmodernism. The “gay / straight” identities of our own society are meaningless when applied to past history. The lightning rod of both ideas is the acceptance and prevalence of homosexuality in ancient Greece. The use of references to a gay societal construction in ancient texts has been used as a current justification for the homosexual lifestyle. Yet, in reading the texts such as Sappho, Homer and Plato the reader is faced with a completely different social construction than our current social makeup. Greek homosexuality was pederastic in nature. The relationships were between adult males and slaves or boys. The use of these relationships was more for power than for love. This understanding begs the question for the homosexual community. Can they honestly connect themselves to the pederastic relationships of the ancient greeks? The answer is a simple no. Though some men of ancient Greece may have been homosexual, the belief that it was overall deviant caused many of those men to live in the ancient closet. The society of that time was more repressive and marriage was more for convenience than actual love. “While some same-sex couples might have described themselves as married, as Clement of Alexandria, Ptolemy of Alexandria and Lucian of Samosata all claim, these ancient writers condemn or ridicule this appellation” (Mohr, 1997). Homosexuality has come a long way since the time of the Greeks. Gay citizens can live an open life with the hope of acceptance. The current social construction for homosexuals is more advanced than in the past, yet the meaning of “gay / straight” still causes friction within society.



Mohr, R. (1997). The Perils of Postmodernism. In Schneider, R. (Ed.) The Harvard Gay &
Lesbian Review (pp. 334-346). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.