By Thomas “TJ” Mattaboni

I’ll admit, this essay will be very short and have nothing to do with psychology but it is pride month and I love writing about history. My sister also says that this is talked about a little but not a lot in the LGBTQ community. Therefore, I thought I would post this anyway. While it may appear that homosexuality has been looked down upon by almost every civilization in history, there are examples where it was legal and considered acceptable by society. One very notable exception was Ancient Greece.

According to the book: World History Volume I: to 1800 by William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel, homosexuality was a major aspect of the city state of Athens. The last paragraph on page 112 states: “The Greeks did not feel that the coexistence of homosexual and heterosexual predilections created any special problems for individuals or society.” Although this is unlikely to be the case for every part of Greek culture. This is because every city had a different government. Page 98 of the same book discusses how there were numerous city-states known as poleis. Additionally, each had a different government and in-turn, a slightly different way of life. Despite this, it is clear that the ancient Greeks accepted homosexuality as part of their culture.

History never ceases to fascinate me and that is why I love studying it. I hope I can find better ways to tie it into psychology in the future.