Being Gay the Medieval Way! | Homosexuality during the Middle Ages...

Jan 7, 2022 | Throughout history, there have always been people who belong to the LGBTQ community. In Antiquity same-sex relations were common, and it was acceptable for men to have both male and female lovers outside of marriage. Regarded as a way of controlling the population, Plato compared the acceptance of homosexuality to democracy and its repression to tyranny. Both the terms heterosexuality and homosexuality were not created until the 19th century, and there was no understanding of these terms in the Middle Ages. No one in medieval Europe would have referred to themselves or anyone else as ‘gay’, ‘straight’, ‘lesbian’, ‘transgender’ or ‘bisexual’. There was only normal and abnormal sexual behaviour, and what was normal was decided by the Christian Church at that time. For the most part, there aren’t many historical resources during the Middle Ages about same sex relationships between women, although any sort of sex that did not result in conception was known as sodomy. In fact, the church was antagonistic to any form of sexual expression at all.