Lesbian History

Although same-sex relationships were common in ancient Greece, Rome and pagan Celtic societies, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, severe laws against homosexual behaviour appeared. An edict by the Emperor Theodosius I in 390 condemned all "passive" homosexual men to death by public burning.

 

This was followed by the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian I in 529, which prescribed public castration and execution for all who committed homosexual acts, both active and passive partners alike.

Justinian's law code then served as the basis for most European countries' laws against homosexuals for the next 1400 years. Homosexual behaviour, called sodomy, was considered a capital crime, and thousands of homosexual men were executed across Europe during waves of persecution in these centuries. Lesbians were less often singled out for punishment, but they also suffered persecution and execution from time to time.

Greece was the most accepting of homosexual relationships. When Rome came to power, it began to frown on such relations. Later, penitentials were developed by Celtic Monks in Ireland. They were unofficial guidebooks which became popular, especially in the British Isles. These books listed crimes and the penances that must be done for them.

For example, "...he who commits the male crime of the Sodomites shall do penance for four years." The penitentials of Theodore of Tarsus, who became archbishop of Canterbury in the 7th century, made special references to lesbianism. He states, "If a woman practices vice with a woman she shall do penance for three years." Penitentials soon spread from the isles to mainland Europe. From the 6th to the 11th centuries, there are thirty-one penitentials that punish male homosexuality and fourteen that punish lesbianism.

The Old French legal treatise Li livres de jostice et de plet (circa 1260) is the earliest reference to legal punishment for lesbianism akin to that for male homosexuality. It prescribed dismemberment on the first two offences and death by burning for the third: a near exact parallel to the penalty for a man, though what "dismemberment" could mean for a medieval woman is unknown. If these legal principles became actual law or if they were ever enforced, it has not come down to us.

Later, during the French Revolution, the French National Assembly rewrote the criminal code in 1791, omitting all reference to homosexuality. During the Napoleonic wars, homosexuality was decriminalised in territories coming under French control, such as the Netherlands and many of the pre-unification German states, however in Germany this ended with the unification of the country under the Prussian Kaiser, as Prussia had long punished homosexuality harshly.

On 6 August 1942, the Vichy government made homosexual relations with anyone under twenty-one illegal as part of its conservative agenda. Most Vichy legislation was repealed after the war- but the anti-gay Vichy law remained on the books for four decades until it was finally repealed in August 1982 when the age of consent (15) was again made the same for heterosexual as well as homosexual partners.

Nevertheless, gay men and lesbians continued to live closeted lives, since moral and social disapproval by heterosexual society remained strong in France and across Europe for another two centuries, until the modern gay rights movement began in 1969.

Various countries under dictatorships in the 20th century were very anti-homosexual, such as in Nazi Germany, and in Spain under Francisco Franco's regime. In contrast, after Poland regained independence after World War I, it went on in 1932 to become the first country in 20th century Europe to decriminalise homosexual activity, followed by Denmark in 1933, Iceland in 1940, Switzerland in 1942 and Sweden in 1944.

In 1979, a number of people in Sweden called in sick with a case of being homosexual, in protest of homosexuality being classified as an illness. This was followed by an activist occupation of the main office of the National Board of Health and Welfare. Within a few months, Sweden became the first country in the world to remove homosexuality as an illness.

In 1989, Denmark was the first country in Europe, and the world, to introduce registered partnerships for same-sex couples. In 2001 a next step was made, when the Netherlands opened civil marriage for same-sex couples, which made it the first country in the world to do so. Since then, four other European states followed (Belgium in 2003, Spain in 2005 and Norway and Sweden in 2009).

On 22 October 2009, the assembly of the Church of Sweden, voted strongly in favour of giving its blessing to homosexual couples, including the use of the term marriage. The new law was introduced on November 1, 2009 and is the first case in the world.