"
It can scarcely be said that the consciousness of this attitude of society
is favorable to the invert's attainment of a fairly sane and well-balanced
state of mind. This is, indeed, one of the great difficulties in his way,
and often causes him to waver between extremes of melancholia and
egotistic exaltation. We regard all homosexuality with absolute and
unmitigated disgust. We have been taught to venerate Alexander the Great,
Epaminondas, Socrates, and other antique heroes; but they are safely
buried in the remote past, and do not affect our scorn of homosexuality in
the present.
It was in the fourth century, at Rome, that the strong modern opposition
to homosexuality was first clearly formulated in law.[265] The Roman race
had long been decaying; sexual perversions of all kinds flourished; the
population was dwindling. At the same time, Christianity, with its
Judaic-Pauline antagonism to homosexuality, was rapidly spreading. The
statesmen of the day, anxious to quicken the failing pulses of national
life, utilized this powerful Christian feeling. Constantine, Theodosius,
and Valentinian all passed laws against homosexuality, the last, at all
events, ordaining as penalty the _vindices flammae_; but their enactments
do not seem to have been strictly carried out.
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