Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

HOMOSEXUALITYand, as we should expect, is especially found among thePrimates most nearly below Man. G. V. Hamilton, studyingmonkeys and baboons, states that "the immature malemonkey typically passes through a period during which heis overtly and almost exclusively homosexual, and that thisperiod is terminated at sexual maturity by an abruptturning to heterosexual ways." Zuckerman has closely observedthe homosexual behavior of baboons and chimpanzees,sometimes findingit more pronounced in the femalesthan in the males, and he is even inclined to assimilatehomosexual and heterosexual behavior among the apes,finding no pronounced differences.Among many savage and barbarous peoples homosexualityhas been conspicuous and sometimes treated withreverence. This was so even among the ancient civilizationson which our own is founded. It was known to theAssyrians, and the Egyptians, nearly four thousand yearsago, attributed paederasty to their gods Horus and SetIt has been associated not only with religion but withmilitary virtues, and was in this way cultivated among theancient Carthaginians, Dorians, and Scythians, as it waslater by the Normans. Among the ancient Greeks, finally,it was idealized not merely in association with militaryvirtue, but with intellectual, aesthetic, and even ethicalqualities, and was by many regarded as more noble thannormal heterosexual love. After the coming of Christianityit still held itsground, but it fell into disrepute, while as apsychological anomaly consisting in an idealization of personsof the same sex even apart from homosexual acts itwas forgotten or unknown. It was only recognized afterJustinian's time as sodomy, that is to say as a vulgar vice,or rather as a crime, deserving of the most severe secularand ecclesiastical penalties, even burning at the stake.In the Middle Agesit isprobable that sexual inversion["91