THE QUEER THING ABOUT SIN

A university academic explores the origins of homophobia through Greek history.

As an evangelical Christian teenager, author Tanner recalls firmly believing his simmering queer yearnings would send him to hell. After a period of suicidal ideation, he admits that studying ancient Greek altered his opinions on the Bible and its “passed down” translations and interpretations. This epiphany not only reinforced his self-acceptance as a gay man, but launched a keen interest in discovering why Western culture believed so sternly that homosexuality was sinful. His debut examines queer poets (Theognis), prophets, politicians, philosophers, and various locales throughout the ancient world (Lesbos, Boeotia) to uncover how society came to adopt a vehement hatred of queer sex and queer life. The agitators, his research revealed, were economic discrepancies, political inequality and the masculine ideals adopted by victorious Greek soldiers, and the ancient versions of “mob-rule” democracy, where the rise to power of wealthy oppressors brought forth the demonization of same-sex desire. Despite Athenians who sought to capitalize on the meek and less fortunate, queer love thrived in classic couplings like Homer’s Achilles and Patroclus and in classic Greek theater performances. Eventually, homosexual desire and queer sex became derogatorily associated with a “depraved lack of self-control” and was considered a predatory, perverted act and a symbol of “extravagance and excess”; this attitude had lasting sociological effects on Greek populaces and expanded globally through religious means, among others. The author delivers this rich history with vibrant authority and fairmindedly reveals the overlooked legacies of queer women and transgender individuals despite the annals of Greece and Rome being dominated by often misogynistic male voices. If Tanner’s scrutiny becomes overly academic for the casual reader, the text brightens toward the concluding chapters, in which he shifts his timeline to examine how modern homophobia continues to demonize queer love. Countering incremental advancements in queer equality, he issues a concluding caution: “Just because we live in a moment of tolerance and acceptance now, it doesn’t mean we always will.”

A scholarly, immersive, and vital history of queer intolerance.