No. Rome did not fall because of homosexuality.
Moralists love to claim that it did. I don’t know why Christians hold the fall of pagan Rome as a bad thing, given it was Christianity that triumphed, but they certainly do. They see the fall of Rome as historical proof that homosexuality undermines civilizations.
Emperor Caligula
The truth is Rome fell over 300 years after its peak when Christian emperors forced their new religion on the Roman citizens. Emperor Constantine implemented anti-religious laws banning the Roman people’s traditional beliefs, along with Christian anti-sexuality laws. Denied the right to worship their traditional Gods and persecuted for being sexual, the citizens of Rome grew increasingly disenfranchised from their moralistic government. It is no exaggeration to say that homophobia was a greater cause of the fall of Rome than the gay.
With the fall of Rome, Christianity triumphed over the pagan Roman gods, and so began 1,000 years of Dark Ages, where the power of the church suppressed human knowledge, arts, and understanding. Only with the rise of a different kind of thinking, lead by Martin Luther, did the possibility of humanity grounding itself in secular knowledge begin to reassert itself in the West, opening the doors for a renaissance in human thought most prominently by the ultimate Renaissance men, both profoundly gay, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo!
Not only was Renaissance Florence a hotbed of homosexuality, so was ancient Greece. And Paris. And Berlin. And London. And New York. And of course, Rome. And that is just the West. With so many examples to choose from, its obvious that gay people are the source of cultural thriving, not decline, although that won’t stop the homophobes from repeating this tired canard.
“Its obvious that gay people are the source of cultural thriving” Just because homosexuals tend to inhabit thriving cities does not mean that they are the cause of the thriving city, any more than a bird building a nest in a tree is the cause of a tree. Gays may be drawn to big cities but I don’t see how they are the cause of cultural thriving. Perhaps you are saying that where there is a ‘thriving culture’ there are often a lot of homosexuals. This is an obvious fact, in any long lasting and expansive civilization you are going to find more of ALL kinds of people. Murders, drug dealers, preacher and teachers.
I doubt that there is even such a thing as a ‘sexuality gene’. I don’t believe that anyone was born straight or gay and therefore in a genetic sense one sexuality is as legitimate as the other. Claiming to be gay or straight has an equal legitimacy as far as “being born that way”, namely that we are not born one way or the other. However it seems to be a fact of nature that life perpetuates itself and this is one aspect of existence that a homosexual couple can not partake in naturally. In the strictest sense only a man and woman can have a true nuclear family.
The goal of evolution is to adapt and pass on those adaptations. Based on our modern understanding of evolution homosexuality is not a step forward in evolution, in fact its not even a step backward, it is a step OUT of the natural process of evolution, that is to adapt and procreate. For this reason it seems that homosexuality plays an entirely emotional / personal gratification role and has no real value in the ongoing goal of nature. (Perpetuate life)
However as far as the fall of Rome goes there are several ways to look at it. If homosexuality were not common practice perhaps the empire population would have been able to meet the requirements of its expanding borders. Of course this argument also applies to the practice of abortion which was common in Rome at the time. As we have no idea of knowing how many children could have been born that weren’t because of homosexuality and abortion we literally have no way of knowing how much influence these two factors had on the fall. It could have been a minor influence or it could have been a major one.
It is commonly said that a corruption in the government, indebtedness and unemployment were other major factors in Romes fall. As for the forced Christianity I highly doubt many Christians would call it true Christianity.
Please note that I am not making any claims of ‘Rightness’ or ‘Wrongness’ because I don’t have all the answers and I’m not fit to judge. I’m just not sure how to reconcile the belief in evolution and homosexuality. My paragraph is a matter of logical contradiction, not a matter of morality or religion. Perhaps you see something I don’t and can clear this up?
Of course you are right. Homosexuality of itself was not ‘the’ cause of the fall of Rome. However, homosexuality rather belonged to a subset of a larger issue. One which both the straight and gay Romans contributed to. Birth rate. Gays had no children, and the straights either aborted or didn’t have kids in the pursuits of pleasure.
The decadence in Rome belonged to both camps. Plus, Demograpics is but one of the handfull of major causes to Roman collapse.
Both lived in the empire and both must be blamed.
Plus, please go read Montesqieue. Don’t do the wiki weed.
Funny on the wiki-weed. Many sources say similar things and point to the complexity of Rome’s eventual fall. Personally I like to blame the mercenary armies, and find the lead pipes in their legendary water systems an interesting theory too. And demographics… why not that too?
Andrew,
At worst, homosexuality is an unfavourable but inevitable mixing of gender roles; a trait that is only partially genetic, but can become fixed by sexual imprinting in childhood or the trauma of being raped. However, here are some potential reasons for why homosexuality persists:
#1 Sexually Antagonistic Selection:
There is evidence that some genetics that predispose males toward homosexuality may survive by predisposing females toward being unusually prolific.
#2 Kin Selection:
There is evidence that homosexual men tend to help rear the offspring of relatives.
#3 Another possibility is that homosexuals were still equally procreative. Compared to other animals, humans are much less passionate in their procreative pursuits.
The nuclear family is very recent. For most of human history, the family unit was much larger, consisting of all three or four generations. They were typically partilineal, where young daughters were transferred from one family unit to another through arranged marriages, and children were born from these arranged marriages. Sexual passion was irrelevant to the duty of procreation. Impregnation through infidelity was punished severely.
In the fourth century, St. Augustus said it was sinful to enjoy sexual intercourse, and sinful to love your wife passionately. Thomas Aquinas echoed these views 900 years later.
Thomas did no such thing and if he did give us a quote. The guy was a stickler for citations.