For the Most part, although Kinsey put gender and sexual orientation on a sliding scale, he was doing so in the time in which he lived with the people living then and, although his research and conclusion may be correct according to available evidence, historical conditions, perhaps read about in sources not available or the potential interview subjects too wary to come out, his conclusion are not perfection.
The Romans had structured their civilization on stability. There was no use working your life away hoping to leave what you accumulated to specific people as opposed to having your life’s work a grab bag for any and all who are left behind. There would chaos, never ending chaos.
After all, in spite of some people’s best efforts they may be the father to many children by many women. Who gets the stuff?
When it came to just living your best life, the Romans did not care with whom you slept provided it was clear in the law that the only issue that will inherit anything unless otherwise specified would be the first born male child of a legally sanctioned marriages. Blood was legally thicker than water.
As can be seen by the Greeks, when it comes to sex, we have so labelled and compartmentalized it that it has the people in society getting into everyone else’s business, but it was not so in those days. A person could give into any temptation, but at some point, if they wanted to insure a clean line of succession and inheritance, a person would have to enter a legally binding marriage contract, remaining free to follow any desire so long as duties to the wife and offspring are taken care of because to not do so could be used in what should have been unnecessary litigation regarding the worthiness of the heir. There may have been romance, but not getting Rome all tied up in endless litigation, was a major factor in marriage with the usual arranged ones to keep and increase fortunes. If the claimants to the inheritance want to kill each other to be left with it, those cases can be dealt with as murder trials, quick and limited, not those never ending business cases that never seem to resolve.
The Catholic Church may downplay it , but it cannot deny it though it would like it not to come up, eventually developed a ritual where same sex couples, knowing there would be no issue, except in rare cases, and so unable to get a civil marriage because there was no need for one, instituted a ceremony for same sex couples, blessing their relationships. It s an attempt to have all its members of the church welcomed and if the state would not honor a same sex union, in Jesus’s name, the church will raise up the relationship. The church might now give some excuse why such blessings were nor real ones while it continues to bless animals on a specific day, fishing fleets on another, religious items bought in gift shops, weapons of war, and any inanimate object someone light like, I have seen the things the faithful thrust in front of a priest seeking it be blessed, but somehow blessing a same sex couple was a step too far. The weapons one should have been, so that attests to the principle or lack thereof.
But it cannot deny its true history.
Over time this “civil marriage” seemed to be lacking and those who could get married in city hall wanted the church to give theirs a little spiritual boost, and the church began the sacrament of marriage denying it to those who had been the reason for it because countries were being formed and the new monarchies killed or let live according to who conformed the closest to what kept them in power. And, as the institution became larger and positions in it became the alternative to no inheritance since you were second in line and the heir selfish, and could mold the church and people to become your taxpaying citizenry, political views overpowered and replaced some fundamental and traditional firmly held religious beliefs.
A careful examination of the Historical record shows that when religion and politics wed, things like same sex activity needed to be regulated to ensure there was conformity and a continual resupply of the population could be met. If same sex coupling was allowed to continue, it would decrease the number of those needed to keep the monarch and all who benefited from his personage and largess in power as feudal armies, and the whole feudal system depended not on humanity, but a steady supply of people to send into battle and tax in order to do that. Politics often uses religion and vise versa when beneficial to those who gain from the power of either.
When same sex couples were discovered in the act, although both people might be punished, the more ostentatious kind was meted out to the one who had either, in the case of a dominant Lesbian, usurped the male role while in a male couple the harsher punishment, burning at the stake was standard, was given to the one that assumed the woman’s role and demeaned his sex.
Like Catholics and Protestants between Henry VIII and Cromwell, where you stood sexuality and gender-wise depended on monarchical tastes.
When Psychoanalysis started up, although the concept was a good one, in order to work, there had to be a normal and an abnormal, and the only delineation was that what the founders of psychoanalysis did was normal, while what they neither did nor were attracted to or found objectionable, was abnormal. They had to take human sexuality that was boundless and put it into boxes.
The term “Homosexuality” with all its assigned baggage did not come about until 1869, and then being normal and abnormal could be measured and people put in cubbyholes.
Most people are not aware that as the talk of psychoanalysis began to enter common conversation, non-Homosexuals wanted to know what they were called, and, so, in spite of the idea that their behavior was the norm, they were labeled Heterosexual.
It, like Homosexual, was coined to label an invented category.
The Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology recognizes that as our initial goal is to find Homosexual activity on whaling ships, the reality is that that designation only began when whaling was becoming a slowly dying industry and only when the artificial normal/abnormal divide was invented, so the possibility exists that even as we look back and view examples of male/male interaction on whaling ships looking for the Homosexuals, we may actually be rediscovering that there really never was and still is not l aux natural, a binary until we invented one and these men were not involved in Homosexuality but in sex.
So here we are at the fun part.
Society’s ruled did not apply on board a ship with its own micro-society. It was only when you returned to port that you had to abide by community standards, and communities can become quite judgmental and condemning if properly influenced.
While looking for Homosexuality, we might actually prove that Non-binary is the normal human condition.
Otherwise, if Heterosexuality is our natural state, how can one book in the library overpower it.
It might just turn out that all the gender studies and all the arguments and actions are not introducing anything new, but actually bringing us back to how it had always been.
Unlabeled naturalness.
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