Thesis: Eunuchs are Gay Men

(with a listing of secondary sources)

by Mark Brustman

One day I read in the Bible that Jesus said there were eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb.1 To my knowledge, a eunuch was a man who had been castrated, so how could he be born that way? As a translator by profession, I was aware that ideas are sometimes distorted in translation, and that this was particularly a problem in the Bible. In this case, the context was about men's obligation to marry, and these and other kinds of eunuchs were said to be exempt. As a proud gay man and, at that time, a Christian, I was intrigued by this. Since I firmly believed (and still do) that I was born gay and that, on this basis, it would be a bad idea for me to marry a woman, it occurred to me that a so-called born eunuch might mean a gay man like myself.2

    The common denominator in gay men and castrated men, which could be the basis for categorizing both groups under the term eunuch, is that neither one is suitable for marriage. This indeed was the point of the gospel verse. But in order to prove beyond a doubt that born eunuchs were gay men, I had to prove that, like gay men:

(1) born eunuchs could have complete genitals,
(2) they had no lust for women, and
(3) they had lust for men.

     There is little agreement nowadays about what causes sexual orientation and what it consists of. Some say it is a matter of genetics, others that it is caused by psychological influences in early childhood. Still others say that it is fluid and changeable over the course of a person's life. To my mind, the best way to accommodate all of these ideas within one system is to say that most people are born bisexual, but a few are not. Most of the born bisexuals learn to avoid homosexual interaction. Europeans and Americans are raised to suppress homosexual erotic impulses, and direct their sexual attention exclusively to the opposite sex, so their so-called straight orientation is a result of environmental factors, which can change over time. Some resist the indoctrination and express both sides of their sexual nature freely -- these are what our society calls bisexuals. But a small percentage of people genetically just don't have the capacity to feel attraction to the opposite sex. These are the people who say they were born gay. I am one of them. By the same token, just as few people lack the capacity to feel attraction to their own sex. In this culture, these people simply blend in with the majority.
     A bisexual in my terminology is anyone who genetically is able to feel lust for men and women. This describes the majority of people. What we call a "straight person" is, in most cases, a bisexual who has been conditioned to avoid acting on his or her homosexual side. Gay people are monosexuals who are genetically unable to feel lust for their respective opposite sex. A few straights are monosexual like gays, in that they are genetically unable to feel lust for people of their own sex. I believe this inability has something to do with some people lacking sexual pheromone receptors for one sex or the other. The argument I am making in this essay is that men who were genetically unable to feel lust for women, i.e. what we call gay men today, were called eunuchs by our pre-Christian ancestors.
     Almost all current dictionaries define a eunuch as a man missing a crucial part of his reproductive anatomy, either due to castration or birth defect. But I will show in Section 1 of this essay that most so-called "eunuchs" in the ancient world were not anatomically deprived and were able to procreate. Moreover in Section 2, I show that one of the central defining characteristics of a eunuch in the ancient world was his lack of a sexual drive for women, something which is not true of castrated men. Men who lust after women will continue to do so even if they are genitally mutilated. Castration may prevent a straight man from impregnating a woman, but it will not change his desires. In Section 3, I show that eunuchs were stereotyped as lustful sex objects for men.
 

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    When I began my research back in 1991, I set out to define the category Jesus had called the "born eunuch," which was something different from a castrated man, or "man-made eunuch."
     The oldest available version of Matthew is a translation probably from Aramaic or Hebrew into Greek,3  and the word used in the Greek translation is eunouchos, from which we get our word eunuch. Most scholars state that the word eunouchos comes from eune (bed) and echein (to have), and claim that it means "one who guards the bed." [Note in 2015: I have recently become convinced that the real etymology of eunouchos is not from eune, but rather from eunous ("good-minded") and echein, and is a contraction of a Greek expression meaning "to be good in mind; to be loyal, good-natured."] But Jesus would not have used the Greek word, since he spoke Aramaic. The Hebrew and Aramaic word for eunuch is saris, an Assyrian loan word that has been interpreted to mean "at the head."4  None of these etymologies ruled out my hypothesis that born eunuchs were, in general, anatomically whole like gay men. Later I learned that an ancient Syriac translation of the Bible used the word mu'omin for eunouchos andsaris. Mu'omin means "person of faith" or "person of trust."
     I began a search lasting several years to find proof, either that a born eunuch was born missing some male reproductive parts, or that he simply lacked desire for women. The field of evidence I had to search through consisted of dozens, even hundreds, of ancient texts in which eunuchs were mentioned. By analyzing what each author or text said about an individual eunuch or about the category of eunuchs, I could put all the texts together and observe the common trends in the way ancient authors defined eunuchs.
      An ancient Roman novel I had read in college, Petronius's Satyricon, raised an initial theoretical problem for my thesis, however. The Satyricon is a comic novel about two men lusting after a teenage boy. Most people today, at least in Europe and America, would identify them as gay men because of their homosexual lifestyle, but none of the main characters called themselves eunuchs. In fact, there are scads of homosexually active men throughout Greek and Roman literature who are not called eunuchs. This can be explained in two ways.
     First, homosexual behavior, though disapproved of particularly for the passive partner, was tolerated a lot more in ancient Greece and Rome than it has been in modern Europe and the United States. Significant numbers of Greek and Roman men appear to have been actively bisexual: having sex with other men, but also fulfilling their marriage duties. I hear that is still the custom today in those countries. So it is possible and even likely that many younger Roman men, without actually being born gay, avoided the responsibilities of marriage by pursuing a wholly homosexual lifestyle. This would certainly fit the carefree character of the protagonists in the Satyricon. Nothing prevents bisexuals from getting married, though, so they would not be eunuchs.
     On the other hand, unless you wanted a job as a domestic servant for women or at the imperial court, being known as a eunuch in Rome entailed no special advantage. On the contrary, eunuchs were ridiculed in ancient Greece and Rome like gays are today. Xenophon, the Greek historian of the fifth century BCE, wrote: "There is not a man in the world who would not think he had the right to overreach a eunuch." So even if a man was a born eunuch (and the first-person narrator of the Satyricon does betray some anxiety about his own ability to perform with women), he might very well not want to carry that label. 
     The first place I looked for evidence about born eunuchs was a religious reference work called the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The article on the wordeunouchos by Johannes Schneider stated that the Greek word appeared in two chapters in the New Testament, and the Hebrew word saris occurred 40 times in the Old Testament5 (which latter figure I later discovered was an underestimate). Moreover, Schneider asserted that many men were called saris in the Old Testament who were not actually eunuchs, by which he meant to say they were not castrated. Schneider also mentioned a discussion in the Talmud concerning differences between born versus man-made eunuchs.6  Of course, this was just the kind of source text I was looking for: ancient scholars arguing over what a born eunuch was. I will present and analyze the evidence that I found below, but for now I am merely retracing my steps in my research.
     From Schneider I learned of an article  published in Germany just before World War I, concerning the attitudes of the early church fathers to eunuchs, and their interpretations of Matthew 19:12.7 On the "eunuch" shelf at the library, I found a recent German book on eunuchs in classical Greece and Rome which provided a list of names of eunuchs. That book cited another German article concerning the word eunouchos and related terms in secular Greek and Latin sources.8  This article referred me to a still another German article  on eunuchs, with extensive references to ancient sources, in a nineteenth-century encyclopedia of classical Greek and Roman historical figures and literature.9  I compiled a list of over 500 classical references to eunuchs from these German secondary sources, and I determined to look up as many as I could get hold of.
     Thank goodness, German is my second language. I could never have gotten off the ground with this project if I did not know German. Whatever else you might say about Germany, it has produced some thorough and conscientious scholars. I am grateful that some of them chose to direct their attention to eunuchs.  Thank goodness, too, that I took Greek and Latin in college, and that my alma mater is U.C. Berkeley, which has one of the world's greatest libraries and grants borrowing privileges to its alumni.
     I collected references to eunuchs in the Bible using Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible, finding forty-five rather than forty Old Testament verses containing the word saris,10  in addition to the two New Testament chapters referring to eunuchs.11  Later I also found eight apocryphal verses using the word eunouchos.12  I had to learn a little Hebrew to look up the Old Testament references.
     None of the Bible verses indicated that eunuchs were castrated. And a verse about castration, Deuteronomy 23:1, said nothing about eunuchs. What's more, looking in the concordance, I discovered something very strange. The King James Version translates saris variously as chamberlain, eunuch, officer, or as a proper name Rabsaris (literally "chief eunuch"). As a translator, I was appalled at the inconsistency, which to me smacked of a cover-up of some kind. I checked Martin Luther, who translated the German Bible. He was more consistent in his mistranslation, using Kämmerer or Erzkämmerer (chamberlain or head chamberlain) in every single case except Isaiah 56:3-5 and Matthew 19:12. In Matthew, Martin Luther translates the born eunuch category as "es sind etliche verschnitten, die sind aus Mutterleibe also geboren" or in English, "there are some cut (!) who are born so from their mother's womb." Ouch!
     Schneider's article offered an explanation, albeit somewhat implausible, for the inconsistency in translation. He said that the term saris had a dual meaning, with the other being "palace official." Apparently, sarisim had participated in religious rites (Jeremiah 34:19), which would be impossible if they were castrated. Deuteronomy 23:1 says castrated men cannot enter the congregation of the Lord. Therefore, modern religious scholars, assuming all eunuchs were castrated, concluded that a saris must not necessarily be a eunuch. But Isaiah 56:3-5 and Matthew 19:12 clearly imply that the procreative ability of a saris is compromised somehow. It sounds unlikely to me that a term that implies one is not fully male would also be used to cover ordinary men, especially when there were other perfectly good words for palace officials. I see no reason why those sarisim participating in religious rites could not be uncastrated, born eunuchs.

     From Greece, Rome, and the Bible, I expanded my search for eunuchs to other ancient cultures and spiritual traditions, and some of my most helpful resources were the following.
     A friend of mine who studies ancient Egypt turned me on to a book about the Egyptian mythical figure Seth,13  which provided several references to articles about homosexuality and eunuchs in ancient Egypt.
     Bernadette Brooten's Love Between Women provided references to ancient astrologists who wrote about eunuchs and other homosexuals.14
     David Greenberg's The Construction of Homosexuality referred to a French-language article  on homosexuality in an encyclopedia about the Sumero-Babylonian and Assyrian cultures.15 That and another article  from the same encyclopedia, on eunuchs,16 provided important references. Greenberg's book, an exhaustive cross-cultural history of homosexuality, also contained references to eunuchs and third-gender roles in traditional African communities which paralleled the understanding of eunuchs in ancient Middle Eastern cultures.17 [Since composing this website, I found a great new book on Africa edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.]
     In addition, while studying circumcision rituals (which I have come to believe are derived from a primeval association between holiness and a diminished capacity for sexual pleasure), I came across an anthropological report of a spiritual role reserved for unmanly men among the Mbo people of Zaire.
     [Also since first posting this website, I was introduced to the work of Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé, a married couple who both come from the town of Dano in Burkina Faso and write about Dagara rituals and spirituality for a broad audience. Sobonfu Somé's book The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient Teachings in the Ways of Relationships contains a chapter on "Homosexuality: The Gatekeepers," in which she writes, "Gatekeepers are people who live a life at the edge between two worlds -- the world of the village and the world of the spirit."]
     Murray and Roscoe's Islamic Homosexualities and Shaun Marmon's Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society, as well as the Encyclopedia of Islam, provided references to eunuchs in Islam.
     Zia Jaffrey's recent study of eunuchs currently living in India,18 and a psychological study called The Life Style of the Eunuchs,19 provided insight into the lives of contemporary Indian eunuchs as well as references to traditional Indian sources.
     An early twentieth-century book by Richard Millant, entitled Les Eunuques à travers les Ages or "eunuchs across the ages," gave some juicy anecdotes, but not enough references to primary sources. Like most modern scholars, Millant was operating from an assumption that being a eunuch meant being castrated. Without being able to check his sources for myself, I could not challenge his interpretations. Eventually, though, I found many of Millant's sources through the German articles and other secondary sources.
     Taisuke Mitamura's Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics was also stingy with footnotes, and anyway I could not check its references for lack of translations of the original sources into European languages. Mitamura did mention a nineteenth-century article on Chinese eunuchs by a European named G. Carter Stent ("Chinese Eunuchs," in Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series No. 11, Shanghai, 1877, pp. 143-184), who, like Millant, provides lots of interesting references, but also assumes that eunuchs are defined by castration.

     From these works, I have gathered several hundred ancient references to eunuchs, and over the course of seven years, I have assiduously looked up the primary sources in order to determine whether eunuchs, or born eunuchs, met my three definitive criteria for gay men. I checked primary sources in their original languages whenever my language skills permitted, that is in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and to some extent Egyptian and Akkadian. For ancient Indian sources, I relied on translations,20 but they supported my findings in Middle Eastern and Western sources.
     Most of the references neither proved nor disproved my hypothesis. The pre-Christian ancient writers were never specific in defining a eunuch as lacking a penis and/or testicles. Many of them made vague allusions to an imperfection, lack of power, femininity, or impotence, which did not exclude either genital deformity or a gay man's kind of impotence with women. A lot of them merely mentioned that a particular person was a eunuch, period. Although I was sometimes discouraged during the first few years because of not finding definitive proof that eunuchs and gay men shared the same characteristics, the very fact that hundreds of references did not exclude my hypothesis was cumulatively encouraging. With the overwhelming number of sources failing to specify that eunuchs were castrated, it seemed that I only needed to find one eunuch with a full set of genitals to throw the burden of proof off of my hypothesis and onto the opposite view.
     The evidence I eventually found was tailor-made to prove my hypothesis. Eunuchs as a category were able to procreate (except "if someone is a eunuch in such a way that he lacks a necessary part of his body"), and they had a sexual aversion to women and an attraction to men. Moreover, the early Indo-European cultures attacked them with the same kind of negative stereotypes that are inflicted on gay men today. But even more interesting was the reverence and appreciation enjoyed by eunuchs in many non-Indo-European ancient cultures, for which eunuchs/homosexuals assumed priestly roles.
     In the following I will bring the citations that were most relevant to proving my thesis. First, I will present quotes from ancient works indicating -- and even stating categorically -- that eunuchs could procreate. Then I will present quotes to the effect that eunuchs avoided sexual interaction with women or were impotent with them. This abstinence with respect to women was actually what defined the eunuch in the ancient mind, so the category covered not only gay men but any man who was unable or unwilling to have sex with women. Thirdly, lest the religious homophobes try to insist eunuchs are simply impotents and sexual abstainers, I also bring quotes demonstrating that eunuchs were known for sexually pursuing and accommodating other men. Thus eunuchs are gay men, and gay men are eunuchs.
     Think about it. Jesus spoke specifically about gay men in Matthew 19:12. He even said people might become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He did not anywhere say eunuchs should avoid their own kind of sexual expression. The church's condemnation of gay sexuality thus falls into the same category as its former hatred of straight sexuality, namely the category of irrelevance. In fact, you could even call it complicity in genocide, given the number of gay people who have been tortured and killed, either by the church or with its condonation.
    A lot of the ancient authors and works mentioned on this website are unfamiliar even to well-educated people who are not specialists in religious history, the Greek and Roman classics, and ancient multicultural literature. I would like for this research to be meaningful to a broad spectrum of people, and for that to be possible, it has to be easy for people of all walks of life to follow. The argument I am making is dividing into three sections. As stated above, the first section includes quotes that show their authors felt eunuchs could procreate. The second section contains quotes showing that their authors felt eunuchs were impotent with or sexually turned off to women. The third section includes quotes from authors attesting to the frequent sexual interaction between eunuchs and other men.
     What I intend to prove with these quotes is that people living thousands of years ago all across Europe and Asia acknowledged a certain category of men as different from the norm; that their difference consisted in the fact that they had no sex drive toward women, while they did enjoy sex with other men; and that their difference was conceived of as natural and inborn. I will bring also evidence that some cultures recognized that there were women who by nature had no lust for men. In sum, I intend to prove that gay men and women existed in the ancient world as categories distinguished from the norm.
     I welcome any questions that readers may have. You can direct them to my email address at <aquarius@well.com>.
     Please read on!
Go on to Section 1: Eunuchs are Able to Procreate --- Table of Contents --- Home
            

 

Footnotes

1 Matthew 19:12. "For there are some eunuchs who are born so from their mother's womb, and some eunuchs who are eunuchized by men, and some eunuchs who eunuchize themselves for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens. Let him who is able to receive it, receive it." Greek: "Eisin gar eunouchoi hoitines ek koilias mêtros egennêthêsan houtôs, kai eisin eunouchoi hoitines eunouchisthêsan hupo tôn anthrôpôn, kai eisin eunouchoi hoitines eunouchisan heautous dia tên basileian tôn ouranôn. ho dunamenos chôrein chôreitô."2 During my research I found that John J. McNeill had put forth the same idea in a book which ultimately resulted in his expulsion from the Catholic priesthood. He said about Matthew 19:12: "The first category -- those eunuchs who have been so from birth -- is the closest description we have in the Bible of what we understand today as a homosexual." (John J. McNeill, The Church and the Homosexual, Fourth edition, Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, p. 65. First edition: 1976.) Later in the spring of 1996, in the midst of a scandal at my mainstream Baptist church when some gay members came out, I finally wrote out a version of my thesis to show to some of my ministers. They were intrigued but not convinced. Within a couple months, I came across a book by Rev. Nancy Wilson of MCC-LA that put forward almost exactly the same arguments as I had put in my essay at the time (Rev. Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe: Queer folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).
3 For the Greek text of Matthew, I used The NRSV-NIV Parallel New Testament in Greek and English, with interlinear translation by Alfred Marshall, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990. This book uses the Greek text of the 21st edition of Eberhard Nestle's Novum Testamentum Graece. 
4 Bruno Meissner and Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, Vol. II, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965, p. 973b, under the word resu. This is a dictionary of Akkadian, the parent language to Assyrian and Babylonian.
5 Johannes Schneider, "Eunouchos, Eunouchizo," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. II, Gerhard Kittel, ed., Geoffrey W. Bromiley, tr., Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmanns, 1985, p. 766.
6 Yebamoth VIII, folios 79b-84a. Yebamoth is one of the books of the Talmud. The Talmud is a collection of legal pronouncements, called the mishnah, made by certain authoritative ancient Jewish rabbis, as well as interpretations of these pronouncements, called the gemara, made by later rabbis.
7 Walter Bauer, "Matth. 19:12 und die alten Christen," in Neutestamentliche Studien Georg Heinrici zu seinem 70. Geburtstag (14. März 1914) dargebracht, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrick'sche Buchhandlung, 1914, pp. 235-244. Available in translation on this website by clicking here. Use "back" button to return here.
8 Peter Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven und Freigelassene in der griechisch-römichen Antike, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980. Ernst Maass, "Eunouchos und Verwandtes," inRheinisches Museum für Philologie 74 (1925), pp. 432-476.
9 Arnold Hug, "Eunuchen," in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supplement III, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1958, cols. 449-455. Available in translation on this website by clicking here. Use "back" button to return here.
10 Robert Young, Analytical Concordance to the Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, p. 42 of Index-Lexicon (saris), p. 791 of Analytical Concordance (Rabsaris). The forty-five verses are: Genesis 37:36, 39:1, 40:2, 40:7; 1 Samuel 8:15; 1 Kings 22:9; 2 Kings 8:6, 9:32, 18:17, 20:18, 23:11, 24:12, 24:15, 25:19; 1 Chronicles 28:1; 2 Chronicles 18:8; Esther 1:10, 1:12, 1:15, 2:3, 2:14, 2:15, 2:21, 4:4, 4:5, 6:2, 6:14, 7:9; Isaiah 39:7, 56:3, 56:4; Jeremiah 29:2, 34:19, 38:7, 39:3, 39:13; 41:16; 52:25; Daniel 1:3, 1:7-11, 1:18. Available on this website by clicking here. Use "back" button to return here. 
11 Matthew 19:12; Acts 8:26-39.
12 Judith 12:11; Additions to Esther 12:1, 12:3, 12:6; 3 Maccabees 6:30; Wisdom of Solomon 3:14; Wisdom of Sirach 20:4, 30:20.
13 H. Te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of his Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967, especially Chapter 2: Seth, the Enemy and Friend of Horus.
14 Bernadette J. Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996, especially Chapter 4: Predetermined Erotic Orientations: Astrological Texts.
15 J. Bottero and H. Petschow, "Homosexualität," in Erich Ebeling and Bruno Meissner, eds., Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie, Vol. 4. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975, pp. 459-68. Although the alphabetization of this encyclopedia is in German, this particular article is in French. Available in translation on this website by clicking here. Use "back" button to return here.
16 G. Meier, "Eunuch," in ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 485-486. This article is in German. Available in translation on this website by clicking here. Use "back" button to return here.
17 David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988. The reference to the article by Bottero and Petschow is on page 126. Greenberg discusses Assyrian and Babylonian eunuchs in Chapter 3: "Inequality and the State: Homosexual Innovations in Archaic Civilizations" and Chapter 4: "Early Civilizations: Variations on Homosexual Themes."  He discusses homosexuality in Africa on pp. 60-62 in Chapter 2: "Homosexual Relations in Kinship-Structured Societies." 
18 Zia Jaffrey, The Invisibles: A Tale of the Eunuchs of India, New York: Pantheon, 1996. This is a very interesting book by an Indian-American woman from New York who went to live and study in India for a period of time. One day at a wedding there, she became intrigued by some strange men dressed in women's clothing who showed up on the doorstep of the reception and sang songs for money. She began researching their lives and cultural heritage, and wrote this book about what she discovered.
19 Yogesh Shingala Vyas, M.D., The Life Style of the Eunuchs, New Delhi: Anmol Publications; Delhi: Distributed by Anupama Publishers and Distributors, 1987. This is a study intended to inspire social policy initiatives to help Indian eunuchs, who are called hijras. Hijras are gay men and transgenders usually from rural areas, who join or are brought by their parents to houses of eunuchs in nearby urban areas. By tradition they let themselves be castrated, which is a holdover from the requirement of medieval royal courts that all eunuchs be man-made eunuchs. Both this book and Jaffrey's book indicated that the younger generation of hijras has grown resistant to the castration tradition, and it is being done less and less.
20 The Laws of Manu, with an introduction and notes, translated by Wendy Doniger with Brian K. Smith, New York: Penguin, 1991. Vatsyayana, Das Kamasutram des Vatsyayana, Dr. Ferdinand Leiter und Dr. Hans H. Thal, eds., Vienna: Verlag Schneider & Co., 1929. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the founder of the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin and an early leader in the German gay rights movement, wrote a foreword to this "first complete German edition" of the Kamasutra. 

 The Third Gender in Ancient Egypt

   
              The notion of gender complexity is deeply rooted in ancient Egyptian culture. In the Egyptian story of the creation of the gods, the first god is male and female, and its name is Atum. Through asexual reproduction, Atum creates two other gods, Shu and Tefnut. These two in turn produce another pair, Geb and Nut. Finally, Geb and Nut, the earth and the sky, combine and produce the two pairs of Isis and Osiris, and Seth and Nephthys. In the stories of these archetypal beings, Isis exemplifies the reproductive female, Osiris the reproductive male, Seth the nonreproductive eunuch, and Nephthys the unmarried virgin (lesbian).
             Seth and Nephthys are supposed to be a couple like Isis and Osiris, but they have no adventures together and no children. Nephthys spends all of her time with Isis, being of assistance to her in various ways. Seth, likewise, spends all of his time with Osiris and then with Osiris's son Horus, but unlike Nephthys he spends his time causing all kinds of havoc. Seth and Osiris are in competition for primacy among the gods. Seth kills Osiris by cutting him into pieces and scattering them all over Egypt, but Isis, with the aid of her sister Nephthys, gathers the pieces back together and revives him long enough for him to impregnate her. Isis then bears a son Horus, and Osiris goes to rule in the afterlife. Next Seth turns his attention to Horus, attempting to discredit him as a male by having sex with him. On his mother's advice, Horus catches Seth's ejaculate in his hand. He then brings the semen to Isis who throws it into the river. Then she takes some of Horus's seed and sprinkles it on Seth's favorite food, (the non-sexually reproducing) lettuce, which Seth eats. Seth, thinking his semen is in Horus, although he himself has actually eaten Horus's seed as salad dressing, appears with Horus before the judges who will determine who has primacy among the gods. Seth tells the judges to call to his semen so that it can respond telling where it is. They do, and his semen responds from the reeds along the river, making it seem as though Seth was sterilely pleasuring himself down by the river. Then they call to Horus's semen, and it responds, much to Seth's surprise, from Seth's own belly. Seth is disgraced and Horus assumes the role as prime god.
             Another version of this story, referred to in the Book of the Dead, says Seth casts "filth" into the eye of Horus, causing it to emit liquid. What exactly is meant by filth is open to question. In response, Horus attacks the testicles of Seth. Perhaps Seth ejaculated into Horus's eye. In any case, Horus is always spoken of in terms of the regained strength of his eye, and Seth in terms of the loss of his virility.
             Seth's behavior may be considered inappropriate and harmful, and he may lose face, but he unquestionably displays exclusively homosexual tendencies, which means a homosexual is one of the most ancient central archetypes in Egyptian mythology. And Seth is described as having impotent testicles, which is consistent with my thesis that exclusively homosexual men in the ancient world were defined as eunuchs.
             The intrigues among the gods have been interpreted to reflect not only human interactions, but the interaction of the Nile with the surrounding desert. The Nile is Osiris, who contributes the fluid that brings life. The dryness of the desert is Seth, who kills off life. When the desert dryness becomes too powerful, the river dries up and is divided into thousands of pools along the entire riverbed. The evaporated liquid comes together in the sky (female principle or Isis) and rain falls down, replenishing the river temporarily. The river brings forth new life (Horus) in the form of vegetation. Thus life wins out over death in a never-ending struggle.
             How does Nephthys, Seth's third-gendered counterpart, fit into this scheme? She provides an instructive example. She is initially childless, and spends all of her time with Isis. She does, however, eventually have a child, not by her "husband" Seth, but by Osiris. In the allegory of the Egyptian landscape, Nephthys has been said to represent the desert ground outside the reach of the Nile's flooding (see Plutarch). On rare occasion, the Nile exceeds its limits and flows out onto this desert ground, producing vegetation.
             This story of Nephthys exemplifies a difference between gay men and lesbians, in that a woman who is unattracted to men is still able to engender a child through sex with a man. But a man who is not attracted to women will not easily get an erection with a woman, which is prerequisite to his having procreative sex. Since gender was traditionally defined as a role in procreation -- with the male being the one who reproduces in another person's body, and the female being the one who reproduces in her own body -- the eunuch, or exclusive homosexual, who does not reproduce either in his own body or in another person's body, is neither male nor female. But a lesbian, in spite of her lack of attraction to men, does not necessarily sacrifice her femaleness, since she is not hindered in fulfilling the female role.
             Inscribed pottery shards discovered near ancient Thebes (now Luxor, Egypt), and dating from the Middle Kingdom (2000-1800 BCE), contain a listing of three genders of humanity: males, eunuchs, and females, in that order. (See Sethe, Kurt, "Die Aechtung feindlicher Fürsten, Völker und Dinge auf altägyptischen Tongefäßscherben des mittleren Reiches," in: Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 1926, p. 61.) The word for male includes a picture of a penis and a picture of a man kneeling. The word for eunuch includes a picture of a man kneeling, but not a picture of a penis. The word for female includes a picture of a woman kneeling, but no picture of body parts (unless the shield-like shape which designates "woman" is a picture of the female pubic region).
 
 (males)
  (eunuchs)
 

  (females) 

             The pronunciation of the words on the shards is given as tai (tie), sht (sekhet) and hmt (hemet), respectively. The word for eunuch here, sht, also appears in a pyramid text where it is contrasted with the word for male, tai. There is not much evidence, if any, for castration of living human beings in ancient Egypt. [See my translation of Frans Jonckheere's 1954 article  attempting to find such evidence, I think unsuccessfully.] One can assume in the absence of contrary evidence that eunuchs in ancient Egypt were anatomically whole, natural eunuchs such as are found elsewhere throughout the ancient world.
             There is also another common word for eunuch in ancient Egyptian inscriptions, which is hm. The word is similar to the word for female, but it lacks the feminine grammatical ending -t. The word hm is used with a variety of senses. The Berlin Dictionary defines it as " coward". A text in the temple at Edfu says that in Sebennytus one must not have sex with a hmti or a male, which positions the hm as a man who is not male. [This text was written in a late period after Greeks had already conquered Egypt, so its prohibition of sex with eunuchs may reflect the influence of Platonic and Aristotelean moral philosophy.] Hm is also a very common word in tomb inscriptions which Egyptologists like to translate as "priest," because the hm's are depicted performing all kinds of sacrifices for the dead. This word for priest hm is written with a kind of upward pointing club, differently from the word for eunuch hm, but the pronunciation is exactly the same and the range of uses overlap in the meaning of servant.
             In a tomb established by two men at Sakkara near Memphis they are depicted holding hands, feasting together, and in their sacrificial chamber they are shown twice in very loving embraces (see Ahmed Moussa and Hartwig Altenmüller, Das Grab des Nianchchnum und Chnumhotep, Old Kingdom Tombs at the Causeway of King Unas at Saqqara, Excavated by the Department of Antiquities, Archäologische Veröffentlichungen, vol. 21, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1977). They were both manicurists for the king Neuserre, and both referred to by the word hm (priest).
             Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep have their names intermingled at the entrance to their tomb: Niankh-Khnum-Hotep, which means "joined in life, joined in death" (or "joined in peace"). Inside the tomb is a legal declaration authorizing the hm priests to carry out their duties and forbidding the tomb owners' respective family members to impede them (page 87). The excavators of the tomb noted that there are an extraordinary number of hm priests depicted in their tomb and an extraordinary number of them are mentioned by name (page 30). This they saw as a sign of the high social position of the tomb owners, but of course, it can also be a sign that they were personally acquainted with lots of these hm priests. Perhaps the hm priesthood was an association of exclusive homosexuals, of which they were prominent members? If so, these hmpriests were merely playing the spiritual role that homosexuals in many cultures play.
             The walls of the tomb are very elaborately carved with pictures and text, depicting the two men in various scenes. One of the men, Niankhkhnum is consistently placed in a typical male position with respect to the other man, Khnumhotep, who is consistently depicted in a female position (this analysis I heard from Greg Reeder, author ofwww.egyptology.com). There are remarkably few female figures in the tomb. Those who are depicted are either the sisters, daughters, or wives of the men. Each man had one wife. In one banquet scene, the men are depicted at either end of the table, and the wife of Niankhkhnum is depicted sitting behind him - but her image has been chiseled out of the scene and is only recognizable as an erased outline. At the other end of the table, Khnumhotep is depicted sitting alone, without even any room available to portray his wife. In one section of another wall there is a procession of females, but the figures are all allegorical depictions of different crops, etc. (plates 66-67). Male and female (and other) family members account for only 21 out of the 97 individuals named on the wall. Besides the two tomb owners, the other 76 named individuals are all men and are all called hm (priests). The describers of the tomb translated hm as Totenpriester or funerary priest.
             Scene 16.2 (Plate 40) in the tomb shows a hunting scene. In one corner a dog-like animal mounts another dog-like animal from behind. It is the only depiction of a sex act in the tomb, which raises the question of why this sex act was depicted. The small pair of copulating animals in a lower corner of the scene is not prominently displayed, and they would be easy to overlook (click here for picture of dogs). They do not particularly add a note of procreativity to the heavily homoerotic tomb. Perhaps it is a modest or humorous representation of the type of intercourse preferred by the two tomb owners. The animals themselves might be hyenas, which have long been a symbol of gender confusion, or jackals, which is the animal most often used to represent Seth.
            The conventional interpretation of these tomb owners' relationship has been that they were brothers. This is based on their depiction in the tomb within what appears to be a family posing scene (plate 30). Ten people are depicted in a line. At the front are a man and a woman with the woman embracing the man. Next follow two men, three women, and three more men. The last two men are Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in that order. All the persons depicted have their left hands over their hearts, except for the first woman (presumably the mother) and Khnumhotep. The latter two are affectionately touching the men in front of them - the woman has her left arm draped around her husband, and Khnumhotep is holding Niankhkhnum's right hand in his left. Clearly, the Egyptologists, due to their heterosexism, have been unable to see that Khnumhotep is clearly represented as a spouse in this family scene, not as one of the siblings.
            For more information and pictures on this tomb and some other aspects of homosexuality in ancient Egypt, see Greg Reeder's website www.egyptology.com.
            
 
            Background reading:
             Te Velde, H. Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967. Especially chapters II and III.
             Budge, E.A. Wallis. The Gods of the Egyptians, or Studies in Egyptian Mythology. Volume II. New York: Dover, 1969. Especially chapter XV.
             Plutarch. Isis and Osiris. 
  

Male Daughters, Barren Women and Virgins

       NOTE: This is a page in progress and badly needs to be updated. It addresses lesbian and transgendered male roles which I encountered during my research about eunuchs.

---

     The understanding of male and female exemplified by Aristotle's definitions did not always distinguish lesbians and transgendered males as a separate category of women. As Aristotle stated, femaleness was defined as the capacity to reproduce within one's own body.1 Lesbians and transgendered males are physically just as able to do this as other women. Even if they are not excited by a man, a sexual encounter can still take place, which can lead to pregnancy. This is in contrast to the case with gay men, who must obtain an erection and therefore must be aroused to some degree in order to fulfill the male role with respect to reproduction.
     Still, some women are identified in ancient cultures as having a "male" nature. Based on evidence from the Code of Hammurabi, the Sumerian culture recognized a separate type of woman called a salzikrum,2 a compound word meaning "male daughter." A salzikrum was entitled to greater rights of inheritance than an ordinary woman. Like a priestess, she could inherit a full share of her father's estate to use during her lifetime, after which it reverted to her brothers' heirs, while an ordinary woman was not entitled to a share in the paternal estate at all. If the father made a written stipulation to her, a salzikrum could also dispose of her inheritance in any way she wanted, creating the possibility for her to start a family of her own, with a wife or wives of her own. By law, if a salzikrum had any children that she put up for adoption, she could not reclaim them, and the children were punished if they sought out their biological mother. Thus I believe that she, like the eunuch, was generally expected to remain childless. Perhaps she was also a temple servant or priestess like the other priestesses and the eunuchs. 
     The Babylonian flood myth Atrahasis mentions nonprocreating women who were created after the flood in order to help keep the human population down.3 Overpopulation was the reason for the flood in this myth. 
     In Egyptian mythology, the goddess Nephthys and her twin brother Seth may have been intended as the gay, nonprocreative counterparts to the straight Isis and Osiris. Nephthys is usually thought of in the company of Isis, and is generally childless,4  until she eventually has a child by Osiris. She exposes the child Anubis, but Isis finds him and raises him.5 Plutarch says Nephthys's pregnancy symbolizes the flowering of the dry desert whenever the Nile exceeds its normal flood limits.6
   The Indian Laws of Manu, Book VIII 364-370, has some strange provisions about sex with "willing" and "unwilling virgins." I believe that research into this "virgin" type would yield some good results. Nos. 369 and 370 are particularly suggestive (translation by Doniger):
               If a virgin does it to another virgin, she should be fined two hundred (pennies), be
               made to pay double (the girl's) bride price, and receive ten whip (lashes). But if a
               (mature) woman does it to a virgin, her head should be shaved immediately or two
               of her fingers should be cut off, and she should be made to ride on a donkey.
Removing Doniger's parenthetical interpretations, the distinction here is between "virgins" and "women." This distinction could be equivalent to one between women not interested in men sexually and women who do desire men. In this way, women who are interested in men are punished more severely for indulging in homosexual sex, while a woman who is not interested in men is made to suffer a punishment that, while terrible, may be an ordeal of toughness and a test of committment and capacity to bear the burden of being a husband to her partner. The virgin is expected to do right financially by the family of her beloved, like a potential husband. Of course, the ten whip lashes are probably not a feature of most heterosexual weddings, and their inclusion as punishment for the "virgin" seducer of virgins may simply show a disapproval of homosexual relationships even between women of homosexual identity. 
     Rev. Nancy Wilson has already interpreted the "barren woman" in Isaiah 54 and the eunuchs in Isaiah 56 as "our gay, lesbian, and bisexual antecedents."7  The Talmud mentions a female counterpart to the eunuch called an aionolit. Her identifying marks, according to the rabbis, are: lateness or absence of pubic hair growth, lack of breasts, pain during copulation, lack of a mons veneris, and finally, the fact that her voice is so deep that one cannot distinguish whether it is that of a man or a woman. (See Section 1, Note 37 for citation.)
     I also found that in the Hebrew scriptures, a certain kind of unmarried woman or virgin ['almah] is mentioned who is distinguished from the ordinary virgin with an intact hymen [bethulah].8 Bethulah occurs 50 times in the Bible, and bethulim for virginity occurs 10 more times, while 'almah is used only 7 times. The word exists in modern Hebrew in a masculine gender form 'elem, meaning a youth or a lad, but the feminine form is absent from my Hebrew English dictionary.9  The meaning of 'almah could be a "female lad" or what we call a tomboy. In any case, Proverbs 30:18-19 gives a riddle about the 'almah that may help to determine who she is:
               There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:
               The way of an eagle into the sky, the way of a snake into a rock, the way of a ship
               into the heart of the sea, and the way of a man with an 'almah.
To my mind this riddle is very suggestive of a list of impenetrable barriers. In each of the similes, the first item is unable to penetrate the second item -- the speaker says these "ways" lie outside his sphere of knowledge. An eagle can never pierce the sky, a snake can never penetrate a rock, and ship can never descend to the heart of the sea (perhaps as wreckage, but not as a ship), and so, the writer implies, a man cannot have sexual intercourse with a lesbian.
     In Psalms 68:25, 'alamoth (the plural of 'almah) play timbrels in the sanctuary. This recalls the Sumerian priests and priestesses who play instruments in the temple. 
     In Song of Solomon 1:3, the love of the 'almat for Solomon is given as evidence of the exceptionally sweet flavor of his kisses and of his "ointments." Song of Solomon 6:8 says that, along with sixty queens and eighty concubines, Solomon's harem included "innumerable 'alamoth." This could be a hyperbolic praise of Solomon along the lines of "even the lesbians love him," or some such, or it may be a male sexual fantasy to be with lesbians.
     The remaining three occurrences of the word 'almah include some of the Bible's most prominent young women. Moses's sister Miriam, "the prophetess", was called an 'almah.10  She was the one who watched over him while he floated down the river as a baby, and arranged for Pharaoh's daughter to let Moses's mother nurse him. Later she was stricken with leprosy. Miriam never married.
When Isaac's servant went to find a wife for him, he predicted that when an 'almah came to fetch water from the well,11and responded in a particular way to his request for water, she would be the woman for Isaac to marry. The woman who fulfilled his prediction was Rebekkah, who may have seemed tomboyish. In a patriarchal culture in which men have rights over their wives, a lesbian might be the ideal wife -- the husband knows she won't go chasing other men!
     The last, and perhaps most significant occurrence of 'almah in the Hebrew scriptures, is in Isaiah 7:14:
               Behold, an 'almah shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Thus it is quite possible that the Messiah was to be born, not of a virgin as the King James version translates it, but of a lesbian -- a woman who is not turned on by sex with men. In fact, the Qur'an also seems to indicate that Mary was not an ordinary female. It says that Mary's mother declared at her birth:  "Behold, I have brought it forth a female -- and Allah knew best what she brought forth -- and the male is not like the female." To ancient cultural thinking, only men had the heat necessary to give form to semen and create a child. The fact that Mary was blessed with a child without the contribution of a man, may have in itself made her seem in some way "male."
      Latin uses the word virago for manly, warlike women and the word would also be used by the Romans for women who aggressively and exclusively pursued women as sexual partners and it was also used for virgins. There is more than a passing relationship between virago and virgo, the word for virgin, and the concepts seem related, since a woman who refused men, no matter if she were sexually active with women, would remain a virgin in the eyes of the ancient world.

 
 

Footnotes

1 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, I 2. "The male is t he one that has power to generate in another ... while the female is the one [that has power to generate] in itself." Greek: "tô arren men einai to dunamenon gennan eis heteron ... to de thêlu to eis auto."2 Code of Hammurabi § 172 and following, and  § 184 and following.
3 See end of myth of Atrahasis, Tablet III 7, in Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, tr. by Stephanie Dalley, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 35.
4 Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 38. See translation in Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, edited with translation and commentary by J. Gwyn Griffiths, University of Wales Press, 1970.
5 Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 14.
6 Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 38. 
7 Rev. Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
8 This use of bethulah is found in Genesis 24:16.
9 The Meridian Hebrew-English/English-Hebrew Dictionary, edited by Dov Ben-Abba, New York: Meridian, 1994. Find 'elem on page 255, col. 2 of the Hebrew-English section. Arabic has a corresponding word ghulam meaning "boy, lad, youth," from a verb ghalima meaning "to be excited by lust, in heat." In ancient times, heat was considered an attribute of males.
10 Exodus 2:8.
11 Genesis 24:43.

The Ancient Roman and Talmudic Definition of Natural Eunuchs
 
Presented at a conference on Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond held at Cardiff University on July 27, 1999


Natural Eunuchs in Roman Law: "Not Diseased or Defective"
When the Roman jurist Ulpian states in Lex Julia et Papia, Book 1 (Digest 50.16.128), that "Eunuch is a general designation: the term includes those who are eunuchs by nature, moreover the crushed and the pounded, as well as any other kind of eunuch," he places the natural eunuchs first. Mutilated eunuchs are placed into a secondary rank after an extenuating Latin conjunction item, which I have translated as "moreover." Unfortunately, Roman law does not provide a statement of what exactly unites the various types of eunuchs under one general classification. But it does provide more material for understanding the distinction between types of eunuchs.
The law (D 28.2.6) says that someone who cannot easily procreate is nonetheless entitled to institute a posthumous heir, but it gives no concrete examples of such a man. In the same context, it states that the "eunuch" holds this right as well, while "castrated men" expressly do not.
Elsewhere (D 23.3.39.1), Ulpian discusses whether money, given in lieu of a dowry when slaves enter into a marriage-like partnership, is to be counted as an actual dowry after the partners have become free. In this context, Ulpian mentions a special case: "When a woman marries a eunuch," he says, "I think that a distinction must be drawn as to whether he was castrated or not, so that if he has been castrated, you may say that no dowry can exist; but a dowry exists and a claim for the dowry against the one who has not been castrated, because a marriage exists."
The distinction Ulpian is making here is between the noncastrated eunuch who is eligible for marriage, and a castrated eunuch who is not. Note, first, that for Ulpian the term eunuch can imply a castrated or a noncastrated man, and, second, the qualities of the two types of eunuchs are significantly different.
What is a noncastrated eunuch? He could be a man who is missing testicles by some process other than castration, such as the aforementioned crushing or pounding, or by atrophy due to illness, or one who was simply born without testicles. Such a eunuch would be, technically speaking, not castrated. Walter Stevenson has speculated that "the crushing and pressing were procedures somehow not associated with the more drastic castration." Perhaps it is the process of cutting that disqualifies the castrated man for marriage. In fact, in another part of the Digest, Ulpian once again singles out castration as a negative. Ulpian notes (D 48.8.4.2) that Emperor Hadrian made the manufacture of eunuchs, specified as castration, subject to the same penalty as murder.
However, we see that Paulus filled in Ulpian's omission of other types of mutilation when he recalled (D 48.8.5) that those who make thlibias (i.e. who crush the testicles of others) are in the same position as those who do castrations. This suggests that crushing and pounding are like castration before the law.
Is it the destruction of a man's bodily integrity that is at issue? By this logic, the mutilated eunuch would be unable to marry because his bodily integrity and, with that, his dignity has been compromised, while a natural eunuch is born incapacitated and his integrity has not been injured by himself or someone else. As plausible as this last hypothesis might sound in the Roman context, another distinction is actually at work here, as we shall see.
There was a kind of "lemon law" for slaves in the Roman empire -- just as in modern times used car dealers may be prohibited from concealing major flaws in cars, Roman slave dealers were prohibited from concealing serious flaws in slaves that they offered for sale. The purpose of the rulings in Book 21 Title 1 of the Digest was to determine what kinds of flaws would give rise to the rescission of a purchase contract if the seller had not reported them before the sale.
Minor flaws, such as long-ago healed wounds or stuttering speech, were called defects and did not require disclosure. Relevant flaws, such as blindness or tuberculosis, were called diseases. The jurist Sabinus defined disease in this context as "an unnatural physical condition whereby the usefulness of the body is impaired for the purposes for which nature endowed us with bodily health."
Ulpian declares that "if there be any defect or disease which impairs the usefulness and serviceability of the slave, that is a ground for rescission; we must, however, bear in mind that a very minor flaw will not lead to his being held defective or diseased. Thus a slight fever, or an old recurrent fever which can now be ignored, or a trivial wound, will entail no liability if it be not declared; such things can be treated as beneath notice."
Vivian says "that we should still regard as healthy those with minor mental defects," otherwise the health of a slave could be denied "without limit, for instance, because he is frivolous, superstitious, quick-tempered, obstinate or has some other flaw of mind."
Ulpian ultimately stipulates that "generally, the rule which we appear to observe is that the expression 'defect and disease' applies only to the body ... All in all, if the defect be one of the mind alone, there will be no rescission, unless the vendor has stated that such defect does not exist when, in fact, it does ... if the defect is wholly physical or a combination of the physical and nonphysical, there is scope for rescission."
Paulus says (D 21.1.5): "Just as there is a distinction between those defects which the Greeks describe as a malignancy, and those they categorize as misfortunes, maladies, or weaknesses, so there is a distinction between such [lesser] defects and that form of disease whereby the usability of a slave is reduced."
So we see, the principle is that a slave is diseased for the purposes of the law if he has a bodily flaw which diminishes his usability, which for a slave means his ability to perform certain functions that may be of value to his owner.
Now we come to the point that interests us today. The law finds that eunuchs did not have an incapacitating bodily flaw.
Ulpian says (D 21.1.6.2): "To me it appears the better view that a eunuch is not diseased or defective, but healthy, just like a man who has one testicle, who is also able to procreate."
Therefore Ulpian is saying that the usefulness, or capability, of a eunuch is not destroyed by his being a eunuch: he is able to procreate. How can this be, we ask today? Eunuchs, as we all know, are made unable to procreate by their emasculation!
Paulus (D 21.1.7) clarifies: "If, on the other hand, someone is a eunuch in such a way that he is missing a necessary part of his body, even internally, then he is diseased."
So the reproductive ability of the unqualified form of eunuch is not destroyed because he is not missing any necessary parts of his body. If it were impossible for a eunuch to produce a child because of a bodily characteristic, even a naturally-occurring one like an anatomical birth defect, then that would clearly constitute a disease under this section. But Ulpian says a eunuch is not diseased, but healthy. Apparently, eunuch status must be an issue of the mind, featuring no disabling anatomical defect and therefore having no legally relevant consequences. By the way, I have never seen this section of the Digest cited in any article or book about eunuchs. I found it by looking up spado in a concordance to the Corpus Juris Civilis.
To recap, the distinction for Ulpian and Paulus is between a eunuch whose capability to procreate is destroyed because he is missing necessary parts of his body, and an anatomically whole eunuch for whom procreation may be psychologically difficult, but is biologically unimpeded.
Returning to Ulpian's other statements about the various types of eunuchs, we recall eunuchs by nature, crushed and pounded eunuchs, and castrated eunuchs. Out of these categories, the crushed, pounded and castrated lack necessary parts of their body and are physically incapable of procreation. There is only one category left for the anatomically whole eunuchs: they are the "natural eunuchs."
In D 50.16.128 natural eunuchs are mentioned first before man-made eunuchs, and in D 21.1.6.2 whole eunuchs are mentioned before anatomically deprived eunuchs. Under Roman law, not only is it very important whether a eunuch is mutilated or anatomically whole, but the natural, whole eunuch is the true eunuch.
Surveying the Roman legal provisions about eunuchs, we see that eunuchs could make wills (Code of Justinian 6.22.5, 12.5.4.2-3) and were required to perform guardianship duties (Code of Justinian 5.62.1). Whole eunuchs who were freemen, unlike mutilated eunuchs, were eligible for marriage and for adopting children (D 23.3.39.1, 28.2.6). In fact, anatomically whole eunuchs had all the rights and duties of ordinary men.
But of course, eunuchs were not just ordinary men. Although they had no legally relevant bodily defects, they were nonetheless characterized in the popular mind by a certain physical incapacity. The popular view of eunuchs as defective explains their appearance in the law on defects in slaves, and it is also conveyed by the wording of other Roman laws, if not by their effects.
Gaius's First Commentary, Section 103 included eunuchs among those who "cannot procreate," even while saying they could adopt and arrogate heirs. In his re-editing of the laws, Justinian retained Gaius's provision regarding "eunuchs" to the word, but added a clause that "castrated men" were to be excluded from these rights.
In First Commentary, Section 196, Gaius stated that a eunuch did not attain puberty like a male. On the other hand, in providing (D 1.7.40.1) that a eunuch might obtain an exclusive heir by arrogation, Modestinus flatly affirmed: "he does not have a bodily defect as an impediment" [nec ei corporale vitium impedimento est].
So, what defined the natural eunuch, if he was anatomically intact?
For that, we must consider ancient notions of how reproduction occurred. Ancient doctors had no knowledge of sperm cells and egg cells. The cause of conception was thought to be a dynamic heat found in males, which can transform already existing, nongenerative fluids into a formed, generative state, much like egg whites gel and whiten in soft-boiled eggs. When implanted in the womb, this seed would be nourished and grow into a baby. According to a long-standing tradition dating at least from Aristotle, women's fluids were non-generative because, it was thought, their bodies were too cold and moist to give form to semen (Generation of Animals 1.20, 4.1). This was why women could not produce children without males. To produce a child, semen first had to be poached, as it were, by the heat of the male's orgasm.
Eunuchs were considered like women, that is, cold; therefore their fluid would normally be watery and sterile too (Generation of Animals 2.7). Applying Aristotle's reasoning that the concoction of semen by heat makes it generative, I surmise that eunuchs were deemed unable to procreate insofar as they did not feel the heat of passion during procreative acts with women. It is only if a eunuch can penetrate and reach passionate orgasm with a woman, not an easy thing for him to accomplish, that he can also implant concocted semen into her and procreate like a male -- but then he would also cease to be considered a eunuch, having in this way proven his manhood!
If a second century eunuch could simply be a homosexual who was impotent with women, by the ninth century, the meaning of eunuch had shifted and narrowed. Byzantine emperor Leo VI no longer had to distinguish between types of eunuchs. For example, without noting that he was changing prior l aw, Leo absolutely prohibited eunuchs from marriage (only castrated men had been prohibited by the ancients, not eunuchs in general) (Constitution 98). On the other hand, in spite of the fact that eunuchs were allowed to adopt in all earlier laws, Leo presented his law permitting eunuchs to adopt as a change (Constitutions 26, 27). And it was a change, because by "eunuchs" he meant only mutilated men. He felt that the ancients were wrong to prohibit adoption by men who have suffered "lethal acts." According to Leo, the ancients "stated as a reason for this exclusion that the law should not recognize persons whom Nature does not consider qualified for g eneration as suitable for this function." But Leo corrected the ancients' by then anachronistic view: for it was not Nature but human beings who had injured them, and "We do not think that the law should be as cruel to them as those who have inflicted this outrage on them," ...so "that if they should wish to adopt someone, they shall have to power to do so." The emperor made these provisions about eunuchs without ever mentioning the distinction between types of eunuchs, which was crucial and indispensable to the earlier Roman legislators. This in spite of the fact that the gospel of Matthew also mentions eunuchs who are born so from their mother's womb (mentions them first, I might add) in distinction to man-made and voluntary eunuchs (Matthew 19:12).
Kathryn Ringrose (see my list of recommended articles and books) and others have mentioned the change in meaning of eunuch between the third and twelfth centuries. Now we know what the change consisted of. Before, eunuchs were primarily anatomically whole men, while later only anatomically deprived men were eunuchs.
Under Christianity, that lack of sexual drive towards women that once made natural eunuchs stand out could no longer be the basis for distinguishing types of men. A man who lacked sexual desire for women had options: he could become a celibate priest, or he could remain celibate within marriage if he wanted. In fact it was often admired for couples to refrain from sexual indulgence, although one would hope that the bride had been made aware beforehand of her husband's lack of interest in her. I have often thought that the ideal Christian marriage would be between a gay man and a lesbian: they would truly have sex only for procreation. [Since writing this I have posted an essaythat pinpoints the transformation in the meaning of "eunuch" more precisely to the fourth century, as an outcome of conflicts over church doctrine, in which eunuchs were said to play a role, and the establishment of one party to the conflict as the official imperial church.]
Those natural eunuchs who gave into their own sexual desires were branded as Sodomites. In fact, Justinian's New Constitution 141, in exhorting the men of the empire to abandon male-on-male homosexual practices, notes that some men will more obstinately continue in their ungodly habits, and it cautions that the full force of the law will be brought against them.
In the western Christian Visigothic Code of the late seventh century, the eunuch category disappears, and active and passive partners in "male" homosexual acts were subject to castration (Lex Iudicorum 3.5.5-6). So in eastern and western Christianity, natural eunuchs became total celibates, and if they did give into their lusts, they kept it "in the closet," or risked being killed or becoming man-made eunuchs. 

Natural Eunuchs in the Talmud: Never Fit, But Possibly Curable
Like the Roman law, the Talmud also distinguished with clear legal consequences between natural and man-made eunuchs. In Yebamoth, Chapter 8 (folio 79b), Rabbi Joshua posed a question about a contradiction he had encountered in the law.
According to the Bible (Deuteronomy 25:5-10), when a man dies childless, it is his brother's responsibility to marry the widow and engender a child in his brother's name. Any man who refuses to give his deceased brother a child in this way is disgraced and must submit to a humiliating public ceremony called "chalitsah" in which the widow removes one of his shoes and spits in his face. From then on the reluctant brother's family is known as "the house of him who had his shoe loosed" [beit chalu' hanna'al].
The legal problem puzzling Rabbi Joshua was this: "I have heard that a eunuch submits to chalitsah and that chalitsah is arranged for his wife, and also that a eunuch does not submit to chalitsah and that no chalitsah is arranged for his wife, and I am unable to explain this." The text continues with two conflicting explanations by the Tannaim.
Rabbi Akibah said: "I will explain it: A man-made eunuch submits to chalitsah and chalitsah is also arranged for his wife, because there was a time when he was in a state of fitness. A eunuch-by-nature neither submits to chalitsah nor is chalitsah arranged for his wife, since there never was a time when he was fit."
The opposing view was given by Rabbi Eliezer, who said: "Not so, but a eunuch-by-nature submits to chalitsah and chalitsah is also arranged for his wife, because he may be cured. A man-made eunuch neither submits to chalitsah nor is chalitsah arranged for his wife, since he cannot be cured."
The text goes on: "Rabbi Joshua ben Bathyra testified concerning Ben Megosath, who was a man-made eunuch living in Jerusalem, that his wife was allowed to be married by the levir, thus confirming the opinion of Rabbi Akibah. The eunuch neither submits to chalitsah nor contracts the levirate marriage ..."
In the Talmud, as in Roman law, the distinction between natural eunuchs and man-made eunuchs was substantive, although it is not easy to determine whether the natural or the man-made eunuch was in a better position. Both types of eunuchs seemed to be exempted from the requirement to perform the levirate marriage or submit to chalitsah, so there was no advantage here for the natural eunuch. If anything, the man-made eunuch seemed entitled to greater privileges than the natural eunuch, since the man-made eunuch was entitled have a child engendered in his name by his brother if he died childless. It is likely that the natural eunuch should not have married in the first place, as he was never in a state of fitness. [On later review, given that the unqualified "eunuch" is said to be exempt from levirate marriage, while the man-made eunuch is not exempt, it appears to me even more strongly that the unqualified "eunuch" is the eunuch-by-nature.] But what is most interesting is that Rabbi Eliezer believed the natural eunuch might be cured. Here I would merely note past controversies in the United States about alleged cures for homosexuality.
There is a potential ambiguity in the use of the English phrase "by nature" in this context. "By nature" can mean two different things: "by constitution or essence," or "because of the actions of nature or random fate." In the Talmud, the term contrasted against the man-made eunuch [saris adam] is literally "eunuch of the sun" [saris chammah], with the implication being that the "eunuch of the sun" has been that way since the sun first shone upon him. That is the interpretation given by the Soncino edition of Yebamoth.
For the Amoraim rabbis who composed the Gemara, or commentative, sections of Yebamoth, the identification of a "eunuch of the sun" presented a problem. It is interesting that in their musings as to possible means of identifying a "eunuch of the sun," none of the rabbis suggested looking for defects in the reproductive organs. Instead, they looked for absence of pubic hair at the age of twenty (expressly one of the signs of puberty in Roman law), absence of froth in urine, watery semen, urine which does not ferment, absence of steam from the body after a winter bath, and finally a voice which is so abnormal that one cannot distinguish whether it is that of a man or a woman. Many of these characteristics, if not all, seem to reflect an Aristotelian coolness in the eunuch's body.
This interesting hypothesis is complicated by what the rabbis said was the cause of natural eunuchism, namely that during pregnancy the natural eunuch's mother drank strong beer and baked bread at noon. In other words, it was an excess of heat during gestation that caused the eunuchism. Perhaps this also explains the term "eunuch of the sun." Maybe the eunuch is like a burned-out light bulb, which never gets hot again. In any case, if the "eunuch of the sun" were a eunuch in our modern sense of the term, perhaps because of an anatomical birth defect, it would not be necessary to resort to such obscure tests in order to identify him.
 
A Third Gender
Discussions of natural eunuchs are not only found in Roman and Jewish law, but also in Greek and Latin literature.
Aristotle warned that some boys indulging in receptive anal intercourse would grow to like it and might become impubescent from birth and nonprocreative due to an imperfection of the reproductive organs (History of Animals 7.1.5-6).
Pliny the Elder assigned eunuchs and hermaphrodites to the "third gender called half-male," saying this category also included men whose testicles were destroyed, either by injury or by natural causes (Natural History 11.49). Thus Pliny distinguished between eunuchs and men whose testicles were destroyed even while categorizing them together, along with hermaphrodites, as third-gendered half-males.
In Physiognomy 2.3, Adamantios said that: "The characteristics of natural eunuchs are worse than those of other men. So most of them are savage, deceitful evildoers, each one more so than the last. Of the cut eunuchs, though, some characteristics change over at the same time as the cut, but most of their congenital nature remains."
Notice that Adamantios described natural eunuchs in distinctly psychological terms, having certain personality characteristics. These characteristics were not observable for the most part in cut eunuchs, who retained most of their congenital nature, i.e. as males. I translate this passage differently than Kathryn Ringrose did in her essay. She did not make a distinction here between natural and cut eunuchs, but I was led by Ernst Maass in his 1925 essay "Eunouchos und Verwandtes," who saw the "same distinction" in Adamantios as in Ulpian's statement about natural and man-made eunuchs.
Notice too Adamantios's viciously disdainful attitude toward natural eunuchs. Is it not reminiscent of negative attitudes toward passive homosexuals as noted frequently in modern scholarship about homosexuality in the classical world?
In the same vein, see the statement given by Lucian's character Diocles in The Eunuch, that a eunuch is "worse off than a castrated priest of Cybele [bakêlos], for the latter had at least known manhood once, but the eunuch had been "cut off" from the very first and was an ambiguous sort of creature like a crow, which cannot be reckoned with either doves or ravens" (Eunuch 8). Likewise, Diocles's explanation that "a eunuch is neither male nor female, but something composite, hybrid, and monstrous, alien to human nature" (Eunuch 6).
In Lucian's dialogue, a self-proclaimed eunuch is competing against Diocles, who is a male, in a public contest for an endowed chair in philosophy, and the male has argued that no eunuch should hold such a position of dignity and honor. The eunuch argues in rebuttal that even women can be philosophers, so a eunuch certainly can be (Eunuch 7). Nonetheless, the dispute continues. Toward the end of the dialogue, when a bystander claims to know that this eunuch is not really a eunuch, but merely assumed this identity falsely to escape a prior adultery charge, Lucian exploits the tension existing in his time between the definitions of mutilated and anatomically whole eunuchs.
Lucian several times indicates that impotence, specifically with women, is a defining feature of certain eunuchs. It is true that half of the spectators wanted to lift the supposed eunuch's cloak and inspect him, "as they do with slaves purchased with silver" (Eunuch 12). This corresponds to the man-made eunuch. But others had the "even more ridiculous" idea to fetch some women from a brothel and put him in a room with them and order him to have sex with them. The oldest and most trustworthy judge should stand by to observe whether he was able to perform. This corresponds to the anatomically whole eunuch, who is impotent because he does not feel the heat of passion for women. The tests are never performed, but the reputed eunuch, who now wants to be thought of as a male in order to secure the academic position, sets to having sex with as many women as he can to prove he is not a eunuch. And the narrator of the story prays at the end that his own young son will have the genital skills required to be a philosopher (Eunuch 13).
 
Unwilling, But Not Unable
Approximately contemporaneous with Adamantios, Lucian, the Roman legislators and Rabbis Akibah and Eliezer, the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria provided a complementary perspective about the born eunuch, by way of quoting the Basilidian Christians with respect to the gospel verse about eunuchs (Stromata 3.1.1):
 

Some men by birth have a nature to turn away from women, and those who are subject to this natural constitution do well not to marry. These, they say, are the eunuchs by birth.

The Basilidians included those who are unfortunately castrated under eunuchs by compulsion, in opposition to eunuchs by birth.
In another context (Pedagogue 3.4.26), Clement himself warned Christian householders against entrusting their wives to eunuchs, because "even these are panders: they will neglect their duties and serve pleasure without suspicion, because of the common belief that they are not able to enjoy love. But the true eunuch is not the one not able, but the one not desiring to make love." Note that as a Christian who despised all manner of effeminacy in men, Clement was not even considering homosexual sex here. When Clement said true eunuchs did not desire to make love, he obviously had in mind sex with women.
In the late fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzos advises natural eunuchs not to be proud of their abstinence, because a natural virtue is not praiseworthy like one gained by an exertion of will (Oration 37.16-17). After all, what praise is due to fire for burning, to snow for being cold, or to rain for falling down? "Since your abstention is not laudable," Gregory says, "I ask something else of eunuchs. Do not commit prostitution in divine matters. Having yoked yourself to Christ, do not dishonor Christ." He is addressing the ancient, persistent and widespread practice of sacred prostitution and sexual dramatization by homosexuals dating back at least to the Ishtar cults of archaic Babylon.
 
Conclusion
To sum up, there is an important and, in modern times, lamentably neglected distinction in the early centuries of our era between natural and artificial eunuchs which is crucial to understanding laws in a range of cultural contexts. I have tried to show, using the Roman law, that when the term eunuch was used in isolation, it normally meant natural eunuchs, while castrated eunuchs were a divergent subgroup.
Much more evidence could be brought forth to negate the false assumption that eunuch status implied castration, and to demonstrate that a lack of sexual drive with women as well as a certain effeminacy of body and disposition, and even a lust for homosexual sex, were stereotypical characteristics of eunuchs. Conversely, no evidence exists, indeed none can exist, to say that most eunuchs were mutilated.
In very early references to castration, such as the Iliad or Deuteronomy 23:1, the word eunuch is not used, and where eunuchs are mentioned, cutting is not, such as in the Code of Hammurabi (§§ 187, 192-193), the Middle Assyrian Laws (§ 20), the Kama Sutra (2.9, 6.1), the Laws of Manu (9.201-203), and throughout the Bible (45 Old Testament verses, 2 New Testament chapters).
In one of the earliest Greek uses of the word eunuch, Hippocrates describes a northern people who suffer from a high incidence of impotence not related to genital deformation as "the most eunuchoid of all nations" (Airs, Waters, Places 22).
Although Xenophon compares eunuchs to castrated animals, he still goes no further than to say that eunuchs are deprived of the respective desire [steriskomenoi tautns tns epithumias] (Cyropaedia 7.58-65).
In the earliest clear application of the word eunuch to refer to castrated men, by Herodotus, that author always uses another more concrete word to specify castrated males, namely ektomias (Histories 3.48-49, 3.92), while not relying on the general designation eunouchos alone to convey his meaning (Histories 6.32, 8.105).
This word ektomias survives even as late as Dio Cassius specifically to designate castrati in Greek as opposed to mere eunuchs (Roman History 67.2.3).
Several testimonies to eunuchs' surprising procreative ability exist throughout premodern history around the Mediterranean, in Mesopotamia, and in India. And even in China, where my limited access to source material has not turned up any eunuch fathers, some eunuchs felt their condition could be cured by ingesting certain gory substances.
Of course, some kind of interruption of procreative power is one of the defining characteristics of eunuchs. What I am saying is that the interruption of procreative power which is characteristic of eunuchs is equivalent to that which is characteristic of exclusively "homosexual" men. Namely, their impotence with women is sufficient to define the group, but it is not an absolute impotence. They have no drive toward procreative sex, but they are sometimes capable of doing it under exceptional circumstances.
I realize that I am making a very controversial assertion, and that I have an uphill battle in promoting it. I hope that I have at least succeeded in challenging an unquestioned, comfortable assumption, namely that, after the long and enduring suppression of psychological gender nonconformity by the medieval Christian Church, we can trust the dictionary to tell us what a eunuch was in the ancient Mediterranean world. It is only because of the vociferous gay liberation movement of this century that it has become possible for gay men to be constructed as a natural group, and thus to be identified with another analogous group last constructed as natural over a thousand years ago.

Plato: The Serpent in the Garden of Sexuality
(deutsche Übersetzung)
 
Although Plato is credited by some historians of sexuality as an early proponent and theorist of homosexual activity, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Plato can be blamed for having first devised the oppressive sexual moral code under which the West has suffered since the early middle ages.
Admittedly, Plato's dialogues are full of references to homosexuality, and the contemporary (male) Greek society displayed through his work apparently rated love between males higher than any other form of love. This is clear from the statements of characters in the dialogues, but these are mainly characters who do not represent Plato's point of view.
In Plato's dialogues, it is always the case that one of the characters is meant to represent the standpoint of true wisdom (usually Socrates, but in the "Laws" an anonymous Athenian), while the other conversants range from arrogant fools (Ion, Protagoras) to eminent men of Athens who nonetheless fall short of Socrates' wisdom (Symposium) to earnest seekers of wisdom (Republic, Laws, Phaedrus) to gifted disciples of Socrates (Timaeus).
Although the character "Socrates" concedes the supreme status of chaste love between males, any positive statements about homosexual sex all come from the less wise conversants, never from "Socrates" himself. On the contrary, the wise character is confronted with a society in which same-sex sexuality is prevalent, and wishes to find ways to discredit it with an aim to abolishing it altogether.
This indicates two things: First, that Plato was no advocate of homosexuality. Second, and consequently, that assertions regarding the prevalence of same-sex sexuality among the Greeks are based on real facts of life in Greece, not the wishful thinking of some homophile elite. After all, since Plato seeks to abolish non-marital sexuality through his work, why would he pretend that homosexuality was prevalent if it was not so? Such would not only make no sense, it would contradict one of Plato's main educational principles: don't show people behaviors in literature that you don't want them to imitate in life.
If Plato's work is a treasure trove of positive ancient characterizations of homosexuality, that is only because those positive characterizations were current in his world. They are the starting point from which Plato wishes to lead his followers and his society into exclusive heterosexuality in marriage.
In the Republic, the Laws, and his other works, Plato sought to devise a system of education that would promote what he considered to be the qualities of an ideal man: wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage. Sexuality was fundamentally dangerous and antithetical to his project, so he said, because it was characterized by mental frenzy as opposed to rationality (Republic 403) and because sexual acts failed to teach courage to one partner (the passive) and temperance to the other (the active) (Laws 836). The only justification for sexuality to exist at all was for procreation. Therefore, all sexuality outside of marriage should be forbidden by law (Laws 838-9). If only that were possible! he laments (Laws 835). Getting everyone to agree to this moral code would be difficult, but once it was established it would perpetuate itself, if only all people could somehow be prevented from ever contradicting or denying it (Laws 838). He offers various potential means for establishing the acceptance of such a moral code, including telling children at an impressionable age that non-marital sex is hated by God (Laws 838), that abstinence from sex represents a victory even more glorious than any athletic or military victory, and that failure to be abstinent is ugly and makes you lower than the animals (Laws 840). He also suggests requiring that people hide their sexual practice, so that the sight of some people enjoying sex would not become an enticement to others (Laws 841). Finally, one could simply enact a law forbidding all homosexual sex and all sex outside of marriage or concubinage (Laws 841).
This is Western sexual morality in a nutshell. It should not be surprising that it was first formulated by Plato, since he is undoubtedly the most significant thinker in Western intellectual history. I say it should not be surprising, and yet it is, because we have all been taught (as Plato suggested we should be) that these ideas come from religion and are ordained by God. What surprises us is to find that they are not eternal truths revealed through a prophet, but rather the product of faulty rational thought by an essentially disbelieving man.
Plato is not a prophet of God. Rather, he suggested a way in which divine myth could and should be manipulated and twisted to achieve "rational" purposes.
Plato's way of thinking spread throughout the Mediterranean world and engulfed the Jewish religion long before Jesus was born. Following Alexander the Great's conquest of the Middle East, political power was in the hands of people who had been trained in Greek philosophy, in which Plato was the towering figure. This was a period in which several books of the Bible were written, more were being edited, and all were being translated, commented on, and interpreted. These interpretations and commentaries were colored by rational philosophy. Whether you want to say that religious scholars adapted the scriptures to meet the challenges of the dominant philosophy, or that they were in fact philosophers seeking to use their traditional holy scriptures as foundation myths to achieve some of the aims of moral philosophy -- either way, the impact of philosophy on revealed religion was thorough, profound, and insidious.
It was in this context that the story of Sodom began to be used as a pretext to ban all homosexuality. The Biblical story of Sodom had traditionally been viewed as a story of God's punishment on a people who exemplified boundless violence and cruelty. It had never been viewed as a story about sex and gender deviants. Then along came a Jewish philosopher called Philo of Alexandria, a man trained in Greek philosophy as well as the Hebrew scriptures. Columbia Encyclopedia calls Philo  -- who was about sixteen years older than Jesus and survived him by about twenty years -- "the first important thinker to attempt to reconcile Biblical religion with Greek philosophy." Philo made the earliest recorded argument that the city of Sodom was destroyed because its acts were unnatural and perverted (as opposed to merely violent and unjust), and he was also the first to associate the prohibitions of Leviticus against "lying with males" with so-called gender-differentiated homosexuality, in which the bottom partner is a person who is socially defined as not male. (See Philo, On Abraham 135-141; Special Laws I 324-325; Special Laws III 37-42.)
According to the Biblical story (told in Genesis 19), the city of Sodom was destroyed after its inhabitants attempted to rape two messengers of God whom they took for ordinary males. The city of Sodom was populated by men who lusted after men, but that did not mean they were distinctly homosexual men -- they weren't. The violators were "all of the men of the town, from the youngest to the oldest, down to the last one," according to the Bible, not just the small minority of homosexuals that might exist in any town. If there is doubt that non-homosexual men would desire to rape other men, one can check out statistics of male rape which show that the vast majority of rapists of men are otherwise heterosexual (see the bottom of my page of recommended books for references), or one can simply turn to the Biblical story of the rape committed by the men of Gibeah as told in Judges 19, in which the men of the town initially ask to rape a man, and then are satisfied to rape a woman instead.  These men were criminals, but they were not homosexuals. Most so-called "heterosexual" men can be naturally aroused for a homosexual act and carry it out as well as homosexuals. Although there was nothing unusual or unnatural about their desire to use men as sex objects, it is nonetheless true that to act on those desires by penetrating other "males" was considered criminal by the ancient world. The fact that they wanted not merely to penetrate males, but in fact to rape them, only further emphasizes the criminal nature of their intended acts, but other verses in the Bible state that the penetration of males is a crime in and of itself (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13).
In order to interpret the story of Sodom and the prohibition of Leviticus properly, one must know that the attribute of "maleness" in the ancient world entailed a certain responsiveness toward the female sex and was not  considered an anatomical characteristic alone. Maleness was the attribute of those who played the "male" role in procreation. The kind of man who by nature showed no sexual arousal with females, like a gay man today, was not considered male but rather a "natural eunuch."
So the sin of Sodom, being defined as the sexual abuse of "males," is a sexual crime comprised of one extremely rare form of homosexuality: the penetration of non-gay men. It is not sex between women. It is not sex between homosexual men. It is not even sex between straight and homosexual men when the straight man is on top. It is only when a potentially heterosexually active man is penetrated that there is even a question of sodomy. Thus, sodomy comprises only a very small portion of the entire range of what we call homosexual activities.
When you present this interpretation of the story to many religious believers, and argue that most forms of homosexuality are not prohibited and that only one rare form of it is, they often abandon the story of Sodom, at that point preferring to claim that, after all, all sex outside of marriage is prohibited and noting that marriage is only contractable between a man and a woman. In this way these religious believers only show themselves to be good Platonists! They will not find the doctrine of "no sex outside of marriage" stated anywhere in the Bible or Qur'an (not counting the epistles of Paul, who was trained in Greek philosophy like Philo). However, through constant and unwavering repetition by religious leaders it has become an axiom that is accepted and never contradicted, just as Plato had recommended. It is an example of what is called in the Qur'an: saying something is from God while it is not from God.
In the Qur'an and Bible, God does tell people to restrain themselves sexually, but there is no call for complete sexual abstinence or for avoidance of all sexuality outside of marriage. In fact, according to the Qur'an men are explicitly allowed to have sex with as many slaves as they can afford to own (e.g. 4:3, 23:6, and 70:30, not to mention 33:50). And there is no statement about what the slaves' gender has to be.
The sexual restraint that is called for in the Qur'an and Bible (excluding the philosopher Paul) is not about curbing your appetite in the Platonic sense. Rather, it is about not treading on other people's rights and thereby causing strife. Therefore, you can have sex with those people with whom you have a right to have sex, but not with people with whom you do not have a right to have sex. That sounds like a tautology, so let me state it more clearly. The God of revelation allows you to have sex with anyone you like as long as you are not infringing on someone else's rights. It is the infringement of rights that constitutes the crime, not the sexual pleasure.
In adultery it is obvious who the injured parties are: the husband of the adulterous woman or the child resulting from the adultery if the legal husband disowns it. In sodomy, the injured parties are the penetrated man, if he is a victim of rape, and potentially the wife or future wife of even a willing passive recipient of sexual penetration, as well as her children. Although we moderns know that the penetrated man will not pass the seed of the penetrator to his wife, we also know that he may pass infections to her and to her offspring.
For example, according to estimates I have seen, HIV infection is ten times easier to pass from the active to the passive partner than from the passive to the active partner. So if a man is penetrated by another man, and subsequently has sex with a woman, he is ten times more likely to pass HIV to her and her offspring than he would be due to having penetrated another man. Concern about the spread of disease to unborn children may well be behind the prohibition of sexual penetration of men who also have sex with women.
(This raises the issue of condom use, and whether voluntary sexual penetration using condoms would be a violation of the sodomy prohibition. Perhaps not. On the other hand, there may be some other concerns that we are unaware of, perhaps having to do with preserving the gender self-identification or sexual preferences of heterosexually active men. The philosopher Aristotle, for one, warned that boys allowed to indulge in passive homosexuality might become heterosexually impotent.)
Most ancient authors assumed that a "real man" would not want to be penetrated anyway. If men who loved women did let themselves be penetrated by other men, it was assumed to be for some purpose other than sexual desire, such as payment. Such men were deemed contemptible sellers of their own dignity as men. Conversely, men who really did desire sexual penetration were assumed to be impotent, effeminate and not real men, and as such they were ineligible for marriage.
The logic went as follows: if you were a real man, you must not want to be penetrated, so if you actually wanted to be penetrated, you must not be a real man. If you wanted to marry a woman, that meant you were going to play the role of a man, so you could not be penetrated by another man. If you were penetrated, you could not marry a woman. It was a very simple rule, made perfect sense, and was easy to comply with. The social stigma of losing male status would be enough to check a heterosexually active male's curiosity about playing the passive role, if he felt any. Meanwhile, a man who was naturally impotent with women, and thus was a "natural eunuch," never had obtained male status to begin with and therefore did not have to worry about losing it.
This system was entirely in accordance with nature. Moreover, it allowed for a fulfilling exercise of sexual desire and development of love relationships, which are often fragile, without the danger of pregnancy associated with heterosexuality. Heterosexual relationships on the other hand were tightly controlled because of the consequence of childbirth. This was the system that Plato himself grew up with.
The rule was homosexuality for "falling in love" (which is fleeting), heterosexuality for childraising (which is permanent). This was what constituted planned parenthood in ancient times. While women could forge sexual relationships with any other women, men had to take care that their passive sex partners were not "male" in the procreative sense. The partners available to them were female prostitutes, beardless boys, and natural or artificial eunuchs. In fact, these are the three groups from which ancient men chose their beloveds. The "natural eunuchs," who felt no lust for women but only for men, would have been allowed to penetrate one another or to be penetrated by men.
Infatuation was no basis for establishing a permanent relationship of marriage, however. Marriage was an agreement to produce children together, and infatuation was, if anything, an obstacle to making that kind of agreement. Infatuation could color the judgment, and might cause you to form an attachment that you might later regret. Since infatuation was a temporary joy, not expected to last, it was best experienced with someone from whom no permanent commitment was to be expected. Therefore, a same-sex partner was ideal. Even Plato approved of male-male infatuation, although he insisted there should be no actual sex involved (so-called Platonic friendship).
It took centuries for Plato's restrictive views on sex to become prevalent. And as I point out in another essay on this website, it was not until 390 CE, over seven hundred years after Plato's death, that the first enforceable law was promulgated against gender-differentiated homosexuality (i.e., homosexuality between men in which the bottom partner is deemed not male, due to his lack of arousal for women or for some other reason).
But in the twentieth century we have gone further than even Plato's intention to remove the sex from male-male love. Through the work of twentieth-century psychologists, sealed by late 1940's politically-motivated hysteria about "perverts" taking over society and the subsequent obsession with appearing "normal," the marginalization of same-sex love has led to the disappearence of even chaste love and affection between men, something that was still quite common in the nineteenth century and even until recently in societies that had not yet experienced waves of hetero-paranoia.
In the title of this paper I called Plato the serpent in the Garden. After all, he took a natural world in which human beings allowed themselves to experience numerous pleasures with only a few important restrictions, and, after promising to raise them out of ignorance into knowledge of good and evil, he ultimately led them to cast themselves out of paradise into a world of shame and torment.

The Historic Origins of Church Condemnation of Homosexuality

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On May 14, 390,[1] an imperial decree was posted at the Roman hall of Minerva, a gathering place for actors, writers and artists,[2] which criminalized for the first time the sexual practice of those whom we call "homosexual" men -- this had never happened before in the history of law. The prescribed penalty was death by burning. This law was promulgated by an emperor who at the time was under a penance set by St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan,[3]  and the law was issued in the context of a persecution of heresies. Homosexual men at the imperial court had been powerful opponents of Catholic doctrine during the fourth-century conflicts over the nature of Jesus Christ, known as the Arian controversies.
    Prior to 390, both religious and secular laws had targeted only one particular form of homosexuality: when a man or youth who otherwise exhibited a virile attraction toward women nonetheless agreed to or was forced to play a female role in intercourse with other men. For example, Biblical laws against homosexual acts call it an abomination and prescribe death as a punishment when "a man lies with a male the way one lies with a woman."[4] Meanwhile, only heterosexually-oriented men (including bisexual men) would properly be called "male," since potency with women was the primary proof of masculinity. Augustus Caesar's law against adultery likewise prohibited intercourse with "males,"[5]  and may well have provided the impetus for a widely-attested wave of castrations in the early empire -- in order to supply sex partners who were not "male."[6]  As late as 342, Constantius II issued a decree imposing an "exquisite punishment" for the crime which occurs "when a male gives himself in marriage to an effeminate [femina, literally 'a woman'] and what he wants is for the effeminate to play the male role in sex [literally 'project the male parts']," thus for himself to play the female role.[7]

   Men lacking desire for or potency with women, like today's homosexual men, were never intended by these laws -- they would not have been deemed, on the whole, to be male. Maleness implied playing the role of penetrator and procreator. Those who did not, failed to meet the ancient criteria for being called male. One could say that the very concept of masculinity or virility was defined throughout the ancient Mediterranean, not in contrast to women, but to homosexual men. Innumerable loci can be adduced to show that exclusively homosexual men were called non-male, half-male, neither male nor female, androgynous, or third sex -- but never male.
    It is a very little-known fact that there was a category of men in the ancient Mediterranean who were called "natural" or "constitutional" eunuchs.[8] It is even less known that these eunuchs are defined in early third-century Roman laws as having no physical defects -- at most they had a peculiar mental orientation.[9]  They were evidently what we call "born homosexuals." In the laws, they are differentiated from castrated men and others, who do have physical defects. Natural eunuchs were entitled to marry women, adopt, and bequeath property, since "there is no bodily defect present as an impediment to that"[10], while castrated men were prohibited from doing all these things. Nonetheless, Juvenal had found that "when a eunuch marries a woman, it is hard not to write satire."[11] [For a more detailed discussion of the definition of natural eunuchs, see my article on the subject on this website.]
    From early Babylon down to the late Roman empire, eunuchs had played two major roles in ancient society -- as priests in pagan temples, and as domestic servants in wealthy households and royal palaces. Thus eunuchs had a tradition of spirituality, and of being close to power. In the fourth century, this combination made them a great help to bishops whom they supported, and a potent threat to those whom they opposed. The eunuch Eusebius, the grand chamberlain of the Byzantine palace under Constantine and then under his son Constantius, was considered to wield virtually imperial power due to his ability to control access to the emperor, especially during the son's reign. Eusebius was an active proponent of the Arian doctrine, which held that the Almighty God was not the Father of Jesus in a procreative sense (notwithstanding the virgin birth), but rather that God adopted Jesus as His Son through grace. In his History of the Arians, St. Athanasius, a virulent advocate for Catholic doctrine, recounted Eusebius's mission to Rome allegedly to bribe and threaten the pope Liberius into accepting communion with Arian Christians. Afterwards he summed up: 
                    It was the eunuchs who instigated these proceedings against all
                    [i.e., pressure tactics against Nicene Christians in various cities].
                    And the most remarkable circumstance in the matter is this; that
                    the Arian heresy which denies the Son of God receives its support
                    from eunuchs, who, as both their bodies are fruitless, and their
                    souls barren of the seeds of virtue, cannot bear even to hear the
                    name of son...The eunuchs of Constantius cannot endure the
                    confession of Peter [Matthew 16:16], nay, they turn away when
                    the Father manifests the Son, and madly rage against those who
                    say that the Son of God is His genuine Son, thus claiming as a
                    heresy of eunuchs that there is no genuine and true offspring of
                    the Father.[12]
Regardless of what homosexual Christians may feel today about Jesus's status as God, it is clear that in the fourth century they were identified as powerful enemies of Catholic doctrine. This is not the place to examine the merits of official Church doctrine -- to discuss whether Jesus was more or less like other human beings, or whether the male role in a procreative act can properly be attributed to God. Suffice it to say, the early supporters of the Nicene creed saw homosexual men as dangerous rivals.
    Now, in addition to being spiritual authorities and palace servants, eunuchs had a traditional role as sexual passives. Because they were not "male," this behavior was legal in both pagan and Biblical law throughout all prior history. A sympathetic historian in the time of Constantius II noted that the emperor himself was sexually devoted to his eunuchs, courtiers, and wives; while, "content with these, he was never defiled by any transverse or unjust lust."[13] It was Constantius, a Christian, who issued the aforementioned decree implicitly recognizing homosexual marriage (as long as it did not involve a "male" partner in a passive role). Remember that this decree was issued in a period when palace eunuchs were powerful and influential in the imperial court. 
   The gender of eunuchs, until the fourth century, was typically described as it is in Lucian's dialogue The Eunuch: "neither man nor woman, but something composite, hybrid, and monstrous, alien to human nature."[14] Or as in Aristotle's assertion that eunuchs "fall but little short of the idea of the female."[15]  Or in Pliny's categorization of eunuchs, alongside hermaphrodites and castrati, as a third gender.[16] However, by the early fourth century the first signs appear of an expansion of the definition of masculinity to include eunuchs. To Firmicus Maternus, an astrologer and Christian convert, eunuchs are "males without seed and who cannot copulate, obscene, disreputable, filthy, lewd passives"[17] -- the point being that he calls them males, something writers in prior centuries had never done.
    At the same time, we notice the definition of eunuch is beginning to shrink. In the early third century, Clement of Alexandria had defined the eunuch as one not unable, but unwilling to have sex.[18] Basilides (quoted by Clement) had defined the born eunuchs of Matthew 19:12 as persons who "from their birth have a nature to turn away from women, and those who are naturally so constituted do well not to marry."[19]  Now, in the fourth century Epiphanius of Salamis claims the born eunuchs are incapable of doing anything sexual "because they lack the divinely created organs of generation."[20] And they get no credit or heavenly reward for their abstention from sex, for "they have not done the thing not because they didn't want to but because they couldn't" and therefore "they have no experience of the struggle" (committing the sin is a physical impossibility for them). Nonetheless, "they have felt desires." This is a flat reversal of Clement's and Basilides's statements.
    This reduction of eunuch status to a physical defect is but one churchman's tactic (eventually superseding all others) within a general fourth-century ecclesiastical strategy to deprive physically whole, natural eunuchs, i.e. homosexual men, of their religious credibility. Gregory Nazianzen adopted a different rhetorical means towards the same end. In his case, he admitted that natural eunuchs lacked desire to procreate, but, like Epiphanius, Gregory too denied them credit for their abstinence because it was natural for them and had not resulted from a fierce internal struggle. Rather than abstain from procreation, Gregory instead called on Christian natural eunuchs to avoid prostituting themselves and thus dishonoring Christ.[21]

   So it is against the backdrop of a concerted effort by Nicene proponents to debase their powerful enemies that we must assess the outlawing of the sexual life of homosexuals. In 389, one year before the anti-homosexual decree mentioned at the start, the emperor had taken away the right of heretical neo-Arian eunuchs to make or benefit from wills.[22]  This exemplifies the targeting of eunuchs through imperial laws as a way of combating heresy. Early the next year, having committed an atrocity against the residents of Thessalonica, the emperor Theodosius was excommunicated by St. Ambrose. His august majesty came crawling to the bishop, theoretically an imperial subject, and begged for forgiveness and reinstatement. The bishop relented and promised reinstatement after the emperor had completed a penance, which lasted eight months. It happened to be during the first month of this penance that the law against sex acts by homosexuals was promulgated. Initially unsuccessful due to the unexpectedly high number of violators,[23] the decree was reissued in August at Trajan's Forum as follows:
                    All those whose shameful habit it is to condemn the male body to
                    suffer an alien sex in the manner of women, for they appear to be
                    in no way different from women, shall expiate a crime of this kind
                    in avenging flames in the sight of the people.[24]
The old crime of passive male homosexuality was thus expanded to include passive "non-male" homosexuality by the focus on the "male body" [virile corpus]. The universality of the law is reinforced by the word omnes ["all those"]. Heretofore, those known in law as natural eunuchs were not considered "male," but they certainly had male bodies. Prior Roman law had already established that, with natural eunuchs, "there is no bodily defect" [corporale vitium non est]. Finally, the emphasis on the effeminacy of the perpetrators makes clear that this law is specifically targeted at those "non-male" types -- i.e. natural eunuchs -- who had been exempt from all prior laws against homosexuality. 
   Having once established power over imperial legislation regarding religion, Catholic authorities never looked back. With the outlawing of heresies, enforced by imperial power, no one was in a position to contradict the established doctrine of the Church. If the Church decided that Jesus meant only persons suffering from anatomical birth defects in Matthew 19:12, who would have been in a position to object? If the now imperial Church found that a homosexual engaging in his own natural sexuality was guilty of the sin of Sodom, who would stand up to argue?
    Rather, the Church continued to use the oppression of homosexuals (of whom, like Jesus's living water, there is an unending supply) as a tool to consolidate power. When Justinian enacted the next laws against homosexuality, in 538 and 544,[25] he returned to characterizing the crime as a corruption of "males" (as opposed to male bodies), but since the term male was beginning to be applied to homosexuals already in the fourth century -- a trend that the Church supported since it preferred to define maleness based on anatomical organs rather than procreative libido -- it can be assumed that the New Constitutions 77 and 141 against homosexuality were meant to include all those with a male body as well. In case the real target of the laws was unclear to anyone, No. 77 also castigated blasphemy. Perhaps 150 years had not been enough time to silence eunuch theologians who insisted on Christ's full humanity -- and even labelled Him a fellow eunuch?[26] What is interesting and new about No. 141 is its insistence that those who were guilty must "not only refrain from sinning," but "confess their faults in the presence of the Most Blessed Patriarch," thereby averting punishment but ruining their reputations and putting an end to any hope of an ecclesiastical career.
    The seventh century Visigothic Code ultimately solved the ambiguity around natural eunuchs by ordering the castration of every man guilty of a homosexual act[27] -- which certainly gives the Spanish obsession with cojones a whole new dimension. The closet was thus constructed, and with it a new definition of masculinity as well -- based not on the fulfillment of the procreative role, but rather on the preservation of bodily integrity. A male was now identified merely by an intact penis and testicles. ***
 
Send comments to aquarius@well.com
Visit Born Eunuchs Home Page for lots more information about homosexuality in ancient cultures.
[Help! I believe this is information that people everywhere should have access to. If you would be willing to translate this paper into your language, I will post it on the website as well. I would really like to thank Luqman, who translated this into Spanish. Allah's blessings be upon him always.]

Footnotes
1 Rev. M. Hyamson, ed. and tr., Mosaicarum et romanarum legum collatio, London, 1913 (reprint Buffalo, 1997), pp. 82-83. (Coll. leg. mos. et rom. 5.3.1-2)
2 Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th edition, New York, 1993, s.v. Minerva, p. 1782.
3 Wilhelm Ensslin, Die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Theodosius des Grossen, Munich, 1953. In: Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Year 1953, No. 2.
4 Leviticus 18:22, 20:13.
5 Institutes of Justinian 4.18.4.
6 Seneca, De ira 1.21; Juvenal 6.371-373, 10.306; Martial 6.2, 9.6.4, 9.8.5; Statius, Silvae 4.3.16; Suetonius, Nero 28, Domitian 7.
7 Code of Theodosius 9.7.3.
8 Matthew 19:12; Digest of Justinian 50.16.128.
9 Digest of Justinian 21.1.1.9 in conjunction with 21.1.5-6 and 21.1.38.7. 
10 Digest of Justinian 1.7.2.1, 1.7.40.1, 23.3.39.1, 28.2.6.
11 Juvenal 1.22.
12 Athanasius, History of the Arians, 5.38.
13 Sextus Aurelius Victor, Epitome of the Caesars, 42.19.
14 Lucian, The Eunuch, 6.
15 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 4.1.
16 Pliny, Natural History, 11.49.
17 Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, 3.9.1.
18 Clement of Alexandria, The Educator, 3.4.26.
19 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies, 3.1.1.
20 Epiphanius of Salamis, Basket of Heresies, 4.3.2-5.
21 Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 37, 16-17. 
22 Code of Theodosius, 16.5.17.
23 Otto Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, Stuttgart, 1920-1922 (reprint 1966), vol. 5, p. 531, note regarding p. 229, line 9.
24 Code of Theodosius, 9.7.6.
25 New Constitutions of Justinian, 77 and 141. For the dates I rely on Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, London, 1955 (reprint 1975), pp. 73ff.
26 As Tertullian had done, for example, in Monogamy, 3: "The Lord Himself opened the kingdom of heaven to eunuchs and He Himself lived as a eunuch. The apostle [Paul] also, following His example, made himself a eunuch and indicated that continence is what he himself prefers."
27 Visigothic Code 3.5.5-6. 

Queer Sexuality and Identity in the Qur'an and Hadith

by Mark Brustman

The Qur'an generally scorns "approaching males in lust", as well as the castration of males, as the sin of the people of Lot (Qur'an 7:81, 26:165-166, 27:55, 29:28-29).
 

7:81 "Indeed you approach males in lust in place of women..." 
Arabic: اِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّنْ دُوْنِ النِّسَآءِ

26:165-166 "What! Do you approach the males of the worlds and forsake those whom your Lord has created for you for your mates?" 
Arabic: آ تَاْتُوْنَ الذُّكْرانَ مِنَ الْعلَميْنَ \ وَتَذَرُوْنَ مَا خَلَقَ لَكُمْ رَبُّكُمْ مِّنَ اَزْوَاجِكُمْ

27:55 "Will you indeed approach males in lust in place of women?"
Arabic: آ ئِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّنْ دُوْنِ النِّسَآءِ

29:28-29 "Most surely you are guilty of an indecency which none of the nations has ever done before you; What! do you come unto the males and cut the passageways [i.e. vas deferens and/or urethra] and commit evil in your clubs?"
Arabic: اِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مَا سَبَقَكُمْ بِهَا مِنْ اَحَدٍ مِّنْ الْعلَمِيْنَ \ آ ئِنكُمْ لَتَاْتُوْنَ الرِّجَالَ وَتَقْطَعُوْنَ السَّبِيْلَ وَتَاْتُوْنَ فِي نَادِيْكُمْ المُنْكَرَ 
 

But the Qur'an does not prohibit using, as passive sex partners, the ancient category of men who by nature lacked desire for women, since such men were not considered "male" as a result of their lack of arousal for women. This kind of man is often known as "gay" in modern times, but in the ancient world he was identified as an anatomically whole "natural eunuch." Although the Qur'an never uses the word eunuch [خَصِي], the hadith and the books of the legal scholars do. Furthermore, the Qur'an recognizes that some men are "not possessors of the desire (or skill) that belongs to adult males" (24:31: غَيْرِ اُولىِ الاِرْبَةِ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ) and so, as domestic servants, are allowed to see women naked. This is a reference to natural eunuchs, i.e. innately and exclusively gay (if not totally asexual) men.

A person had to be indifferent to women's bodies in order to assume the role as a servant in women's private space. In the following case from the hadith, a household servant who had been falsely assumed to be indifferent to women due to his being an "effeminate man" [mukhannathمُخَنَّث ] was evicted by the Prophet because he unexpectedly exhibited a lascivious attitude toward women:
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 114:
What is forbidden concerning the entering upon the wife by those imitating women.
(162) Umm Salama reported that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was at her house, and in the house there was an effeminate man [مُخَنَّث], and the effeminate man said to the brother of Umm Salama, Abdullah bin Abi Umayya: "If God makes you all conquer Ta'if tomorrow, I will point out to you the daughter of Ghailan, for surely she has four when coming towards you and eight when she turns her back." Then the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "This one shall not call upon you (pl.)."

Muslim, Collection of Authentic Traditions, Book XXVI (Greetings), Chapter 12:
(5415) Umm Salama reported that she had an effeminate man [مُخَنَّث] in her house. The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, was once at the house when he (the effeminate man) said to the brother of Umm Salama, 'Abdullah b. Abu Umayya: "If God makes you all conquer Ta'if tomorrow, I will point out to you the daughter ofGhailan, for surely she has four when coming towards you and eight when she turns her back." The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, heard this and he said: "These ones shall not call upon you."

(5416) 'A'isha reported that an effeminate man [مُخَنَّث] used to call upon the wives of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and they considered him to be "not a possessor of the desire/skill" [فكانوا يعدونه من غيْر أولى الارة]. The Prophet, peace be upon him, came by one day as he (the effeminate man) was sitting with some of his wives and he was describing a woman, saying: "When she comes towards you, she has four, and when she turns her back, she has eight." Then the Prophet, peace beupon him, said: "I see this one knows these things! He shall not call upon you (pl.)." She ('A'isha) said then they began to observe veil from him.
 

Note that in 'A'isha's telling of the story, she states that the women allowed him into their private rooms because they assumed he lacked "the desire/skill". (I use the words desire and skill together because the Arabic word has both meanings and because this particular skill depends on desire.) 'A'isha actually quotes the Qur'anic verse about men who are "not possessors of the desire/skill that belongs to males," demonstrating that his presence in the women's space would have been proper according to the Qur'an if only he had in fact lacked "the desire/skill." However, the statement of the effeminate man about the daughter of Ghailan, whatever it meant, indicated to Muhammad that he possessed the desire/skill that characterized adult males and that he had an appreciation of women as sexual objects. This disqualified him as an intimate domestic servant according to the Qur'an as well as the standards of the day. In a system that depended on household servants to be heterosexually indifferent, the main risk was that this indifference could be faked. In other words, an ordinary male could pretend to be an exclusive homosexual in order to gain free access to the private space of women.

There are other ahadith against cross-dressers in which the Prophet specifically curses "males" who imitate women and women who imitate males, and in which the consequence of their malfeasance is that he "evicts them from the houses." The specific reference to "males" who do this (as opposed to non-male eunuchs, for example) is made very explicit:
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXXII (Dress), Chapter 61:
(773) The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, cursed female-impersonators [m.pl.] who are males, and male-impersonators [f.pl.] who are women.
Arabic: لَعَنَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صلى اللهُ عليهِ وَسلَّمَ المُتَشَبِّهِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ بالنِّساءِ وَالمُتَشَبِّهاتِ مِنَ النِّساءِ بالرِّجالِ

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXXII (Dress), Chapter 62:
(774) The Prophet, peace be upon him, cursed the effeminate men [m.pl.] who are males, and the male-pretenders [f.pl.] who are women, and he said: Evict them from your houses, and the Prophet, peace be upon him, evicted such-and-such [m.sg.] and 'Umar evicted such-and-such [f.sg.].
Arabic: لَعَنَ النَّبِي صلى اللهُ عليهِ وَسلَّمَ المُخَنَّثِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالمُتَرَجِّلاتِ مِنَ النِّساءِ وَ قَالَ: أخْرِجُوهُمْ مِنْ بُيُوتِكُمْ، قالَ: فأخْرَجَ النَّبِيُّ صلى اللهُ عليهِ وَسلَّمَ فُلانا، وأخْرَجَ عُمَرُ فُلانَةَ

The words "males" and "women" are obviously emphatic here because the grammar does not really require them to be used, unless it be for emphasis or clarification. Masculine gender is already provided grammatically by the endings on the words "impersonators" and "effeminates," and feminine gender is already provided in the words "impersonators" and "male-pretenders." Given the emphasis, the curse is specifically directed only at "males" and "women," and does not cover non-males who might be female-impersonators (or non-women who might be male-impersonators, if indeed there was a recognition of "non-women"). It's okay to be a drag queen as long as you are not a straight man posing to gain access to unsuspecting women, or to the wives of unsuspecting husbands.

The Qur'an recognizes that there are some people who are "non-procreative" [عَقِيم], thus neither male nor female:

42:49 "To Allah belongs the dominion over the heavens and the earth. It creates what It wills. It prepares for whom It wills females, and It prepares for whom It wills males. 
50 Or It marries together the males and the females, and It makes those whom It wills to be non-procreative. Indeed It is the Knowing, the Powerful."
Arabic: لله مُلْكُ السَّموتِ وَالْاَرْضِ يَخْلُقُ مَا يَشَآءُ يَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَّشَآءُ اِنَاثاً وَّيَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَّشَآءُ الذُّكُوْرَ \ اَوْ يُزَوَّجُهُمْ ذُكْرَاناً وَّاِنَاثاً وَيَجْعَلُ مَنْ يَّشَآءُ عَقِيْماً اِنَّهُ عَلِيْمٌ قَدِيْمٌ

These last two verses (42:49 and 50) are usually interpreted differently in English translations to say that God bestows daughters or sons on whom It wills and gives some people both sons and daughters. But there are problems with this interpretation, one of which being that the word for causing to marry or pairing up [زَوَّجَ] is used in the second verse. When families have boys and girls, the boys and girls do not usually arrive in pairs! The second problem is that, in Qur'anic verses mentioning males and females together, the males are usually mentioned first, and the females second (e.g., 3:195, 4:12, 4:124, 6:143-144, 16:97, 40:40, 42:50, 49:13, 53:21, 53:45, 75:39, 92:3). This is the only verse in the Qur'an, as far as I know, in which the female is mentioned before the male. If these two verses were talking about sons and daughters, we would expect sons to be mentioned before daughters.

In this case, the "males first" principle would indicate that the lines are referring to females and males not as offspring, but as counterparts, i.e. objects of desire, for "whom(ever) God wills." The female objects of desire are mentioned first because they are most typically objects of desire for males. Hence, even this verse is referring to males first, as the most typical "whom(ever)" for whom God prepares females. Yet the use of the word "whom(ever)" leaves it open for females to be objects of desires for other females as well, when God wills, and for males to be love objects for females and other passive non-males. I believe this verse is very neatly and concisely describing the varieties of sexual orientation and gender, which Allah, the All-Knowing and All-Powerful, creates as Allah wishes.

The non-procreative can include abstinent women as well as men, and in fact "the abstinent ones among women, who do not hope for marriage" [وَالْقَوَاعِدُ مِنَ النِّسآءِ الّتِي لَا يَرْجُوْنَ نِكَاحاً], are permitted to "put off their cover" in Sura 24:60.

Another intriguing example of a gender variant woman is Jesus's mother Mary. According to ancient notions about procreation, males were the only ones capable of producing seed. It would be impossible for a woman to give birth to a child, let alone a boy, without receiving seed from a male. In Christianity, this problem is solved by making God the male father of Jesus. According to the Qur'an, however, God does not procreate. This means that the seed that became Jesus came from within Mary. If Mary carried viable seed originating from within her, then by ancient definitions, she was a male, despite appearances to the contrary. So the Qur'an says that, when Mary was born, her mother declared that she was a female baby, but God knew better:
 

(Qur'an 3:36) Lord, surely, I have brought it forth a female - and Allah knew best what she brought forth - and the male is not like the female...
Arabic: رَبِّ اِنِّي وَضَعْتُها اُنْثى وَاللهُ اَعْلَمُ بِمَا وَضَعَت وَلَيْسَ الذَّكَرُ كَالاُنْثى

There are other traditions about the gender variance of Mary. I have argued elsewhere that Mary's virginity is not merely the innocent state of a girl who has not yet known a man, but a more permanent rejection of sex with men, like that of the Vestal virgins in Rome. In Isaiah 7:14, it is predicted that a virgin will conceive bear a son, but the word for virgin used there is not the generic bethulah (בתולה) used throughout the Hebrew scripture for girls who have not yet had sex. Instead, the word almah (עלמה) is used, a very rare word in the scriptures, which is the female counterpart to elem (עלמ), meaning boy. In the other verses in which it is used, it is compatible with a meaning of tomboy or rebuffer of men (cf. Proverbs 30:18-19, in which an almah appears to be impermeable to men).

Homosexual activity by straight men
Homosexual activity by homosexuals (eunuchs) is not spoken of in the Qur'an, which mentions only the unjust homosexual rape perpetrated by straight men against other straight men. Besides the Lut story, sexual exploitation of straight males is also alluded to in the assurance that the prophet Joseph's slaveholders "abstained from him" (12:20: وَكَانُوْا فِيهِ مِنَ الزَّاهِدِيْنَ).

But the Qur'an and hadith also have traces of the permitted homosexual desires of straight men. There is even a hadith in Bukhari, admittedly giving not the Prophet's opinion but that of Abu Jafar, according to which a pedophile is prohibited from marrying the mother of his boy-beloved if there is penetration:
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 25:
As for whom(ever) plays with a boy: if he inserted it into him, then he shall not marry his mother.
Arabic: فِيمَنْ يَلْعَبُ بالصَّبِي: إنْ أدْخَلَهُ فِيهِ فَلا يَتَزَوَّجَنَّ أُمَّهُ

(This rule is accompanied in the same chapter by prohibitions against a man marrying both a mother and her daughter.) Apparently according to this hadith, even sexual penetration of a boy is not considered sodomy, because if it was, surely the sodomite would have more worries than whether he could marry the boy's mother! Like whether he preferred to die by fire, stoning, or falling from a high tower! These are some of the punishments mentioned in the hadith for "doing as the people of Lut did." [A reader wrote in to say that this hadith would not necessarily imply that penetration of boys was not sodomy, but could be a recognition of the fact that not all crimes will be discovered and punished and that one who does penetrate a boy, even if he is not punished for sodomy for whatever reason, should at least know in his own conscience that the mother of his boyfriend is off limits. In any case, one possible inference from this hadith is still very interesting: namely, that if a man plays with a boy without penetration, then marrying the mother is still a possibility!!]

The distinction between pederasty (sex with boys) and sodomy (penetration of "males") was commonly, albeit not universally maintained throughout the ancient world, and indeed survived throughout most of the history of Islam until at least the nineteenth century (in spite of the futile objections of some medieval scholars). Apparently, boy-love was considered okay by many people because, like "natural eunuchs," adolescent boys were also thought to lack the "desire/skill that belongs to adult males" (sexual potency with women, or at any rate fertility). The Qur'an itself gives support to pederasts in its glimpses of paradise:
 

52:24 And they shall have boys [غِلْمَانٌ] who will walk around among them, as if they were hidden pearls.

56:22-23 And dark-eyed ones [حُوْرٌ عِيْنٌ], the like of hidden pearls

76:19 And boys never altering in age [وِلْدَانٌ مُتَخَلَّدُوْنَ] will circulate among them, when you see them you will count them as scattered pearls.

2:25 And they shall have immaculate partners [اَزْوَاجٌ مُّطَهَّرَةٌ] in [the gardens] ...

4:57 And they shall have immaculate partners [اَزْوَاجٌ مُّطَهَّرَةٌ] in them ...

One of the great male Sufi contemporaries of Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya provided a divine justification for a pederastic relationship, which was repeated without a hint of disapproval in a 10th century book about great Sufi women:
 

One day Rabi'a saw Rabah [al-Qaysi] kissing a young boy [وهو يقبّل صبيا صغيرا]. 'Do you love him?' she asked. 'Yes,' he said. To which she replied, 'I did not imagine that there was room in your heart to love anything other than God, the Glorious and Mighty!' Rabah was overcome at this and fainted. When he awoke, he said, 'On the contrary, this is a mercy that God Most High has put into the hearts of his slaves.'
(Quoted from as-Sulami, Early Sufi Women = ذكر النّسوة المتعبّدات الصّوفيات, translated by Rkia E. Cornell, Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999, pp. 78-79.)

Sexual use of eunuchs
Besides boys, straight Muslim men were occasionally interested in grown adults as well, provided they were not "male." There is a hadith in which the Prophet's companions asked whether they were allowed to use men (presumably prisoners of war) as eunuchs to fulfill their sexual urges, since they were far from their wives.
 

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 6:
(9) Narrated ibn Mas'ud: We used to fight alongside the Prophet, peace be upon him. There were no women with us, so we said: "O Messenger of God, may we not treat some as eunuchs [ألا نَستَخْصِي]?" He forbade us to do so.

The version in Bukhari, Book LXII Ch. 8:13a says that rather than let the companions "treat [some] as eunuchs" while stuck out on military campaign, the Prophet allowed them to have sex with a sexually experienced, unmarried woman who would take a cloak as compensation [رَخَّصَ لَنا أنْ نَنكِح المَرأَة بالثَّوْبِ], and he recited to them from the Qur'an (5:87): "O ye who believe! Make not unlawful the good things which Allah has made lawful for you, but commit no transgression." This mention of a cloak as compensation is a reference to a story that is told with more details in Sahih Muslim, Book of Nikah, Hadith 13, 22 and 23. The permission to have sex with a woman for an agreed price reflects the ancient view that a man could not commit adultery by having sex with an unmarried, sexually experienced woman, but only by having sex with a married woman or a marriageable daughter.

Clearly, when the companions came to the Prophet asking if they could designate eunuchs, it was because they were seeking a way to find lawful sexual release, and they saw eunuchs as such a way. The fact that Muhammad forbade the companions from treating captive men as eunuchs, or making them into eunuchs, is not the point here. Of course, using a straight male as a eunuch was wrong -- that was essentially the sin of the people of Lut. But what about using a natural eunuch (i.e. one who permanently lacks arousal with women) as a eunuch? Given that ibn Mas'ud made reference to the use of eunuchs for sexual gratification, and given that the Prophet understood what he meant, that indicates that the use of eunuchs for sexual gratification was known in Arabic society, and was considered a use that was appropriate to eunuchs. Since eunuchs were not considered male, there was no prohibition against it, not even in the Qur'an.

Eunuchs were still sex objects for straight men in the Mamluk dynasty, according to David Ayalon in Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships(Jerusalem, 1999). They not only served to prevent older Mamluks from having sexual access to younger trainees:
 

The eunuchs seem to have served as a shield against homosexual lust in yet another way. They themselves formed the target of that lust, thus diverting it from the youngsters. They are described as being womanly and docile in bed at night and manly and warlike by day in a campaign and in similar circumstances (hum nisaa' li-mutma'inn muqeem wa rijaal in kaanat al-asfaar; li-annahum bil-nahaar fawaaris wa-bil-layl 'araa'is). [Arabic transcribed by Ayalon on page 34, from Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi, Al-Lataa'if wal-Zaraa'if, Cairo 1324/1906-7, p. 79, lines 1-7; and the same quote from Tha'alibi in his Tamtheel wal-Muhaadara, Cairo 1381/1961, p. 224.]

A eunuch Companion?
As for the issue of whether Muhammad himself expressly acknowledged that some people by nature are incapable of heterosexuality, thus being natural eunuchs, consider the following ahadith.

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 2:
The Statement of the Prophet, peace be upon him: "Whoever is able to perform coitus should get married, for it helps him lower his gaze and use his private parts in the best way." And should he get married who does not have a desire for conjugal intercourse?
(3) Narrated 'Alqama: [...] I heard [Abdullah] saying [to Uthman]: [...] The Prophet, peace be upon him, once said to us: "O young men! Whoever among you is able to perform coitus, he should get married, and whoever is not able, should abstain, because it will unnerve him."
The Arabic of the last sentence is: يا مَعْشَرَ الشَّبابِ مَن اسْتَطاعَ مِنْكُم الباءَةَ فَلْيَتَزَوَّجْ، وَمَنْ لَمْ يَستَطِيع فَعَلَيْهِ بالصَّوْم، فإنَّهُ لَهُ وِجاءٌ

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 3:
Whoever is not able to perform coitus should abstain.
(4) Narrated Abdullah: We were with the Prophet, peace be upon him, as young men and we did not feel any passion. And the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said to us: "O young men! Whoever among you is able to perform coitus, he should get married, and whoever is not able, should abstain, because it will unnerve him."

In the next case, a specific man, Uthman bin Madh'un, comes to ask if he can be permitted to live a life of asceticism, and he is not allowed to:

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 8:
What is disliked about asceticism and eunuchism.
(11) Narrated Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas: The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, forbade Uthman bin Madh'un to be an ascetic, and if he had allowed him, we would have lived as eunuchs.
(12) Narrated Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas: He forbade this, that is to say, the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, forbade 'Uthman bin Madh'un, and if he had allowed him to be an ascetic, we would have lived as eunuchs.
The Arabic of the last sentence is: وَلَوْ أجازَ لَهُ التَّبَتُّلَ لإخْتَصَيْنا

But notice the different outcome in the following case:

Bukhari, Authentic Traditions, Book LXII (Marriage), Chapter 8:
(13b) Narrated Abu Huraira: I said, "O Messenger of God, I am a young male, and I fear torment for myself, but I do not feel that with which to marry women" [إنِّي رَجُلٌ شابٌّ وأنا أخافُ على نَفسِي العَنَتَ وَلا أجِدُ ما أتَزَوَّجُ بِهِ النِّساءَ]. He remained silent. Then I said something similar to that, and he remained silent. Then I said something similar to that, and he remained silent. Then I said something similar to that. Then the Prophet of God, peace be upon him, said: "O Abu Huraira, the pen is dried as to what you are experiencing. So be a eunuch for that reason or leave it alone." [يا أبا هُرَيْرَةَ، جَفَّ القَلَمُ بِمَا أنتَ لاق فاخْتَصِ عَلى ذَلِكَ أوْ ذَرْ].

This hadith is packed with information that raises a load of questions: What does he mean by his being a "young male"? What is the torment that he fears for himself? What does he not have that he would need in order to pair up with women? And why does he use the plural "marry women" and not say "marry a woman" as one might well expect? Why does the Prophet (sas) stay silent, and wait for him to repeat the statement, and why does he answer on exactly the fourth time? Finally, what does the Prophet's command mean: "So be a eunuch for that reason or leave it alone"? Leave what alone? Stop doing what?

Since Abu Huraira calls himself a young male or male youth, we have to assume he is on the verge of adulthood or has just crossed over into adulthood when he makes his statement. He is at the point when his maleness will really have to show itself -- if not, he will find himself in the eunuch category. The test of manhood is precisely sexual potency with women, which in a fully grown adult signifies fertility. Whoever did not develop that skill, would be a eunuch by default.

Abu Huraira is at a critical time of life when everything changes for a male. In ancient times throughout the Mediterranean world, beardless adolescent boys were often objects of adoration and courtship for other older men, and there is some evidence that this situation was also known among the Arabs, as indicated above. But when a boy crossed over into manhood, he was no longer a fit object for this kind of attention. What made him no longer fit was his newly acquired status as a full-grown male, which implied that he was now fertile for procreation with women as evidenced by, among other things, his getting erections around women.

Abu Huraira is just crossing this threshold, but he has a couple of problems. First, he says, he fears torment for himself, that is, for his nafs. The word for torment here is 'anat, which is used in the Qur'an in a context (surat Nisa', 4:25) that suggests it is the torment of sexual abstinence. Some interpreters view it as the torment of having committed sins. For them, the torment must be the remorse that comes after the inevitable failure to be abstinent. They do not like to think of Allah (swt) describing sexual abstinence as a torment that requires a remedy. But it is much simpler and more true to human nature to assume that the torment is that of living under the influence of youthful sexual hormones with no appropriate way of working them out. In sura 4:25, the ones feeling torment are men who lack the power or status to marry (or have sex with) free believing women, and the remedy for their torment is to allow them to marry (or have sex with) slave girls with the permission of their families, as long as they pay them their due compensation and as long as the slave girls are not seeing other men.

But Abu Huraira has come with a different problem than the men referred to in the Qur'an. He does not find in himself what it takes to marry "women" at all. He is not talking about their social status, but their gender. Now, if he had meant to say that he was so poor that he could not afford even a slave girl, he would have said that he did not have what he needed "to marry a woman." After all, before he starts complaining that he can't afford a bunch of wives, he would probably first say whether he could afford one. But he doesn't talk about one woman, he starts right in by saying that what he lacks is the ability to marry "women." Because he uses the plural, the statement becomes an enunciation of his inability to be with women in general. Abu Huraira is expressing that he is impotent with women.

So if Abu Huraira is impotent with women, what is the nature of the torment that he fears? The word 'anat still suggests the torment of sexual abstinence. It is still the question of how to exercise his hormonally dictated sexual needs. Of course, if he is not aroused by women, having to abstain from sex with them would not even be a problem, let alone a torment. But what about having sex with men?

By calling himself a male, he is cutting himself out of the pool of potential passive partners for other men. But by admitting his impotence with women, he is excluding himself from the male category. The statement is confusing, and perhaps necessarily so, since Abu Huraira is still a young man, and who knows, perhaps he might still develop sexual feelings for women.

And so it is natural that the Prophet would not rush to answer, but rather remain silent. He cannot settle Abu Huraira's dilemma, because he does not have enough information to be sure of the correct answer.

Why does he wait for him to ask four times? Four times is for the four seasons. In Hanafi law on impotence as grounds for divorce, the wife has to give the husband a whole year to consummate the marriage before she can choose to divorce him, because a man is not at his best at every time of year, and he may have to wait for the season that most agrees with him before he is able to perform, which may be summer, fall, winter or spring. Even if the husband is a eunuch, she still has to wait a year to see if he can consummate, but if he is castrated, she can get a divorce right away (see Al-Marghinani, Hidaya, Book on Divorce, Chapter on Impotence).

Abu Huraira comes to the Prophet saying the same thing four times, meaning that he is in the same condition no matter what time of year it is. And so, the Prophet tells him his condition is permanent, using a metaphor for a sealed destiny: "The pen is dried as to what you are experiencing." Here you have a statement from the Prophet affirming that a eunuch, or in modern terms a gay man, cannot change his sexual orientation.

Finally, what does the answer mean: "So be a eunuch for that reason or let it be"? The alternatives he gives are stark: (a) be a eunuch or (b) let it be. What is it that the young man on the brink of adulthood would have to stop doing, unless he were a eunuch? What does a youth do before adulthood that males cannot do in adulthood but eunuchs can? One answer springs to mind: youths are love objects for men, particularly playing the passive role as the "beloved", until they reach manhood when the active-passive sexual relationship with the older male lover has to stop. That is one thing that he will have to cease doing if he is not a eunuch. But a eunuch never achieves manhood, so there is no reason why he would have to stop being passive with men. Notice that "being a eunuch" is the opposite alternative to "stopping" whatever you were doing; in other words, a eunuch does not have to stop.

So we have our answer.

To sum up, Abu Huraira, the "father of a kitten," has come to the Prophet as a very young man, on the brink of adulthood, and has admitted that he is currently impotent with women. The Prophet waits for a year before giving his opinion. But after a year has passed and Abu Huraira's statement has not changed, the Prophet tells him that what he is experiencing is not going to change, so Abu Huraira has to make a decision between two options. He can't go back and forth from one option to the other. He can be a eunuch and keep doing what he was doing before to meet his sexual needs -- which seems to be the anticipated choice. Or if being a eunuch is not the choice Abu Huraira wants to make, then he will have to stop doing whatever he was doing and conform to the rules for adult males. It appears Abu Huraira chose to live as a eunuch in keeping with his consistent year-long testimony, given that he never married or had any children. That might go some way to explain his controversial reputation.

Prohibition of public displays
Finally, there is a pair of verses calling for punishment in cases of indecency (فَاحِشَة) between people of any gender (4:15-16). These verses are often cited as a prohibition of homosexuality because one of the verses refers to indecency committed by women (with the implication that men were not involved). But in referring separately to an act committed by women, these verses are simply covering all the bases, so to speak. In order to address all cases, it is necessarily for grammatical reasons to deal separately with an offense by women only. As to what is meant by an indecency, the text does not specify. But in order for someone to be convicted of the offense, four eyewitnesses have to testify to it, which seems to indicate some sort of public act. Certainly the idea that, for the sake of decency, erotic behavior should be carried out in private goes back at least as far as Plato. In any case, by "indecency," these verses are not referring to homosexuality per se, since two people of opposite sex can also be covered by verse 4:16.