Gay men are male homosexuals. Historic terminology for gay men has included inverts and uranians.
Gay men continue to face significant discrimination in large parts of the world, particularly in parts of Asia and Africa. In the Western world, many gay men still experience discrimination in their daily lives, though some openly gay men have reached national success and prominence, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and heads of state or government such as Edgars Rinkēvičs (President of Latvia since 2023) and Scott Bessent (United States Secretary of the Treasury since 2025).
The word gay is recommended by LGBTQ groups and style guides to describe all people exclusively attracted to members of the same sex, (Reprinted from ) while lesbian refers specifically to female homosexuals, and gay men to male homosexuals.
Male homosexuality in world history
Some scholars argue that the terms "homosexual" and "gay" are problematic when applied to men in ancient cultures since, for example, neither Greeks nor Romans possessed any one word covering the same semantic range as the modern concept of "homosexuality". Furthermore, there were diverse sexual practices that varied in acceptance depending on time and place. Other scholars argue that there are significant similarities between ancient and modern male homosexuals. The author has made adapted and expanded portions of this book available online as A Critique of Social Constructionism and Postmodern Queer Theory .
In cultures influenced by Abrahamic religions, the law and the church established sodomy as a transgression against divine law or a crime against nature. The condemnation of anal sex between males, however, predates Christian belief."sow illegitimate and bastard seed in courtesans, or sterile seed in males in defiance of nature." Plato in The Laws (Book VIII p.841 edition of Stephanus) or p.340, edition of Penguin Books, 1972. Throughout the majority of Christian history, most Christian theologians and denominations have considered homosexual behavior as immoral or sinful. Condemnation existed in ancient Greece; for instance Plato, in his Laws, described male homosexuality as 'unnatural' and argued for its prohibition.
Many historical figures, including Socrates, Lord Byron, Edward II, and Hadrian,Roman Homosexuality By Craig Arthur Williams, p.60 have had terms such as gay or bisexual applied to them. Some scholars, such as Michel Foucault, have regarded this as risking the anachronistic introduction of a contemporary construction of sexuality foreign to their times, though other scholars challenge this.
Africa
The first recorded possible homosexual male couple in history is commonly deemed to be Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, an ancient Egyptian couple, who lived around 2400 BCE. The pair are portrayed in a nose-kissing position, the most intimate pose in Egyptian art, surrounded by what appear to be their heirs.Richard Parkinson: Homosexual Desire and Middle Kingdom Literature. In: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (JEA), vol. 81, 1995, pp. 57–76. The 6th- or 7th-century Ashmolean Parchment AN 1981.940 provides the only example in the Coptic language of a love spell between men. More recently, the European colonization of Africa resulted in the introduction of anti-sodomy laws, and is generally regarded as the central reason why African nations have such stringent laws against gay men today. Three countries or jurisdictions have imposed the death penalty for gay men in Africa. These include Mauritania and several regions in Nigeria and Jubaland.
Americas
As is true of many other non-Western cultures, it is difficult to determine the extent to which Western notions of sexual orientation apply to Pre-Columbian cultures. Evidence of homoerotic sexual acts between men has been found in many pre-conquest civilizations in Latin America, such as the Aztecs, Mayas, Quechuas, Moches, Zapotecs, the Incas, and the Tupinambá of Brazil. In fact, in Aztec mythology, the deity Xochipilli was a symbol of gay men and male prostitutes.
The Spanish conquistadors expressed horror at discovering sodomy openly practiced among native men and used it as evidence of their supposed inferiority.Mártir de Anglería, Pedro. (1530). Décadas del Mundo Nuevo . Quoted by Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre. "Good Indians", "Bad Indians", "What Christians?": The Dark Side of the New World in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478–1557), Delaware Review of Latin American Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2002. The conquistadors talked extensively of sodomy among the natives to depict them as savages and hence justify their conquest and forced conversion to Christianity. As a result of the growing influence and power of the conquistadors, many Native leaders started condemning homosexual acts themselves. During the period following European colonization, homosexuality was prosecuted by the Inquisition, sometimes leading to death sentences on the charges of sodomy, and the practices became clandestine. Many homosexual men went into heterosexual marriages to keep appearances, and some turned to the clergy to escape public scrutiny.
During the Mexican Inquisition, after a series of denunciations, authorities arrested 123 men in 1658 on suspicion of homosexuality. Although many escaped, the Royal Criminal Court sentenced fourteen men from different social and ethnic backgrounds to death by public burning, in accordance to the law passed by Isabella the Catholic in 1497. The sentences were carried out together on one day, 6 November 1658. The records of these trials and those that occurred in 1660, 1673 and 1687, suggest that Mexico City, like many other large cities at the time had an active underworld.
East Asia
In East Asia, same-sex relations between men has been noted since the earliest recorded history. Homosexuality in China, known as the passions of the cut peach and various other euphemisms, has been recorded since approximately 600 BCE. Male homosexuality was mentioned in many famous works of Chinese literature. The instances of same-sex affection and sexual interactions described in the classical novel Dream of the Red Chamber seem as familiar to observers in the present as do equivalent stories of romances between heterosexual people during the same period. Confucianism, being primarily a social and political philosophy, focused little on sexuality, whether homosexual or heterosexual. Ming dynasty literature, such as Bian Er Chai (弁而釵/弁而钗), portray homosexual relationships between men as more enjoyable and more "harmonious" than heterosexual relationships.Kang, Wenqing. Obsession: male same-sex relations in China, 1900–1950, Hong Kong University Press. Page 2 Writings from the Liu Song dynasty by Wang Shunu claimed that homosexuality was as common as heterosexuality in the late 3rd century China. Opposition to male homosexuality in China originates in the medieval Tang dynasty (618–907), attributed to the rising influence of Christian and Islamic values,Hinsch, Bret. (1990). Passions of the Cut Sleeve. University of California Press. p. 77-78. but did not become fully established until the Westernization efforts of the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China.Kang, Wenqing. Obsession: male same-sex relations in China, 1900–1950, Hong Kong University Press. Page 3
Europe
Classical period
The earliest Western documents (in the form of literary works, art objects, and mythographic materials) concerning same-sex male relationships are derived from ancient Greece. Certain city-states prohibited it while others were ambiguous or allowed it. In Athens, laws were eventually enacted to curb pederasty and homosexuality in general, but not prohibit every instance of it.
In Ancient Rome, male homosexuality is documented through pederasty, but male sexual passivity was criticized; pederastic attentions were considered legitimate only if it is directed towards current or former slaves. The Hellenophile emperor Hadrian is renowned for his relationship with Antinous, but the Christian emperor Theodosius I decreed a law on 6 August 390, condemning passive males to be burned at the stake. In 558 C.E., The Emperor Justinian expanded the proscription to the active partner as well, warning that such conduct can lead to the destruction of cities through the "wrath of God"
Some scholars argue that there are examples of male homosexual love in ancient literature, such as Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad.
Renaissance
During the Renaissance, wealthy cities in northern Italy—Florence and Venice in particular—were renowned for their widespread practice of same-sex love, engaged in by a considerable part of the male population and constructed along the classical pattern of Greece and Rome.Rocke, Michael, (1996), Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Ruggiero, Guido, (1985), The Boundaries of Eros, But even as many of the male population were engaging in same-sex relationships, the authorities, under the aegis of the Officers of the Night court, were prosecuting, fining, and imprisoning a good portion of that population. From the second half of the 13th century, death was the punishment for male homosexuality in most of Europe. The relationships of socially prominent figures, such as King James I and the Duke of Buckingham, served to highlight the issue, including in anonymously authored street pamphlets: "The world is chang'd I know not how, For men Kiss Men, not Women now; ... Of J. the First and Buckingham: He, true it is, his Wives Embraces fled, To slabber his lov'd Ganimede" (Mundus Foppensis, or The Fop Display'd, 1691).
Middle East
In ancient Sumer, a set of priests known as gala worked in the temples of the goddess Inanna, where they performed elegies and lamentations. Gala took female names, spoke in the eme-sal dialect, which was traditionally reserved for women, and appear to have engaged in homosexual intercourse. The Sumerian sign for gala was a ligature of the signs for "penis" and "anus". One Sumerian proverb reads: "When the gala wiped off his ass [he said], 'I must not arouse that which belongs to my mistress [i.e., Inanna]. In later Mesopotamian cultures, kurgarrū and assinnu were male servants of the goddess Ishtar (Inanna's East Semitic equivalent), who dressed in female clothing and performed war dances in Ishtar's temples. Several Akkadian proverbs seem to suggest that they may have also engaged in homosexual intercourse. In ancient Assyria, male homosexuality is documented. It is thought that ancient Assyria (2nd millennium BC to 1st millennium AD) viewed homosexuality as negative and at least criminal, with the religious codes of Zoroastrianism forbidding homosexuality. Some religious texts contain prayers for divine blessings on homosexual relationships.Gay Rights Or Wrongs: A Christian's Guide to Homosexual Issues and Ministry, by Mike Mazzalonga, 1996, p.11 The Almanac of Incantations contained prayers favoring on an equal basis the love of a man for a woman, of a woman for a man, and of a man for man.Pritchard, p. 181.
Gay men in modern Western history The use of gay to mean a "homosexual" man was first used as an extension of its application to prostitution: a gay boy was a young man or adolescent serving male clients. Similarly, a gay cat was a young man apprenticed to an older hobo and commonly exchanging sex and other services for protection and tutelage. The application to homosexuality was also an extension of the word's sexualized connotation of "uninhibited", which implied a willingness to disregard conventional sexual mores. In court in 1889, the prostitute John Saul stated: "I occasionally do odd-jobs for different gay people."