The origin and development of the moral ideas

OUR review of the moral ideas concerning sexual relations has not yet come to an end. The gratification of the sexual instinct assumes forms which fall outside the ordinary pale of nature. Of these there is one which, on account of the rôle which it has played in the moral history of mankind, cannot be passed over in silence, namely, intercourse between individuals of the same sex, what is nowadays commonly called homosexual love.

In America homosexual customs have been observed among a great number of the native tribes. In nearly every part of the continent there seem to have been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions of women, and living with other men as their concubines or wives.3 Moreover, between young men who are comrades in arms there are liaisons d’amitié, which, according to Lafitau, “ne laissent aucun soupçon de vice apparent, quoiqu’il y ait, ou qu’il puisse y avoir, beaucoup de vice réel.”4

Homosexual practices are, or have been, very prominent among the peoples in the neighbourhood of Behring Sea.5 In Kadiak it was the custom for parents who had a girl-like son to dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at woman’s work, and letting him associate only with women and girls. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he was married to some wealthy man and was then called an achnuchik or shoopan.6 Dr. Bogoraz gives the following account of a similar practice prevalent among the Chukchi:—“It happens frequently that, under the supernatural influence of one of their shamans, or priests, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts a woman’s attire, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself altogether to female occupation. Furthermore, this disowner of his sex takes a husband into the yurt and does all the work which is usually incumbent on the wife in most unnatural and voluntary subjection. Thus it frequently happens in a yurt that the husband is a woman, while the wife is a man! These abnormal changes of sex imply the most abject immorality in the community, and appear to be strongly encouraged by the shamans, who interpret such cases as an injunction of their individual deity.”

The change of sex was usually accompanied by future shamanship; indeed, nearly all the shamans were former delinquents of their sex.7 Among the Chukchi male shamans who are clothed in woman’s attire and are believed to be transformed physically into women are still quite common; and traces of the change of a shaman’s sex into that of a woman may be found among many other Siberian tribes.8 In some cases at least there can be no doubt that these transformations were connected with homosexual practices. In his description of the Koriaks, Krasheninnikoff makes mention of the ke’yev, that is, men occupying the position of concubines; and he compares them with the Kamchadale koe’kčuč, as he calls them, that is, men transformed into women. Every koe’kčuč, he says, is regarded as a magician and interpreter of dreams; but from his confused description Mr. Jochelson thinks it may be inferred that the most important feature of the institution of the koe’kčuč lay, not in their shamanistic power, but in their position with regard to the satisfaction of the unnatural inclinations of the Kamchadales. The koe’kčuč wore women’s clothes, did women’s work, and were in the position of wives or concubines.9

In the Malay Archipelago homosexual love is common,10 though not in all of the islands.11 It is widely spread among the Bataks of Sumatra.12 In Bali it is practised openly, and there are persons who make it a profession.13 The basir of the Dyaks are men who make their living by witchcraft and debauchery. They “are dressed as women, they are made use of at idolatrous feasts and for sodomitic abominations, and many of them are formally married to other men.”14 Dr. Haddon says that he never heard of any unnatural offences in Torres Straits;15 but in the Rigo district of British New Guinea several instances of pederasty have been met with,16 and at Mowat in Daudai it is regularly indulged in.17 Homosexual love is reported as common among the Marshall Islanders18 and in Hawaii.19 From Tahiti we hear of a set of men called by the natives mahoos, who “assume the dress, attitude, and manners, of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance. With the manners of the women, they adopt their peculiar employments…. The encouragement of this abomination is almost solely confined to the chiefs.”20 Of the New Caledonians M. Foley writes:—“La plus grande fraternité n’est pas chez eux la fraternité uterine, mais la fraternité des armes. Il en est ainsi surtout au village de Poepo. Il est vrai que cette fraternité des armes est compliquée de pédérastie.”21

Among the natives of the Kimberley District in West Australia, if a young man on reaching a marriageable age can find no wife, he is presented with a boy-wife, known as chookadoo. In this case, also, the ordinary exogamic rules are observed, and the “husband” has to avoid his “mother-in-law,” just as if he were married to a woman. The chookadoo is a boy of five years to about ten, when he is initiated. “The relations which exist between him and his protecting billalu” says Mr. Hardman, “are somewhat doubtful. There is no doubt they have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy.”22 Such marriages are evidently exceedingly common. As the women are generally monopolised by the older and more influential men of the tribe, it is rare to find a man under thirty or forty who has a wife; hence it is the rule that, when a boy becomes five years old, he is given as a boy-wife to one of the young men.23 According to Mr. Purcell’s description of the natives of the same district, “every useless member of the tribe” gets a boy, about five or seven years old; and these boys, who are called mullawongahs, are used for sexual purposes.24 Among the Chingalee of South Australia, Northern Territory, old men are often noticed with no wives but accompanied by one or two boys, whom they jealously guard and with whom they have sodomitic intercourse.25 That homosexual practices are not unknown among other Australian tribes may be inferred from Mr.

In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have intercourse with men, paying those men who please them.27 In an old account of that island, dating from the seventeenth century, it is said: “II y a … quelques hommes qu’ils appellent Tsecats, qui sont hommes effeminez et impuissans, qui recherchent les garçons, et font mine d’en estre amoureux, en contrefaisans les filles et se vestans ainsi qu’elles leurs font des presents pour dormir auec eux, et mesmes se donnent des noms de filles, en faisant les honteuses et les modestes…. Ils haïssent les femmes et ne les veulent point hanter.”28 Men behaving like women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German South-West Africa29 and the Diakité-Sarracolese in the French Soudan,30 but as regards their sexual habits details are wanting. Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons.31 But among the natives of Africa generally such practices seem to be comparatively rare,32 except among Arabic-speaking peoples and in countries like Zanzibar,33 where there has been a strong Arab influence. In North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns; they are frequent among the peasants of Egypt34 and universal among the Jbâla inhabiting the Northern mountains of Morocco. On the other hand, they are much less common or even rare among the Berbers and the nomadic Bedouins,35 and it is reported that the Bedouins of Arabia are quite exempt from them.36