Far from it. And it would probably be pointless to adjure card-carrying gay haters to pick it up. They may even discover in themselves some sympathy and admiration for the gay movement, its goals, and its achievements. Others will perhaps decide that those were the good old days after all, and whine about decadence and moral decay. But then they, and everyone else, will know exactly what company they keep.
Contemporary homophobia is an original phenomenon.
It brings together into a new and unique configuration beliefs and attitudes that evolved at different times and in different contexts. Fone s book chronicles the successive appearance, in Western philosophy, literature, theology, and the law, of the constitutive elements of homophobia as we know it. The Greeks and the Romans thus contributed their deep disgust for the penetration of the male by the male, rooted in an even deeper disgust for everything female. Contempt for the effeminate, sexually passive male has been one of the most enduring legacies of the ancient world to ours. The caricature through which it is, still today, often expressed can already be found, complete with lisp and limp wrist, in the works of Greek and Latin satiric authors.