Homosexuality and the City: An Historical Overview

Abstract

Ever since the time of ancient Athens and the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, homosexuality has been associated with the city. Historians over the past decade have chronicled urban gay and lesbian groups in Renaissance Italy, Enlightenment France and Britain, and modern America and Australia, and social scientists have also identified emerging gay communities in Asia. Their researches show how homosexuals formed urban networks of sociability and solidarity, and how the presence of such minority communities impacted on urban development from Castro Street to Soho. Homosexuals often moved to cities to escape the sexual and social constraints of traditional life, and they played a major role in transforming the city and in creating a particular urban ethos. The city, in turn, is the site for the construction of much contemporary gay and lesbian culture.