This work traces the history of homosexuality from the earliest societies and the first civilizations to the present day. On the way he considers Balinese cross-dressing and Peruvian temple sacrifice, Sumerian male temple prostitutes and Egyptian sexual positions. The reader is taken on a journey from the early Middle Ages, when the western world was tolerant of homosexuality, to the homosexual flowering in the open, creative society of Renaissance Florence, and from male bonding amonst the repressed Victorians to the rise of gay politics in this century.