Gay World With Tim Warrington
The Greek Islands are a popular holiday destination for gay travellers, particularly Mykonos.
Greece Ancient Greece was A-okay with being gay. Modern Greece – not so happy. But things are changing… slowly. In 1982, American songstress Charlene went to “Nice and the Isle Of Greece” where she “sipped champagne on a yacht”. Thirty years later, it’s hard to imagine much cause for popping the bubbly in Greece. The Hellenic Republic is in its fifth year of recession with unemployment at a whopping 22 per cent. Greece is experiencing its worst fiscal crisis since welcoming back democracy in 1974 – poor Greece… literally! This Southern European country of 11 million people is doing it tough at the moment. The Global Financial Crisis and uncontrolled government spending has devastated the country’s economy, resulting in massive, multibillion-dollar bailouts (€240 billion so far), a substantial debt write-off, stringent austerity measures and internal political instability. And despite the fabled pink dollar, Greek gays are not immune; they now battle recession as well as discrimination. Once upon a time in Ancient Greece, it was okay to be gay. Same-sex sexual relations were routine. Society didn’t distinguish sexual behaviour by the gender of the participants, rather the roles they played. The dominant partner, almost always older and upper class was seen as masculine. The passive partner, who was usually younger and lower class, was perceived as feminine. While this type of homosexual arrangement was commonplace in Greek society of old, more equal relationships between mature men were rare. One notable exception was that of Alexander The Great and his buddy, Hephaestion. In Greek mythology too, heroes of the Trojan War, Achilles and Patroclus, were rumoured to be more than just friends. 104 DNA
And it wasn’t just the boys. There is strong evidence to suggest lesbian love was present in Ancient Greece, too, albeit far more discreet. Sappho, a 6th Century BC Greek poet was born on the Isle Of Lesbos. Not much of her writing remains, but fragments of her poems that have survived focus on the beauty of women, proclaiming her love for girls. Sexual acts aren’t mentioned but often implied – regardless, she is seen as the mother of lesbianism. The term “lesbian” came into common usage in the 19th Century, in
“There’s the secular Greece and the religious Greece and somewhere in the fray, there’s gay Greece desperate to be recognised.” homage to the island of Sappho’s birth. Now, fast-forward roughly 2,500 years. Male and female same-sex sexual activity is legal in Greece. For males it was decriminalised way back in 1951. Lesbians weren’t mentioned or acknowledged at all in the Greek Criminal Code. But while it’s not technically illegal, homosexuality isn’t generally accepted. It’s still seen by many as
taboo – existing in a sort of no man’s land. A Eurobarometer survey on discrimination in the European Union published in 2007, showed that 77 per cent of Greeks believed that being gay or lesbian in their country “tends to be a disadvantage”. In 2005, Greece banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in the labour market, adopting a European Union directive, however, no serious effort has been made to enforce this legislation. Gays and lesbians cannot adopt and hate crime laws do not include sexual orientation or gender identity. One of the biggest issues facing the LGBT community is the Greek Orthodox Church. Church doctrine pledges allegiance to the hatethe-sin-love-the-sinner school of forgiveness, yet many Church leaders (and followers) strongly appose what they see as the “gay choice”. On the Orthodox Wiki website, it states, “We are not born homosexual as we are born with a particular skin colour or gender.” The former head of the Greek Orthodox Church, the late Archbishop Christodoulos was fervently homophobic. Famous for his one-note agenda of strict moralising, he once referred to gays as “handicapped”. In a 2004 sermon, Christodoulos stated, “Imagine the sorrowful state humanity has reached. It wants us to cover up and not speak about what is a declared, blatant and flagrant sin [homosexuality], because those who have the ‘defect’ are annoyed and because they want all the rest to admit that this is a natural situation.” He died. The new head of the Church, however, has made comments that may indicate a softening in his faith’s hard-line opposition to gays. Responding to government proposals in