11. Ancient Greece, 500 – 400 BC (kind of)
Legend often paints ancient Greece as a queer paradise where homosexuals could be themselves. In reality, much like in ancient Rome, ancient Greece embraced homosexuality only under particular conditions. While cultural standards did vary between the loosely organized collection of city-states that comprised ancient Greece, by in large, homosexuality between adults was frowned upon. One notable exception was the Thebans, whose military is believed to have been composed of bonded pairs of homosexual men to encourage genuinely frantic fighting. The only homosexual behavior that was widely tolerated by the Greeks was pederasty, paiderastia in Greek, which was practiced in many of the city-states.
In the organized system of paiderastia, older men, known as erastes, would take on younger men, known as eromenos, as mentees. These older men would help raise the young men and train them in crafts, military exercises, and more. They also were legally allowed to indulge in sexual relationships with the young men, which the mentees may or may not have consented to. While pederasty carries a horrible connotation today, in ancient Greece the practice was not only legal but popular and socially embraced. After the Romans conquered Greece, they introduced laws prohibiting being a receiver of male homosexual sex.