Good thing we weren’t part of the legendary conqueror Genghis Kahn’s empire, ’cause we would have been screwed:
Homosexual acts were punishable by death under Genghis Khan’s rule, according to researchers who spent more than a year compiling the legendary Mongolian conqueror’s code of laws… Experts at the Research Institute of Ancient Mongolian Laws and Sociology said the ban was put into place because Genghis Khan wanted to expand the Mongolian population, which was about 1.5 million at the time. The rival Song Dynasty, which dominated today’s central China, was 100 million strong, Xinhua said. Khan’s 13th century empire stretched across Asia all the way to central Europe.
Those anti-gay laws may have been the world’s first. Quite a trailblazer, that Kahn.
Mr. B
Is there any verification that Khan’s law could have been the first of its kind? In the ancient world, where reproduction and survival were held in high regard, homosexuality was a punishable offense in many societies. Jewish law wasn’t written the way it appears in Leviticus to be picky–it was all about your people not dying out in the desert. Doesn’t really carry the same weight as anti-gay legislation in the modern world.
All of that to say, I’m not sure why this is so shocking. And it’s sure not the same thing as anti-gay legislation in the modern Western(ized) world.