Timeline of Homosexuality

1590 BC	First historical mention of Phoenecians, who practiced homosexuality in religious ritual
c. 1400 BC	The earliest date of the Biblical book of Leviticus, which includes the prohibition of "lying with a man as with a woman"
c. 55-57 AD	Paul writes Romans and 1 Corinthians, in which he condemns same-sex "indecent acts" and "homosexual offenders"
c. 100	Plutarch writes approvingly of attraction to either gender (see Homosexuality in Ancient Greece)
2nd cent.	The apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter depicts hell populated with men who pretended to be women, and women who slept with other women
342	Roman constitutions ban male prostitution
390	Roman constitutions reinforce ban on male prostitution, adding punishment of burning at the stake
438	Emperor Theodosius II punishes passive homosexuality with a death sentence
535	Emperor Justinian's Novella outlaws both passive and active homosexuality, reinforced by capital punishment
538	Justinian changs the penalty of homosexuality to penance
1886	Psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing writes Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), in which masturbation, sado-masochism, and "lust-murder" are sexual perversions that originate in heredity
1948	The Kinsey Report finds that 30 percent of adult American males among Kinsey's subjects had engaged in some kind of homosexual activity
1969	Stonewall Riot - New York policemen raid a gay bar and meet sustained resistance.
1973	The American Psychiatric Association declassifies "ego-syntonic homosexuality" (the condition of a person content with his or her homosexuality) as a mental illness
1995	Albania repeals anti-sodomy laws
2001	Gay couples marry under the same laws as heterosexual marriage in Amsterdam
2005	The Civil Marriage Act (Bill C-38) legalizes same-sex marriages in Canada (July 20)

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