Gay Marriage In The Roman Empire

The following excerpt comes from Marilyn Yalom’s The History of The Wife:

“Nero, the flamboyant Roman emperor who ruled from 54 to 68 C.E., went so far as to marry two men, sequentially, in public ceremonies. Suetonius wrote of Nero’s first homosexual marriage: “Having tried to turn the boy Sporus into a girl by castration, he went through a wedding ceremony with him – dowry, bridal veil and all – which the whole Court attended; then brought him home, and treated him as a wife. He dressed Sporus in the fine clothes normally worn by an Empress and took him in his own litter … through the Street of Images at Rome, kissing him amorously now and then.” He later also married the freedman Doryphorus. Nero forced the Imperial Court to treat his male brides with the same courtesy bestowed upon his three heterosexual wives (first Octavia, whom he divorced on a trumped-up adultery charge and then put to death; then Poppaea, who died three years later; and finally Statilia Messalina.)

Homosexual weddings seemed to have increased during the first and second centuries, but were outlawed in 342. Some of the reactions to these weddings sound very much like those voiced today by conservatives facing gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies, domestic partnerships, and the possibility of legalized marriage.”