First off I want to preface this by saying that by no means do I think homophobia is gone or that it’s accepted everywhere in the West. Go back a little over a decade and being openly homophobic was totally acceptable. We also couldn’t even get married.
However we have made a lot of progress in recent years. Is this the farthest we’ve gotten? Was there any other point in history when a culture was so open to the idea of homosexuality that one could identify as gay and be in a relationship without fear of reprisal? Or even go so far as to start a family, through adoption obviously, without sparking outrage?
I know different cultures and time periods had varying views and it wasn’t always vilified. But I’m not sure if I can see people getting to the level of acceptance we have now.
This is a great reply by u/PaxOttomanica to this question regarding the Ottoman empire.
I am not an expert on this topic, so if someone has complementary sources, I am more than open to criticism.
I intended here mostly to talk about same-sex relations in Tokugawa Japan, which is probably pretty up there in terms of positive acknowledgments of male same-sex relations. However, the Korean gentry class (yangban) in the 17th century were known to keep "boy-wives" ( Leupp's words, not mine) who were publicly acknowledged by the village., so I thought I would mention that here. These boys would, on reaching adulthood, enter a heterosexual marriage of their own.
Male same-sex relations in Japan were publicly acknowledged, but not in the way in which they take place in our society. These are relations that were based on a hierarchical difference between both parts, where one of them was understood to be either younger or of lower status. Of course, this would not have applied to every relationship of this type, but that was the pattern of the socially acceptable one. Particularly the ones involving kabuki actors, male prostitutes (yaro) or wakashu (youths) and brothel patrons, would work in a similar way in which these relationships happened between patrons and female prostitutes. Love between both parts may be publicly expressed, and a permanent or semi-permanent arrangement achieved, but a "sugar daddy" element would be understood to be taking place. Confucian morals condemned these types of "romance," but the criticism came from an angle of relinquishing of duty. And yet, popular culture around the red-light district and theatres was extremely extended and books about how to conduct oneself around prostitutes and wakashu, what to wear, how to offer money, etc. were widely circulated. So I would not say every sphere of society approved of those relationships, but they were an important element of urban life, and much discussed in literature.
For instance, in The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Okagami) by extremely popular 17th century author Ihara Saikaku, he very much juxtaposes the "true passion" of male love to the obligation/preference for women. He states in his preface
Women may serve a purpose for the amusement of retired old men in lands lacking handsome youths, but in a man's lusty prime they are not worthy companions even for conversation.
And, later on
[What is preferable,] ransoming a courtesan, or setting up a kabuki actor in a house of his own?
Saikaku also offers examples of famous literary figures both in China and Japan having preferred the company of men, with no reproach from their contemporaries, and lamenting that some of them are more famous as lovers of women.
I feel like I must mention that, even though, we have traditionally thought of wakashu, strictly as young men, performing the passive role in a same-sex relationship, there are issues of gender performance that complicate this classification. According to Joshua Mostow, an anonymous 17th century erotic book talks about
The term “wakashu,” the author relates, is generally defined as a male from the ages of eleven to twenty-two or twenty-three (in Japanese count). Yet he goes on to note that at Koya there are wakashu sixty years old and at Nachi there are wakashu as old as eighty.
The wakashu appear very distinctly garbed in this type of book, but they are also sometimes depicted having sex in an active role with women, and so we may be led to believe this classification had more to do with gender performance than explicitly with age or sexual role.
Finally, I feel like I must also briefly mention the "monastic tradition." Tales about acolytes (chigo) and monks appear in widely circulated anecdotal Buddhist literature all the way from Medieval times. Nanshoku, or "male love" is said to have been invented or imported to Japan by Kobo Daishi (774-835), the founder of the Shingon sect, in order to encourage monks to remain celibate. although sometimes the passion itself is seen as problematic, since attachment is frowned upon by Buddhism, the same-sex nature of the affair is never really remarked upon as particularly unsuitable. In many tales, the monks write poetry to the chigo and lament their coldness in exactly the same way in which this is portrayed in tales about heterosexual relationships. You can still find this sort of story in the 18th century, where in Ugetsu monogatari (a popular collection of stories by Ueda Akinari) we are told of a monk who went mad with grief when his chigo lover died and ate his corpse.
Sources:
Leupp, Gary P. Male Colors : The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley ; London: U of California, 1995
Ihara, Saikaku, and Paul Gordon. Schalow. The Great Mirror of Male Love. Stanford, Calif: Stanford UP, 1990.
"The Gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire" in Mostow, Joshua S., Norman Bryson, and Maribeth. Graybill. Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field. Honolulu: U of Hawaii, 2003
Schmidt-Hori, Sachi. "The New Lady-in-Waiting Is a Chigo: Sexual Fluidity and Dual Transvestism in a Medieval Buddhist Acolyte Tale." Japanese Language and Literature 43.2 (2009): 383-423.