Somewhat true but not entirely true, and it depends on the city. It was still highly stigmatized (or even illegal) for a man to be on the receiving end of gay sex even back then. It would be OK for a grown man to bang a teen boy but not another man. Any man on the receiving end would be shunned as effeminate just like nowadays with a huge social stigma. Probably would be OK to rape a man if raiding his village though during war as that would be manly if you're the one penetrating. Some cities in ancient Greece didn't even approve of banging teen boys. Depends where you were. There was one city however, can't remember which one, I want to say Thebes, that went through a short period of time where homosexuality was approved of and even encouraged, but that didn't last long, like a generation or two... they even had an elite group of soldiers that you had to join alongside your gay lover. The logic was that if you were fighting alongside your lover you're less.likely to run away, show cowardice, etc.. and if he died in battle you'd fight that much harder. For most of Greece though in the classical period they weren't so into gay sex as most people believe.... It was more man-boy love that they OK'd and even then, not all cities in ancient Greece allowed that.
All I can add to that is Ancient Greece was not a nation as such but a group of "city states" with their own rules and priorities. A city state was termed a "polis" hence the modern day term of metropolis. Polis has nothing to do with 'pole' referring to a bloke's appendage in case anyone is wondering and therefore nothing to do with gay sex.
Yeah, the gay soldier thing was at the forefront of my mind when I posted. The Greek culture of pederasty spread across Persia for a brief time. It wasn't as widely accepted though. As far as I can see the religions, and those that branch off, that stem from Jesus are the ones that tried to stamp it out. I'm happy to be wrong btw. It's more a question than a statement.
