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The circumstances of time and place determine whether a sexual minority can form at all, and they also determine which sexual minority has a chance to be recognized. For example, a “gay and lesbian” minority was unthinkable in ancient Greece and Rome, because homosexual contacts were never an issue but taken for granted. It was also unthinkable in medieval Europe, but for the opposite reason: Homosexual contacts were so severely condemned and prosecuted that it would have been suicidal for anyone to defend them. Today, different parts of the world present different pictures: In some Western countries a “gay and lesbian” minority is well recognized and has won equal rights, in others the civil rights struggle is continuing, and in still others it has hardly begun. In South Africa, couples of the same sex can get married, in Uganda male homosexual contact can be punished by life imprisonment. Different countries have different policies, not only in Africa, but also in Asia and the Americas. Moreover, some of these policies are in the process of changing, so that it is difficult to offer a summary. This is also true of other sexual minorites. Some of them have only recently become organized in some Western countries: Bisexuals, fetishists, sadomasochists, swingers, transvetites, transsexuals, and asexuals. How many of these will grow and succeed in their aims or decline and fail is an open question. It is also unclear whether they can establish themselves in other parts of the world. Sexual minorites are not absolute, stable anthropological constants.They emerge and disappear under certain, sometimes rapidly shifting social and political conditions. Obviously, this does not mean that human sexual behavior changes. After all, it is the result of a very long evolutionary process and has been more or less the same everywhere since time immemorial. However, the social attitudes toward some of this behavior have changed many times in the course of history.
The following sections offer brief descriptions of the sexual minorities that are best known today. We should keep in mind, however, that there may be some overlap, and that some individuals identify themselvs as members of several of these minorities.
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