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INor did the Inquisition bother to investigate further into what was apparently a rampant gay scene in the town of Pamiers.
"Gay scene" sounds like a perfect name for a town upgrade. Negligible loss of pop. growth for increased happiness of characters with homosexual trait, who have the town in their domain. Enables special events.
 
IMHO the reason there aren't events and such around homosexuality is that:

1.) They would all be negative and suddenly the community would be up in arms over that. Or if they weren't, the community would be up in arms over it.
2.) Homosexuality, whether you agree with it or not, is a controversial subject in most of the world. They would be alienating customers by pandering to the homosexual community and supporters by adding events that could offend their other customers.

Personally I think the guys did a good job of trying to meet all parties in the middle. They added a homosexual trait which hits when the child is old enough to express themselves (and not at birth), which recognizes that homosexuals existed during the time frame and it tries to accurately reflect what it would mean to be homosexual during that time when they were all in the closet.
 
I am a little surprised by all the generalities about medieval sexuality. Depending on the place and the time, sex was rampant or brutally suppressed, be it homosexual or heterosexual. Some Nunneries took to prostitution in desperate times of famine. Monks were encouraged to take a little orphan to bed to keep them warm of a night time. Within religious orders there were the nobility and the peasants. The nobility of the order could expect anything from the peasants to make their life easier. Patricide was rampant because sons that were not of the father were treated badly, till the boy lashed out.

Priests in Britain ignored the order not to marry because their farms needed two to make them work. A priest by himself would starve, so he needed a wife. The best brothels were to be found around the papacy. When the papacy left Avignon one bishop bragged it barely had a single brothel when they arrived, and now they left it with hundreds. The plague was thought to be God's revenge for sexual sins in particular, though general sins were thought to be a secondary cause.

Yet there were also pogroms against sex, usually on a local level and were more political then sexual. God was important to the medieval mind, but the morality we associate with religion was quite different then.

To make the game historically accurate for Medieval sex would mean upsetting the Modern politically correct.
 
To make the game historically accurate for Medieval sex would mean upsetting the Modern politically correct.

+1

I was nearly shot to death for a little post about medieval views and pointing out that they were only natural at the time a few pages above. So yes, avoid this in the game. it would be either ridiculous and false or offensive to those who cannot see past the cage of political correctness which is in fact an ideology.
 
I was nearly shot to death for a little post about medieval views and pointing out that they were only natural at the time a few pages above. So yes, avoid this in the game. it would be either ridiculous and false or offensive to those who cannot see past the cage of political correctness which is in fact an ideology.

I really think you missed the points that people were making. We aren't talking about the PC brigade trying to revise medieval history to make it a happy clappy gay paradise :)

Its that a lot of people are taking a view of homosexuality which is several hundred years to late. Some of the possible events people are talking about sound really interesting: love affairs with foreign nobles, the ever present possibility of disgrace, all that love that dare not speak its name stuff. Sounds really interesting, but also like it belongs in the salons of Paris centuries later.

The really key thing is that the idea of homosexual identity is anachronistic. People wouldn't have viewed someone known to have engaged in homosexual acts as "a homosexual" (and I don't just mean the word is modern), nor would the man himself. Why would they? The thought simply wouldn't occur because the whole frame of reference didn't exist. They, and himself, might regard him as someone who had sinned, and if powerless he might face a chance of brutal punishment. But there was nothing particularly special about the sin in question, it was a sin of lust, but it didn't form part of his identity in the way it would in later centuries.

I'm nearly always for gameplay above realism in Paradox games. But when it comes to what are essentially flavour events, I think anachronism should be avoided.
 
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I agree with you. Those are interesting ideas. But I think it would look weird if those were included in vanilla game given its current event content size. As I said earlier I would welcome a bunch of these events if the total amount of content in the game was much bigger.

But if this was a mod I would like to give it a try.
 
I really think you missed the points that people were making. We aren't talking about the PC brigade trying to revise medieval history to make it a happy clappy gay paradise :)

Its that a lot of people are taking a view of homosexuality which is several hundred years to late. Some of the possible events people are talking about sound really interesting: love affairs with foreign nobles, the ever present possibility of disgrace, all that love that dare not speak its name stuff. Sounds really interesting, but also like it belongs in the salons of Paris centuries later.

The really key thing is that the idea of homosexual identity is anachronistic. People wouldn't have viewed someone known to have engaged in homosexual acts as "a homosexual" (and I don't just mean the word is modern), nor would the man himself. Why would they? The thought simply wouldn't occur because the whole frame of reference didn't exist. They, and himself, might regard him as someone who had sinned, and if powerless he might face a chance of brutal punishment. But there was nothing particularly special about the sin in question, it was a sin of lust, but it didn't form part of his identity in the way it would in later centuries.

I'm nearly always for gameplay above realism in Paradox games. But when it comes to what are essentially flavour events, I think anachronism should be avoided.

In extension to this, the sin that you refer to was that of sodomy, which is neither exclusive to homosexuality nor obligatory to homosexuals.

I appreciate that elements of this thread (and indeed this post) might make the forum moderators a bit uncomfortable but it's an interesting discussion that is being debated maturely.
 
"Gay scene" sounds like a perfect name for a town upgrade. Negligible loss of pop. growth for increased happiness of characters with homosexual trait, who have the town in their domain. Enables special events.

Errr, what do you mean by "agreeing with homosexuality"? Homosexuality is in the game. There are also events for characters who are inbred, sadists (impaler trait) or murder their wives and children. Surely it is pretty idiotic to suggest that all these things are ok, but suddenly homosexuality is off limits because it is "controversial".
 
I dunno. I've read some quite interesting threads on here on medieval homosexuality.

Do we actually have much evidence of regular homosexual scandals (among contemporaries, not later commentators)? I've picked up the impression (and will happily take correction) that it wasn't seen as the sort of identity defining thing that we do today - that it was a sin in the eyes of God and the zealous, but then so were many common sexual proclivities. Would a noble who was rumoured or known to have engaged in homosexuality actually be disgraced in the way we are used to from more recent European history?

It wasn't an identity issue the way being gay is today, but noone (I hope) here denies that there are people that are exclusively or almost exclusively attracted to the same sex and since that's biological, this is not a cultural issue but must have existed in the past. Whether people were living in denial and being miserable about it or acting upon it is another matter, but considering sexual attraction is a really powerful force, it is quite unlikely that it wasn't acted upon in at least a large percentage of cases.

Sure, rulers who were homosexual ended up having kids as this was expected of them, but that does not mean they didn't engage in homosexual sex.

Incidentally, also noone is suggesting such event should have no negative consequences - prejudice against homosexual people was strong in middle ages (albeit, unlike what most people suggest, death penalty for sodomy was more of a product of renaissance than the medieval era covered by the game) and a homosexual ruler having a same sex lover would incur significant loyalty penalties from vassals. But that should be represented, imo.
 
"Gay scene" sounds like a perfect name for a town upgrade. Negligible loss of pop. growth for increased happiness of characters with homosexual trait, who have the town in their domain. Enables special events.
Okay, no, listen.
MEDIEVAL. GAY. PARADES.
RAINBOW.
KNIGHTS.
It will be awesome.
 
I do really think this is rather overthinking of the matter (and the trait is way too common, I mean seriously my current king has 3 Daughters and a lot of courtiers with it). There are some claims of incidents of this during the period it is true, however its always important that we dont add Modern 'Liberal' interpretations onto other events. We for example only have insinuation to prove Homosexuality in certain Greek cities and those insinuations are often our own meanings and values.

My point is that peopel have to be very careful in the interpretation of history to suit modern views/ beliefs/ wishes. Particularly over such divisive issues (one I might add that has had many occasions of associated groups trying to edit the past either way).
 
There was no recognizable homosexual identity in medieval times, but that seems like a red herring to me. Having a taste for the vice of sodomy (which is how it would have been viewed at the time), or even being rumored to have such a taste could have impact on a ruler's reign and yes, those should be negative impacts. I don't see why that should present a problem for political correctness--if we don't object to negative consequences for female rulers or for rulers of different religions, why should we object to them for people identified as "sodomites". I'd be quite happy to see an event modeling the Edward II/Piers Gaveston situation, where some court members/vassals object to a king's "favorite". And the fact that Edward II later had kids didn't stop chroniclers from hinting rather strongly at a sexual relationship between him and Gaveston.

I'm skeptical of the notion that a nobleman was in serious danger of being executed for sodomy under normal circumstances, however, unless somebody can come up with historical examples. Law and practice are often at odds. Until 2003, sodomy was punishable by up to 20 years in prison in the state of Florida, and many states had laws on the books banning oral sex even between opposite sex couples.
 
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IMHO the reason there aren't events and such around homosexuality is that:

1.) They would all be negative and suddenly the community would be up in arms over that. Or if they weren't, the community would be up in arms over it.
2.) Homosexuality, whether you agree with it or not, is a controversial subject in most of the world. They would be alienating customers by pandering to the homosexual community and supporters by adding events that could offend their other customers.

Personally I think the guys did a good job of trying to meet all parties in the middle. They added a homosexual trait which hits when the child is old enough to express themselves (and not at birth), which recognizes that homosexuals existed during the time frame and it tries to accurately reflect what it would mean to be homosexual during that time when they were all in the closet.

Do you really think including more detailed homosexuality in the game would be more controversial than plenty of other things in there? First of all, I'm sure lot more people in the world would be offended by a game called Crusader Kings (regardless of whether crusading is actually the main aim of the game, it clearly plays a part and you can't officially play as the Muslims, so it's pretty one-sided). There are also events allowing you to sanction rape (prima nocta event) - that one isn't even historical so there's really no excuse for it and allowing you to torture people. You can also assassinate people including children. Do you think there are more people offended by homosexuality than child murder?
 
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