The Queer Thing About Sin

SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025

Harry Tanner

$42.99

Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury Continuum
25 September 2025

Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Social & cultural history; Gay studies (Gay men)

'BOLD AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN' Tom Holland 'MY GOD, THIS BOOK IS NEEDED. HISTORY HAS NEVER SEEMED MORE ALIVE...' Russell T Davies

A gripping new journey through ancient history, uncovering the origins of homophobia and the untold stories of those who dared to love.

In the early days of ancient Greece, queer love was celebrated. The most famous warrior in antiquity loved another man, the poet whose lyrics were memorised by philosophers and kings sang of her desire for women. Men could swear oaths of undying love and live out the rest of their lives together in peace. What fragments survive of this ancient world all tell us one thing: it was not a sin to be queer.

In this extraordinary book, Harry Tanner sets out on a journey to discover the origins of homophobia in the West. He follows the traces of this sinister idea as it swept across the ancient Mediterranean. Wherever he discovers the roots of homophobia taking hold, Tanner finds a confluence of crises mirrored across the centuries. Inequality, fear and an obsession with self-control – this is how societies turn on their queer citizens, time and time again, since the dawn of history.

This is a powerful story that draws on the rich world of the ancients to reveal how homophobia infected Western religion and ideology - the consequences of which we are still living with today - and to that end how we can move forward and resist homophobia in the future.

By: Harry Tanner
Imprint: Bloomsbury Continuum
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 467g
ISBN: 9781399422291
ISBN 10: 1399422294
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 25 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Foreword 1 The Myth of Greek Sex 2 How Money Corrupted Love 3 Queer as Macedon 4 Plato and the Philosophy of the Closet 5 Alexander the Straight? 6 Love in the Time of the Old Testament 7 Toxic Masculinity in Ancient Rome 8 The First Christians 9 The Birth of Modern Homophobia Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index Note on the Author Note on the Type

Dr Harry Tanner earned his PhD in Ancient Greek at the National University of Ireland, Galway. As a teenager, he was an evangelical Christian and came to believe homosexuality was a sin. After a period as an atheist, he is open once again to spirituality and religion, and lives a fulfilled gay life in London where he writes and teaches ancient languages and history. The Queer Thing About Sin is his first book.

Reviews for The Queer Thing About Sin: SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025

""An extremely compelling proposition which asks, with personal urgency, how a religion of love can also - somehow - end up as a religion of pain.” * Alain de Botton * In this polemical tour de force, Harry Tanner shows how the phenomenon of homophobia can be linked to social conditions in historical societies, presenting the case with brilliant verve and scholarship. Readable and thought-provoking in equal measure. * Professor Armand d’Angour (author of Socrates in Love and Professor of Classics at Oxford University) *