Outside of homosexuality advocates in the late 20th century, who was challenging the fact that homosexual acts were acts against the natural law in all of human history?
The gay rights movement of the Middle Ages???
Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates.....all pagans.......all saw homosexual acts as contrary to the Natural law.
"Let me begin by noticing a too little noticed fact. All three of the greatest Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, regarded
homosexual conduct as intrinsically shameful, immoral, and indeed depraved or depraving. That is to say, all three rejected the linchpin of modern "gay" ideology and lifestyle.
Socrates is portrayed by Plato (and by Xenophon) as having strong homosexual (as well as heterosexual) inclinations or interest, and as promoting an ideal of homosexual romance between men and youths, but at the same time as utterly rejecting homosexual conduct. This is made clear in Sir Kenneth Dover's book Greek Homosexuality1; in Dover's summarising words: "Xenophon's Socrates lacks the sensibility and urbanity of the Platonic Socrates,
but there is no doubt that both of them condemn homosexual copulation."2 It is also made clear by Gregory Vlastos in his last book, precisely on Socrates: In Socratic ero^s involving relationships of affection between men and boys or youths, intimacy is limited to mind- and eye-contact and "terminal gratification" is forbidden3 (and a fortiori in relationships between adult males, since virtually all Athenians regarded sex acts between adult males as intrinsically shameful)4.
Vlastos thus makes it clear that Socrates forbids precisely what I have been calling homosexual conduct.
What, then, about Plato? Well, the same Plato who in his Symposium wrote a
famous celebration of romantic and spiritual man-boy erotic relationships, made very clear that all forms of sexual conduct outside heterosexual marriage are shameful, wrongful and harmful. This is particularly evident from his treatment of the matter in his last work, the Laws, but is also sufficiently clear in the Republic and the Phaedrus, and even in the Symposium itself. This is affirmed unequivocally both by Dover and by Vlastos, neither of whom favours these views of Plato. According to Vlastos, for example,
Plato--
saw anal intercourse as 'contrary to nature,' [footnote: Ph[ae]dr[us] 251A1, L[aws] 636-7] a degradation not only of man's humanity, but even of his
animality..."5
It is for Plato, Vlastos adds, a type of act far more serious than any mere going "contrary to the rules".6
As for Aristotle, there is widespread scholarly agreement that he rejected
homosexual conduct. In fact, such conduct is frequently represented by Aristotle (in some cases directly and in other cases by a lecturer's hint) as intrinsically perverse, shameful and harmful both to the individuals involved and to society itself.7"
http://www.princeton.edu/~anscombe/articles/finnisorientation.pdf