When I was in prep school--which was kind of like being in a prison camp in some ways--I got on a reading jag and read every novel in the library, beginning with the A's and working through the alphabet. I remember one novel with a hero(?) who travels through the middle east and on the old silk routes into Asia, going from one romantic boy to the next. (I doubt whether the librarian knew what he had on his hands with that one.) I don't recall the title, which is probably just as well.
Anyway, since that first reference to this phenomenon of Arabic homosexuality I have seen numerous other references since, both novelistic and historic. If you wanted to find plenty of cheap boys, the place to go was North Africa or the Arab middle east.
P.S. No, by golly, I do recall the name. Frederick Prokosch, The Asiatics. I had no inclinations that way, fortunately. I found the sexiest book in the library to be Laurence Lockridge's bestseller, Raintree County.
"If you wanted to find plenty of cheap boys, the place to go was North Africa or the Arab middle east."
Exactly the two places where islam is now rooted...
I'm not disputing your points, but I have to ask if homosexuality is so prevalent in the Mideast why haven't we read about an aids epidemic there or do Arabs have a genetic immunity to aids?