eroticism can take quite different forms and can serve quite different psychological ends, depending on person, place, and time; individual personal pleasure may involve cultural understandings beyond simple physical enjoyment. Erotic activity can be used to release tension; erotic activity can be used to express care and affection; erotic activity can also be used to express contempt or to establish and maintain social inequalities. The possibilities are myriad
Here, for example, is a discussion of what was considered "proper" in ancient Greeki society:
... Given that only free men had full status, women and male slaves were not problematic sexual partners. Sex between freemen, however, was problematic for status. The central distinction in ancient Greek sexual relations was between taking an active or insertive role, versus a passive or penetrated one. The passive role was acceptable only for inferiors, such as women, slaves, or male youths who were not yet citizens. Hence the cultural ideal of a same-sex relationship was between an older man, probably in his 20's or 30's, known as the erastes, and a boy whose beard had not yet begun to grow, the eromenos or paidika. In this relationship there was courtship ritual, involving gifts (such as a rooster), and other norms. The erastes had to show that he had nobler interests in the boy, rather than a purely sexual concern. The boy was not to submit too easily, and if pursued by more than one man, was to show discretion and pick the more noble one. There is also evidence that penetration was often avoided by having the erastes face his beloved and place his penis between the thighs of the eromenos, which is known as intercrural sex. The relationship was to be temporary and should end upon the boy reaching adulthood ... Homosexuality
First published Tue Aug 6, 2002; substantive revision Fri Feb 11, 2011
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/A similar notion of "propriety" (namely, that superiors penetrated inferiors and not vice-versa) seems to have been common in Rome -- and so it was already illegal, in the time of the Republic, to seduce a citizen's underage son; but beyond public disapproval, there seem to have been no further legal strictures until the Empire was collapsing. The Emperors, of course, were free to do more or less as they pleased, regardless of public opinion. Here is Suetonius on Nero:
... He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his home attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero's father Domitius had had that kind of wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the courts and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time ...Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/suet-nero-rolfe.htmlOne might, I suppose, call this an example of "homosexual marriage" in ancient Rome, but it is not "marriage" in any modern sense of the word, and it's certainly not what most of us mean when they speaking of "homosexual marriage." The story reflects an "erotic" view that is conditioned by the absolute power of the Emperor and the corresponding powerlessness of the slave child
We could, of course, debate endlessly about what "Christianity" really is -- but in the early Roman imperial era, people in Jerusalem and its surroundings generally disliked the Roman occupation, and they were enough of a headache to the Romans that the Romans finally destroyed the main city near the beginning of the Christian era. Even if you regard the Christian texts as mythology, the stories are informative about attitudes: the Christian god is born in filthy circumstances, socially almost illegitimate, and promptly becomes a refugee from state terror; this god associates with outcasts and has little interest in social conventions; finally, the religious and military authorities set out to murder the god. The texts also lay out a religious theory, according to which there is a high and immutable law, even more rigorous than the hundreds of ancient Judaic commandments ("Whoever looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart"), an entirely impossible standard for any human -- and then suggests that if anyone who hopes for mercy might begin with his or her own behavior ("Forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us"). The egalitarianism of the early church ("Neither Jew nor Greek, neither servant nor free, neither woman nor man: you are all one") drove it underground, since the ancient world could not tolerate such subversion, and the sect spread underground for several hundred years until the conversion of Constantine
Constantine II and Constans were the sons and successors of Constantine. Constans' edict against homosexuality offers some problems: Constans himself seems to have been openly homosexual, and so some commentators have suggested it was a joke. Constans' edict did not punish both male partners; it punished the passive male partner -- still consistent with traditional Greco-Roman notions of propriety, according to which the passive partner had lower social status. There is, of course, no question that the early church was quite suspicious of sex and taught that non-procreative sex was immoral; such views were later incorporated into Roman law, when the Empire was collapsing:
... With the decline of the Roman Empire, and its replacement by various barbarian kingdoms, a general tolerance (with the sole exception of Visigothic Spain) of homosexual acts prevailed. As one prominent scholar puts it, “European secular law contained few measures against homosexuality until the middle of the thirteenth century” ...http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/ 
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