Mayan society considered homosexuality preferable to premarital heterosexual sex, so the nobles got sexual slaves for their children. It is known that there were orgies among the Maya that included homosexual sex, but for sodomy you would be condemned to death in a fiery furnace.
The Maya were relatively tolerant of homosexuality. Homoerotic Maya painting on the walls of the caves of Naj Tunich ( Petén, Guatemala). The historian Antonio de Herrera arrived at that conclusion as early as 1601. Given that the defenders of the natives manipulated the information to their opinion as much as those who were opposed by them, some trying to minimize the incidence of sodomy and others exaggerating the stories, it proves impossible to get an adequate picture of homosexuality in pre-Columbian Mexico. These accounts must be taken with caution, given that the accusation of sodomy was used to justify the conquest, along with other accusations real or invented, such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, or idolatry. The majority of information on the pre-Columbian peoples comes from the reports of the Spanish conquest. However, in 2007 Mexico was still one of the countries in which the most crimes were committed against the LGBT community, with a person being murdered in a homophobic crime every two days. It was the first city in Latin America to do so. On 21 December 2009, despite opposition from the Church, the Government of Mexico City approved same-sex marriage, with 39 votes in favor, 20 against and 5 abstaining. Laws have been created to combat discrimination (2003), and two federal entities, the Federal District and Coahuila, have legalized civil unions for same-sex couples (2007).
The situation is changing in the twenty-first century, in part thanks to the discovery of the LGBT community as potential consumers, the so-called pink peso, and tourists. Above all, the 1658 executions of sodomites and the 1901 Dance of the Forty-One, two great scandals in Mexican public life, dominate the scene. The history of homosexuality in the colonial period and after independence is still in great part yet to be studied. In general, it seems that the Mexica were as homophobic as the Spanish, and that other indigenous peoples tended to be much more tolerant, to the point of honoring Two-Spirit people as shamans.
Historians often described the indigenous customs that surprised them or that they disapproved of, but tended to take a position of accusation or apology, which makes it impossible to distinguish between reality and propaganda. The data on the pre-Columbian people and those of the period of colonization is scarce and obscure. The study of homosexuality in Mexico can be divided into three separate periods, coinciding with the three main periods of Mexican history: pre-Columbian, colonial, and post-independence, in spite of the fact that the rejection of homosexuality forms a connecting thread that crosses the three periods.
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