...But what can we say about monks and homosexuality? Gay monks were common in traditional Tibet (and every other Buddhist culture) and were an accepted part of society, without there being any legal form of “gay marriage” or indeed any modern concept of “homosexual orientation.” We can see this for instance in the public popularity of drombos. Drombo is a Tibetan term for a passive homosexual partner, often someone in a close relationship with a monk. Tibetan socio-religious attitudes considered penetration to be unacceptable violation of monastic celibacy rules, whether or not the persons involved were same or opposite gender. So the commonly-accepted workaround was for a monk to form a relationship with a drombo, who might be a younger monk or someone from the society at large (the dancers of the Dalai Lama’s personal troupe were considered especially desirable as drombo). Instead of oral or anal sex in the usual Western mode, drombo and their monastic patrons engaged in a modified form of the missionary position–the drombo lay on his back with his thighs crossed, and the monk ejaculated by moving his penis back and forth between them. No penetration, hence no violation of the rules.
Far from being an underground practice, this was a socially accepted form of interaction between males, and had no relationship to sexual or personal identity as such. While the monks in the active roles were frequently gay in the sense that Westerners now understand the term, the drombo himself often had no sexual attraction to men. Rather, the drombo received patronage from the monk, something very important in the heirarchical society of traditional Tibet. A drombo became the ward of his patron and would often receive substantial benefit to his career and status through this association (i.e. a “heterosexual” male drombo serving as a passive homosexual partner received not stigma but overt social benefit). That drombos were steered through Tibetan social circles by their patrons demonstrates the entirely above-the-board nature of these same-sex relationships: everyone knew that the drombo was being supported by monk so-and-so precisely because he was a drombo, and this was seen as perfectly natural. In fact, sometimes a drombo would become so well-known as a lover that various high-placed monks would fight over him, even sending subordinate warrior monks (dobdobs) out to kidnap him in order to force the drombo to switch to a new patron.
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