is debated. Some maintain that the early Christian churches deplored transgender people and same-sex relationships, while others maintain that they accepted them on the level of their heterosexual counterparts. These disagreements concern, in some cases, the translations of certain terms, or the meaning and context of some biblical passages. Prior to the rise of Christianity, certain sexual practices that are today considered "homosexual" had existed among certain groups, with some degree of social acceptance in ancient Rome and ancient Greece (e.g. the pederastic relationship of an adult Greek male with a Greek youth, or of a Roman citizen with a slave). Both societies viewed anal sex as an act of dominance by the active (penetrating) partner over the passive (penetrated) partner, representing no distinction from how vaginal sex was viewed. It was considered a sign of weakness and low social status (such as slavery or infamia) for a man to assume the passive role. There was no such stigma against a man who assumed the active role. Derrick Sherwin Bailey and Sarah Ruden both caution that it is anachronistic to project modern understandings of homosexuality onto ancient writings. The Judaic prohibitions found in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 address the issue of sex between two men. The latter verse (20:13) says: "And if a man also lies with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." In his fourth homily on Romans, John Chrysostom argued in the fourth century that homosexual acts are worse than murder and so degrading that they constitute a kind of punishment in itself, and that enjoyment of such acts actually makes them worse, "for suppose I were to see a person running naked, with his body all besmeared with mire, and yet not covering himself, but exulting in it, I should not rejoice with him, but should rather bewail that he did not even perceive that he was doing shamefully." He also said: "But nothing can there be more worthless than a man who has pandered himself. For not the soul only, but the body also of one who hath been so treated, is disgraced, and deserves to be driven out everywhere." The writings of the early church contain strong condemnations of same-sex acts. Tertullian wrote, "When Paul asserts that males and females changed among themselves the natural use of the