Re: Thanks for this informative post

"I find it interesting that they condemned *all* homosexuality, not just pederasty and paedophilia." Yes, well, you know how a favorite device of the Unscrupulous Right (as opposed to the larger portion of the conservatives) is to say, "All gays are pederasts"? Back in classical times, the conservatives said, "All pederasts are gays" - that's not how they phrased it, but they tried to imply that anyone who had sex with boys also had sex with adult males, and everyone knows how disgusting sex with an adult male is. I mean ick, men have beards and they're grown and worst of all they're not boys. The "smear 'em by association" tactic worked just as well back then. "I must confess to not reading the Bible very much, so thanks for pointing me in the direction of the Epistles." Whoops! I have a hard time keeping track of who's who on this board. Don't bother scouring the Epistles for marital references - there ain't many (as many a liturgist preparing a marriage service has discovered). Here's the infamous passage I had in mind - it's the one that makes everyone say, "Paul was a misogynist." Paul probably didn't write this particular Epistle, and even if he did, it would just show how advanced he was in a era that took wifely subordination for granted but didn't take husbandly duties for granted. "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' [He's quoting Jesus here.] This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." (Ephesians 5:21-33) Compare the bit above about husbands loving their wives because they are part of them with this passage from Aristotle's Politics: "To rule badly, on the other hand, is harmful to both [master and slave by nature]; for what is beneficial to a part is beneficial to the whole also, whether this be the body or the soul or both, and a slave is a certain part of a master, so to speak, an animate but separate part of the body of the master. For this reason, the relation between master and slave, whenever they deserve by their nature to be called such, should be one of friendship and of benefit to both; but if their relation is not such but exists by law or is forced, it leads to contrary results." "I am sensitive to the likelihood that if it was considered humiliating, it would have been humiliating in practice." Probably to the same extent that being gay is humiliating in a society where it's not accepted. Some of the writings by gays in the early twentieth century are filled with the most horrific self-loathing. Well, heck, all you have to do is read BC on one of its bad days, and you can see the same thing. "What could account for the differing perceptions of social reality?" Heaven only knows. I wish that just one of those researchers who confidently says, "Homosexuals make up ten percent of the general population" would back up and explain why male-attracted men make up nearly one hundred percent of pederastic societies. Obviously one society or the other or (most likely) both have got their figures wrong, but I haven't seen anyone tackle this vexed question. We can't even know how to translate classical literary and artistic references to homosexuality into reality. I mean, if we were to take Hollywood as our main reference in understanding twenty-first-century sexuality, we'd get a very distorted view. It used to be the fashion to say that homosexuality was only practiced by the elite in classical times (who were the ones producing the books), but then a bunch of non-elite graffiti turned up which smashed that theory to bits. But there are still scholars out there who act as though everything written by Plato was a pattern for Greek sexual behavior, which is just silly. I mean, the man was making love to Being itself, for heaven's sake. Not that that wouldn't make for an interesting pastime. Heather (who is, alas, further down Plato's ladder of love than that) Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]