What on earth happens in the mind of an impressionable adolescent when he, or she, is told that the Ancient Greeks thought love between two men was the highest form of love, as they are told in this highly-touted sex education book for pre-teens, It’s Perfectly Normal? I imagine that it throws the boys into extreme confusion, and makes the girls feel ugly and undesirable. Which is the intended effect.
Interesting, that they don’t mention that homosexuality among the Ancient Greeks involved pederasty.
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What they also probably don’t mention is how “homophobic” Ancient Greeks were since they believed that marriage was between a man and a woman and that the traditional family unit (e.g. father, mother, their biological children and the extended family) was the building block of society and civilization (modern gay activists have a field day on this and typically rewrite history so that “gay unions” happened in that time period when they didn’t). Marriage was de-facto reproductive and patriarchal and by today’s modern feminist standards, Ancient Greeks would be deemed misogynist. Also how about the fact that Ancient Greek “democracy” was restricted to Greek male citizens and not all immigrants were welcomed? These books never display the Greeks’ ”sexism and racism” (nor their interesting philosophical debates about God). These works also never mention how male homosexuality in that place and time was situational and happened typically because of severe segregation between the sexes.
Daniel S. writes:
Homosexuality in classical Greece, and indeed much of the ancient world, was a radically different reality than that found in the modern West. Much of the homosexuality in ancient Greece was between an older man and a youth, with the youth trading a sexual relationship in return for learning a trade. There was no homosexual “identity”, rather no mature man would submit himself to a submissive sexual role in a homosexual relationship, as that would be considered humiliating, hence only youths would be placed in these submissive sexual roles. It goes without saying that both Plato and Aristotle condemned homosexuality in a general sense and considered it harmful for the individual and the society. Of course historical accuracy has never been of interest to the cultural Marxists, rather they cherry pick and distort what serves their purpose from history (hence the Greeks could shift from being evil, imperialist, white males to be used to justify the homosexual agenda).
On a side note, the Greeks practiced slavery. Would these followers of Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukas, Wilhelm Reich, Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, and Herbert Marcuse now seek to justify slavery based on the historical practices of the Greeks?
Ken C. writes:
I may be off on my extrapolations, but two points:
**Where did this leave the Greek wife/mother? The man was going to impregnate her and leave the building of society/family up to her while he received pleasure from prostitutes/slaves/young boys? Somehow I don’t see modern feminists finding this setup very equitable.
**This situation seems very similar to the current Sandusky/Penn St/Second Mile scandal. The authoritarian man is going to provide safety, instruction, discipline and structure and in return the old geezer would receive sexual gratification from the impressionable youth. The Greeks would have shrugged at this, but modern society appears to be horrified. As an aside, have the Dan Savages of the world ever condemned this PSU tragedy?