Pedastery and Love in Ancient Greece

[AveSantaMaria]

In scandals involving the Catholic church, the victims of sexual abuse were adolescent boys. Similarly, the 2006 congressional page scandal involved males.

A commentary on The Symposium by Plato includes this discussion of pedastery and love.

Pausanias, the legal expert of the group, begins by taking Phraedrus up on his chosen examples (180c) asserting that the love that deserves attention is not the kind associated with Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite common to the whole city) whose object may equally be a woman or a boy, but that of Aphrodite Urania (Heavenly Aphrodite), which “springs entirely from the male” and is “free from wantonness”; the object of this kind of love is not a child, but one who has begun to display intelligence and is close to growing a beard (181e).
Pausanias claims that Elis and Boeotia are inarticulate regions that have nothing to say against pedophilia (182a-b); Ionia and other regions think it is disgraceful (182b-c), but they live under despots and think no more of philosophy and sport than they do of love. Pausanius then launches into a confusing discussion of Athenian law regarding pedastry. He says that Athens’ code is not easy to understand, but claims that it cheers on the lover, so long as he does not pursue the boy in secret and does not rush him into it. He says you would never know that the law explicitly approves the lover’s conduct by the way fathers behave when they get wind of the fact that some older man is sniffing around his on, or by the way the boy’s playmates tease him about having a lover. He adds that these contradictions are easily explained (183d).

Pausanias says that Athenian law makes a firm distinction between the lover who should be encouraged by the boy and the lover who should be discouraged. He says that when a boy surrenders to sex out of hope for money, political favors, or in a cowering fear that he will suffer abuse (a beating?) from the lover, his surrender is contemptible (184b). Only when the boy is hoping to become wise and virtuous is his surrender to the older man not offensive to human decency. Pausanias thinks that the law addresses itself to children and their “motives” for surrendering to adults. He says that a boy who is duped is no fool, but has shown himself to be one “who will do anything for the sake of virtue” (184e-185b)

In Ancient Greece, same-sex relationships were rarely egalitarian as is portrayed on Brokeback Mountain. They generally involved an older man and an adolescent boy. Often today these relationships are still un-egalitarian: many same-sex relationships of today are not egalitarian: a man of 60 and a man of 30 may commonly partner together.

Same-sex sexual behavior is largely determined by environment in addition to genes. Many men in prisons exhibit same-sex behavior in prisons and opposite-sex behavior outside.

Here is a greek myth about pedastry. Ganymede was abducted by Zeus from Mount Ida in Phyrgia, the setting for more than one myth element bearing on the early mythic history of Troy. Ganymede was there, passing the time of exile many heroes undergo in their youth, by tending a flock of sheep or, alternatively, during the chthonic or rustic aspect of his eduction, while gathering among his friends and tutors. Zeus saw him and fell in love with him instantly, either sending an eagle or turning himself to an eagle to transport Ganymede to Mount Olympus. In the Illiad, the Achaean Diomedes is keen to capture the horses of Aeneas: “They are of the stock that great Jove gave to Tros in payment for his son Ganymede, and are the finest that live and move under the sun.” (5.265ff)

As a Trojan, Ganymede is identified as part of the earliest, pre-Hellenic level of Aegean myth. Plato’s Laws states the opinion that the Ganymede myth had been invented by the Cretans - Minoan Crete being a power center of pre-Greek culture - to account for “pleasure …] beyond nature” imported thence into Greece, as Plato’s character indignantly declares. Homer doesn’t dwell on the erotic aspect of Ganymede’s abduction, but it is certainly in an erotic context that the goddess refers to Ganymede’s blond Trojan beauty in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, mentioning Zeu’s love for Trojan Ganymede as part of her enticement of Trojan Anchises.

**A link to a picture of the image Rape of Ganymede: **upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Ganyrubn.jpg

"Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickeness and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Romans 1:26-32

Might Michelangelo be a person worthy of consideration for sainthood?

Michaelangelo, painter of the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, sculptor of Pieta and the statue of David maintained a “monk-like chastity” and should be acclaimed for persevering in his difficult struggle. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo#Sexuality

 

[AveSantaMaria]

Cathechism of the Catholic Church

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity [Cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10], tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”[Cf. Persona Humana] They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

 

[dkdempsey]

“The Cathechism of the Catholic Church”

Further proof why religious people should not be allowed to breed.

 

[bilop]

“The Cathechism of the Catholic Church”

Further proof why religious people should not be allowed to breed.

Looking to get banned, are you?

 

[buffalo]

“The Cathechism of the Catholic Church”

Further proof why religious people should not be allowed to breed.

Breed? Animals breed.