Chapter Five Age-Structured Homosexuality

3. Age Structured Homosexuality

The third type of homosexuality is transgenerational or age-structured, usually between men and boys. This is the type of homosexuality that finds most disapproval in our western culture today. Yet this type of homosexuality is still sited today to allow for approval of homosexuality in general. Most often mentioned is the Greek pederasty and militarized societies, i.e. New Guinea. Characteristic of this type of homosexuality is that it is seen as a regular and normal part of development. In militarized societies it is the context for installing of the values of courage, prowess, aggressiveness, and masculine value by older men into younger boys. This type of homosexuality is strongly correlated with ritual mechanisms, such as initiation ceremonies. Boys are raised by their mothers to a certain age is reached, and then the boy goes through a cultural ritual and begins segregated living with other males. In general there is a greater segregation of the sexes; less emphasis is placed on a family structure. Again most notably we are referring to tribal agrarian societies. We can find that the homosexual activity is practiced by older males on younger males who are in the late childhood through early adulthood age. As the males grow older the roles are reversed, from being passive recipients, to being the active partners in the homosexuality activity. Even after marriage the male was able to participate in this homosexual activity. It was only after fatherhood that he was no longer able to participate in homosexual activity. “With fatherhood, however, all same-gender activity is expected to cease.” (Turner, Miller, and Moses, Editors. AIDS Sexual Behavior and Intravenous Drug Use, p.161) The most common type of homosexual activity is oral sex, the idea being that semen must be transferred from older males to younger males. Gilbert Herdt, a gay anthropologist, has written extensively about this type of homosexuality.

“The Sambia people (Herdt 1981) of the eastern highlands of New Guinea are among those whose traditional folk wisdom provided a rationale for the policy of prepubertal homosexuality. According to this wisdom, a prepubertal boy must leave the society of his mother and sisters and enter the secret society of men in order to achieve the fierce manhood of a head hunter. Whereas in infancy he must have been fed woman’s milk in order to grow, in the secret society of men he must be fed men’s milk- that is, the semen of mature youths and unmarried men- in order to become pubertal and grow mature himself. It is the duty of the young bachelors to feed him their semen. They are obliged to practice institutionalized pedophilia. For them to give their semen to another who could already ejaculate his own is forbidden, for it robs a prepubetal boy of a substance he requires to become an adult. When a bachelor reaches the marrying age, his family negotiates the procurement of a wife and arranges the marriage. He then embarks on the heterosexual phase of his career. He could not, however, have become a complete man on the basis of heterosexual experience alone. Full manhood necessitates a prior phase of exclusively homosexual experience. Thus homosexuality is universalized and is a defining characteristic of head-hunting, macho manhood.” (Money, “Sin, Sickness, or Status?,” p. 384-385)

“Since homosexual behavior in Melanesian societies is routine and obligatory as part of the social organization of these societies, it is not perceived as deviant or abnormal behavior. Clearly, we cannot label this behavior according to our norms or view these men as “homosexuals” – a term that derives from our Western culture (see Herdt, 1984; Stroller, 1980.)” (Heyl, “Homosexuality: A Social Phenomenon,” p. 323 in Human Sexuality: The Societal and Interpersonal Context. Kathleen McKinney and Susan Sprecher.)

Age-structured homosexuality occurs in many places and times in history, although it is not universal. Of the three types of homosexuality discussed it could be argued that it is the most frequent form of institutionalized same-sex erotic contact around the world. This type of homosexually occurs among the norm of heterosexuality for the adult male that is married and has children. A much more detailed look at Greek pederasty will now follow.

By many “homosexual apologists” there is much made of Greek pederasty. Yet if we let the facts speak for themselves, perhaps we may see Greek pederasty more as the Greeks viewed it. It is quite interesting that the many recent books written about Greek sexuality by those advocating for homosexuality have tended to romanticize it. In the following discussion I have also included those who have not done so. The difference may be seen in their titles and the quotes I use.

“Many of us, too, may imagine that world as one where our dreams of a truly healthy and fully affirmed homosexuality were realized. Yet while it is true that the Greeks believed that sexual desire for members of one’s own sex was something that almost everyone would feel at some time, and also true there were culturally sanctioned ways of living that desire, those accepted ways are not necessarily congruent with our contemporary fantasies about how same-sex love might most fulfillingly be lived. Indeed, some scholars believe that the ancient Greek presuppositions surrounding the accepted forms of male love of males are so radically different from the modern concept of homosexuality as to make their perspectives irrelevant to our lives.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.133)

“However, ancient Greek idealization of the athletic male form were always grounded in a larger context of both aesthetics and religion. And, it must be remembered, Athenian boy-lovers always married and never stopped honoring female divinities.” (Paglia, Vamps and Tramps, p.69)

“For the ancients, many historians agree, sexuality was not a separate realm of experience, the core of private life; instead it was directly linked to social power and status. People were judged by public behavior, for which there were clear roles; marriage, for instance, was a duty that bore no necessary relationship to erotic satisfaction. Socially powerful males (citizens) enjoyed sexual access to almost all other members of the society (including, in Greece, enslaved males, younger free males, foreigners, and women of all classes).” (Clausen, Beyond Gay or Straight, p. 51)

“The cross-cultural data on homosexuality (and almost all it concerns males alone) is also scarce, of dubious quality and sometimes difficult to interpret. There are, of course, the famous instances of widespread male homosexual practices, but the data are often less than the fame. Classical Greece and some Arab societies are cases of this sort, and one is forced to consider the possibility that these examples have as much to do with cultural stereotyping as with a genuine cultural pattern.” (Davenport “Sexual in Cross-Cultural Perspective, p.153 in Human Sexuality in Four Perspectives, Editor Frank A. Beach.)

Because of fundamental differences between the sexual mores of ancient Greece and those of our society, to make comparisons between cultures is difficult. We must try to avoid interpreting the Greek experience through our post modern, western linguistic categories, even though the sexual mores of our society and culture have their roots in both Roman/Greek and Judea/Christian sexuality.

“First, most of the writing on ancient sexuality these days grinds the evidence in the mill of an “advocacy agenda” supported by some fashionable theory that says more about the crisis of Western rationalism than it does about ancient Greece. Thus we are told that the Greeks saw nothing inherently wrong with sodomy between males as long as certain “protocols” of age, social status, and position were honored, an interpretation maintained despite the abundance of evidence, detailed below in Chapter 4, that the Greeks-including pederastic apologists like Plato-were horrified and disgusted by the idea of male being analling penetrated by another male and called such behavior “against nature.” One purpose here is to get back to what the Greeks actually say without burying it in polysyllabic sludge.” (Thornton, Eros The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p. xiii)

“The Greeks associated sexual desire closely with other human appetites – the desire for food, drink, and sleep – and saw all these appetites as entailing the same moral problem, the problem of avoiding excess.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.134)

“The Greek sexual ethic emphasized not what one did but how one did it; it involved not an index of particular forbidden acts but an inculcation to act with moderation.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.135)

“Another salient aspect of the Greek view of sexually was its emphasis on roles. From their perspective the most important question was the distinction between subject and object, between the active and the passive participant. Sex was not conceived as a mutual dyadic engagement but as what one person does to another.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.135)

“Thus it is not too hard to see the great difference between Greek homosexuality, which was accepted by and fully integrated into society, and modern homosexuality, which is considered by society -not without reason- to be a perversion, a deviation from the socially enforced heterosexual pattern. All the energies of modern culture are devoted to the rearing of heterosexuals, homosexual leanings are assiduously discouraged from youth to adulthood and therefore can be nurtured by the individual only in defiance of society. Whereas Greek homosexuality is not a stable pattern in life, but only a phenomenon of puberty later integrated into adult heterosexual life, modern homosexuality tends to be a lasting pattern which establishes itself as a perversion early in childhood and gives away with great difficulty (if at all) to heterosexual “normality” later in life. Modern homosexuality becomes a compulsion, leading inevitably to anxiety and even neurosis; Greek homosexuality, on the contrary, remained only a temporary resort, (see, for example, “Lysistrara”), purely sexual in nature, and thus did not normally become a device for alleviating anxieties. Finally, there is no evidence that Greek homosexuality was normally fused with or placed in the service of nonsexual aggressive drives, or that it was ever antihedonistic or less pleasurable than vaginal intercourse, as modern homosexuality seems to be.” (Henderson, The Maculate Muse, p.207-208)

Though the Greeks celebrated pederasty, social class and the role it played in the Greek society limited it. In addition to pederasty, the Greeks were aware of the existence of homosexuality, which had its own name pedomania. They saw pedomania as a sexual perversion and condemned it.

“As Greece developed from a congeries of tribes, villages, and warlords to an urban civilization, pederasty developed from a rite of passage to an educational institution that was at once ethical, strongly personal, and elitist. Its emphasis on physical virtues applicable to warfare gave it an ascetic cast, though was driven by an erotic and therefore sensuous energy.” (Garrison, Sexual Culture in Ancient Greece, p.167)

“Still, we must be prepared to approach Greek pederasty on its own terms, that is, both free from the confusion with androphilia and replete with the values that fostered it and that it in turn fostered.” (Percy, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece, p.10)

Looking at these two types of homosexual relationships there are several terms and their definitions that we must constantly keep in the forefront. Pederasty comes from two Greek words, one was for “boy” and the other was “to love”. It consequently then denotes the spiritual and sensual affection for a boy. In pederasty the older male partner or lover was called eraste. The younger male partner, a boy, the beloved was called eromenous. But it must be noted that the Greek word for boy was for a male who was sexually mature, and had reached the age of puberty.

“As often in sexual relationships, there was an understood distinction of roles; the older partner, the initiator and aggressor, the active “lover,” or erastes, dominated the younger, passive modest eromenos. The role of the erastes was to comport himself with moderation and restraint, whereas the young eromenos was to display no sexual desire of his own, reciprocating his lover’s eros with simple goodwill, philia. If he accepted a lover’s attentions he was perceived to “gratify” (khorizesthai) his suitor out of gratitude (khoris ) rather than sexual desire, but the gratitude was less for love gifts (never for money) than for the elder man’s time and attention. In return for being “gratified” through intercural sex (as in fig. 5.12), the elder man would introduce the younger boy to adult society and social skills; in the male world of wellborn aristocrats, the “beautiful and good” kalokagathai.” For the adolescent boy, it was both an education in the customs of his class and a rite of passage to the privileged society.” (Garrison, Sexual Culture in Ancient Greece, p.157)

“The eroneunos was not consider feminine but manly, and his submissiveness was not one of character but of his stage of life. Whatever his feelings of affection, the young eromeunos was not to feel sexual desire for the older man. This explains the frequent lack of a youth’s erections on vases.” (Bishop and Osthelder, Sexualia From Prehistory to Cyberspace, p.208)

“Furthermore, it is only the desire to play the active role that is regarded as "natural." The younger male yields to the older’s importunities out of admiration, compassion, or gratitude but is expected to feel neither desire nor enjoyment.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.139)

“At an emotional level, the relationship was clearly between unequals, the older man having a dominant, possessive, or didactic role, while the youth was the protégé who stood to gain materially and educationally from the relationship.” (LeVay and Nonas, City of Friends, p. 26)

“The relationship between erastes and eremenos was seen as having an educational and moral function, to be part of the youth’s initiation into full manhood. Therefore it was a disgrace not to be wooed-although also shameful to yield too easily. The lover became responsible for the youth’s development and honor. Because the more mature partner was assumed to be motivated by true regard for his beloved’s well-being, and because what he wanted was love and consent not simply sexual satisfaction, rape, fraud, or intimidation were disallowed (indeed proof of coercion was grounds for banishment). The two shared fame and shame.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.139)

“ “Greek love” therefore means men loving pubescent boys. Because almost all erastai preferred adolescents between the ages of twelve and eighteen, or until body hair sprouted and the beard became heavy, we would classify them as pederasts rather than pedophiles (those loving the prepubescent) or ephebophiles (those loving eighteen to twenty-two year olds). On their side, they would be quick to condemn our prevalent androphilia as extremely distasteful and even reprehensible in that it serves no pedagogical purpose. Indeed in their eyes, such behavior would have diminished the prestige and worth of the passive partner because most Greeks and (Romans) seem to have thought that adult citizens should not assume feminine roles. Further, the ancients generally expected citizens to marry and sire offspring as a civic and familial duty.” (Percy, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece, p.8-9)

In ancient Greece the ideal of same-sex desire was encompassed within the philosophical concept of paiderastia, a term derived from the combination of pais (boy or child) and the verb eran (to love), the source of eros (desire). This ideal imagined a relationship between an older and a younger male, the former an adult citizen, experienced in life, conversant with proper conduct and civic duty, wise in the ways of warfare, exemplary in his management of his household and of his wealth, dutiful to his parents, virtuous, brave, honorable, and devoted to truth. The younger male, commonly described as a youth whose beard had not yet begun to grow, was expected to be modest in demeanor, athletic and brave, eager to improve himself, and willing to learn what his mentor and lover could teach about the general conduct of life and love. Paiderastia implied a relationship that combined the roles of teacher and student with those of lover and beloved, and it carried the expectation of sex between the two.

The Greek language provided specific terms for each role. The beloved or desired boy is sometimes called pais or the related paidika. Often he is eromenos, " one who is loved or desired "; aitas, "the listener, receiver"; or kleinos, "the famous" or "the admired." The mentor is called erastes, "the lover"; or eispnelos, "the inspirer"; or philetor, "the befriender" of the kleinos. The erastes was presumed not only to woo and seduce the eromenos but also to instruct him in the arts of the hunt and of war, in the right conduct of life, and in proper behavior as a citizen. It was assumed that the erastes would also eventually take a wife-which did not necessarily mean that he would abandon homosexual practice-and that the eromenos in his turn would become an erastes to other youths.

“The institution of “pedagogic pederasty” by which adult citizens courted and formed special relationships with younger men cannot be separated from the subordinate status of women in the culture. Male-male relations were not merely tolerated, they were assigned an important role in the emotional and social development of citizens, who were expected also to marry and establish households. The cultivation of romantic friendships between mature and younger men was seen as an important opportunity for civic education. Such relationships are both dramatized and explicitly discussed in Plato’s Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus. In exploring the resemblances and differences between ancient pederasty and modern homosexuality, it is critical to recognize that Greek love was inherently asymetrical and hierarchical. So much so that no single term was available to designate both participants in the relationship: the erastes was the lover - the older, higher-status, often wealthier and more powerful, potential phallic penetrator; the eromenos was the beloved - the young, beautiful, promising but unformed potential phallic recipient. In addition to the differences in age and status pertaining to these roles, each was understood to have a distinctive aim in the erotic context. The erastes’ aim included genial pleasure; the eromenos was understood to take no pleasure in being penetrated, but to permit penetration in exchange for some other advantage, ranging from material gifts to affection to education in civic virtue or philosophy.” (Kaplan, Sexual Justice Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire, p.51-52)

“But the main form that was sanctioned, and even developed into a major social institution, was pederasty (love of boys), between a mature man and an ephebos (immature youth) just past puberty. In the barracks culture of Sparta, every freeborn man was required by law to have young male lovers and to train them in their adult duties to society. The more mature partner was responsible for the behavior of his student-lover, and might remain in the role of teacher even after the boy had outgrown the sexual side of the relationship. In Athens, such relationships were especially prominent in the late 6th and early 5th centuries B.C. Among freeborn citizens sexual relations between age-equals, like prostituting oneself, was viewed with disapproval. While male slaves were sexually fair game and could be taken without ceremony, citizen boys were reserved for citizen men under strict rules of procedure and the relationship was part of a man’s proper relationship with the state. The older lover was perhaps a partial substitute for the boy’s rather distant father, who spent a great deal of time out of the home. It was said that the older partner would “breathe” his love into a beautiful boy, thereby increasing his modesty and self-control. The relationship was developmental. The boy would loose his appeal to the older men when he grew a beard, and he would become an older lover himself. The institution is thus comparable to initiation rites elsewhere.” (Bishop and Osthelder, Sexualia From Prehistory to Cyberspace, p.208)

Pederasty was not the culture norm throughout the Greek society. It was practiced in the Greek city-states, of Sparta and Athens. Also it was class specific, in the upper class for the preparing of the young male to take his place as a ruling adult male in the Greek society.

“The Athenians, themselves were not unaware of such ambiguities and conflicts. To begin with, according to Xenophan Greeks acknowledged that law and customs regarding paederastry varied widely between different Greek states. Some prohibited it out right, others explicitly permitted it. “Further, in his Symposium (128aff), Plato put into the mouth of Pausanias an encomium of love which explicitly addresses the conflicts within he Athenian norms and customs regulating paederasty. Whereas for the rest of Greece the laws and customs pertaining to paederasty are clear and well-defined, explains Pausnias, those of Athens and Sparta are “poikilos” -intricate, complicated, many-hued. He goes on to say that Athenian legislation in this area is admirable, but difficult to understand; the difficulty consists in the simultaneous approbation and censure which social norms and legal rules attach to the pursuit of a paederastic courtship.” (Cohen, Law, Sexuality, and Society The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens, p. 174-175)

In the Greek society, male homosexuality, pedomania had many negative connotations and legal consequences.

“Indeed, for a society considered tolerant of a wide spectrum of sexual behavior, the ancient Greeks possessed a much wider public vocabulary of homosexual disparagement, outside the public rest room then, a sexually uptight America can call on.” (Thornton, Eros The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p. 110)

The Greeks were horrified and disgusted by the idea of a male being anally penetrated by another male and called all such behavior “against nature”. Their language and vocabulary expresses this, with a consistent association of passive homosexuality (kinaidos) with “shame” and “outrage”.

“Then there is the kinaidos, the creature of a sterile pleasure-anal penetration-that abandons to the vortex of desire not just his own rational control over his passions but also the masculine order enshrined in the political and social institutions of the city, subjecting them to the corrosive acid of all appetites, all lusts.” (Thornton, The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p.120)

“The kinaidos, to be sure, is not a “homosexual,” but neither is he just an ordinary guy who now and then decides to commit a kinaidic act. The conception of a kinaidos was of a man socially deviant in his entire being, whose deviance was principally observable in behavior that flagrantly violated or contravened the dominant social definition of masculinity.” (Winkler, “Laying Down the Law: The Oversights of Man’s Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens,” p.176-177 in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World editors Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin

“But in nearly every genre of Greek literature the kinaidos’ appetite is sterile, useless, good only for pleasure, rendering the male prone to other appetites for money or power, that also threaten culture and its discriminating categories, particularly if he is a citizen responsible in some measure for the political functioning of the city.” (Thornton, Eros The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p. 101)

“. . . kinaidos, the passive homosexual whose inability to control his appetite, his “ itch” for sexual pleasure, induces him to forsake his masculinity and submit to anal penetration. What we find is the kinaidos as emblem of unrestrained compulsive sexual appetite, of surrender to the chaos of natural passion that threatens civilized order, a traitor to his sex, a particularly offensive manifestation of eros’s power over the masculine mind that is responsible for creating and maintaining order in the face of nature’s chaos.” (Thornton, Eros The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p. 101)

“A man who enjoys playing the receptive partner is derogated as a prostitute and as having forfeited his right as a citizen to hold office. The assumption is that a man who would willingly make himself available would do anything! Only slaves, women, and foreigners would willingly choose to be treated as objects.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.139)

Perhaps the strongest legal consequence was that for the kinaidic, or a passive male in a homosexual relationship was his loss of the right to address the Assembly and to participate in other areas of civil life. The Greeks associated this type of homosexual behavior with male prostitution, engaging in homosexual activity for gain. Later in this book we will discuss homosexuality as expressed in the gay identity. And what is interesting the parallels that may be seen in the “kinaidos” and the sexual promiscuity found in the culture of male homosexuals expressed in bars and bathhouses. The abandonment of rational control of passion that resulted in out of control sexual lusts and consequently followed in widespread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). It was in this culture and environment that gave birth to the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic in the US.

“Whatever its source, through, habitual passive homosexuality is clearly considered an aberration, a disorder linked to violence and disease, even in the supposedly accepted institution of pederasty.” (Thornton, Eros The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p.101-102)

“In the Greek language the word “pederasty” had not this ugly sound it has for us today, since it was regarded simply as an expression for one variety of love, and had no sort of defamatory meaning attached to it.” (Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, p. 413)

It is extremely unfortunate that in modern times we have confused the two, using the word “pederasty”, and giving it the Greek meaning for the word “pedomania”. (Marmor, Sexual Inversion)

“ Love affairs between men and boys, or between two grown men could, depending on circumstances, be licentious and depraved or noble and chaste.” (Henderson, The Maculate Muse, p. 205)

“Although homoerotic passivity in adult males was condemned by Greeks and Romans alike, the two cultures took different ethical positions on pederasty.Despite it being a source of deep social unease, courtship of freeborn youths was nevertheless institutionalized in democratic Athens and philosophically extolled as an educational process. (Foucalt 1985: 187-225; D. Cohen 1991a: 171-202).” (Skinner, Introduction, p.11 in Roman Sexualities editors Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner)

The Greeks tended to attach a greater importance to the sexual instinct, even to the point of glorifying it, rather then the particular object of a sex act. As a result they were much freer than modern man to vary sexual objects on their relative merits, and imposed on adult males no limitations as to the choice of their sexual objects.

“In Greece the sexual relationship was assumed to be a power relationship, where one participant is dominate and the other inferior. On one side stands the free adult male; on the other, women, slaves, and boys. Sexual roles are isomorphic with social roles; indeed, sexual behavior is seen as a reflection of social relationship not as itself the dominant theme. Thus it is important for us to remember that for the Greeks it was one’s role, not one’s gender, that was salient. Sexual objects come in two different kinds – not male and female but active and passive.” (Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love, p.135-136)

“In its basic characteristics, the Roman sex/gender system was hardly unusual. Its conceptual blueprint of sexual relations, like that of classical Athens, corresponded to social patterns of dominance and submission, reproducing power differentials between partners in configuring gender roles and assigning by criteria not always coterminous with biological sex. Intercourse was constructed solely as bodily penetration of an inferior, a scenario that automatically reduced the penetrated individual-woman, boy, or even adult male- to a feminized state.” (Skinner, Introduction, p.3 in Roman Sexualities editors Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner)

In doing so they had a double standard, in that they tolerated most sexual activity, as long as it did not threaten the survival of the family. For the Greeks sexual activity has a directional quality, sex was something one did to someone else. It also had anatomic imperative, which dictated that it was the man, or more precisely the penis that did the doing. So for the Greeks it may be seen that the social acceptability of a sexual act was not determined by the gender of the partners but rather by the balance of the power between them. The acceptability of a particular sexual pairing depended on the age and social standing of the partner. Also sexual acts were viewed from the prospective of domination and submission. This may be constantly seen across cultures and history. Examples of this may include the practice of humiliating conquered enemies - both males and females by raping them. To be penetrated unwilling is shameful and degrading.

“The ancient world, both Greek and Roman, did not base its classification on gender, but on a completely different axis, that of active versus passive. This has one immediate and important consequence, which we must face in the beginning. Simply put, there was no such emic, cultural abstraction as “homosexuality” in the ancient world. The fact that a man had sex with other men did not determine his sexual category. Equally, it must be emphasized, there was no such concept as“heterosexuality”. The application of these terms to the ancient world is anachronistic and can lead to serious misunderstandings. By the fifth time one has made the qualification, “The passive homosexual was not rejected for his homosexuality but for his passivity,” it ought to become clear that we are talking not about “homosexuality” but about passivity.

It is very difficult for us to ignore our own prejudices and realize that what may be literally a matter of life and death in our culture would have been a matter of indifference or bewilderment to the Romans (see below). But anthropological data shows that active versus passive as a basis for determining sexual categories is paralleled in a wide variety of societies. Outside our own system of cultural types, “homosexual” applies meaningfully only to acts, not to people; it is an adjective, not a noun. Even then we must add the warning that the adjective may serve to gather together acts of significance only to our culture. We all recognize that different societies have totally different lines from ours that divide sacred and secular, edible and inedible, kin and nonkin. We are willingly to believe that the Romans inhabited a different physical world, a different spiritual world, a different psychological world. We must be willing to accept the fact that they inhabited a different sexual world as well.” (Parker, The Teratogenic Grid, p.47-48 in Roman Sexualities editors Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner)

In actuality there is very little surviving historical evidences and records of how the Greeks viewed sexuality. But what we know is that the norm for an adult Greek male was predominantly heterosexual and his sexual responsibilities were primarily for his wife. As seen in other cultures, there was a “homosexual period” in the life of a Greek man. Their society expected a male to pass through predominately homosexual stages of life on their way to full masculinity. The end, this “full masculinity” for the Greek male was heterosexuality, marriage, and fatherhood. Greek homosexuality was not a stable pattern in life, but only a phenomenon of puberty, that might later be integrated into adult heterosexual life. Thus though homosexual drives may have remained into adulthood, they need not be denied, nor was shame attached to them. The Greek culture allowed for their physical expression provided the proper social etiquette was observed.

When studying the “art” of ancient Greece, there is almost no written record of the circumstances standing what the artist attempts to portray. Are they attempting to portray sex acts? We are viewing these artifacts hundreds of years later and from a radically different world viewpoint. From the little surviving historical evidence there is even less if any, showing same sex adults as “couples”. The majority of surviving evidence and records from ancient Greece is related to man-youth homosexuality or the precisely defined passive homosexual, kinaidos.

“Vase paintings are very clear about the correct sexual position, showing male citizen lovers as standing up facing one another, not penetrating any orifice but with the erastes rubbing his penis inside the boy’s thigh (interfemoral intercourse).” (Bishop and Osthelder, Sexualia From Prehistory to Cyberspace, p.208-209) A review of the surviving historical written records from the three greatest philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle will show that they regarded homosexual conduct as intrinsically immoral. They rejected the “idea of a modern gay identity”. Also there are written records of legal provisions regulating various forms of homoerotic behavior. These legal provisions may be may be grouped into three categories. The first group has been mentioned before, legal provisions surrounding male prostitution. The male lost the right to address the Assembly and to participate in other areas of civil life if he engaged in homosexual intercourse for gain. These legal provisions against male prostitution also applied to pederasty.

“This was especially so if the youth allowed himself to be penetrated, an act considered unworthy of a man and a free citizen, and one which could threaten his citizenship.” (Bishop and Osthelder, Sexualia From Prehistory to Cyberspace, p.208)

A second group of legal provisions regulating homoerotic behavior were laws relating to education and courtship. The growth of pederasty had also resulted in a “proper way” for wooing the boy, so as to protect the integrity of both parties. This also was to provide for the protection of the boy’s family. This group of legal provisions set out a series of detailed prohibitions designed, among other things, to protect schoolboys from the erotic attention of older males. The final group was a more general set of legal provisions. They were general provisions concerning sexual assault, and fell under the Law of hubris (insult, outrage, or abuse). Thus they were applicable to both males and females.

“Scholars usually do not refer to hubris in connection with pederasty because they believe hubris to require violent insult and outrage. They have not paid sufficient attention, however, to the way in which the law of hubris may have provided for the principle criminal penalties for rape. But although rape is often characterized as hubris, so is seduction. Euphiletus, foe example, refers to the hubris which the lover of his wife has committed against him (Lysias 1.4, 17, 25) and an oration of Demosthenes involves a prosecution for hubris (hubreos graphe) brought by a son on account of the seduction of his mother.

Such contexts perfectly match Aristotle’s definition of hubris as any behaviors which dishonors and shames the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the offender (Rhetoric 1387b). Indeed, it is in this connection that Aeschines introduced the law of hubris into the catalogue of statutes which he enumerated as regulating paederasty in Athens in the fourth century B.C. In fact, when he first refers to the law of hubris he characterizes it as the statute which includes all such conduct in one summary prohibition: “If anyone conmmits hubris against a child or man or woman or anyone free or slave . . .” (Aeschines 1, 15). Accordingly, Athenian sources qualify both rape and seduction of women and children as acts of hubris, for both violate the sexual integrity and honor of the family.” (Cohen, Law, Sexuality, and Society The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens, p.178-179)

So what can we know about how the Greeks viewed homosexuality and pederasty.

“Homosexuality, then, to the Greeks is a historical innovation, a result of the depraved human imagination and vulnerability to pleasure.” (Thornton, Eros The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p. 102)

“The people of the ancient world were not only unfamiliar with the concept of “homosexuality,” they would have been equally puzzled by the concept of “sexuality.” Indeed, we can legitimately question whether either of these terms has any clinical validity at all. The Greeks were aware that some people enjoyed tender relations with members of their own sex and others did not. Period.” (DuBay, Gay Identity The Self Under Ban, p.154)

“All three of the greatest Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, regarded homosexual conduct intrinsically immoral. All three rejected the linchpin of modern “gay” ideology and lifestyle.

At the heart of the Platonic-Aristotelian and later ancient philosophical rejections of all homosexual conduct, and thus of the modern “gay” ideology, are three fundamental theses: (1) The commitment of a man and a woman to each other in the sexual union of marriage is intrinsically good and reasonable, and is incompatible with sexual relations outside of marriage. (2) Homosexual acts are radically and peculiarly non-martial, and for that reason intrinsically unreasonable and unnatural. (3) Furthermore, according to Plato, if not Aristolte, homosexual acts have a special similarity to solitary masturbation, and both types of radically non-martial act are manifestly unworthy of the human being and immoral.” (Finnis, “Law, Morality, and “Sexual Orientation, p.33)

Pederasty developed from a rite of passage to an educational institution. This institution was for the noblemen from the privilege class of leading Greek city-states to pass onto the adolescents of the same social class the manly virtues they would need to take their place in Greek society. Consequently there may be less “sex” between the male adult and youth, then homosexual advocates may wish to portray. What sexual contact took place between males of the same social groups was very much concerned with the status and was played out according to rules that neither party was degraded or open to accusations of licentiousness. The little sexual contact that may have taken place was to be sexual release and pleasure for the adult male and not for the youth. It was not oral or anal sexual activity. Most often it is thought to occur by the adult rubbing his penis between the thighs of the youth to obtain organism, while both are standing up and facing each other. What this accomplished was to allow the older active partner to achieve orgasm, avoiding for the young man the “shame of penetration”. For the young man, whatever his affections for the older man, he was not to feel or express sexual desire towards the older man. The Greek norm was always heterosexuality and marriage. Greek pederasty was primarily restricted to the “privileged noble classes” of some Greek city-states. Both members the adult and youth were from the same “social class”. The relationship for the youth ended when he himself became an adult. Greece placed a strong emphasis on military and sport abilities, i.e. the Olympics.

“Such pederasty was supposed to transmit manly virtues of mind and body from nobleman to young lover (Vangaard, 1972).” (Karlen, “Homosexuality in History,” p.79 in Homosexual Behavior: A Modern Reappraisal, editor Judd Marmor)

“Ancient Greece is often cited as an example of a civilization in which homosexuality was accepted as normal, even encouraged. This is not quite true. All males were expected to make love to women, to marry, and to sire a family, whether or they a male lover or not. Moreover, love and sex between adult males was thought to be a bit ridiculous. The norm was for an adult male to have a relationship that lasted several years with and adolescent boy. When the boy reached maturity, he, then, was also expected to take a young lover.” (Goode, Deviant Behavior, p.193-194)

“For instance, in ancient Greece, homosexual relationships between older men and younger men were commonly accepted as pedagogic. Within the context of an erotic relation, the older man taught the younger one military, intellectual, and political skills. The older men, however, were also often husbands and fathers. Neither sexual relationship excluded the other. Thus, although ancient Greek society recognized male homosexual activity, the men in these relationships rarely defined themselves as primarily “homosexual.” (Escoffier, American Homo: Community and Perversity, p. 37)

“To facilitate the understanding of the Hellenic love of boys, it will be as well to say something about the Greek idea of beauty. The most fundamental difference between ancient and modern culture is that the ancient is throughout male and that the woman only comes into the scheme of the Greek man as a mother of his children and as manager of household manners. Antiquity treated the man, and the man only, as the focus of all intelligent life. This explains why the bringing up and development of girls was neglected in a way we can hardly understand; but the boys, on the other hand, were supposed to continue their education much later then is usual with us. The most peculiar custom, according to our ideas, was that every man attracted to him some boy or youth and, in the intimacy of daily life, acted as his counselor, guardian, and friend, and prompted him in all manly virtues.” (Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, p.418)

“For instance, in ancient Greece, homosexual relationships between older men and younger men were commonly accepted as pedagogic. Within the context of an erotic relation, the older man taught the younger one military, intellectual, and political skills. The older men, however, were often husbands and fathers. Neither sexual relationship excluded the other. Thus, although ancient Greece society recognized male homosexual activity as valid form of sexuality, the men involved in these relationships rarely defined themselves as primarily “homosexual.” (Escoffier, Jeffrey. American Homo Community and Perversity, p.37)

Throughout history the majority of societies were essentially masculine, although there were exceptions. So we must be careful not to add a strong sexual emphasis to Greek pederasty.

“The truth is that pederasty is a vice encouraged by abnormal social conditions, such as life in military camps or purely masculine communities. Society was essentially masculine in the classical period of Greek civilisation, even outside of Sparta. Homosexuality in fact develops wherever men and women live separate lives and differences in education and refinement between the sexes militate against normal sexual attraction. The more uncompromising such separation and diversity become, more widespread homosexuality will be.” (Flaceleitere, Love in Ancient Greece, p.215-216)

“What then is one to conclude about a culture whose laws expressed a deep rooted anxiety about pederasty while not altogether forbidding it. A culture in which attitudes and values range from the differing modes of approbation represented in Plato’s Symposium to the stark realism of Aristophanes and the judgement of Aristotle, that in a man, the capacity to feel pleasure in a passive sexual role is a diseased or morbid state, acquired by habit, and comparable to biting fingernails or habitually eating earth or ashes. A culture is not a homogeneous unity; there was no one “Athenian attitude” towards homoeroticism. The widely differing attitudes and conflicting norms and practices which have been discussed above represent the disagreements, contradictions, and anxieties which make up the patterned chaos of a complex culture. They should not be rationalized away. To make them over into a nearly coherent and internally consistent system would only serve to diminish our understanding of the “many-hued” nature of Athenian homosexuality.” (Cohen, Law, Sexuality, and Society The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens, p. 201-202).

Again here, with pederasty as an example of age-structured homosexuality, along with the other two types of homosexualities, gender reversed and role-specialized discussed, heterosexuality in adulthood with marriage and parenthood is seen as being the norm. Thus the nature of same-sex erotic contact is sequential, not linear; in time it evolves into a different mode of sexual experience for the individual. Also it is in the context that sexual maturity is broken by the discontinuity of adolescent homosexuality. Heterosexuality is the end result, with homosexuality being a transitional phase state. Finally it is important to notice that one sexuality, homosexuality is replaced by another sexuality, heterosexuality. What is learned and accepted must be unlearned and rejected. In all three of these types of homosexualities there is no concept of the “modern western gay identity”. That is a homosexual identity, a person who is habitually and exclusively sexually bonded to a same sex-partner through the life span. As with the other two types of homosexualities we must acknowledge the existence of the possibility of adulthood homoerotic attractions. But they are by far not the standa