08-15-2006, 12:50 PM
Quote:If you mean 'homosexuality' meaning men having sex with each other then yes, there probably was a lot of it in both Greek and Roman cultures, probably more so in the Greek culture. If you mean 'homosexuality' to mean a lifestyle where people identify with a particular group because of their sexual orientation and pair off into committed pairs, then there wasn't a lot of homosexuality in Ancient cultures.There is much truth in the words of Gore Vidal that in post-WW2 Western society, "homosexual" and "heterosexual" are used as indications of people, whereas it always used to be indications of acts.
Quote:There were committed pairings but they were rare.This has been refuted by Charles Hupperts in Eros Dikaios. Part of his argument is that we don't recognize same-sex unions when we see them. For example, if we have a piece of pottery with two naked men and a naked lady dancing, we call it "erotic"; when we see three naked men dancing, we don't. The main point of his book, though, is a different one, that Plato can not be used as evidence for actual behavior, as has been done for over a century. Cf. the article here.
Quote:In reality porn is a reflection of the prosperity and individual freedom of a society.A very, very good point. And it's also the other way round: porn is one of the most important keepers of morals. It shows acceptable ways to express lust and freedom.
To explain this paradox, I return to the example I quoted several times above, bondage. If people want to introduce an element of power, things can become dangerous indeed; now the sex shops sells attributes that channel the lust into a more or less acceptable way. You will find handcuffs of leather, not of glass. You can usually buy an erotic novel or two, but not the works of Marquis De Sade (which are boring anyway).
(Of course really unacceptable things are published, but I'm talking about the mainstream porn that one can buy in the average sex shop here in that Sodom & Gomorrah of the third millennium, Amsterdam.)
