On Pedophillia and Homosexuality

Gerry Quinn · 22 Jul 2010, 07:40 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:40:17 +0100
Subject: (urth) On Pedophillia and Homosexuality
References: <620951.93527.qm at web37908.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <343AED60B03D48689EE28EE5E4242EEE@jill>

From: Nicholas 

>> don't see where you get this from.  Granted Baldanders is not shown as having any sexual interest in women, and by default one might assume that such a character might (or might not) be gay.  But the modified child in his bed hardly qualifies as a man."

> You make two bad assumptions that the classic world didn't. The first is that sexual preference is fixed. As I pointed out this is a new (and I think very wrong) idea. 

I make no such assumption.  Perhaps outside the short time we know him, Baldanders is a connoissueur of sheep, or perhaps he eventually transforms himself into a tribade.  However, at the time we meet him, all we see is that he seems to have little interest in women.  If we assume that, as with most people, he has at least *some* sexual interests, then we will consider it at least more likely than average that he will turn out to have an interest in men. This is all beside the point anyway.

> Two, that the boys essential nature isn't human and male.  What is he, a female mouse? A Greek wouldn't understand the fine difference you're driving at to protect modern sensibilities (sensibilities trained by a halting assumption of Christian ethics). What difference does it make when I sleep with a slave that is three or thirty?

You said yourself: " He's interested in men because they are like him and he is his own idol."  Baldanders is a mature man; a three year old boy is not much like him.  And a child may be human and male, without thereby being a man.

The Greeks would in my opinion have made this distinction also, even if they tolerated adult males having sex with adolescent boys.  (I reserve judgement on how much this alleged tolerance has to do with historical fact, and how much with the predilections of certain classical scholars looking wistfully back towards a mythical golden age of pederasty.)

- Gerry Quinn

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