Sex! Love! Writing!

[Carol]

 Sharon:
> I agree. These kinds of stereotypes are born of attitudes handed
down via Judeo-Christian values in western society, which clearly
disaproves of homosexuality. Howevr, apart from that tradition,
homosexuality has been regarded highly throughout various eras in
history, the Ancient Greeks being one that comes immediately to mind.
In that era, love between men was considered the highest form of
beauty, something to be cherished. men still married women and
produced children but the love between men was seen as something
purer, even when accompanied by sex.  Plato's "Symposium" describes
the different kinds of love and beauty and comes to this conclusion.
The ancients greeks did not distinguish between sexual "orientations".
It was all just "normal" no matter who you loved.
>
Carol responds:
Unfortunately, the Greeks (whom do I admire for many reasons,
especially therir contributions to art and philosophy), regarded love
between men as superior to love between a man and a woman because
women were regarded as physically and intellectually inferior to men.
The attitude was not universal, forever. Plato's "Symposium" explores
the views of a number of young men (who, BTW, have had quite a bit of
wine--and one of them, Aristophanes, is a comic playwright whose ideas
should probably be taken with a grain of salt). And, of course, we
don't know to what degree Plato fictionalized the dialogue, which
would have occurred many years before he crafted it as a defense of
Socrates (executed for corrupting the youth of Athens). We do know
that some Greeks loved their wives. Pericles, who was born nearly
seventy years before Plato, loved his wife, Aspasia, an educated and
beautiful woman (unfortunately, a "metic" or resident alien, so her
children had no rights in Athens). Education was, of course, not the
norm for Athenian women, but Aspasia wasn't Athenian.

Not sure where I'm going here, except that we should not overlook the
inferior status of women in ancient Greece, especially Athens, if we
discuss homosexuality in ancient Greece or the frequent disparity in
the ages of the homosexual pairs, some of whom were beardless boys.

Carol, not sure that fourth- and fifth-century B.C. Athenian culture
and values are at all comparable to late the nineteenth-century WW (or
even to postmodern European and American culture)