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Pederasty

[ped-uh-ras-tee, pee-duh-]

Pederasty or paederasty refers to an erotic relationship, sexually expressed or not, between an adolescent boy and an adult male outside his immediate family. Pederasty has existed from earliest times through a variety of customs and practices within different cultures. Though Pederasty has been criminalized at various times in history, today its legal status in most countries is determined by whether or not the boy has reached the local age of consent.

In the history of Europe, its most structured cultural manifestation was Athenian pederasty, reaching its zenith in the 5th century BC. Greek pederasty's various forms were the subject of philosophic debates in which the carnal type was unfavorably compared with erotic yet spiritual and moderate forms.

Constructions

Starting with Geoffrey Gorer, pederasty has been seen as one of the three main types of homosexuality. Gorer specifically posits a minor fourth type, pedophilia, and describes it as "grossly pathological in all societies of which we have record." According to Gorer, the main characteristic of homosexual pederasty is the age difference (either of generation or age-group) between the partners. In his study of native cultures pederasty appears typically as a passing stage in which the adolescent is the beloved of an older male, remains as such until he reaches a certain developmental threshold, after which he in turn takes on an adolescent beloved of his own. This model is judged by Gorer as socially viable, i.e. not likely to give rise to psychological discomfort or neuroses for all or most males. He adds that in many societies, pederasty has been the main subject of the arts and the main source of tender and elevated emotions.

Anthropologists propose three subdivisions of homosexuality as age-structured, egalitarian and gender-structured.

An alternative classification takes a broad historical perspective of male homosexual practice according to three cultural models: the Greek model, the Melanesian model, and the Western model. Of these, the first two represent pederastic practices, and the last, a comparatively recent evolution, relations between adults. Today, the Greek model is practised in secret, while the Melanesian - associated mainly with Papua New Guinea - died out before the end of the twentieth century.

Pederastic practices have been utilized for the purpose of coming-of-age rituals, the acquisition of virility and manly virtue, education, and development of military skill and ethics. These were often paralleled by the commercial use of boys for sexual gratification, going as far as enslavement and castration. The evanescent beauty of adolescent boys has been a topos in poetry and art, from Classical times to the Middle East, the Near East and Central Asia, imperial China, pre-modern Japan, the European Renaissance and into modern times.

The Western model of age-similar homosexual relations, currently prevalent in modern industrialized societies, is seen by researchers as a departure from this norm since it has rarely appeared as a pattern in other times and places. Unlike the other models, it ‘assumes that homosexuality is not merely a behavior, but something innate to a person’s real being.’

Age range

Some modern observers restrict the age to "generally between twelve and seventeen", though historically the spread was somewhat greater, and it is understood that while the younger partner must, in some sense, not be fully mature, that could nevertheless accommodate young men in their late teen or early twenties in relationship with an older man.

While relationships in ancient Greece involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18 (Cantarella, 1992), in Japan the younger member ranged in age from 11 to about 19 (Saikaku, 1990; Schalow, 1989).

Historical synopsis

In antiquity, pederasty as an educational institution for the inculcation of moral and cultural values, as well as a form of sexual expression, entered history from the Archaic period onwards in Ancient Greece, though Cretan ritual objects reflecting an already formalized practice date to the late Minoan civilization, around 1650 BCE. According to Plato, in ancient Greece, pederasty was a relationship and bond – whether sexual or chaste – between an adolescent boy and an adult man outside of his immediate family. While most Greek men engaged in relations with both women and boys, exceptions to the rule were known, some avoiding relations with women, and others rejecting relations with boys. In Rome, relations with boys took a more informal and less civic path, men either taking advantage of dominant social status to extract sexual favors from their social inferiors, or carrying on illicit relationships with freeborn boys.

Analogous relations were documented among other ancient peoples, such as the Thracians, the Celts and various Germanic peoples such as the Heruli and the Taifali. According to Plutarch, the ancient Persians, too, had long practiced it, an opinion seconded by Sextus Empiricus who asserted that the laws of the Persians "recommended" the practice. Herodotus, however, asserts they learned copulation with boys (παισὶ μίσγονται) from the Greeks, by the use of that term reducing their practice to what John Addington Symonds describes as the "vicious form" of pederasty, as opposed to the more restrained and cultured one valued by the Greeks. Plutarch, however, counters Herodotus by pointing out that the Persians had been castrating boys long before being exposed to the mores of the Greeks.

Opposition to the carnal aspects of pederasty existed concurrently with the practice, both within and outside of the cultures in which it was found. Among the Greeks, a few cities prohibited it, and in others, such as Sparta, only the chaste form of pederasty was permitted, according to some ancient commentators. Likewise, Plato's writings devalue and finally condemn sexual intercourse with the boys one loved, while valuing the self-disciplined lover who abstained from consummating the relationship.

The Judaeo-Christian faiths also condemned sodomy (while defining that term variously), a theme later promulgated by Islam and, later still, by the Baha'i Faith. Within the Baha'i faith, pederasty is the only mention of any type of homosexuality by Bahá'u'lláh. "We shrink, for very shame, from treating of the subject of boys. Fear ye the Merciful, O peoples of the world! Commit not that which is forbidden you in Our Holy Tablet, and be not of those who rove distractedly in the wilderness of their desires.

Within this blanket condemnation of sodomy, pederasty in particular was a target. The second century preacher Clement of Alexandria used divine pederasty as an indictment of Greek religion: "For your gods did not abstain even from boys. One loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship! Early legal codes prescribed harsh penalties for violators. The law code of the Visigothic king Chindasuinth called for both partners to be "emasculated without delay, and be delivered up to the bishop of the diocese where the deed was committed to be placed in solitary confinement in a prison." These punishments were often linked to the penance given after the Sacrament of Confession. At Rome, the punishment was burning at the stake since the time of Theodosius I (390). Nonetheless the practice continued to surface, giving rise to proverbs such as With wine and boys around, the monks have no need of the Devil to tempt them, an early Christian saying from the Middle East.

Pederasty was notable in Moorish Spain, and Tuscany and northern Italy during the Renaissance.

Elsewhere, it was practiced in pre-Modern Japan until the Meiji restoration, in Mughal India until the British colonization, amongst the Aztecs and Maya prior to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and in China and Central Asia until the early 20th century. In the Islamic world spiritual pederasty was incorporated into many mystic Sufi teachings.

Sexual expression between adults and adolescents is not well studied and since the 1990s has been often conflated with pedophilia. Nonetheless, such relationships have raised issues of morality and functionality, agency for the youth, and parental authority. They also raise issues of legality in those cases where the minor is below the age of consent. Homosexual pederasty has been deemed beneficial by ancient philosophers, Japanese samurai, and modern writers such as Oscar Wilde. In many societies, it was justified on the grounds that love was the best foundation for teaching courage as well as civic and cultural values, and that man-boy relations were superior to relations with a woman. Today, some commentators consider that they have a negative effect on the psychological development of the youth.

Etymology and usage

“Pederasty” derives from the combination of “παίδ-” (the Greek stem for boy or child) with “ἐραστής” (Greek for lover; cf. “eros”). Late Latin “pæderasta” was borrowed in the sixteenth century directly from Plato’s classical Greek in The Symposium. (Latin transliterates “αί” as “ae”.) The word first appeared in the English language during the Renaissance, as “pæderastie” (e.g. in Samuel Purchas' Pilgrimage.), in the sense of sexual relations between men and boys. Beside its use in the classical sense, the term has also been used as a synonym for anal sex, irrespective of the nature of the partner. A nineteenth century sexological treatise discusses men practicing the "insertion of the penis into the anus of women," as "pederasty with their wives.

Pederasty has been defined as “The erotic relationship between an adult male and a youth, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection.” Another, more detailed version indicates likewise but stipulates: "Pederasty is the erotic relationship between an adult male and a boy, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection, whether or not the liaison leads to overt sexual contact."

Academic (historical, anthropological, and sexological) usage notwithstanding, some modern dictionary definitions restrict the meaning of the word to copulation between males. Some borrow the terminology of religious discourse, such as the Oxford Compact Edition, which offers “Unnatural connexion with a boy; sodomy”. Others refer to the mechanics of copulation, such as the Merriam-Webster (on-line edition): “one who practices anal intercourse especially with a boy”, or "sodomy".

Social class factors

Pederastic relationships in a number of different societies were identified with the upper classes, or with class difference between the partners. This class difference at times was seen as facilitating the relationship by providing upward mobility when the man was from the upper class and the boy from a poor family.

In ancient Sparta pederasty was practiced by the Spartiates as an educational device. In Athens the slaves were expressly forbidden from entering into pederastic relations with the free-born boys. In mediaeval Islamic civilization, pederastic relations "were so readily accepted in upper-class circles that there was often little or no effort to conceal their existence.

The ancient world

The Greeks

Main articles: Pederasty in Ancient Greece and Philosophy of Greek pederasty

As keystone of the Greek paideia, the relationship between lover and beloved (erastes and eromenos) was valued for fostering excellence in the youth as well as in the man who loved him.

Plato was an early critic of sexual intercourse in pederastic relationships, proposing that men's love of boys avoid all carnal expression and instead progress from admiration of the lover's specific virtues to love of virtue itself in abstract form. While copulation with boys was often criticized and seen as shameful and brutish, other aspects of the relationship were considered beneficial, as indicated in proverbs such as A lover is the best friend a boy will ever have.

Pederastic relationships were dyadic mentorships. These mentorships were sanctioned by the state, and consecrated by the religious establishment. See Mythology of same-sex love. The pederastic relationship also had to be approved by the boy's father. Boys entered into such relationships in their teens, around the same age that Greek girls were given in marriage. The mentor was expected to teach the young man or to see to his education, and to give him certain appropriate ceremonial gifts.

The physical dimension ranged from fully chaste to sexual intercourse. Pederastic art shows seduction scenes as well as sexual relations. In the seduction scenes the man is standing, grasping the boy's chin with one hand and reaching to fondle his genitals with the other. In the sexual scenes, the partners stand embracing face to face, the older of the two engaged in intercrural sex with the younger, who (usually but not always) does not show arousal. Anal sex is almost never shown, and then only as something eliciting surprise in the observers. The practice was ostensibly disparaged, the Athenians often naming it jocularly after their Dorian neighbors ("cretanize," "laconize," "chalcidize"). While historians such as Dover and Halperin hold that only the man experienced pleasure, art and poetry indicate reciprocation of desire, and other historians assert that it is "a modern fairy tale that the younger eromenos was never aroused.

Pederastic couples were also said to be feared by tyrants, because the bond between the friends was stronger than that of obedience to a tyrannical ruler. Plutarch gives as examples the Athenians Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Others, such as Aristotle, claimed that the Cretan lawgivers encouraged pederasty as a means of population control, by directing love and sexual desire into relations with males.

The Romans

From the early Republican times of Ancient Rome, it was perfectly normal for a man to desire and pursue boys. However, penetration was illegal for free born youths; the only boys who were legally allowed to perform as a passive sexual partner were slaves or former slaves known as "freedmen", and then only with regard to their former masters. For slaves there was no protection under the law even against rape.

The result was that in Roman times, pederasty largely lost its function as a ritual part of education and was instead seen as an activity primarily driven by one's sexual desires and competing with desire for women. The social acceptance of pederastic relations waxed and waned during the centuries. Conservative thinkers condemned it — along with other forms of indulgence. Tacitus attacks the Greek customs of "gymnasia et otia et turpes amores" (palaestrae, idleness, and shameful loves). The emperors, however, indulged in male love — most of it of a pederastic nature — almost to a man. As Edward Gibbon mentions, of the first fifteen emperors, "Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct" — the implication being that he was the only one not to take men or boys as lovers.

Other writers spent no effort censuring pederasty per se, but praised or blamed its various aspects. Martial appears to have favored it, going as far as to essentialize not the sexual use of the catamite but his nature as a boy: upon being discovered by his wife "inside a boy" and offered the "same thing" by her, he retorts with a list of mythological personages who, despite being married, took young male lovers, and concludes by rejecting her offer since "a woman merely has two vaginas.

Christianity

In the Old Testament, Leviticus decrees death as the punishment for a number of sexual improprieties including carnal relations between men.

Furthermore within some early second century Christian communities even speech about pederasty was suppressed: "Conversation about deeds of wickedness is appropriately termed filthy [shameful] speaking, as talk about adultery and pederasty and the like," and was to be "put to silence.

There are two pericopes found in two of the synoptic gospels (Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10) which recount the same story in more or less slightly different terms. The same basic the story is found in each book, which recounts the healing of a "beloved slave," (it is this translation that leads to the argument below, alternatives are "dear" or "valuable") has been interpreted by some as supportive of male love. The centurion's servant healed by Jesus is construed to have been his beloved, and this narrative "as Jesus' acceptance of, and even collaboration in a pederastic relationship," according to T. W. Jennings, professor of biblical and constructive theology at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Other venues

Pederasty in ancient times was not the exclusive domain of the Greeks and Romans. Athenaeus in the Deipnosophists states that the Celts also partook and despite the beauty of their women, preferred the love of boys. Some would regularly bed down on their animal skins with a lover on each side. Other writers also attest to Celtic pederasty: Aristotle (Politics, II 6.6. Athen. XIII 603a.), Strabo (iv. 199), and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32)). Some moderns have interpreted Athenaeus as meaning that the Celts had a boy on each side, but that interpretation is questioned by Hubbard, who reads it as meaning that they had a boy one side and a woman on the other. (Hubbard, 2003; p.79)

Persian pederasty and its origins was debated even in ancient times. Herodotus claimed they had learned it from the Greeks: "...and [the Persians'] luxurious practices are of all kinds, and all borrowed: the Greeks taught them pederasty. However, Plutarch asserts that the Persians used eunuch boys to that end long before contact between the cultures. In either case, Plato claimed they saw fit to forbid it to the inhabitants of the lands they occupied, since "It does not suit the rulers that their subjects should think noble thoughts, nor that they should form the strong friendships and attachments which these activities, and in particular love, tend to produce.

Post-classical and modern forms

The Middle East and Central Asia

In pre-modern Islam there was a "widespread conviction that beardless youths possessed a temptation to adult men as a whole, and not merely to a small minority of deviants.

In central Asia the practice is reputed to have long been widespread, and remains a part of the culture, as exemplified by the proverb, Women for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight. Though no longer widely practiced, boy marriages nevertheless still occur. In the Ottoman Empire culture, young male dancers, usually cross-dressed in feminine attire, were called Köçek. In the aftermath of the US-Afghan war, western mainstream media have reported derisively on patterns of adult/adolescent male relationships, documented in Kandahar in Afghanistan.

In post-Islamic Persia, where, as Louis Crompton claims, "boy love flourished spectacularly", art and literature also made frequent use of the pederastic topos. These celebrate the love of the wine boy, as do the paintings and drawings of artists such as Reza Abbasi (1565 1635). Western travelers reported that at Abbas' court (some time between 1627 and 1629) they saw evidence of homoerotic practices. Male houses of prostitution amrad khaneh, "houses of the beardless", were legally recognized and paid taxes.

Osman Agha of Temeşvar who fell captive to the Austrians in 1688 wrote in his memoirs that one night an Austrian boy approached him for sex, telling him "for I know all Turks are pederasts".

In 1770s, Âşık Sadık the poet wrote, in an address to the Sultan: Lût kavmi döğüşür, put kavmi bozar. Askerin lûtîdir, bil Padişahım ("The people of Lot fight, the people of idolatry spoil. Know, my Sultan, that your soldiers are sodomites"). Studies of Ottoman criminal law, which is based on the Sharia, reveal that persistent sodomy with non-consenting boys was a serious offense and those convicted faced capital punishment.

China

Men's sexual interest in youths was reflected in prostitution, with young male sex workers fetching higher prices than their female counterparts as recently as the beginning of the twentieth century. In Tianjin there were thirty five male brothels, housing 800 boys, and men from the area were assumed to be expert in anal relations. Though the superintendent of trade at Guangzhou issued an annual warning to the population against permitting westerners access to boy prostitutes ("do not indulge the Western barbarian with all our best favors"), Europeans were increasingly welcomed in the boy brothels.

Japan

In Japan, the practice of shudo, "the Way of the Young", paralleled closely the course of European pederasty. It was prevalent in the religious community and samurai society from the mediaeval period on, and eventually grew to permeate all of society. It fell out of favor around the end of the 19th century, concurrently with the growing European influence.

Its legendary founder is Kūkai, also known as Kōbō Daishi, the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism, who is said to have brought the teachings of male love over from China, together with the teachings of the Buddha. Monks often entered into love relationships with beautiful youths known as " chigo", which were recorded in literary works known as "chigo monogatari".

Korea

One of the earliest mentions of male attraction to boys is that of Gongmin of Goryeo (r. 1351–1374), the 31st king of the Goryeo dynasty, who was famous for his predilection for falling in love with young boys. After the death of his wife in 1365 he is reputed to have spent his time in the practice of Buddhism and relations with boys, establishing an organization for their recruitment.

Paul Michaut, a French physician writing in 1893, described Korea as a country where "[p]ederasty is general, it is part of the mores; it is practiced publicly, in the street, without the least reprobation." He associated its prevalence with that of syphilis which was likewise general.

North America

"Of the Koniagas of Kodiak Island and the Thinkleets we read, 'The most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage. A Kodiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans' (the authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand). The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the Aleutian Islands, where 'male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.' The objects of 'unnatural' affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the women. In California the first missionaries found the same practice, the youths being called Joya."

Central America

Though early Mayans are thought to have been strongly antagonistic to same-sex relationships, later Mayan states employed pederastic practices. Their introduction was ascribed to the god Chin. One aspect was that of the father procuring a younger lover for his son. Juan de Torquemada mentions that if the (younger) boy was seduced by a stranger, the penalty was equivalent to that for adultery. Bernal Diaz reported statues of male pairs making love in the temples at Cape Catoche, Yucatan.

Europe

Pederastic eros in the West, while remaining mostly hidden, has nevertheless revealed itself in a variety of settings. Legal records are one of the more important windows into this secret world, since for much of the time pederastic relations, like other forms of homosexual relations, were illegal. The expression of desire through literature and art, albeit in coded fashion, can also afford a view of the pederastic interests of the author.

Reflecting the conflicted outlook on male loves, some northern European writers ascribed pederastic tendencies to populations in southern latitudes. Richard Francis Burton evolved his theory of the Sotadic zone, an area bounded roughly by N. Lat. 43° N. Lat. 30°, stretching from the western shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Likewise, Wilhelm Kroll, writing in the Pauly-Wissowa encyclopaedia in 1906, asserted that "The roots of pederasty are found first of all in the existence of a contrary sexual feeling that is probably more frequent in southern regions than in countries with moderate climates.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance, inspired by the rediscovery of the philosophy and art of the ancient world, was a fertile time for such relations. Among the luminaries of the time who praised or depicted romantic liaisons with youths were Théophile de Viau, Marsilio Ficino, Benvenuto Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Homoerotic desire was primarily conceived as an adult's desire for an adolescent, beardless youth. Consequently, pederastic aesthetics influenced art and literature throughout Europe. "The most conventional object of homoerotic desire was the adolescent youth, usually imagined as beardless."

Albania

As late as the mid-1800s, Albanian young men between 16 and 24 seduced boys from about 12 to 17. In the literature, the lover is called ashik and the beloved, dyllber. A Geg married at the age of 24 or 25, and then he usually, but not always, gave up boy-love.

England

In the mid-19th century, William Johnson Cory, a renowned master at Eton from 1845 until his forced resignation in 1872, evolved a style of pedagogic pederasty which influenced a number of his pupils. His Ionica, a work of poetry reflecting his pederastic sensibilities, was read in intellectual circles and “made a stir” at Oxford in 1859. Oscar Browning, another Eton master and former student of Cory, followed in his tutor’s footsteps, only to be likewise dismissed in 1875. Both are thought to have influenced Oxford don Walter Pater, whose aesthetics promoted pederasty as the truest expression of classical culture. Also in 19th-century England, pederasty was a theme in the work of several writers known as the "Uranian poets". Although most of the writers of Uranian poetry and prose are today considered minor literary figures at best, the prominent Uranian representatives --- Walter Pater, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Oscar Wilde -- are figures of world-standing. Hopkins and Wilde were both deeply influenced by Pater's work. Wilde wrote of pederastic and homoerotic culture -- though not in the "elevated" pederastic sense that it held for Pater and Hopkins -- in a number of works. In the case of Hopkins, "Hopkins often was, it must be admitted, strikingly Ruskinian in his love of Aristotelian particulars and their arrangements; however, it was at the foot of Pater -- the foremost Victorian unifier of ‘eros, pedagogy, and aesthetics’ -- that Hopkins would ever remain. As a result, Hopkins's poetry displays bountiful pederastic themes and nuances.

Reaction and retrenchment

The end of the 19th century saw increasing conflict over the issue of social acceptance of pederasty. A number of other pederastic scandals erupted around this time, such as the one involving the German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp, which drove him to suicide. In the same vein, in a work that was to influence the evolution of communism's attitude towards same-sex love, the German political philosopher Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's collaborator, denounced the ancient Greeks for "the abominable practice of sodomy" and for degrading "their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede".

This strife also involved the Wandervogel movement, a youth organization emphasizing a romantic view of nature. Wandervogel took flight in 1896, the same year that the journal Der Eigene went to press. It was published by a twenty-two-year-old German (Adolf Brand), and it advocated classical pederasty as a cure for the moral flabbiness of German youth. Influenced by the ideas of Gustav Wyneken, the Wandervogel movement was quite open about its homoerotic tendencies, although this kind of affection was supposed to be expressed in a nonsexual way. The founding of Young Wandervogel happened largely as a reaction to the public scandal about these erotic tendencies, which were said to alienate young men from women.

The English schools, however, continued to be “hotbeds of pederasty” into the twentieth century. C. S. Lewis when talking about his life at Malvern College, an English public school, acknowledged that pederasty "was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with foetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition.

Modern constructs

Liminal same-sex love — relations with young people on the threshold of becoming adults — whether for pleasure or to further social goals is no longer widely practiced, despite the lawful status of such relations in countries with a lower age of consent. Even when legal, some in the west perceive such relationships in the light of feminist and postmodern theory as an abuse of power when the older partner is in a position of educational, religious, economic, or other form of institutional authority over the younger partner. Other observers criticize this as repressive, and point out that appropriate and acceptable forms of sexuality for adolescents have yet to be evolved.

Illegal, and even legal, forms of pederasty continue to be strongly condemned. It remains widely censured, whether legally or illegally expressed, and instances of it have had severe political repercussions. A major political known as the Mark Foley scandal, or "Pagegate broke out in the United Sates of America in 2006, threatening the Republican leadership of the house and contributing to the Democratic capture of the House and Senate in the fall elections. The scandal was triggered by revelations that congressman Foley was exchanging pederastic communications with a number of teenage pages, over the course of several years, despite longstanding warnings to the Republican leadership about his excessive familiarity with teenage boys. Twenty-three years earlier, in 1983, Democratic Congressman Gerry Studds admitted having had an affair with a 17-year-old page a decade earlier and was censured by the United States House of Representatives but continued his career in Congress. Some "gay-positive" writers, in their work of interpreting Christian teachings, have concluded that Paul's criticism of same-sex love do not target those for whom such affections comenaturally, but rather those who indulge such pleasures by choice, with the example given being "the Hellenistic practice of erotic behavior with young males." Their work suggests that religious opposition to same sex relations should restrict itself to pederastic relationships, with their presumed abuse of power. But a position paper of the Anglican Church rejects that contention, claiming that,

The Graeco-Roman "ideal" did not entail erotic love of children, but of young (teenage) males, of the same age that young woman would be given in marriage. Frequently the more mature male was only slightly older than the partner. Had Paul intended to proscribe pederasty by using these terms (such as we understand pederasty today), he had recourse to many other more precise terms. In fact, the discussion in Romans, with its inclusion of female homoerotic behaviour, indicates that exploitation and victimisation were not the issue. (Paul has a lot to say about the abuse of power elsewhere). Position paper: HowIs Homosexuality Understood in Scripture, Tradition, and in Contemporary Theology

The Catholic Church, while itself implicated in scandals over pederasts in its clergy, is at the same time one of the main groups working to prohibit the practice of pederasty. On Feb. 2, 1961 the Vatican issued a document, “Instruction on the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders,” barring from the priesthood anyone who has "perverse inclinations to homosexuality or pederasty."

Child abuse issues

A study countering this position, authored by Bruce Rind and others, was published by the American Psychological Association in 1998. According to Lilienfeld (2002) Rind's study was approvingly cited by NAMBLA, and was criticized in World Magazine in the article; “Tossing the Last Taboo: Psychologists Hail the Benefits of Pederasty”. Though paederasty was once accepted in many cultures, some modern observers have retrospectively labeled it abusive. Enid Bloch argues that many Greek boys who were involved in paederastic relationships may have been harmed by the experience. If the relationship included anal intercourse, Bloch writes, the boy may have been traumatized by worry that he was violating social customs. According to Bloch, the "most shameful thing that could happen to any Greek male was penetration by another male." In this respect Bloch is in accord with Greek sexual morality, which also recognized a difference between ethical pederasty which excluded anal intercourse and "hubristic" pederasty which was believed to debase the boy as well as the man who penetrated him. Bloch further argues that vases showing "a boy standing perfectly still as a man reaches out for his genitals" indicate the boy may have been "psychologically immobilized, unable to move or run away." Many vases, however, show the boys responding warmly to the man's advances, placing their hands around the man's neck or on his arm, a gesture thought to indicate affection and reciprocity.

Academic controversy

An unspoken ban of talking about pederasty in academia was broken only in 1905 by the German historian Erich Bethe with his study Dorian Boy-Love: Its Ethic, Its Idea. In the USA, as late as 2005, Haworth Press withdrew from publication a volume on homosexuality in classical antiquity titled Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West. This was in response to criticism from American right-wing groups that objected to book's depiction of classical pederasty, as well as to the substance of a chapter by the American academic Bruce Rind which integrated observations from history, anthropology, and zoology, and which was interpreted by some readers as advocating pedophilia.

The publisher, in a letter to the editors, attempted to exonerate Rind from the accusation and conceded that the article was sound, but stood by his decision to withdraw it "to avoid negative press" and "economic repercussions. Later Haworth reversed course and announced that the book and journal would be published, but without Rind's controversial essay. Mr. Rind's essay is to be published in a future "supplementary volume" of The Journal of Homosexuality, together with counterarguments advanced by his critics.

Notes

References

General

Homosexuality and Civilization, by Louis Crompton; Belknap, Harvard, 2003. ISBN -X
Growing Up Sexually: A World Atlas
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. 2: Sexual Inversion, by Havelock Ellis
Pederasty among primitives: institutionalized initiation and cultic prostitution, by G. Bleibtreu-EhrenbergPederasty and Child Sexual Abuse
Crosson-TowerCynthia, C. PhD. 2007 UnderstandingChild Abuse and Neglect. Allyn & Bacon. ISBN-10: 0205503268
LASCARATOS.J., POULAKOU-REBELAKOU.E. (2000) Child Sexual Abuse:Historical Cases in the Byzantine Empire(324–1453 A.D.)Child Abuse& Neglect, Vol. 24, No. 8, pp. 1085–1090, 2000
Durkin, Keith F. & Clifton, D. Bryant (1999) Propagandizing pederasty: A thematic analysis of the on-line exculpatory accounts of unrepentant pedophiles. Deviant Behavior 20,2:103-127. Abridged andretitled as 'On-Line Accounts of Unrepentant Pedophiles,' and reprintedin Alex Thio & Thomas C. Calhoun (Eds.). Readings in DeviantBehavior, 2nd Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001, pp. 305-313
Goode, E., Vail D.E. 2007 Extreme Deviance. PP 144. ISBN 1412937221
C.K. Li, D.J. West, T.P. Woodhouse. Children's sexual encounters with adults /. Publisher London : Duckworth, 1990.Ancient Greece
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'Homosexuality' & other articles in the Encyclopædia Iranica