Aye Owdun. [/quote] i agree 100% here another fact about gays in the military ...................................................................................... The Storm Troopers, founded on Aug. 31 1921, provided an place for disaffected young men. Recruiting drives were held in saloons, you joined up you got free beer for the night. The boys got their hair cut, put on brown shirts and nice shiny black boots and joined a gang that the police wouldn't touch. The boys who had been in the youth groups and the boys who had been in the gangs all graduated to the Storm Troopers. This was a heady mix. Comrades, purpose, respect, and money. And in the beginning, masculine gays were welcome.
After all the leader was the most notorious homosexual in the Party.
A 'Du' Friend of Hitler.
German is a very formal language. There is a formal way to talk to someone and a familiar way to talk to someone. Germans can know each other for decades and never use first names or the du form in conversation. There's even a little ritual when one passes this point.
Hitler only had two du friends in his entire life. One was Ernst Roehm.
Ernst Roehm was likely the first Nazi. He is known to have found Hitler his first job in 1919. He and Hitler had both been wounded in WWI. Roehm was one of the few survivors of the Beer Hall Putsch . While Hitler was imprisoned in 1924 Ernst Roehm built up the SA into the largest single political force in the country. By 1932, the SA was the most powerful army in Germany, but Ernst Roehm had two fatal flaws.
Ernst Roehm was a socialist. He argued with Hitler over the necessity of a second revolution to fulfill the Socialist concept in National Socialism. It wasn't safe for anyone to argue with Hitler.
The other was that he was an incredibly indiscreet homosexual. He stocked upper levels of the SA with handsome young gay men. He used party funds to have enormous banquets which became orgies. He had sued a hustler who had tried to blackmail him over love-letters and had been sent to Bolivia due to it and disagreements with Hitler for 5 years.
Ernst Roehm did not like Bolivia at all. He complained about the heat. The lack of culture and the lack of sexual partners. When Hitler called him back to Germany to settle mutiny in the ranks of the SA he was delighted to return. He was granted the rank of Minister without Portfolio in the parliament. Some of his supporters thought that he should have been the Minister of the Military.
Ernst Roehm was a very skilled street-fighter and organizer of street fighters. He was respected and popular to the youth of the SA. (The majority of the SA were under the age of 21). Even his enemies acknowledged that he didn't coerce younger men to provide sexual favours. He remained faithful to Hitler his entire life, even when Hitler had sent him away.
The aristocrats in the military had utter contempt for the vicious and oafish Roehm. His blatant sexuality was one of the points that stuck in their craw. The industrialists were worried on his insistence on the Second Revolution (the Nazis gaining political power was the first.) Roehm's outspoken contempt for the officers of the military and the wealthy made him many powerful enemies. The SS was subordinate to the SA therefore subordinate to Roehm but the three leaders of the SS got ambitious.
Ernst Roehm remained oblivious to the growing influence of these people on his leader and best friend. He was far too blunt to understand sneakiness or betrayal. He apparently considered the anti-Semitism of the Nazi party to be a propaganda tool. When he demanded that the Wehrmacht, the SS and the SA be united under his command too many people got worried and one of them was his best friend.
The Sturmabteilung
The SA was one of the most vicious gang of thugs this century. The SA originated the role of the SS in tortures, murders, beatings and genocide. The Brown shirts were the shock troops of the Nazi movement, under Roehm, they recruited among communists, socialists, petty thieves, hustlers and street kids, anyone with a taste for violence was a potential member, unless they were Jewish. Hitler once made an official statement
The SA is not an Institute for the moral education of genteel young ladies, but a formation of seasoned soldiers.
This was said when the SA was still an asset to Hitler.
The average German citizen feared and despised the SA. They extorted money from businesses and then spent it on fancy cars, fancy clothes and fancy parties. This was at a time when a significant portion of the German population were on the verge of starvation.
The SA were used as the shock troops of the Fascist movement. In the early days they tore down the posters of their opponents and got into brawls in the bars. As their numbers swelled they became more violent. People would be beaten on the streets with no provocation. Regular German citizens could be seized and brought to one of the SA club houses where they would be tortured sometimes to death. The first concentration camps wee set up under the auspices of the SA.
They were better organized than the police and many of the judges refused to hear cases against them. The judges who tried to continue with cases where often victims themselves. The politics of intimidation finally convinced the German people that any end to violence was better than violence without end.
Hitler was not comfortable with the idea of homosexuals. As far as can be told he wasn't very comfortable with the concept of sex period, although he did like the effect of lots of Aryan babies being born. He believed that homosexuality led to racial degeneracy, (for that reason he permitted homosexuality among the slave populations such as the Slavs.) and was the sole cause for the Fall of the Roman Empire. He, however, was a brutally practical pragmatist. As long as homosexuals were useful to the Party they were permitted to exist.
Other members of the Nazi party were not so pragmatic. Himmler hated gays with a passion. The Ministry of Justice made paragraph 175 harsher and harsher. In the Weimar Republic only sodomy was outlawed. Under the Nazi regime any behaviour that the judge found 'peculiar' could receive a death penalty. These laws were made retroactive.
No matter how homophobic the pronouncements of the rest of the Nazi Party, having a blatant homosexual as the second in command made all the other homosexual/bisexual men feel safe. A large number of the leadership of the SA were openly homosexual. After all, the SA was above the law. The SA were the brutal arm of enforcement for the Nazi Party. They thought that they were indispensable. They were quickly becoming an embarrassment.
As the Nazi Party gained legal political power the conservative elements in society such as the Wehrmacht (the Army) and the industrialists told Hitler and other officials that there support depended on Hitler 'doing something' about this army of thugs. Hitler had to show that the Mad Dogs of the SA were under his control. The random violence against the 'average German' had to end if the Nazi Party were to remain in control.
Langemessernacht: The Night of the Long Knives
The picnic for openly homosexual Nazis ended on Langemessernacht. The SS was empowered to execute the leaders of the SA under the rubric of sexual perversion.
On June 4th 1932, Ernst Roehm and Adolf Hitler had their last formal meeting. It lasted for five hours and ended with them screaming at each other. For some reason Roehm had thought that the meeting went well. He went on vacation in his native Bavaria and ordered the SA on a month long vacation.
During that month, Hitler was informed by the military, the industrialists, the Roman Catholic Church and the SS that something had to be done about the SA. Himmler, Goering and Heydrich forged a report that the SA was prepared to rebel against Hitler and set up a Gay Bolshevik state. (Sounds like they were Republicans). According to reports from this time period Hitler seemed reluctant to make the step that would destroy the man and the group that had brought him to power. Finally, the pressure convinced him that the only way that he could retain power would be to eliminate the SA.
Early in the morning of Saturday June 30th, the arrests of the SA leaders started. Edmund Heines and his chauffeur were reportedly executed in the bed that they shared. Ernst Roehm was arrested and given the choice of suicide or execution. He is said to have refused and demanded that Hitler perform the killing himself. Many of the SA leaders apparently never knew why they were being executed. Several died shouting out Heil Hitler! Some of the ones who were not executed said afterward that they thought that the purge was an attempt to overthrow Hitler.
Hitler claimed afterward that 77 men died during the Blood Purge . A figure of closer to 1,000 was given at the War Crimes tribunal in the late forties. Higher estimates are given based on the fact that many of the SS took the opportunity to go after real and perceived enemies. This is one of the episodes of the war when the Nazis did not keep records.
Results
A German joke of the time puts it best:
Leiber Gott! If Hitler killed Roehm and his men because he just found out about Roehm's homosexuality. What is he going to do when he finds out about Dr. Goebbel's clubfoot?
Most of the men who were killed were not killed because they were homosexual. They were killed because it was dangerous to let them live. This was the pattern for the rest of the war many of the people who were killed for being homosexual were arrested for other reasons. It was just easier to secure a death sentence if the charge were sexual deviance. Of course, many of those who died for other reasons were homosexuals, several Communists, Socialists and Jews were also Gay rights activists. One prominent victim was Herschel Grynszpan the assassin of Ernst vom Rath.
The SA did not ignore the liquidation of its leadership. At least 155 SS officers were assassinated over the next two years having a note that said Roehm's Avengers pinned to their shirts.
This was the end of the period that it was safe to be openly homosexual or bisexual within the Nazi Party. Hitler ordered all homosexuals to leave the SA on pain of being accused of treason. The SS was appointed to the position of power that the SA had previously had. The SA was left functionally leaderless and was atomised and absorbed into the Army under the control of the Army officers.
The wholesale slaughter of people because they were 'thought' to be threats to the State and to Hitler was the point of no return for the German people. The government had taken upon itself the arbitrary right to legally execute without recourse to the courts or to any existing laws. The coming Holocaust could have been stopped at this point by an uproar from the German people or from the Party itself. But since it was homosexuals who were killed people didn't care. This set the precedent that it was legal to kill people for their identity, or perceived identity. The history of the development of European law had previously only permitted criminal charges to be laid for behaviour. It was possible to be arrested and convicted for hugging a person of the same sex, appearing in the address book of someone who was arrested for being homosexual or giving someone a look that a passerby could interpret as wanton.
This also silenced the remaining Socialists within the Nazi movement. Communists thought that the Blood Purge was a sign that the Nazis were starting to 'eat themselves' and could simply be ignored as they self-destructed. The Wehrmacht was overjoyed that the lower class perverts in a pseudo-military were wiped out. They were less overjoyed when they discovered that the traditional autonomy of the Military no longer existed under the Nazi regime.
There were no more open homosexuals in the Nazi Party after this point. Members of the SS who were caught engaging in homosexual sex were executed on the spot and not recorded. Several prominent homosexuals were able to achieve a level of safety if they were designated as necessary for morale purposes, but they were not allowed to become members of the Party. Some 5,000 members of the military were charged and sent to concentration camps but it is not recorded whether any of these were Party members (or former members of the SA). Hermann Goering was rumoured to be homosexual but apparently he was merely a transvestite.
This is the story of open homosexuals in the Nazi party from 1921 to 1932.
owdun wrote:There is a suggestion, that the decline of the Greek and Roman empires was down to the rampant homosexuality of the peoples of those empires, and before some wiseguy suggests the same applies to the British empire, it was not queers, but stinking politicians that accomplished that dirty deed.
Aye Owdun.
Sorry Owdun bud, but i've never seen that in any notable works on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Greek, i can't comment so much, cause i haven't read alot about it.
"Don't mess around with the guy in shades at night" Corey Hart...and he means it too...
Should homosexuals be allowed to serve in the U.K's Armed Forces?
I am serving/have served and believe that they shouldn't.
38% [ 27 ]
I am serving/have served and believe that they should.
22% [ 16 ]
I have never served and believe that they shouldn't.
17% [ 12 ]
I have never served and believe that they should.
21% [ 15 ]
Total Votes : 70
I know i said id get back to Kat on this subject, but i figured whats the point? People want to think what they want to think.
I suppose you could also write books and teach courses of the effect of fleas on the canine back throughout history.
The issue is relevancy. My point was that homosexuality was/has never been regarded as the norm in ANY military. I took Kat's post, and i went over some classical history (that included Spartan history), and i came up with what i thought i'd come up with....zilch, zip, nothing.
It was basically things about how young men were taught told to steal from a young age, but if they were caught they could expect severe punishment or even death. Mothers telling their sons to either bring home the family shield or upon it, Spartan military doctrine, etc. Unfortunately, nothing on homos..oh well.
Sleep on this article:
But let us turn our attention now away from the feminized and back to the homosexual man. Such a person, from the age of Homer -- if he were "gay" in today's sense of the word --was called kinaithos (KIN ay thos), which means "causer of shame" in both modern and ancient Greek (aftós/aftí poú eíinai ó kinón tín Aidó). The word has etymological connections to "shame," "corruption," "disgrace" (Aidó/Aísxos), and literally means "he who brings about the curse of Aídó (a minor goddess who punished moral transgressors and was a companion of the goddess, Nemesis). In Athens, and most other Greek city-states, he would not be allowed to take part in public affairs, and if he were blatant in his behavior (that is, behavior such as that characterized by homosexuals today), would be disenfranchised, exiled, or executed by the state.
What must be kept in mind is that the ancient Greeks were perpetually at war, either with foreign (barbarian) or with Greek foes. War in those days was brutal and final. There were no M.A.S.H. units just behind the field of battle, ready to give life-saving first-aid. No helicopters to take the wounded to hospital. If one were captured, there were no Geneva Conventions to ensure the proper treatment of prisoners because there were no prisoners: All combatants were slain, their women, children, and non-combatants sold into slavery, taken as booty, or slaughtered as well. Such war-like societies must, perforce, develop a warrior code in order to survive. This meant that there was a premium on manhood and all that that word implied. Think of Achilles who, when given the choice of a long life with no glory, chose a short life with glory and honor instead. Think of Sparta and her "wall of men," of Leonidas and his 300, or of their Spartan mothers who said to their sons as they left for war: "Either come back with your shield, or on it." Think of Socrates who chose to die rather than bring dishonor upon himself by disobeying the laws of his beloved city: a city he had fought for with honor in many a battle. Think of Alexander the Great at Opis, in Persia, and of his famous speech to his men when he offered to strip in order to match his wounds with theirs, all of which were on his chest and none on his back. Such states could not afford the luxury of the kind of weak, effeminate men we see all around us today. The glory that was Greece was only possible because strong men were willing to fight and die so that their country could survive and their philosophers and poets could flourish. Before there could be a Parthenon there had to be a Marathon (Xoris Marathones then ginounte Parthenones).
This concentration on the development of strong and honorable men, upon whom the very life of the state depended, ultimately resulted in the creation of an aesthetical male ideal. (As opposed to the feminine "Hollywood" ideal prevalent in the West today; focusing, as it does, on sex, romance, and the female form, instead.) And it naturally follows that, in such a society, the manly virtues (aretes) would also be the most prized. And since there were no military academies to train young men in these virtues, this important task was taken up by the older, experienced males who grew to love their charges, just as these young men grew to love and respect their elder mentors. Such training also put a great deal of emphasis on the importance of friendship, especially in the need for a close companion or friend on the battlefield. So important was this training considered to be, that families unable to find a suitable pedagogue for their son felt socially slighted and disadvantaged. The aesthetical ideal of the male mentioned above (similar in its essentials to the idealized Christian feminine ideal, which inspires male effort to a higher good) is delineated in Plato's Symposium, where we are presented with the mystical realization of Plato's famous Doctrine of the Forms. Socrates, having been instructed in matters of love by the priestess, Diotima, seeks to show that by understanding "Eros" (love), we can learn to approach the Forms, toward which our souls are oriented. This is done initially by admiring a young man's body as a thing of beauty. One continues this "aesthetical ascent" by the admiration of all bodies, then on to human institutions -- such as the state -- until, finally, one can come to understand and love the beauty not only of nature but of the Supreme Beauty of God Himself: an evolutionary process that is ultimately meant to purify one's soul, and free one from the enslavement of the flesh.
In Xenophon's version of the Symposium (sometimes titled, Banquet), Socrates expounds on the importance of a love that transcends bodily desires. He tells one of his fellow banqueters that: "My heart is set on showing you ... that not only humankind but also gods and demi-gods set a higher value on the friendship of the spirit than on the enjoyment of the body. For in all cases where Zeus became enamored of mortal women for their beauty, though he united with them he suffered them to remain mortal; but all those persons whom he delighted in for their souls' sake he made immortal." It is this love -- a love on a plane higher than that of the merely physical -- that has come to be known as "Platonic love" in all of the languages of the world. And it is just this love that set the standards of behavior that existed between teacher and boy, as well as between adult friends in ancient Greece. Though it never reached such lofty heights, the admiration of the beauty of the male form was also prevalent in the Roman world as evidenced by such as St. Augustine of Hippo (arguably Christianity's most heterosexual saint), who said that the body was obviously created for more than mere utilitarian purposes; it was also meant to be admired for its beauty. As an example, he cites the beard which has no functional purpose but was given to men to make them beautiful.
So that we have the combination of the need in the Greek world to develop strong, honorable, and physically capable men, coupled with a male aesthetic of the beautiful that was universally admired and sought. Add to this the aforementioned custom of putting the schooling of young boys in the manly arts and virtues into the hands of older men, and one begins to see that such a mix could be potentially explosive. For this reason, although these friendships were encouraged, there were -- according to many sources such as Xenophon, Plutarch, Plato, and others --tough restrictions imposed by custom and law. As an example, an older man (Erastis) might take on the training of a young boy (Eromenos), but under no circumstances was intimate touching allowed. The difference between homo-erotic friendships, and actual homosexual practices (in the modern sense of what it means to be "gay"), was clearly defined. The Greek ideal was a non-physical, purely pedagogical, relationship. That some, if not many, may have strayed, cannot be denied, but what is important here is to understand that those who did risked serious legal penalties such as banishment or death, and that such behavior was most emphatically discouraged and forbidden by custom and law.
Proof of this can be found through an observation of Greek vase paintings having the depiction of Erastis and Eromenos as the subject. The strong ties between the older man and the boy he is training are easily seen. No close bodily contact is ever depicted, however, and one notices that all of the prohibitions regarding these relationships are being strictly observed. Had overt homosexual behavior been considered acceptable, it would most definitely have been shown -- because the Greeks were prone to "letting everything hang out" -- but this is hardly ever the case. Those vase paintings that do depict what might accurately be categorized as homosexual scenes comprise such an insignificant percentage of the total -- something like 30 out of tens of thousands (cf A. Georgiades, Debunking the Myth of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece. 2002. p. 126.), that one is perfectly justified in wondering just what the real purpose is that lies behind the extrapolation of this minute percentage into the absurd charge that they represent the norm. Moreover, a percentage of these 30 or so could have been commissioned by homosexuals, or even by "straight" customers who saw them as a means of ridiculing behavior they disliked or thought to be amusing. (It is important to note that Greek vases were a major export item and have been found from Russia to Gibraltar, as well as throughout Northern and Western Europe. In the province of Attica alone -- where Athens is located -- over 80,000 have been found to date.-- cf Georgiades. p.127.) When one compares this small number to what we see today on TV, in ads, books, magazines, the cinema, etc., one can just imagine what future generations will think of us.
That such behavior was the subject of ridicule can be seen in the disapproval voiced by Socrates, for instance, who, as Xenophon tells us in his Memorobilia, when he found out that Critias loved Euthydemus, tried to restrain him by saying that such a thing was "mean," and that it was "unbecoming" of Critias to ask of Euthydemus "... a favor that it would be wrong to grant." When Critias persisted, Socrates berates him by saying that "Critias seems to have the feelings of a pig [that can't] help rubbing [itself] against stones"( Emphasis added.). And it is Xenophon as well who tells us in his Lacedaemonian Constitution, that Lycurgus, the great Spartan lawgiver, "... banned the [physical] connection [between man and boy] as an abomination; and forbade it no less than parents were forbidden from sexual intercourse with their children and brothers and sisters with each other." Spartan life was harsh, and boys from a certain age slept in barracks with other boys as part of their training. This fact has given much cause for sly and cunning conjecture, but upon closer scrutiny the effects of this practice can most accurately be compared to what Evelyn Waugh, the English writer, said about the exclusive, all-boys private schools of his time. He said that though there may have been some homosexual activity, he did not know of one single case where a graduate, of his school for instance, did not go on to marry and raise a family. The same can be said of the Spartans who were expected to give strong children to their country, and who, according to Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," were severely dealt with if they didn't.
Concerning Sparta, Plutarch, in the "Sayings of Spartan Women," to be found in his Moralia, relates some pithy but informative anecdotes about these extraordinary females. As one reads them, it is extremely difficult to think of the men they are talking about as being "gay," or effeminate in any way. One of the most famous of these is the following: A woman from Attica asked a Spartiatisa, "Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men?" The Spartan woman answered: "Because we are the only women that are the mothers of [real] men." It is worthy of note that what the woman from Attica said, in effect, was that all Greek women were under the complete control of their men, whereas the Spartan woman answered, in effect, that even these dominating Greek males were not "men" in comparison with Spartans. Another, the wife of Leonidas, of Thermopylae fame, asked her husband what she should do [should he be killed]. He answered: "Marry a good man, and bear good children." First off, it is noteworthy that she asked her husband what she should do, hardly a likely possibility if he were an effeminate male, and she, not he, were the master in the home. Secondly, his chief concern is that she marry and bear children; something a homosexual wouldn't give too much of a damn about. Another has to do with a Spartan girl who is the object of some very sissified advances by a visiting foreigner. She pushes him away and says deridingly: "Get away from me, you can't even 'come on' to me like a man." This tells us, since it is perfectly logical to assume that the girl had never left Sparta (travel outside of Lacedaemonia was not something ordinarily done by anyone, male or female), that in her prior experiences with the men of Sparta, the advances they'd made were aggressive. Finally, when a Spartan woman was asked if she had made advances [before marriage] to her husband, she answered: "No, but he made them to me." And speaking of Spartan men, we mustn't forget that it was Menelaus, the Spartan, who waged war upon the Trojans in order to win back his wife, the beautiful Helen. Whether she was the actual cause of the war is not the issue here; what is important is that the idea of a Spartan husband -- not to mention the whole of Greece -- going to war for a woman had enough verisimilitude about it to be considered the natural thing for any husband to do. Had this story contained too much of the fantastic, it would not have had the staying power it has enjoyed down through the centuries.
From the time of Homer, in whose epic poetry there cannot be found one iota of a hint of homosexual behavior, to the time of Alexander the Great, such practices as sodomy between adults -- or between an adult and a boy -- were considered abominations, and were strictly forbidden and severely punished. As for Alexander, according to Plutarch in On The Fortune of Alexander, when the Macedonian conqueror was asked by the lickspittle governor of one of the conquered provinces in Asia Minor, if he would like him to send Alexander "...a youth, the like of whom for bloom and beauty did not exist." he received the following reply: "Why you vilest of men, what deed of mine have you witnessed in the past that would make you think I would be interested in such pleasures?" And speaking of Homer, the friendship between Achilles and Patroclus has been the subject of much snide innuendo. This malicious and self-serving commentary always seems to ignore the fact that the whole theme of the Iliad -- Homer's great epic account of the Trojan War, and Achilles' heroic exploits in it -- was the "Wrath of Achilles." And what was Achilles so worked up (wrathful) about? Why, it was that Agamemnon, had taken Achilles' slave girl away from him. When Achilles and Patroclus came back to their tent after a hard day on the field of battle, their two captured slave girls -- taken as booty -- were waiting for them. When they went to sleep, they slept with these girls. The idea that the glorification of friendship that the Greeks so admired could have been nothing more than an excuse for sodomy, is as ridiculous as it is despicable and unhistorical.
As far as the classical age is concerned, a reading of Aristophanes' great comedies (as just one source among many) should be enough to convince any reasonable person that, when this great artist poked fun at the perpetual battle between the sexes, he was accurately reflecting the ethos of an overwhelmingly heterosexual society. His play, Lysistrata, is the perfect case in point. The premise of the play is that the Peloponnesian War is destroying Athens, and the women want it to end. They decide that the best way to get their men to stop fighting is to refrain from having sex with them, so they go on what might be called a sex strike. It all makes for very funny reading, but the point we wish to emphasize here is that the men go crazy! After all kinds of very comical goings-on, the men finally give up and agree to stop fighting if only their women will come down from the Acropolis, where they've barricaded themselves, and sleep in their own beds again. If the ancient Greeks were "a bunch of fairies," as that paradigm of civic virtue, the "Rev." Al Sharpton, once remarked, why did they all go nuts? Why were all of the males of Athens running around with "three legs," as is so graphically and comically depicted in the play?
It is important to note that throughout the entire written history of Hellenism (and the same can be said of Christianity as well), erotic love was universally presented in terms of male and female: the bride and the bridegroom. This is true of all of the scriptural images we possess, just as it is true of about 99% of Greek art and literature. When one looks over the whole of Greek literature, poetry, and art, for instance, one sees that when the subject of erotic attachment comes up, it is always between a man and a women: Odysseus and Penelope (whose relationship is a near-perfect model of a mature marriage), Hector and Andromache, Hippolytus and Phaedra, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Even among the major gods like Ares and Aphrodite, Zeus and Hera (and Zeus' behavior can be best described as macho and heterosexual in the extreme), on down to the minor gods, such as Peleus, married to the goddess Thetis, and Heracles, who took the mortal Deianira to wife, the list goes on and on. And this model extends as well into the Hellenistic age, with such lovers as Leander and Hero, and all of the couples in the plays of Menander. The same pattern holds true of Greek art running from the Minoan, Mycenaean, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic ages, a span of over 2000 years. All through this enormous length of time, the overwhelming majority of the sculptures, figurines, wall paintings, mosaics, and vase paintings (something like 99%), show males and females when the subject is erotic love. By contrast, America went from Christian Puritanism to "Gay and Lesbian pride," "Heather has two Mommies," Barney Frank in the U.S.Congress, and "Don't ask, don't tell" in the U.S. Armed Forces -- with all of the attendant decadence these nihilistic constructs have brought us -- in just over 200 years.
This pattern of strict adherence to God's Natural Law held true in the political arena as well. There was not one Greek political leader -- from Homeric to Classical times -- that was known to be a homosexual. Prominent men such as Odysseus, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Priam, Paris, and Hector of the Trojan War; down to the classical period, with such men as Pericles (who, after he divorced his wife, lived with his mistress, Aspasia, until his death), Aristides, Phocion, Themistocles, Miltiades, Nicias, and others, too numerous to mention, were all, without exception, married or involved in heterosexual relationships with mistresses or Hetairai (roughly equivalent to the Japanese Geisha). The same can be said of the "mythological" heroes like Perseus, Cecrops (who first instituted monogamy among men), and Theseus (who was the first man to abduct Helen of Troy when she was a girl); to such heroes as the Argonauts: men like Jason, Orpheus, and Heracles; all of whom were involved in (sometimes stormy) heterosexual love affairs throughout their lives. The playwrights and poets too -- Hesiod, Archilochus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, and others, were all masculine, normal men as well. And this is true of the philosophers whose lives we know something about, such as Socrates (who married twice), Aristotle, and Plato.
Though Plato never married, he had much to say on what he felt was normal behavior between the sexes: Much that would blow to pieces the devious and self-serving assertions being put forward by our postmodern "scholars," and "intellectuals" today. Here is a sample: In his Laws he states quite categorically that "... male does not touch male for this purpose, since it is unnatural...." And again, in the same work, he tells us that "... when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature (kata physin), but is contrary to nature (para physin) when male mates with male or female with female, and that those ... guilty of such enormities [are] impelled by their slavery to pleasure." Plato's views might even be termed puritanical by many today for in his "Seventh Epistle" he tells us that "...if one's existence is spent in gorging food twice a day and never sleeping alone at night ... [then] not a single man of all who live beneath the heavens could ever become wise." And Plato, who has been called the wisest man who ever lived, was certainly wise enough to know that compulsive homosexuality leads inexorably to the utter enslavement of, first, the individuals who practice it, and second, the society in which it is allowed to flourish. For, as the Emperor Julian (the "Apostate") -- a scholar of the first rank who was superbly schooled in Greek paideia -- so aptly put it in his Sixth Oration: "Then never think, my friend, that you are free while your belly rules you and the part below the belly, since you will then have masters who can either furnish you the means of pleasure or deprive you of them."
So that what we see in ancient Greece is a devotion to the male ideal, engendered by the need to create a warrior class capable of defending home and hearth effectively. This self-preserving ideal resulted in the creation of strict codes of honor on the battlefield, and in the elevation of friendship between men carried to what may today be considered the extreme. A similar situation occurred in the age of the Samurai warrior in Japan. These men were the embodiment of heroic virtue, and their idealization led to the cult of the male in that country as well. These manly virtues may provide plenty of material for ridicule for the likes of Woody Allen (who gets lots of laughs when he quips: "I'm way beyond 4-F; I'm categorized as 'coward' by my draft board"); and Bill Clinton, who famously wrote that " I despise the military," and actually demonstrated against his country while American boys were dying in a war he was illegally evading. One more thought on Clinton: It was because those 1500 men on the Titanic had been raised while Helleno-Christian influence was still strong, that they were able to muster the courage and determination to give up their lives so that their women and children could live. There were, of course, a few cowards who dressed as women in order to gain a place on the lifeboats, and you can be sure that "Slick Willie" would have been one of these. Yet, this man --who would not have been allowed to hold the office of "night-soil collector" in ancient Greece -- was elected the Commander-in-Chief of the American armed forces! What does this tell you, dear reader, about the state of "feminine democracy" in that country?
What does this say about the contempt in which the dumbed-down and misinformed citizens of that once-great land are held by those who control that nation's media, and are therefore able to wield the power necessary to have the "lickspittle-of-their-choice" elected?
It may be reasonably argued that there was something wrong with the culture that fostered these irregular and illegal homo-erotic relationships between some Greek males in the 6th, 5th, and 4th centuries. What must be repeatedly emphasized, however, is that, unlike in America (and more and more in Europe) today, this activity was never legalized, never encouraged, never lauded as being perfectly normal, never part of the Greek educational curriculum, never depicted on the stage as something trendy and "cool." No candidate for public office, known to be a homosexual, could ever, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, have been elected; no openly homosexual person -- male or female -- could have avoided death, banishment, or, at the very least, severe public censure. The idea of same-sex- marriage would have been incomprehensible and repugnant beyond words to them; and the thought of a group such as the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA -- whose goal is "to end the oppression of men and boys who have mutually consensual relationships") forming in their community would have thrown them into paroxysms of uncontrollable rage.
The philosophers and priests of ancient Greece were dedicated to the principle of never violating with thought or deed that which has been given to man by the gods. This principle was encapsulated in the much-heralded phrase, Sozein ta phenomena; which phrase we translate as follows: "Preserve the natural!" The acorn may most certainly be observed, commented upon, ridiculed or revered; but it must be allowed to become an oak tree. The idea that within the acorn there is a weeping willow struggling to "come out" would have been met with the ridicule and scorn such fuzzy-minded thinking deserves. This thinking is today encouraged and promoted by a malignant and elitist minority, hell-bent on bringing Western Civilization -- given to the world by White men and women of European ancestry -- to its knees so that it can fill the power vacuum that will result. Some have stated that such thinking is only possible among academics and "intellectuals"; such a belief is simplistic and unrealistic. A more likely reason for the collaboration of such water-bucket-carriers for the aforementioned elitist minority, is that these people are simply the products of a society controlled by the "economic men" previously described. If touting homosexuality, feminism, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., will enhance our careers, why let's do it , and to hell with what damage will be done to future generations. These are the Clintons, the Bushes, the Albrights, the Kissingers, the Friedans, the Abzugs, the Franks, the Simitis', the Karamanlis', the Jacksons, the Sharptons, and the Blairs of the world. For such creatures there is no salvation, no saving grace: everything they do is anathema, corrosive, and self-serving in the extreme. And their most feared common enemy is the White male of European ancestry: It is he who must be ridiculed, marginalized, feminized, and ultimately destroyed before he awakens.
Those of us who wish to preserve what is left of our culture must develop a zero-tolerance attitude towards such people. The kind of "tolerance" demonstrated by the "diversity"-promoting leftists who demonstrate their love for diversity by shouting down speakers who don't toe the party line. We risk losing our identities, our culture, and our freedoms because we seem to think it more important to be polite than to engage in the kind of behavior that has proven so rewarding for our ideological enemies.
Let it be known that the truth shall always win out.
And just read for yourself again the results of the poll. Majority are against it, especially those HAVING served and understand the process. Do you think this is 'new' phenomena?? You can only imagine if you took a poll in the ancient world or even 30 years ago.
Homos are only encouraging society to turn on them, the more they show their sickness for what it is, the more the silent majority will resent them. Eventually somethings going to give...
owdun wrote:There is a suggestion, that the decline of the Greek and Roman empires was down to the rampant homosexuality of the peoples of those empires, and before some wiseguy suggests the same applies to the British empire, it was not queers, but stinking politicians that accomplished that dirty deed.
Aye Owdun.
The decline of the male population in ancient times in Greece and Rome, where attributed to wars and plagues.
So much so, to boost reproduction in the southern regions of greece and rome, male black slaves from africa were brought to these countries.
Red, the reason there are so few greek and roman artworks depicting homosexual relations is that the Christians destroyed more than 90% of the artworks created during that time.
[i]To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man -- Thucydides[/i]
snyder wrote:Red, the reason there are so few greek and roman artworks depicting homosexual relations is that the Christians destroyed more than 90% of the artworks created during that time.
Snyder,
Whoa? Whata? Busha CoNsPiRaCyIeS??
Chuckie 1970,
Look bud, i hate to rain S**T on your lesbian parade, but i don't hold such feelings for them. I don't know many men who do actually.
Last edited by Redhand on Sun 10 Oct, 2004 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Don't mess around with the guy in shades at night" Corey Hart...and he means it too...
Redhand wrote:
Look bud, i hate to rain S**T on your lesbian parade, but i don't hold such feelings for them. I don't know many men who do actually, how old are u?
I just don't share that...and i stick to what i said, i don't know many who are. Suppose it was a fascination in the younger years and what not getting two girls to kiss.
But im honestly tellin ya, that doesn't turn me on.
"Don't mess around with the guy in shades at night" Corey Hart...and he means it too...
Mexican bandit, "Badges?! We don't need no stinking badges....."
Major Kong, "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in vegas with all that stuff....."
Gore, "The first casualty of war is your underpants....."
No conspiracy. The Christians were offerded by Roman and Greek art depicting any kind of sexuality. Most of the stuff that survived was either hidden away or was public art of a non-sexual nature. Almost all of the sexually oriented stuff was destroyed. Ask any professor of classical literature or history and that's the story you'll get.
[i]To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man -- Thucydides[/i]
Chuckie1970 wrote:Would this topic be this controversial if we were really just talking about lesbians. But we are not, we are talking about gay men. Men don't have a problem with lesbians in any situation. In fact men encourage it.
Well you know what they say: Anything two (or more) women do in the privacy of their own home is o.k., as long as they make movies. Seriously, though, it's almost always male homosexuality that gets the attention and scorn. Female homosexuality is usually ignored by the moralists. This is prima facie evidence that the true motivator for such scorn is aesthetic preference rather than moral objection.
[i]To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man -- Thucydides[/i]
[/quote] i agree 100% here another fact about gays in the military ...................................................................................... The Storm Troopers, founded on Aug. 31 1921, provided an place for disaffected young men. Recruiting drives were held in saloons, you joined up you got free beer for the night. The boys got their hair cut, put on brown shirts and nice shiny black boots and joined a gang that the police wouldn't touch. The boys who had been in the youth groups and the boys who had been in the gangs all graduated to the Storm Troopers. This was a heady mix. Comrades, purpose, respect, and money. And in the beginning, masculine gays were welcome. 
Seriously, though, it's almost always male homosexuality that gets the attention and scorn. Female homosexuality is usually ignored by the moralists. This is prima facie evidence that the true motivator for such scorn is aesthetic preference rather than moral objection.