/lit/ - Literature

>>20298640
People on 4chan usually like to defer to ancient sources instead of modern ones when it comes to the interpretation of epic texts (because the ancients “know more about their own culture” and are “more based” than modern historical researchers)—except when it comes to this particular question of the interpretation of Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship in the Iliad, in which case suddenly the very same Greek personalities they usually worship as the heights of manly excellence suddenly become decadent and effeminate and untrustworthy.

Double standard aside, there’s not much explicit evidence for a homosexual interpretation. An ambiguous line in Book 18 where Thetis tells Achilles to have sex with someone to get over his grief, with the original Greek metrically putting the emphasis on ‘woman’, perhaps implies something about their relationship—and certain lines were considered to be later emendations by the grammarian Aristarchus because he thought they sounded too pederastic (specifically, 2.97-100).

Furthermore, in Book 1 the character Phoenix tells the story of Meleager and his wife to analogically describe events between Achilles and Patroclus. And certainly no other relationship in Homer is as emotionally intense. But overall the evidence seems too scanty to conclude anything, and firm archaeological + documentary evidence for the existence of Greek pederasty only emerges in the Archaic era.

1/2

>>19522172
>Men and women fill certain natural roles that two men and two women cannot. An unnatural environment for children is not a good thing.
But certainly some 'unnatural' environments are better than others? Is it better for an orphaned child to stay in an institution where his chances of having a happy, successful life are significantly lower than his or her peers, or to be adopted by a homosexual couple and given at least some kind of family life, which, statistics suggest, will give him or her basically the same chances of success as a kid raised by a man and woman?
>Homosexuality comes about through conditioning.
>Mental ilness that evolved from watching copius amounts of pornography or being sexually abused by somebody of the same gender as a child is what leads to being a homosexual.
Not really. Most scientific evidence suggests that homosexuality is the result of genetic and hormonal factors. Homosexuals and heterosexuals are, on average, physically distinct in areas such as height, bone structure, brain structure, etc. Studies where observers were shown home videos from the childhood of adult heterosexuals and homosexuals have been able to detect which children were 'pre-gay' with a high degree of accuracy. People subject to situational homosexuality in boarding schools or tribal rituals (like those of the Sambia) do not seem to exhibit an increased incidence of lifelong homosexuality.
>Also, due to the fact most religions and cultures are traditionally anti homo, homoes are naturally anti religious and exponentially more likely to participate in hedonistc groups and cults like actual satanic churches in calfiornia or wanting money and power and doing shady rituals to join the "Elites".
Homos are not anti-religious in societies where religion is not anti-homosexual (and many homosexuals have been pious and orthodox Christians: like Michelangelo, Ludwig II, Umberto II, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Evelyn Waugh, etc.). The contention that "most cultures and religions are traditionally anti-homo" is false, as I've already demonstrated. The Greeks attributed homosexual amours to Zeus, Achilles, Heracles, Apollo, etc. Japanese Buddhists wrote regularly about homosexuality (the 'chigo monogatari' genre of writing from feudal Japan is entirely concerned with homosexual love in monasteries). The Chinese have a god who manages same-sex romance: Tu'er Shen. Religious significance was given to berdache among the Native Americans.