-Caveat Lector-
> Undisclosed Gay Greeks
>
> by Paul Gottfried
>
> On September 23, we are told about a sign of change that the New York
> Times obviously approves of. The editors of the Loeb Greek and Latin
> classics (published at Harvard) are now offering translations of
> ancient authors that do justice to their homoerotic interests. Though
> the account makes it appear that the new enlightened editors are at
> last honoring James Loeb, the founder and patron of the series who had
> no use for "bowdlerized" translations, these comments are both vacuous
> and hypocritical.
>
> The media and the filmmakers doctor reality incessantly to make it fit
> their escalating ideological agenda. Thus in films we hardly ever see
> blacks committing violent crimes in inner cities, while media reports
> of black and Hispanic riots typically attribute them to economic
> oppression and white racism. Note also the cloying way homosexual
> activists are presented in the Times, unlike such predictable heavies
> as (non-leftist) Southern whites, non-media big business, and
> Christian traditionalists. If disclosing the full truth is what the
> past Loeb editors failed to do, their sins fall far short of those
> committed by our national press, including the Times.
>
> The two ancient authors mentioned in the news item whose homoerotic
> interests had been allegedly hidden by prudish or mendacious
> translators, Aristophanes and Plato, are bad illustrations for a
> questionable argument. Aristophanes, in his plays, reported the
> "bawdy" humor surrounding Athenian pedophiles, but it is doubtful this
> playwright had any sympathy for the libertines featured or ridiculed
> in his work. A critic of Socrates, whom he thought was corrupting
> Athenss youth, Aristophanes detested non-traditional morals and
> beliefs and never, as far as I know, treated homoeroticism in a
> favorable light. Moreover, Plato was so critical of homosexual acts
> that he made them a capital offense in The Laws. Though the accuracy
> of this harsh judgment has been subject to dispute by politically
> correct classicists, most famously Martha Nussbaum, it is hard to read
> the disputed text without agreeing with the established translation.
> When the Eleatic Stranger, who leads the conversation, concludes that
> homosexuality is para phusin, he does mean what he says, that the act
> is "against Nature."
>
> Platos Symposium is another case in point, a now misrepresented text
> that offers negative judgments about homoerotic relations. Here the
> future political adventurer and self-absorbed pedophile Alcibiades
> recalls a night spent sleeping next to Socrates. This deeply ascetic
> teacher resisted his advances and acted in such a manner as would
> "befit a father or older brother." Alcibiades and the other former
> symposiasts testify to Socratess efforts to contrast homoerotic
> passions to the yearning for a "higher beauty" that is spiritual.
>
> If gay activists and their media boosters are looking for a usable
> past, they might try such plausible candidates as Ernst Roehms Brown
> Shirts. On the other hand, misrepresenting the intentions of respected
> ancient authors does have its propagandistic advantage, especially if
> scholars can be browbeaten or rewarded into going along.
>
> October 4, 2000
>
> Paul Gottfried is professor of history at Elizabethtown College and
> author, most recently, of the highly recommended After Liberalism.
>
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