GAY MARRIAGE

Reader writes of Athens and Socrates

Rocky Cassiano cannot use ancient Athens to support his heterosexual-only morality. As evidence Cassiano cites Socrates' dying request to have his wife and children looked after. It is true that Socrates and the ancient male Athenians married women and had children. However it is also true that most of those ancient male Athenians had sex with other men. Socrates is - as Cassiano would say - the exception that proves the rule. Athenians didn't understand why Socrates abstained from homosexual sex. In Plato's Symposium we read Alcibiades' complaints about this: Alcibiades repeatedly tried to seduce Socrates but without success. This scene in the Symposium occurs after several other characters have given speeches in praise of sex between men. The most famous Symposium speech is by Aristophanes who tells the myth of the origin of sex: In the beginning, humans were large round beings with two heads, four arms, four legs, and two sets of sex organs. There were male/male, male/female, and female/female. In anger, Zeus split them in two, leaving the belly button as a scar. Aristophanes says that love is literally finding your other half. The myth explains the origin of gay males, heterosexual couples, and lesbians.

Also, the island of Lesbos gives its name to lesbianism because of the erotic poet Sappho who wrote what you'd expect.

In "The Fragility of Goodness," University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum writes, "Socrates is weird." He didn't follow the norms of the other ancient Athenians. Socrates is the prototype of the uptight prude who thinks that the body is shameful and a distraction from the pure contemplation of the soul.

In contrast, I embrace the body with its passions and desires. Sex between two consenting adults can be a very good thing.

Dennis Knepp

Moses Lake