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Gay lovers: the ideal warriors

Is it surprising that some people began to propose taking advantage of the courage of gay lovers in defence of the city? In Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus proposed the creation of an army of lovers, because men behave at their best when in love, and that no army could be better than one composed of lovers:

“No man is such a craven that love cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born.”

In about 378 BCE, this literary speculation entered historical fact, putting the notion to practical testing, when Georgidas applied Phaedrus’ reasoning to the creation of the “Sacred Band of Thebes”, a company of 300 soldiers, comprising exclusively pairs of lovers. Was Phaedrus right? Was the Sacred band successful?

You betcha!.

For forty years, the company was celebrated throughout Greece for their courage and military success. When at last they were overcome, fighting to the last man against vastly superior numbers, their conqueror Philip of Macedon, said of them that no man, seeing their valour, could possibly think their love shameful. (Now, note,that this was Philip of Macedon, whose son Philip II was himself not averse to a little man on man action, and whose grandson was Alexander the Great, conqueror of the world ,as far as it was then known - and renowned for his love of Bagoas).

Looking back some centuries later, Plutarch was able to record that he most war-like societies were noted for male love, and listed some famous heroes who were also known for the men they loved: Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon, Epaminondas, and Ioläus (companion of Hercules, and at whose tomb same sex lovers were said to make their vows of commitment.)

In short, for the Greeks, ideals of male were so firmly rooted in their heroes, that it was seen as a sign of real manliness. After listing some of the most famous, from every category of leaders and thinkers, Crompton observes:

This is an astounding record, including most of the greatest names of ancient Greece, during the greatest period of Greek culture. For many biographers, for a man not to have had a male lover seems to have bespoken a lack of character or a deficiency of sensibility.

But take heart, Americans. Even if you (officially) have no gay soldiers, every time you sing the Star-Spangled Banner, you are indirectly singing in praise of homoerotic relationships. The tune is based on a an English drinking song, “To Anacreon in heaven.” Before his poetry was lost to posterity, Anacreon was the most celebrated Greek lyric poet of male love.

And for FUCK sakes dont let them design the uniforms.

No one's saying they can't serve, there's gays all over the military. It's just that no one wants people to go prancing around the barracks talking about how gay they are.

If they start prancing around in the barracks, that isn't going to make them more acceptable to people who have no real reason to hate them in the first place. It's just more bullshit distracting people away from issues that actually matter.

And before anyone calls me on it, I don't like it when dudes run around bragging about how many chicks theyve banged either, they're both equally annoying.

good night all, tip your waitresses.

for no other reason than people want the homophobes to accept gay people for being gay.

good night all, tip your waitresses.

I think a large number of people have missed/overlooked previous posts, and are letting biases cloud their judgement.

Yah that's why this thread is so damn funny. It's like people in separate rooms having separate conversations.

i am going to go on the record as saying: i did not read any of the pages before i jumped into the argument. however, i feel my statements made were far less inflammatory than others and therefore were far less destructive to any actual conversation