Miss Taken wrote:What am I supposed to conclude from these questions?
That the nature, frequency, and attitude towards pederasty is not easily summed up and is certainly not well represented by your assertion thatMany find the idea of pederasty inherently immoral, but it was an ideal in ancient Greece
Pederasty, is not paedophillia, and I hope you are not encouraging anyone on this thread to conclude that. 16 and over for the younger and between 20 and 30 for the older....and actually there is good evidence that pederasty did at least 'officially' involve intercrural sex, and well you should know it, unless you want to take a few Greek vases (now widely copied) as your evidence...
And by the way, I also disagree with your first assertion'many find the idea of pederasty inherently immoral'
In the UK pederastic relationships also have had their place, think Oscar Wilde, public school practices (older student and younger), and indeed on into some of the most prestigious of universities. It's often been a facet of male dominated environments.
Regards
Mary
So the fact that there were a handful of people in Greece means it does not in any way qualify as an "ideal," but the fact that a small portion of a few sections of society in a few countries still practice it renders my statement that "many find the idea of pederasty to be immoral" untrue?
You're grasping at straws. You are forcing two things into my statements that I have not said. First, you have interpreted my statement that "it was ideal" to mean I believe everyone practiced it, which I do not. It existed as an ideal. Universally? No, no ideal has every existed universally. In a majority? Yes. That's unquestionable. In the most influential circles? Yes. Do many people think pederasty is inherently wrong? Yes, beyond all doubt. Most people think it's wrong. are there some that think it's OK? Of course, but pointing that out does absolutely nothing to weaken my argument at all. You've decided that the best way to tear down my argument about changing morals is to disagree with my axioms in some manner or another, so you've interpreted both of my secondary statements for me and have set to try to disprove them. You are wrong on both accounts. Many people (most people, but I said many) find it inherently wrong. That is beyond question. Pederasty was an ideal. These two statements are not debatable. I can't see how you can think that this silly little exercise in semantics is going to make my intitial point any less true. You have, however, shown that you refuse to think outside of your box. You made a conclusion a priori and with nothing but reflections on passive experiences you have had in the past that lightly grazed across the tip of this issue and you've decided to grasp on to that conclusion and fight tooth and nail to make it true. In the end, however, pederasty was an ideal then, and it is thought of by many people as inherently wrong today.