Pederasty

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Warren Cup, depicting sexual intimacy between a boy

and his male lover. British Museum, London
Pederasty or paederasty (US: /ˈpɛdəræsti/
or UK: /ˈpiːdəræsti/) is a (usually erotic)
homosexual relationship between an adult
male and a pubescent or adolescent male.
The word pederasty derives from Greek
παιδεραστία (paiderastia) "love of boys",[1]
a compound derived from παῖς (pais)
"child, boy" and ἐραστής (erastēs) "lover".
In French, however, pédérastie has been
used as a synonym for homosexuality
between adult males (see Histoire du mot
pédérastie).

Historically, pederasty has existed as a

variety of customs and practices within
different cultures. The status of pederasty
has changed over the course of history, at
times accepted and at other times a crime.
In the history of Europe, its most
structured cultural manifestation was
Athenian pederasty, and became most
prominent in the 6th century BC. Greek
pederasty's various forms were the subject
of philosophic debates in which the purely
carnal type was unfavorably compared
with erotic friendships and moderate
forms, known as Sophrosyne.[2]

In most countries today, the local age of

consent determines whether or not a
person is considered legally competent to
consent to sexual acts, and whether such
contact is abusive to the young person,
under the law.

Expressions
Anthropologists propose three
subdivisions of homosexuality: age-
structured, egalitarian and gender-
structured.[3][4] Pederasty is the archetypal
example of male age-structured
homosexuality.[3]Geoffrey Gorer and
others distinguish pederasty from
pedophilia, which he defined as a separate,
fourth type that he described as "grossly
pathological in all societies of which we
have record." According to Gorer, the main
characteristic of homosexual pederasty is
the age difference (either of generation or
age-group) between the partners. In his
study of native cultures pederasty appears
typically as a passing stage in which the
adolescent is the beloved of an older male,
remains as such until he reaches a certain
developmental threshold, after which he in
turn takes on an adolescent beloved of his
own. This model is judged by Gorer as
socially viable, i.e. not likely to give rise to
psychological discomfort or neuroses for
all or most males. He adds that in many
societies, pederasty has been the main
subject of the arts and the main source of
tender and elevated emotions.[5]
Age range

Some modern observers restrict the age of

the younger partner to "generally between
twelve and seventeen",[6] though
historically the spread was somewhat
greater. The younger partner must, in
some sense, not be fully mature; this could
include young men in their late teens or
early twenties.[7]

While relationships in ancient Greece

involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18,[8]
in Renaissance Italy they typically involved
boys between 14 and 19,[9] and in Japan
the younger member ranged in age from
11 to about 19.[10]

History

Man and youth. Cretan ex-voto from Hermes and

Aphrodite shrine at Kato Syme; Bronze, c. 670–650 BC
In antiquity, pederasty was seen as an
educational institution for the inculcation
of moral and cultural values in some
cultures,[11] as well as a form of sexual
expression. Its practice dates from the
Archaic period onwards in Ancient Greece,
but Cretan ritual objects that reflect an
already-formalised practice date to the late
Minoan civilization, in around 1650 BC.[12]
According to Plato,[13] in Ancient Greece,
pederasty was a relationship and bond,
whether sexual or chaste, between an
adolescent boy and an adult man outside
of his immediate family. While most Greek
men engaged in relations with both girls
and boys,[14] exceptions to the rule were
known, some avoiding relations with
women, and others rejecting relations with
boys. In Ancient Rome, relations with boys
took a more informal and less civic path,
men taking advantage of dominant social
status to extract sexual favors from their
social inferiors or carrying on illicit
relationships with freeborn boys.[15]

Analogous relations were documented

among other ancient peoples, such as the
Thracians[16] and the Celts (Posidonius).
According to Plutarch, the ancient
Persians had long practiced it as well, an
opinion seconded by Sextus Empiricus
who asserted that the laws of the Persians
"recommended" the practice.[17]
Herodotus, however, asserts they learned
copulation with boys (παισὶ μίσγονται)
from the Greeks,[18] by the use of that term
reducing their practice to what John
Addington Symonds describes as the
"vicious form" of pederasty,[19] as opposed
to the more restrained and cultured one
valued by the Greeks. Plutarch, however,
counters Herodotus by pointing out that
the Persians had been castrating boys
long before being exposed to the mores of
the Greeks.[20]

Opposition to the carnal aspects of

pederasty existed concurrently with the
practice, both inside and outside of the
cultures in which it was found. Among the
Greeks, a few cities prohibited it, and in
others, such as Sparta, only the chaste
form of pederasty was permitted,
according to Xenophon[21] and others.
Likewise, Plato's writings devalue and then
condemn sexual intercourse with the boys
one loved, and he valued the self-
disciplined lover who abstained from
consummating the relationship.[22]

Judaism and Christianity also condemned

sodomy (while defining that term
variously), a theme that would be
promulgated by Islam and, later still, by the
Baha'i Faith. Within the Baha'i faith,
pederasty is the only type of
homosexuality mentioned by Bahá'u'lláh.
"We shrink, for very shame, from treating
of the subject of boys.... Commit not that
which is forbidden you in Our Holy Tablet,
and be not of those who rove distractedly
in the wilderness of their desires."[23][24]

Within the blanket condemnation of

sodomy, pederasty was a particular target.
The 2nd-century preacher Clement of
Alexandria used divine pederasty as an
indictment of Greek religion and the
mythological figures of Herakles, Apollo,
Poseidon, Laius, and Zeus: "For your gods
did not abstain even from boys. One loved
Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops,
another Chrysippus, another Ganymedes.
These are the gods your wives are to
worship!"[25] Early legal codes prescribed
harsh penalties for violators. The law code
of the Visigothic king Chindasuinth called
for both partners to be "emasculated
without delay, and be delivered up to the
bishop of the diocese where the deed was
committed to be placed in solitary
confinement in a prison."[26] These
punishments were often linked to the
penance given after the Sacrament of
Confession. At Rome, the punishment was
burning at the stake since the time of
Theodosius I (390). Nonetheless, the
practice continued to surface, giving rise
to proverbs such as With wine and boys
around, the monks have no need of the
Devil to tempt them, an early Christian
saying from the Middle East.[27]

Pederasty was notable in Moorish

Spain,[28] and Tuscany and northern Italy
during the Renaissance.[29][30] and also
medieval and Tsarist Russia.[31]

Elsewhere, it was practiced in pre-Modern

Japan until the Meiji restoration.[32]

In many societies, such as Ancient Greece,

it was justified on the grounds that love
was the best foundation for teaching
courage as well as civic and cultural
values and that homoerotic love between
males was superior to other forms of
love.[33]

Etymology and usage

Pederasty derives from the combination of
παίδ- (the Greek stem for boy[34] or
child)[35] with ἐραστής (Greek for lover; cf.
eros). Late Latin pæderasta was borrowed
in the 16th century directly from Plato's
classical Greek in The Symposium. (Latin
transliterates αί as æ.) The word first
appeared in the English language during
the Renaissance, as pæderastie (e.g. in
Samuel Purchas' Pilgrimes), in the sense
of sexual relations between men and boys.
Beside its use in the classical sense, the
term has also been used as a synonym for
anal sex, irrespective of the nature of the
partner. A 19th-century sexological
treatise discusses men practicing the
"insertion of the penis into the anus of
women," as "pederasty with their wives."[36]
Additionally, the term has been used to
refer to any homosexual activity,
regardless of the participants' ages.
Jeremy Bentham used the term in this
broader sense in an essay dating from the
18th century.[37]
The commonly accepted reference
definitions of pederasty refer to a sexual
relationship, or to copulation, between
older and younger males. The OED offers:
"Homosexual relations between a man and
a boy; homosexual anal intercourse,
usually with a boy or younger man as the
passive partner."[38] The concise OED has:
"Sexual intercourse between a man and a
boy."[39] When describing pederasts, some
focus solely on the mechanics of
copulation, such as the Merriam-Webster
(on-line edition): "one who practices anal
intercourse especially with a boy".[40] Other
dictionaries offer a more general
definition, such as "homosexual relations
between men and boys"[41] or "homosexual
relations, especially between a male adult
and a boy or young man."[42] The limitation
of pederasty to anal sex with a boy is
contested by sexologists. Francoeur
regards it as "common but incorrect,"[43]
while Haeberle describes it as "a modern
usage resulting from a misunderstanding
of the original term and ignorance of its
historical implications."[44]

Academic and social studies sources

propose more expansive definitions of the
term. The Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture
defines the term as: "The erotic
relationship between an adult male and a
youth, generally one between the ages of
twelve and seventeen, in which the older
partner is attracted to the younger one
who returns his affection."[6] The
Encyclopedia of Homosexuality suggests
"Pederasty is the erotic relationship
between an adult male and a boy, generally
one between the ages of twelve and
seventeen, in which the older partner is
attracted to the younger one who returns
his affection, whether or not the liaison
leads to overt sexual contact."[45]

Social class factors

In Athens, the slaves were expressly
forbidden from entering into pederastic
relations with the free-born boys. In
medieval Islamic civilization, pederastic
relations "were so readily accepted in
upper-class circles that there was often
little or no effort to conceal their
existence."[46]

The ancient world

Ganymede rolling a hoop and bearing aloft a cockerel

Ga y ede o g a oop a d bea g a o t a coc e e
– a love gift from Zeus (in pursuit, on obverse of vase).
In Greek art, a cockerel was a conventional gift from an
erastes to an eromenos; see J. K. Dover, Greek
Homosexuality, p. 92.

Attic red-figure crater, 500–490 BC; Painter of Berlin;

Louvre, Paris.

The Greeks

Main articles: Pederasty in ancient

Greece

Plato was an early critic of sexual

intercourse in pederastic relationships,
proposing that men's love of boys avoid all
carnal expression and instead progress
from admiration of the lover's specific
virtues to love of virtue itself in abstract
form. While copulation with boys was
often criticized and seen as shameful and
brutish,[47] other aspects of the
relationship were considered beneficial, as
indicated in proverbs such as A lover is the
best friend a boy will ever have.[48]

At the palaestra
Youth, holding a net shopping bag filled with walnuts, a
love gift, draws close to a man who reaches out to
fondle him; Attic red-figure plate 530–430 BC;
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Pederastic art shows seduction scenes as
well as sexual relations. In the seduction
scenes the man is standing, grasping the
boy's chin with one hand and reaching to
fondle his genitals with the other. In the
sexual scenes, the partners stand
embracing face to face, the older of the
two engaged in intercrural sex with the
younger, who (usually but not always)
does not show arousal. Anal sex is almost
never shown, and then only as something
eliciting surprise in the observers. The
practice was ostensibly disparaged, the
Athenians often naming it jocularly after
their Dorian neighbors ("cretanize,"
"laconize," "chalcidize"). While historians
such as Dover and Halperin hold that only
the man experienced pleasure, art and
poetry indicate reciprocation of desire, and
other historians assert that it is "a modern
fairy tale that the younger eromenos was
never aroused."[33]

Pederastic couples were also said to be

feared by tyrants, because the bond
between the friends was stronger than
that of obedience to a tyrannical ruler.
Plutarch gives as examples the Athenians
Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Others, such
as Aristotle, claimed that the Cretan
lawgivers encouraged pederasty as a
means of population control, by directing
love and sexual desire into relations with
males.[49]

The Romans

Jupiter abducting Ganymede; 1st-century AD Roman

statue

From the early Republican times of

Ancient Rome, it was perfectly normal for
an older man to desire and pursue boys.[50]
However, penetration was illegal for free-
born youths; the only boys who were
legally allowed to perform as a passive
sexual partner were slaves or former
slaves known as "freedmen", and then only
with regard to their former masters. For
slaves there was no protection under the
law even against rape.[51]

The result was that in Ancient Roman

times, pederasty largely lost its function as
a ritual part of education and was instead
seen as an activity primarily driven by
one's sexual desires and competing with
desire for women. The social acceptance
of pederastic relations waxed and waned
during the centuries. Conservative thinkers
condemned it – along with other forms of
indulgence. Tacitus attacks the Greek
customs of gymnasia et otia et turpes
amores (palaestrae, idleness, and
shameful loves).[52] The emperors,
however, indulged in male love – most of it
of a pederastic nature. As Edward Gibbon
mentions, of the first fifteen emperors,
"Claudius was the only one whose taste in
love was entirely correct", the implication
being that he was the only one not to take
men or boys as lovers.[53]
Other writers spent no effort censuring
pederasty per se, but praised or blamed its
various aspects. Martial appears to have
favored it, going as far as to essentialize
not the sexual use of the catamite but his
nature as a boy: upon being discovered by
his wife "inside a boy" and offered the
"same thing" by her, he retorts with a list of
mythological personages who, despite
being married, took young male lovers, and
concludes by rejecting her offer since "a
woman merely has two vaginas."[54]

Other venues
Pederasty in ancient times was not the
exclusive domain of the Greeks and
Romans. Athenaeus in the Deipnosophists
states that the Celts also partook and
despite the beauty of their women,
preferred the love of boys. Some would
regularly bed down on their animal skins
with a lover on each side. Other writers
also attest to Celtic pederasty: Aristotle
(Politics, II 6.6. Athen. XIII 603a.), Strabo
(iv. 199), and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32)).
Some modern scholars have interpreted
Athenaeus as meaning that the Celts had
a boy on each side, but that interpretation
is questioned by Hubbard, who reads it as
meaning that they had a boy one side and
a woman on the other. (Hubbard, 2003;
p. 79) The Sibylline oracles claim that only
the Jews were free from this impurity:

[The Jews] are mindful of holy

wedlock,

and they do not engage in

impious intercourse with male
children,
as do Phoenicians, Egyptians
and Romans,
spacious Greece and many
nations of other,
 Persians and Galatians and all
Asia, transgressing

the holy law of immortal God,

which they transgressed.[55]

Persian pederasty and its origins was

debated even in ancient times. Herodotus
claimed they had learned it from the
Greeks: "From the Greeks they have
learned to lie with boys."[56] However,
Plutarch asserts that the Persians used
eunuch boys to that end long before
contact between the cultures.[57] In either
case, Plato claimed they saw fit to forbid it
to the inhabitants of the lands they
occupied, since "It does not suit the rulers
that their subjects should think noble
thoughts, nor that they should form the
strong friendships and attachments which
these activities, and in particular love, tend
to produce."[58]

Post-classical and modern

forms

An Indian Prince and his attendant, Mughal painting

The Middle East and Central
Asia

In pre-modern Islam there was a

"widespread conviction that beardless
youths possessed a temptation to adult
men as a whole, and not merely to a small
minority of deviants".[59] This was despite
the widespread belief of pederastic
relations being immoral.[60]

Osman Aga of Temesvar who fell captive

to the Austrians in 1688 wrote in his
memoirs that one night an Austrian boy
approached him for sex, telling him "for I
know all Turks are pederasts".[61]
In the 1770s, Âşık Sadık the poet wrote, in
an address to the Sultan: Lût kavmi
döğüşür, put kavmi bozar. Askerin lûtîdir, bil
Padişahım ("The people of Lot fight, the
people of idolatry spoil. Know, my Sultan,
that your soldiers are sodomites").[62]
Studies of Ottoman criminal law, which is
based on the Sharia, reveal that persistent
sodomy with non-consenting boys was a
serious offense and those convicted faced
capital punishment.

China
 

The Way of the Academicians

From Hua Ying Chin Chen (Variegated Positions of the

Flower Battle) China, Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)

Men's sexual interest in youths was

reflected in prostitution, with young male
sex workers fetching higher prices than
their female counterparts as recently as
the beginning of the 20th century. In
Tianjin there were thirty-five male brothels,
housing 800 boys. Although the
superintendent of trade at Guangzhou
issued an annual warning to the
population against permitting Westerners
access to boy prostitutes ("do not indulge
the Western barbarian with all our best
favors"), Europeans were increasingly
welcomed in the boy brothels.[63]

In 10th-century China courting male

couples consisted of the older qi xiong (契
兄) and the younger qi di. (契弟) (The
terms mean, literally, sworn elder brother
and younger brother. It is very common in
the Chinese culture to conceptualize many
kinds of alliances as fictive kinship
relationships). Boy marriages, which
lasted for a set period after which the
younger partner would find a wife (often
with the help of the older one) appear to
have been part of the culture in the
province of Fujian in pre-modern times.
The marriages were said to have been
celebrated by the two families in
traditional fashion, including the ritual
"nine cups of tea". The popularity of these
pederastic relationships in Chang'an's gay
quarters gave rise to one of the
euphemistic expressions for same-sex
love in China, "the southern custom". Along
with the concentration of Chang'an's gay
community here, the North Hamlet was
also heavily concentrated with many of the
city's entertaining courtesans, as well as
its notorious brothel houses for
prostitution.[64]

There was another term in ancient China,

luan tong (traditional Chinese: 孌童;
simplified Chinese: 娈童), which means a
beautiful little boy who has sexual
attraction to an adult man. Some
emperors in ancient China had some luan
tong in their palaces for sexual intercourse
or making fun.[65][66]

Japan

In Japan, the practice of shudō (衆道), "the

Way of the Young", paralleled closely the
course of European pederasty. It was
prevalent in the religious community and
samurai society from the mediaeval period
on, and eventually grew to permeate all of
society. It fell out of favor around the end
of the 19th century, concurrently with the
growing European influence.

Its legendary founder is Kūkai, also known

as Kōbō Daishi, the founder of the Shingon
school of Buddhism, who is said to have
brought the teachings of male love over
from China, together with the teachings of
the Buddha. Monks often entered into love
relationships with beautiful youths known
as chigo (稚児), which were recorded in
literary works known as chigo monogatari
(稚児物語).[67]

In comics (manga) in modern Japan,

attraction to young boys is called
shotacon.[68]

North America

Late 19th-century historian Hubert Howe

Bancroft reported in his study of the native
culture of Kodiak Island:

'The most repugnant of all their

practices is that of male
concubinage. A Kodiak mother
will select her handsomest and
most promising boy, and dress
and rear him as a girl, teaching
him only domestic duties,
keeping him at women's work,
associating him with women
and girls, in order to render his
effeminacy complete. Arriving at
the age of ten or fifteen years, he
is married to some wealthy man
who regards such a companion
as a great acquisition. These
male concubines are called
Achnutschik or Schopans' (the
authorities quoted being
Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing,
Choris, Lisiansky and
Marchand). The same is the case
in Nootka Sound and the
Aleutian Islands, where 'male
concubinage obtains
throughout, but not to the same
extent as amongst the
Koniagas.' The male concubines
have their beards carefully
plucked out as soon as the face-
hair begins to grow, and their
chins are tattooed like those of
 the women. In California the
first missionaries found the
same practice, the youths being
called Joya.[69]

Central America

Though early Mayans are thought to have

been strongly antagonistic to same-sex
relationships, later Mayan states employed
pederastic practices. Their introduction
was ascribed to the god Chin. One aspect
was that of the father procuring a younger
lover for his son. Juan de Torquemada
mentions that if the (younger) boy was
seduced by a stranger, the penalty was
equivalent to that for adultery. Bernal Diaz
reported statues of male pairs making love
in the temples at Cape Catoche,
Yucatan.[70]

Europe

Pederastic eros in the Christian West,

while remaining mostly hidden, has
nevertheless revealed itself in a variety of
settings. Legal records are one of the
more important windows into this secret
world, since for much of the time
pederastic relations, like other forms of
homosexual relations, were illegal.[71] The
expression of desire through literature and
art, albeit in coded fashion, can also afford
a view of the pederastic interests of the
author.

Reflecting the conflicted outlook on male

loves, some northern European writers
ascribed pederastic tendencies to
populations in southern latitudes. Richard
Francis Burton evolved his theory of the
Sotadic zone, an area bounded roughly by
N. Lat. 43° N. Lat. 30°, stretching from the
western shores of the Mediterranean Sea
to the Pacific Ocean.[72] Likewise, Wilhelm
Kroll, writing in the Pauly-Wissowa
encyclopaedia in 1906, asserted that "The
roots of pederasty are found first of all in
the existence of a contrary sexual feeling
that is probably more frequent in southern
regions than in countries with moderate
climates."[73]

The Renaissance

According to glbtq.com, during the

Renaissance, "The most conventional
object of homoerotic desire was the
adolescent youth, usually imagined as
beardless."[74]

England
 

Noonday Heat (1911)

By Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929). Many of Tuke's

best-known works are nudes of young men and boys,
and the artist is closely associated with the Uranian
movement.

In England, public boarding schools, with

their homosocial environment, often
encouraged a homoerotic atmosphere,
due to the emphasis on the Classics, and
homosexual relations were formed and
quietly accepted, both between older and
younger boys and even between teachers
and pupils; however, some scandals arose
around such relationships. In the mid-19th
century, William Johnson Cory, a renowned
master at Eton from 1845 until his forced
resignation in 1872, evolved a style of
pedagogic pederasty which influenced a
number of his pupils. His Ionica, a work of
poetry reflecting his pederastic
sensibilities, was read in intellectual
circles and "made a stir" at Oxford in
1859.[75] Oscar Browning, another Eton
master and former student of Cory,
followed in his tutor's footsteps, only to be
likewise dismissed in 1875. Both are
thought to have influenced Oxford don
Walter Pater, whose aesthetics promoted
pederasty as the truest expression of
classical culture.[76]

Pederasty also was a theme in the work of

several nineteenth-century English writers
known as the "Uranian poets". Most now
are considered no more than minor literary
figures, but the most prominent Uranian
representatives – Walter Pater, Gerard
Manley Hopkins, and Oscar Wilde – are
renowned worldwide. Both Wilde and
Hopkins were deeply influenced by Pater's
work. Wilde wrote of pederastic and
homoerotic culture – though not in the
"elevated" pederastic sense that it held for
Pater and Hopkins[77] – in a number of
works.[78] And though "Hopkins often was,
it must be admitted, strikingly Ruskinian in
his love of Aristotelian particulars and
their arrangements . . . , it was at the foot
of Pater – the foremost Victorian unifier of
'eros, pedagogy, and aesthetics' – that
Hopkins would ever remain."[79] Another
notable late-nineteenth-century writer on
pederasty was John Addington Symonds,
whose essays, "A Problem in Greek Ethics"
and "A Problem in Modern Ethics", were
amongst the first defenses of
homosexuality made in the English
language.[80]

Reaction and retrenchment

The end of the 19th century saw
increasing conflict over the issue of social
acceptance of pederasty. A number of
other pederastic scandals erupted around
this time, such as the one involving the
German industrialist Friedrich Alfred
Krupp, which drove him to suicide.

This strife also involved the Wandervogel

movement, a youth organization
emphasizing a romantic view of nature.
Wandervogel took flight in 1896, the same
year that the journal Der Eigene went to
press. It was published by a twenty-two-
year-old German, Adolf Brand, and it
advocated classical pederasty as a cure
for the moral flabbiness of German youth.
Influenced by the ideas of Gustav
Wyneken, the Wandervogel movement was
quite open about its homoerotic
tendencies, although this kind of affection
was supposed to be expressed in a
nonsexual way. The founding of Young
Wandervogel happened largely as a
reaction to the public scandal about these
erotic tendencies, which were said to
alienate young men from women.

Until the 1970s, English "public schools"

were walled boarding schools, educating
adolescent boys only, with a strong
concentration on Greek and Latin classics.
They continued to be "hotbeds of
pederasty" into the 20th century.[81] C. S.
Lewis when talking about his life at
Malvern College, an English public school,
acknowledged that pederasty "was the
only counterpoise to the social struggle;
the one oasis (though green only with
weeds and moist only with foetid water) in
the burning desert of competitive
ambition."[82]

In literature
The Aeneid

In the Aeneid of Vergil, Nisus, a Trojan

soldier, is in a relationship with Euryalus, a
younger Trojan soldier.[83] Although Vergil
avoids directly describing the nature of
their relationship due to the decorum of
the epic poem, the nature of their
relationship has been the source of
academic discourse. While some believe
the relationship to be platonic,[84] others
describe it as pederastic.

Modern expressions
In modern thought, same-sex relations
with adolescents is regarded as an abuse
of power when the older partner is in a
position of educational, religious,
economic, or other form of institutional
authority over the younger partner.
Pederasty therefore remains widely
censured and instances of it have had
severe political repercussions (for
example, the Mark Foley scandal, or
"Pagegate",[85] which broke out in the
United States in 2006).[86]

Some "gay-positive" writers, in their work

of interpreting Christian teachings, have
concluded that Paul's criticism of same-
sex love do not target those for whom
such affections come naturally, but rather
those who indulge such pleasures by
choice, with the example given being "the
Hellenistic practice of erotic behavior with
young males." Their work suggests that
religious opposition to same sex relations
should restrict itself to pederastic
relationships, with their presumed abuse
of power. But a position paper of the
Anglican Church of Canada rejects that
contention, claiming that,

The Graeco-Roman "ideal" did

not entail erotic love of children,
but of young (teenage) males, of
the same age that young woman
would be given in marriage.
Frequently the more mature
male was only slightly older
than the partner. Had Paul
intended to proscribe pederasty
by using these terms (such as we
understand pederasty today), he
had recourse to many other
more precise terms. In fact, the
discussion in Romans, with its
inclusion of female homoerotic
behaviour, indicates that
exploitation and victimisation
were not the issue. (Paul has a
lot to say about the abuse of
power elsewhere).[87]
On February 2, 1961 the Vatican issued a
document, Instruction on the Careful
Selection and Training of Candidates for the
States of Perfection and Sacred Orders,
barring from the priesthood anyone who
has "perverse inclinations to
homosexuality or pederasty."[88]

The same year, social guidance film

director Sid Davis released his now
infamous film, Boys Beware. Timothy
Farrell narrates the film; ironically, Farrell
had appeared earlier in another LGBT film,
Glen or Glenda. Davis plays the role of the
first pederast.[89]
Child abuse issues

Though pederasty was once accepted in

many cultures, some modern observers
have retrospectively labeled it abusive.
Enid Bloch argues that many Greek boys
who were involved in paederastic
relationships may have been harmed by
the experience, if the relationship included
anal sex. Bloch writes that the boy may
have been traumatized by knowing that he
was violating social customs. According
to her, the "most shameful thing that could
happen to any Greek male was penetration
by another male." In this respect Bloch is in
accord with Greek sexual morality, which
also recognized a difference between
ethical pederasty which excluded anal sex
and "hubristic" pederasty which was
believed to debase the boy as well as the
man who penetrated him.[90]

Bloch further argues that vases showing "a

boy standing perfectly still as a man
reaches out for his genitals" indicate the
boy may have been "psychologically
immobilized, unable to move or run
away."[91] Many other vases show the boy
running away.[92]

Academic controversy
An unofficial ban of talking about
pederasty in academia was broken only in
1905 by the German historian Erich Bethe
with his study Dorian Boy-Love: Its Ethic, Its
Idea.[93] In the United States, as late as
2005, Haworth Press withdrew from
publication a volume on homosexuality in
classical antiquity titled Same-Sex Desire
and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in
the Classical Tradition of the West. This
was in response to criticism from "certain
sectors" that objected a line in the abstract
of the academic Bruce Rind's controversial
paper, which they said advocated
pedophilia.[94]
The publisher, in a letter to the editors,
attempted to exonerate Rind from the
accusation and conceded that the article
was sound, but stood by his decision to
withdraw it "to avoid negative press" and
"economic repercussions."[95] Later
Haworth reversed course and announced
that the book and journal would be
published, but without Rind's controversial
essay. Mr. Rind's essay is to be published
in a future "supplementary volume" of The
Journal of Homosexuality, together with
counterarguments advanced by his
critics.[96]

See also
Age of consent
Age disparity in sexual relationships
Bacha bazi
Catamite
Bibliography of Greek pederasty
Bibliography of Japanese pederasty
Ephebophilia
Hebephilia
Homoeroticism
Homosexuality
Homosexuality and Islam
Mythology of same-sex love
NAMBLA
Platonic love
 Yaoi

Notes
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95. Kathryn Rutz, vice president for editorial
development at Haworth, said in an e-mail
message that the press had received about
20 e-mail messages in the 24–36 hours
after the WorldNetDaily article appeared,
and that the flurry of messages prompted a
"vigorous" discussion among the press' top
officials. "Issues on the table," she said,
"included freedom of speech,
consequences of negative publicity,
personal objections to the subject matter,
and resistance to what might appear to be
caving in to a particular group with its own
right-wing agenda." Ultimately, Rutz said, the
decision to cancel the book was based on
the fact that "the final article by Bruce Rind
is construed by some as being sympathetic
to pederasty,” which she emphasized that
the press does not "in any way support or
endorse." Rutz said the decision "can on one
level be considered a business decision.
Our customer base is large and the number
of disciplines we cover is large. Because 95
percent of our customers would likely be
opposed to anything even remotely
construed as sexual abuse apologetics,
publishing this paper would be a bad
business decision.""Doug
Lederman,"Pressure Prompts Publisher to
Punt," in Inside Higher Ed Sept. 27,2005 [3]
96. Glenn, David (26 September 2005).
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Retrieved 19 February 2015.

Further reading
General
Bremmer, J (1980). "An Enigmatic Indo-
European Rite: Pederasty". Arethusa. 13:
279–98.
Crompton, Louis (2003). Homosexuality
& civilization . Cambridge: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-
02233-5.
Ellis, H. Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
Vol. 2: Sexual Inversion, .
Europe
Wood, N (2002). "Creating the Sensual
Child: Paterian Aesthetics, Pederasty,
and Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales". Marvels
& Tales. 16 (2): 156–170.
doi:10.1353/mat.2002.0029 .
Michael Matthew Kaylor. Secreted
Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins,
Pater and Wilde (2006) , a 500-page
scholarly volume that considers the
major Victorian writers of Uranian poetry
and prose (the author has made this
volume available in a free, open-access,
PDF version).
Rigoletto, Sergio. "Questioning Power
Hierarchies: Michael Davidson and
Literary Pederasty in Italy" in Studies in
Social and Political Thought Issue 13 –
March 2007
 North and South America
Fout, JC (1997). "The Politicization of
Pederasty Among the Colonial
Yucatecan Maya". Journal of the History
of Sexuality. 8.

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