Homosexuality without cant
Sir: Mr Simon Raven's article (14 June) makes a very welcome change from the outpourings of the progressively orthodox on this subject. So much so, that I hesitate before pointing to any inadequacy in his arguments.
I feel, however, that what I say may serve to strengthen his case rather than the reverse. In writing of ancient Greece and the Hellenistic world, he oversimplifies to the point of mis- leading. Though the Greeks were bisexual, they did not regard heterosexual love as being on the same high plane as homosexual love; there- fore marriage was not to them, as Mr Raven implies, the end of homosexual activity—far from it. It is evident from Plato's Symposium (to go no further) that, though young men were expected to marry with children in view as part of their civic duty, their serious love life lay a different direction—sometimes with boys, sometimes with 'hetairae.' That boys were not always as old as sixteen before they acquired an adult lover is evident from Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus, where twelve is given as the com- mon age in Sparta. Nor were their male lovers always young: Sophocles is reported (by Athenaeus) as having had an affair with a boy when in his sixties, with no disgrace attaching to himself.
I make these points not out of mere anti- quarianism but in order to show that Mr Raven has not gone quite far enough in his attack on the progressive orthodoxy. Professional do- gooders indulge in considerably more breast- beating over homoseicual behaviour when there is a wide age-difference than when there is not, even though a marriage between an old man and a girl in her late teens would not particu- larly disturb them. Why is this? Why are there two quite distinct standards in these matters?
Similarly, a little scepticism would not be out of place when it comes to hearing that 'the very young must, of course, be protected.' Taken one way, this statement is innocuous; taken another, it is an invitation to prurience and witch-hunting. Mrs Grundy has long since been laughed out of court where young women and adolescent girls are concerned, but she appears unobtrusively to have transferred her atten- tions to boys. Are all relations between the young and the adult of the same sex now to be subjected to prurient scrutiny through Mrs Grundy's microscope? And are we to see a revival of chaperoning, with boys (instead of girls) as the weak and defenceless objects of matronly protection?
I raise these questions in all seriousness, for I think they have not inconsiderable bearing on 'the generation gap' and 'the lack of real communication' between young and adult— fashionable topics of concern. I very much hope that Mr Raven will regard my rejoinders, not as inconsistent with his main case, but simply an extension of it.
G. C. S. Hopeutt 99 Clifton Street, Hurst Hill, Near Bilston, Staffordshire
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