Angry Greeks Deny Alexander the Great Was Bisexual

[FM Arouet666]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=762&e=1&u=/nm/20041119/en_nm/greece_alexander_dc


"We are not saying that we are against gays"

Isn't it always the case with bigots, they preface their hatred with comments stating they are moral and have nothing against the group they oppose. I expect more from the cradle of western civilization.

[Wat_Tyler]

1. And the cradle of Western homosexuality.

What do they think all those Spartans were up to?

[cheezus]

2. forgive my ingorance please

"We go into his bisexuality. It may offend some people, but sexuality in those days was a different thing," he was quoted as saying.

Weren't they just into fucking anything and everything in those times? Is homo/hetero/bi-sexuality determined by performance of a sex act or is it instead internal (or a combination of both)?

[mcscajun]

3. Modern mores on Ancient Behaviors...

Gay or straight are very black vs. white labels and quite modern.

Male sexuality in ancient Greece was a much different matter: adult males could engage in sexual relationships with young boys and incur no criticism so long as the adult was the "top", and the boy was the "bottom"; the reverse was considered scandalous. The same adult male could very well have been married and had many children and had other women lovers in his life. Or not. When the boy in question (unless he was a slave) came of age, his role would have to change and he would move on to find his own boy if that suited him.

Alexander wasn't "gay" or "straight"; he was simply a product of the sexual mores of his times.

[Terran]

5. Well, people formed relationships, even back then

Public relationships between adult men and adult women in that era are not at all well documented. But Alexander appears to have had a life-long romantic relationship with anoth grown man. It wasn't that "everybody" was wantonly bisexual 3000 years ago; but they had a different way of looking at sexuality that did not include the labeling we have today.

[11cents]

4. He wasn't bisexual

He was gay as a warlike little goose. It was taken for granted among the Macedonians that men would have sexual relationships with other men; Alexander's father Phillip did. But Phillip was disturbed by the fact that Alexander really seemed interested *only* in men.

He did marry and have two children, however -- one legitimate and the other illegitimate. Both were killed by the generals who fought over pieces of Alexander's empire after his death.