In Sparta the population was diminishing because so many men were gay and children weren't being made, so the gay men would watch their wives/other women strip and seduce them so that the empire might have more children

@KillerQueer i have not heard this and it doesn't sound realistic. gay men can father children. gay doesn't mean impotent. a lot of the men with younger male lovers were married and had families.

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@genessa no the gay men werent making children

@KillerQueer Do you have a reference regarding Sparta's declining population due to homosexuality, it sounds like a remnant of the old Natural Law argument.

Adult homosexuality as such was not well regarded back in Plato's time, unlike Pederasty The whole concept of sexuality was conceptualized far differently then we think about it. It was based on active versus passive roles, penetration versus penetrated and not straight versus gay.

@KillerQueer yes, they actually were making children. you see, the concept of homosexuality was not the same then as it is now; there wasn't even such a word. we would probably consider them bisexual in a limited way, rather than gay. married men having sex with a shy, not-yet-bearded boy was quite acceptable, as long as they were also having children with their wives. once a boy grew a beard he was no longer fair game, and if he sold his services, that was quite difference. it was supposed to be love, or at least an emotional attachment, not just sex, not even primarily sex, and it didn't make the adult man "gay" -- it was just another beautiful thing he did (yes, it was considered beautiful). what makes you think they were not reproducing? in fact in sparta there was less emphasis on the sexual aspect of the man-boy relationship then, say, in athens, so specifying sparta as the place where reproduction was impeded by these relationships is even less correct on that basis.

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