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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><FONT size=3><B>From:</B> </FONT><A
title=nickjost@yahoo.com href="mailto:nickjost@yahoo.com"><FONT
size=3>Nicholas</FONT></A><FONT size=3> </FONT></DIV>
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class=Apple-style-span><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial><SPAN>>> don't
see where you get this from. Granted Baldanders is not shown
as </SPAN><SPAN>having any sexual interest in women, and by default one
might assume that </SPAN><SPAN>such a character might (or might not) be
gay. But the modified child in his </SPAN><SPAN>bed hardly qualifies
as a man."</SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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class=Apple-style-span><FONT size=2 face=Arial>> You make two bad assumptions
that the classic world didn't. The first is that sexual preference is fixed. As
I pointed out this is a new (and I think very wrong) idea.
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I make no such assumption. Perhaps outside
the short time we know him, Baldanders is a connoissueur of sheep, or perhaps he
eventually transforms himself into a tribade. However, at the time we meet
him, all we see is that he seems to have little interest in women. If
we assume that, as with most people, he has at least *some* sexual interests,
then we will consider it at least more likely than average that he will turn out
to have an interest in men. This is all beside the point
anyway.</FONT></DIV>
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class=Apple-style-span><FONT size=2 face=Arial>> Two, that the boys essential
nature isn't human and male. What is he, a female mouse? A Greek wouldn't
understand the fine difference you're driving at to protect modern sensibilities
(sensibilities trained by a halting assumption of Christian ethics). What
difference does it make when I sleep with a slave that is three or
thirty?</FONT></SPAN></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>You said yourself: " He's interested in men because
they are like him and he is his own idol." Baldanders is a mature man; a
three year old boy is not much like him. And a child may be human and
male, without thereby being a man.<BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>The Greeks would in my opinion have made this
distinction also, even if they tolerated adult males having sex with adolescent
boys. (I reserve judgement on how much this alleged tolerance has to do
with historical fact, and how much with the predilections of certain classical
scholars looking wistfully back towards a mythical golden age of
pederasty.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>- Gerry Quinn</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
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