LGBTQ

[edwardmurphy]

Who said it didn't work in Sparta?

History.

It contributed to their success for a long time, and it didn't contribute to their decline. I'd call that working.

[PaulSacramento]

Who said it didn't work in Sparta?

History.

It contributed to their success for a long time, and it didn't contribute to their decline. I'd call that working.

No, the relationships created by the bisexual bond helped them as warriors ( emotional attachment in the senior/junior relationship) BUT it compromised the family unit and allowed the slave population to thrive and, well, the empire collapsed.
The height of the spartan empire was in the mid to late 400's and the fall started in 371 BC, so it is NOT the long of a reign.
Lets not forget that the Spartan society also advocated infanticide and other horrifics.

[B. W.]

Who said it didn't work in Sparta?

History.

It contributed to their success for a long time, and it didn't contribute to their decline. I'd call that working.

No, the relationships created by the bisexual bond helped them as warriors ( emotional attachment in the senior/junior relationship) BUT it compromised the family unit and allowed the slave population to thrive and, well, the empire collapsed.
The height of the spartan empire was in the mid to late 400's and the fall started in 371 BC, so it is NOT the long of a reign.
Lets not forget that the Spartan society also advocated infanticide and other horrifics.

So Paul, how is this any different than the world that that those on the left advocate for?
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[PaulSacramento]

Who said it didn't work in Sparta?

History.

It contributed to their success for a long time, and it didn't contribute to their decline. I'd call that working.

No, the relationships created by the bisexual bond helped them as warriors ( emotional attachment in the senior/junior relationship) BUT it compromised the family unit and allowed the slave population to thrive and, well, the empire collapsed.
The height of the spartan empire was in the mid to late 400's and the fall started in 371 BC, so it is NOT the long of a reign.
Lets not forget that the Spartan society also advocated infanticide and other horrifics.

So Paul, how is this any different than the world that that those on the left advocate for?
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No difference, it won't work either in the long run.

[RickD]

One can argue, from a scientific and biological ( evolutionary) perspective that, bisexuality is a evolutionary advantage.

Advantage? How so?

From the evolutionary viewpoint, bisexuality improves one chances of survival, two "mates" instead of one for example, with one mate being the protector. ex:
A bisexual male will have a women to procreate with and a male lover to protect him.
A bisexual female will have a woman to socialize and, depending on the female, to protect her and a male to protect and procreate with.
Now, in the real world we know it doesn't work like that and there are other issues to deal with ( there is a reason that it didn't work in Sparta for example), but it can be argued that it CAN be advantageous.

Paul,

I'm glad you finally acknowledge the difference between evolution, and the real world.

[edwardmurphy]

No, the relationships created by the bisexual bond helped them as warriors ( emotional attachment in the senior/junior relationship) BUT it compromised the family unit and allowed the slave population to thrive and, well, the empire collapsed.

Compromised the family unit? How so? Sure, Spartan families didn't look like ours, but they managed to have kids, raise them right (by Spartan standards), and maintain a stable society for hundreds of years. It's true that the Helots came to vastly outnumber the Spartans, but there's no reason to think that bisexuality had anything to do with that. The Spartans were extremely traditional and conservative and they insisted on natural population growth. The only way to get more Spartans was for Spartan men and women to make them. They didn't allow immigration and they refused to interbreed with the Helots, so they had no way to quickly recover from a disaster, such as an earthquake or a costly war. They were also cash poor, since they weren't much into commerce, so they couldn't have hired mercenaries even if they'd been willing to, which they weren't.

In short, Sparta was an extremely rigid society with no capacity for adapting to changing circumstances. Their formula worked for a while, but once they started their downward spiral they were unable to pull out of it.

The height of the spartan empire was in the mid to late 400's and the fall started in 371 BC, so it is NOT the long of a reign.

A city-state doesn't need to control an empire to be considered successful. The Spartans managed to control the Helots, remain free of outside influence, and field the finest armies in Greece for about 400 years. That's success.

Lets not forget that the Spartan society also advocated infanticide and other horrifics.

So did the Romans, and probably plenty of others. The ancients were brutal by our standards, and the Spartans were by ancient standards. But that's a different issue. Nobody is saying that Spartan society is worthy of imitation., just that their way of doing things worked well enough that they were able to thrive for hundreds of years while many of their neighbors were not.

[Hortator]

Nobody is saying that Spartan society is worthy of imitation.

Then why bring any of this up?

[edwardmurphy]

It's the way the thread drifted. I brought up Sparta as an example, Paul made some comments that I disagreed with, and here we are. We could just as easily be discussing pretty much anything else.

Speaking of anything else, is it me, or has the quality of watermelons declined precipitously in the last few years? When I was a kid watermelons had seeds, but they were gigantic, dirt cheap and always good. Now they're seedless, but they're puny and expensive, and getting a good one is rare enough to be noteworthy. What the Hell happened?

I don't think that Spartans had watermelons, but if they did it's a safe bet that they'd have shared a good one with their boyfriends before their wives and that the Helots would have been lucky to get a rind.

[edwardmurphy]

Huh...

Writings from 400 B.C. to 500 A.D. indicate the watermelon spread from northeastern Africa to Mediterranean countries. The ancient Greek name for the watermelon was the pepon.

[PaulSacramento]

No, the relationships created by the bisexual bond helped them as warriors ( emotional attachment in the senior/junior relationship) BUT it compromised the family unit and allowed the slave population to thrive and, well, the empire collapsed.

Compromised the family unit? How so? Sure, Spartan families didn't look like ours, but they managed to have kids, raise them right (by Spartan standards), and maintain a stable society for hundreds of years. It's true that the Helots came to vastly outnumber the Spartans, but there's no reason to think that bisexuality had anything to do with that. The Spartans were extremely traditional and conservative and they insisted on natural population growth. The only way to get more Spartans was for Spartan men and women to make them. They didn't allow immigration and they refused to interbreed with the Helots, so they had no way to quickly recover from a disaster, such as an earthquake or a costly war. They were also cash poor, since they weren't much into commerce, so they couldn't have hired mercenaries even if they'd been willing to, which they weren't.

In short, Sparta was an extremely rigid society with no capacity for adapting to changing circumstances. Their formula worked for a while, but once they started their downward spiral they were unable to pull out of it.

The height of the spartan empire was in the mid to late 400's and the fall started in 371 BC, so it is NOT the long of a reign.

A city-state doesn't need to control an empire to be considered successful. The Spartans managed to control the Helots, remain free of outside influence, and field the finest armies in Greece for about 400 years. That's success.

Lets not forget that the Spartan society also advocated infanticide and other horrifics.

So did the Romans, and probably plenty of others. The ancients were brutal by our standards, and the Spartans were by ancient standards. But that's a different issue. Nobody is saying that Spartan society is worthy of imitation., just that their way of doing things worked well enough that they were able to thrive for hundreds of years while many of their neighbors were not.

You seem to be redefining history there but that's fine, in this regard we are discussing opinion more than historical facts since, well, history doesn't really care about the issues we are discussing.

Sparta had many good things going for it, their women had far more rights than other women in the ancient world as an example ( this was so that men could focus more on training and war), but their policies were short sighted and, again, their bisexuality was for the betterment of their military and not really inline with what happens now.
One could argue that a Spartan would be disgusted at the current display of homosexual and bisexuals of this era.
Of course they would be disgusted at many things we do now, such as allowing handicapped children to live, allowing the weak to have a voice in government, allowing all to have equal rights and so forth.

[edwardmurphy]

I'm not redefining anything. I took a Greek history class back in the day. I'm repeating what I was taught, which came from books written by experts who had studied the source material. Sparta declined because they failed to adapt to a changing world. Their society was based around honoring their gods and creating the best warriors in the world, and nothing else. If they'd been open to trade, and immigration, and allowing more of their population to become citizens and contributors then they might have been a long-standing imperial power. But they weren't and they didn't.

Regarding their separation of spouses and encouragement of bisexual relationships among the warriors, I've yet to see any evidence that it weakened them. It's debatable whether or not it helped them, but if they'd eliminated that one aspect of their society and left everything else the same it's unlikely that it would have made a difference in their long term success. They'd still have had a hostile, slave population within their borders, a smaller ruling class, a weak economy, and tremendous difficulty recovering lost population after natural disasters or military defeats.

Frankly, your argument seems like it's based on current Christian and cultural concerns. You're opposed to bisexuality and you don't want to see it presented as a social positive.

Regarding how a modern Spartan might see our society, including modern homosexuality and bisexuality, I agree that they'd probably be disgusted by our softness, cultural flexibility, and lack of discipline. That's fine. I find a lot of their traditions appalling. The exposure of weak infants, the enslavement and persecution of the Helots, the subjection of their children to brutal rites of passage, the constant State interference in what I regard as private matters, and their extraordinary social rigidity all repulse me. I wouldn't want to be a Spartan or to see Spartan policies enacted in modern, American society.

[Hortator]

Hey thatkidakayoungguy, go to "edit thread" and see if you can add a poll to the thread.

Poll question: Does Ed wish he had been born a Spartan boy? 1. Yes 2. Yes

[thatkidakayoungguy]

Hey thatkidakayoungguy, go to "edit thread" and see if you can add a poll to the thread.

Poll question: Does Ed wish he had been born a Spartan boy? 1. Yes 2. Yes

HAAHA ok.

[thatkidakayoungguy]

Turns out I can't seem to do it.

[edwardmurphy]

He doesn't. If he could pick a place to live in the ancient world it wouldn't be the ancient equivalent of North Korea. And if he just yearned for a bisexual lifestyle he could have it here and now, complete with indoor plumbing.