An inspection of the intersection between religion and pederasty cannot simply begin with asking the relationship between "religion" and pederasty; we must talk first of what sort of religion. Within societies as far-flung as the Romans and the Japanese, pederasty was normal and an understood part of social relations. Even in the Muslim world, quite recently homosexuality was normal and not particularly stigmatized. Gustave Flaubert, recording his experiences in Egypt in 1850, wrote that "One admits one's sodomy, and it is spoken of at table in the hotel." He then went on to explain "The final masseurs, the ones who come to rub you when all the rest is done, are usually quite nice young boys." Given the neutral, even tone of Gustave in his discussions, it is unlikely that he is attempting to provoke Western hatred with slanderous lies in order to allow colonialist exploitation.

The relationship between pederasty - and homosexuality in general - and religion is not, then, one of some intrinsic characteristic of religion. Rather, it has emerged from a very particular religious history: that of Christianity. While the Quran certainly takes a negative view of homosexuality, the evidence is rather clear that pederasty and Islam coexisted in peace for the vast majority of the religion's history. Christianity, at one point, also took a tolerant view, given the cultures through which the religion spread - Roman, German, and Celtic, for example - had, by all evidence, also taken tolerant viewpoints of pederasty. Coming into a new nation and demanding they convert to your faith is quite a bit easier if it is done without following it up with the equivalent of "oh and you can't have sex with your wife anymore," so it's unsurprising that what limited condemnations of homosexuality can be seen in the Christian bible were largely ignored. It is difficult to know exactly how accepted pederasty was within Christianized Europe, given that the vast majority of the surviving documents come from the clergy, who generally did not enjoy writing about sexuality. It is quite likely that knight-squire relationships developed from pagan European practices of pederasty among the warrior class.

I say all this to set the stage for that great cultural genocide, the destruction of ordinary homosexual relationships and its supplantation with our modern models, more derived from a pathologization of non-heteronormative behavior than any sort of objective reality. This is the responsibility of religion. No, that is too extreme - it is the Catholic Church that is responsible for this nonsense. With the development of a strong papal authority with Gregory VII, as well as widespread consideration of the corruption of the Catholic Church - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux remarked that part of the reason for the widespread growth of Catharism was the massive corruption of the church. When reform came, then, the most extremely devout Christians became the leaders of the church. As a consequence of Christianity's ascetic morality, which emphasized the virtues of poverty, chastity, etc, the clergy considered virtually all forms of sex acts to be sinful. Sex could only be committed by a man and a woman, penis in vagina, missionary permission, with the intent to have a baby, while they were both married. Anything else was sinful. Even nocturnal emissions, a completely involuntary process, became a venial or mortal sin, depending on whether the individual had lewd thoughts the night before. Under such circumstances, it is no surprise that pederasty was targeted as well. And that's why it's considered "wrong" to have sex with fourteen year old boys.

AmericanNazbro posted:

whats the string on the penis test?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z29LbVcOARo&feature=player_detailpage#t=740s

Meursault posted:

The guy with all the postcards of young ballet boys stretching taped on his wall being like, yeah I never really noticed before but you're right, I could see how you might think that's a bad influence for me, but I never thought of them that way

he has a passion for choreography, whats so hard to understand about someone having feelings about art, about dance, about the theatre??

Alyosha posted:

Don't rape kids.

agreed. instead, have consensual sex with them, like Mohammed.