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likely to be the taunts of the playground bullies. These youngsters especially can greatly benefit
from at least someone in their surroundings giving them positive messages about their desires:
the very last thing they need is to have their bodies kept at arm's length by terribly pure
paragons of virtue who have apparently conquered physical desire. If even a paedophile won't
touch them, what sort of a pariah will the gay youngster feel himself to be?
Incidentally, while what we have come to call Platonic love is plainly a poisoned chalice, the
writings of Plato himself on the subject of love are still worth reading. Plato's Symposium, in
particular, has an extended discussion on love and the proper relationship between a lover and
a loved one, in a context highly relevant to us and to our consideration of what is "good",
because the lovers in question are men and the loved ones are the youths they befriend. But the
discussion needs to be read very critically. The character Pausanias, in his main speech, makes
what may very well be the first recorded put-down of a paedophile by a gay in literature.
Paedophilia and homosexuality are of course modern social constructions and some of the
arguments in Plato about valid and non-valid sexual behaviour are clearly based on different
social patterns to ours. Nevertheless, the put-down by Pausanias is very instructive for us. Here
is the relevant part of what he says:
"…not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of
praise… any one may recognize the pure enthusiasts in the very character of their
attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent beings whose reason is
beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to
grow. And in choosing young men to be their companions, they mean to be
faithful to them, and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them
in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away
from one to another of them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden by
law, because their future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in
body or soul, and much noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them…"
Note the grounds on which Pausanius makes his put-down. We can easily agree with him that
exploiting young boys' inexperience by deceiving them is wrong, but that is not his main point.
His real worry is that the boys may turn out to be unworthy of a cultured and virtuous lover:
they may be a waste of time. Now on this point it seems to me Pausanius may be getting
somewhere.
The Four Principles of Ipce, and the solemn, self-denying stance that Frans feels he must draw
from them are slightly at odds with what Pausanius is saying. The Four Principles are
completely silent on the question of a particular boy's personality and character. It's as though
all children are like Ming vases, precious, fragile, with no mind of their own but very likely to
be dropped and smashed by a clumsy paedophile.
Pausanias feels men should only have young lovers who are worthy of them: not boys of weak
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