Letter from Thessaloniki
Greece is in the throes of very serious crises in education and the economy. Still, the news is all over the case of a certain brigadier who is alleged to have posted a daring semi-nude photograph of himself on an online site for gay men seeking partners. As rioters and protesting students took to the streets of central Athens once again, and as the movie «300» – recounting the Battle of Thermopylae and the brave Spartans led by Leonidas – hit the theaters of the capital, television panels argued about whether we had gotten complacent in our tolerance and understanding of homosexuals. During a very popular television talk show, appropriately named «Jungle» and anchored by a Makis Triandafyllopoulos, almost everyone on the panel agreed that it is nearly impossible to live openly and comfortably as a homosexual unless you are in the arts, theater or fashion business – or, at least, very brave. But it’s impossible to do so if you are a gay officer – even a very brave one – in the Greek army. History says it wasn’t always like that. In certain militaristic societies, homosexual relationships were encouraged on the grounds that pairs of dedicated lovers (for instance Thebes’ Sacred Legion, the Spartan buddy system) would fight more vigorously than reluctant draftees who want desperately to return home to their wives. Men who don’t have wives and children to worry about are not as easily dominated as those who do. In Zack Snyder’s film «300» («at once homophobic and homoerotic,» according to the analysis penned by Nathan Lee in an article titled «Man on Man Action: Spartan Hotties Versus Persian Trannies» in the Village Voice), 7,000 Greek soldiers met an army of more than 250,000 Persians. Goodness, how did they ever dare? Describing the morals of those ages, Xenophon wrote: «They sleep with their loved ones… yet station them next to themselves in battle… with them (Eleians, Thebans) it’s a custom, with us a disgrace… placing your loved one next to you seems to be a sign of distrust… The Spartans… make our loved ones such models of perfection that even if stationed with foreigners rather than with their lovers they are ashamed to desert their companion.» Homosexual relations between heroes were often celebrated in the ancient world. The oldest of religious texts tells of the love between two men, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. When Enkidu died, Gilgamesh challenged death itself in order to bring his lover back to life. In our most celebrated «Iliad,» Gilgamesh’s rage is echoed by Achilles when his lover Patroclus dies before the walls of Troy. So powerful was the love between the biblical heroes David and Jonathan that David noted in his obituary of Jonathan, «Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.» Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the affection that Ruth felt for Naomi was of a sort that today might well end in a pilgrimage to Eressos on the island of Lesvos. As military pederasty goes, our forefathers encouraged it as means to boost troop morale, bravery, and patriotism – at least that plain old-fashioned patriotism which so often means nothing more than persuading a man to kill a man he does not know. I wonder whether our Defense Minister Evangelos Meimarakis would consider this a good idea? Today, a long time after our attitudes toward sex derived from the Old and New Testament, the permissive society has finally conceded legality but not yet a full place to homosexuals. The recent case of the gay Greek brigadier has shown this. Sure enough Greece has no laws which prohibit same-sex sexual contact, thanks in part to pressure the European Union has put on Athens. But ultimately Greek manhood (injured only during football games these days) has ceased to be an exclusively masculine preserve. For in the past, when Greeks were more the kind of guys who could defoliate an entire forest to make a lunch fire, when women were mere sex objects and work companions who walked alongside the donkey they were riding, then yes, it was easier to be a Real Man. Now with efforts to split the household chores and acknowledge the existence of female orgasms, things have become so mixed up between the sexes in Greece. Essentially, and as local television has proved once again, Greek society today can be divided into two categories of men: those who hate gay brigadiers and those who do not. Those who admire Zorba the Greek (even if they have never read Nikos Kazantzakis’s book) and the others – the wimps, pansies, the warm and sensitive Synaspismos Left Coalition voters who cook and clean and relate to their wives; those who prefer a romantic musical such as the 1934 film «The Gay Divorcee» with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to a gay brigadier who offends our national pride.
