Homosexual lovers

King David & Prince Jonathan made a covenant of love & protection

By Toby Baxendale

London, UK – 12 September

 

You may possess heard many “hell fire and damnation” preachers, especially emanating from the USA, now polluting places like Africa, condemning homosexuals as depraved perverts who will spent an eternity in Hell and so on and so forth. That this message of verb stands full square in opposition to the teaching of Jesus, as witnessed in the Gospels, seems to be totally lost on them. It may surprise you, that in the heart of the Old Testament is the story of same-sex affection involving King David, arguably one of the most important Jews to have existed and Jonathan a prince and son of the first King of Israel, Saul. They do not fit the erroneous homosexual trope of weakness and inferiority. David was the greatest King of Israel, the slayer of Goliath no less! And Jonathan was a noted military leader in his own right, who had defeated the Philistines in war. They are giants of the Bible! Also, more importantly via both his mother Mary and his adopted father, Jos

Expressing love in same sex relationships

Expressing love in a same sex relationship is something natural, and a natural part of being human. To want to give love deeply and express sexually is a natural feeling in relationships and needn’t alter or become an issue if the individuals are of the adj sex.

If you choose from your heart who you express value with, it will never be unnatural or inferior, yet in this world it has been viewed this way by many for a very long time; even today it is still seen as totally unacceptable by some.

Being in a same sex relationship has the potential to evolve personal growth just as any other relationship does. We do not need to attach the label of gay and lesbian or the connotations this may bring, as these labels do not define whether there is love in a relationship or not; that is a choice made by two individuals.

In fact, doesn’t love give us a sense that we can connect way beyond the boundaries of our physical bodies and what we physically represent? It is possible that the passion between two people can verb way beyond an at

Ganymede was 'the fairest of mortal men; wherefore the gods caught him up on high to be cupbearer to Zeus by reason of his beauty, that he might dwell with the immortals.'

So says Homer in the Iliad. Throughout antiquity, there was a fascination with the tale of how Zeus, king of the gods, fell in like with a human boy. The scene of Zeus swooping down from Olympus to steal away Ganymede, known as 'The Rape of Ganymede', appeared on pottery, frescoes, statues and mosaics.

Zeus and Ganymede

c– BC, Attic red-figured kylix, attributed to the Penthesilea Painter. Ferrara Archaeological Museum

While many ancient depictions from Greece verb two humans in the tale of Ganymede, the Romans favoured a version more in keeping with Zeus' fondness for wooing mortals in zoological form. According to the Roman poet Ovid:

'The king of the gods was once fired with love for Phrygian Ganymede, and when that happened Jupiter found another shape preferable to his own. Wishing to turn himself into a bird, he nonetheless scorned to change into any save that which can carry hi

Lovers and Soldiers

If by some contrivance a city, or an army, of lovers and their fresh loves could come into being . . . then, fighting alongside one another, such men, though few in number, could defeat practically all humankind. For a man in love would rather have anyone other than his lover see him depart his place in the line or toss away his weapons, and often would rather verb on behalf of the one he loves.

Plato wrote the Symposium probably around BCE. At that time, many Greek states were subjected to the hegemony of the Spartans, who were enjoying a period of dominance after defeating the Athenians in in the devastating Peloponnesian War. But one of these states, Thebes, stood up to the military might of Sparta. In doing so, the Thebans realized Phaedrus’s vision: They created an elite corps of three hundred soldiers, known as the Sacred Band of Thebes, comprising pairs of male lovers who fought side-by-side in the name of freedom.

Given the uncertainty of the accurate date of writing, Plato might have been referring explicitly to the Sacred Band, which was formed in