Reply #28: yes. society has changed- and in many essential ways, for the better. [View All]

[cali]

I'm sorry, but romanticizing the past is, well, not a particularly good idea. Women were not citizens in Ancient Greece. Slavery was an accepted part of the culture.

From Wiki:

The ancient Greeks did not conceive of sexual orientation as a social identifier, as Western societies have done for the past century. Greek society did not distinguish sexual desire or behavior by the gender of the participants, but rather by the role that each participant played in the sex act, that of active penetrator or passive penetrated.<5> This active/passive polarization corresponded with dominant and submissive social roles: the active (penetrative) role was associated with masculinity, higher social status, and adulthood, while the passive role was associated with femininity, lower social status, and youth.<5>

and:

Given the importance in Greek society of cultivating the masculinity of the adult male and the perceived feminizing effect of being the passive partner, relations between adult men of comparable social status were considered highly problematic, and usually associated with social stigma. This stigma, however, was reserved for only the passive partner in the relationship. According to contemporary opinion, Greeks who engaged in passive homosexuality past the age at which they were the passive members of pederastic relationships "made a woman" of themselves; there is ample evidence in the theater of Aristophanes that derides these passive homosexuals and gives a glimpse of the type of biting social opprobrium heaped upon them by their society.

but really, as my historian/anthropologist pa would have said, you really can't compare contemporary culture to ancient cultures from the vantage point of the contemporary mindset.