some gay notes

The Dionysian element has to do with emotions and affects which have found no suitable religious outlets in the Apollonian cult and ethos of Christianity.... Carnival became secularized and with it divine intoxication vanished from the sacred precincts. But intoxication, that most direct and dangerous form of possession, turned away from the gods and enveloped the human world... The pagan religions met this danger by giving drunken ecstasy a place within their cult. Orgies were granted religious license, so as to exorcise the danger that threatened from them. Our solution prohibition/ denial has served to throw the gates of 'hell' wide open.

In a society where men are allowed to kill men, and where there is no outlet for men also to love men, then there is a serious imbalance and a profound alienation of men from themselves. Institutionalized homosexuality attempts to contain this erotic connection ritually.

-> age-mates

-Gilgamesh and Engidu, the hero's fight with the Great Mother dragon

-homoeros is viewed by the patriarchy as inimical to its aims because it moves to right the imbalance which patriarchy imposes by means of alienation.

-Perhaps without war and ecological disaster men would never recognize the importance of seeking the healing Eros in and among themselves, or see that Eros as well as aggression is an issue between men...In this twilight of the patriarchal gods, we might also argue that we cannot really afford another war, another dead sea, another poisoned landscape. Men must find another way to love each other.

A gay has a sensibility to act as counselor for marital and other relationship difficulties. He is often entrusted the education of children and the guardianship of problem adolescents in traditional societies. More important yet is his familiarity with the spirit world; as an interpreter of dreams and visions, he has no peer but the shaman. When he is the shaman, he is responsible for the spiritual health of the whole community. It is this inextricable bond of earth and spirit in the life of the berdache that qualifies him as a supreme example of the dark sexuality).