In Latin, both "miles" and "bellator" are warriors.

While both "homo" and "vir" = man

A "homo" or "vir militaris" is a warrior.

And a "vir fortissimus" -- fortissimus means most strong -- is a brave man.

While "virilis" and "masculus" both mean masculine.

So in Latin, at least as much as in English, the definitions are recursive.

Which is why we say that masculinity is that which is natural to a man.

A man is masculine; a vir is virilis.

And "virtus" = "manliness"; as does "animus virilis" -- animus is defined as the spiritual or rational principle of life in man.

Animus virilis = having a masculine spiritual principle = having a manly spirit = manliness.

While the word "virtus," meaning manliness, is also synonymous with "moral virtue."

As it is with "excellence, worth, goodness, bravery, and courage."

So a masculine man, a vir virilis, possesses virtus -- manliness, which is synonymous with moral virtue: excellence, worth, goodness, bravery, and courage.

It's all linked: a man / vir -- who is manly / virilis -- partakes of virtue / virtus -- manliness as defined by moral virtue: excellence, worth, goodness, bravery, and courage.

Nice, huh?

That's the Masculine ideal in a Warrior culture.

Again, in Warrior Homosex, there's a concept of Heroic Love -- the love of one fighting man for another.

That love is

Masculine;

Faithful;

Phallic;

and completely rejects the "cowardice of the governed."

Heroic Love is Warrior Love.

Warrior Love is Heroic Love.

David and Jonathan understood that.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu understood it.

The Greeks; the Romans; the Celts -- they understood it.

The Templars understood it too.

Question: When are you going to understand it -- and start living it in your own life?

Everything in your culture -- whether that culture is analism or mainstream hetero culture -- tells you that none of this is true.

Again: when are you going to understand that this IS the truth -- and start living it in your own life?

Guys

I realized after I posted that when I say Rome, you're probably going to think Roman Empire.

But the Roman conception of vir, virilis, virtus long predates the empire, and goes back to when the Romans were just another wandering Warrior tribe.

So their concept of "virtus" -- virtue -- is a warrior concept.

That's why Tacitus, writing around 100 years after Virgil -- when the Roman Empire was at its height -- speaks favorably of the Germans and other peoples the Romans considered barbarians.

He, like many of his countrymen, saw the Germans as still possessing their warrior ideals.

But, said the Romans, their barbarian warrior virtues persisted only so long as they were unconquered.

In Tacitus' phrase, "their valour perished with their freedom."

So: the Roman ideal is a warrior ideal.

To Tacitus, the Empire, which had flooded the city with money and destroyed political freedom, had corrupted that ideal.

As it corrupted the peoples whom it conquered.

But the ideal remains.

Tacitus wrote a short biography -- what I would call an encomium -- of his father-in-law Agricola, who had been the Roman governor of Britain.

Tacitus admired the man -- greatly.

Why?

Clearly, because in Tacitus' eyes, he possessed virtus.

Again: the ideal remains.

I also urge guys to go back and read the Templars message thread.

And eventually I'll probably just appendage this thread to the Templars thread as well.

Because what Robert Loring and Jedi and Greg Milliken and myself and others are talking about here is that there is something which we can call Masculine Virtue.

And if you strip masculinity from the man, then you take his "virtus" -- his manliness as defined by moral virtue -- from him as well.

If he's a gay man, stripped of that virtue he becomes lost in the anomic world of analism, of promiscuous, anything goes, "sex," and soon loses his identity as a man and takes on the identity of a slut and a whore.

That's the problem.

It's not just the anal, though clearly anal is key.

I'll have more to say about that in a later post.

For now, let's take a look at:

Both are taken from John Boswell's Same-sex Unions in Premodern Europe, which you can find on the Reading List.

Boswell was the openly gay head of the history department at Yale who died of AIDS in 1995.

He was also a practicing Catholic.

Same-sex Unions was published in 94, and was much criticized by the gay establishment / secularists, who at that time were very suspicious of the idea of marriage.

And of course it was attacked by homophobes.

But Boswell's erudition is formidable, as his scholarship.

Bascially, he argued that up until about 1200 AD, the Church and local communities didn't just tolerate but celebrated same-sex marriages, and that one can find many records of same-sex ceremonies conducted by priests.

Boswell presents many of those records, which are primarily documents of same-sex marriage.

Here are two of the less formal entries in the book:

This first is from "the Gesta Romanorum, a high Medieval collection of Latin fables":

Boswell: Two knights in a tale in the Gesta Romanorum "loved each other" and decided to form a bond by drinking each other's blood. The nature of the bond so created was that afterward neither would "divorce" the other "in prosperity or adversity," and whatever either one earned would be shared equally with the other. Then they "lived each other in the same house."

Here Boswell is quoting a description of a same-sex marriage in Ireland as described by an anti-Irish commentator named Gerald of Wales writing in the late 12th century:

Under the pretext of piety and peace they come together in some holy place with the man they want to join. First they are united in pacts of kinship, then they carry each other three times around the church. Then, entering the church, before the altar, in the presence of the relics of saints and with many oaths, and finally with a celebration of the Mass and the prayers of priests, they are permanently united as if in some marriage. At the end, as further confirmation of the friendship and a conclusion to the proceedings, each drinks the other's blood, which is willingly shed for this. This however they retain from the rites of pagans, who customarily use blood in the sealing of oaths.

What's striking to me in this second account is how closely it resembles the marriage ceremony Patrick devised for us.

I sometimes joke with Patrick, who's Irish, that he channels Celts, and in this case he seems to have done just that.

We didn't carry each other three times around the church, but we were married in a Holy Union ceremony conducted by a priest, during which we took communion.

At the end of the ceremony, though again we didn't drink each other's blood, there were warrior elements which Patrick created for us.

The basic model then was a Christian mass concluded with a warrior act.

Gerald was writing around 1200 AD, and we were married in 2005 AD.

That the ceremonies were similar is not because Patrick had seen this account, which he hadn't, but because people in similar circumstances will do similar things -- even across many years.

So concepts such as Amor Masculus and Amor Militaris are not romanticized tom-foolery, but are genuine; and present both a link to the past and the possibility of a warrior future.

A true warrior future.

For those willing to work for it.

Greg Milliken

Re: AMOR MASCULUS

1-1-2006

This post reminds me of an observation I made a while ago.

Pride and shame are no different from each other -- they are just opposite ends of the same spectrum. Pride is thinking of yourself more highly than you really are, while shame is thinking of yourself as lower than you really are. Humility, on the other hand, is knowing your true value and accepting it.

Another way of putting it is: humility is accepting your vir virilis. If you cannot recognize your own virtue, you cannot act on it, nor can you take responsibility for what you are capable.

So if, for example, someone on the "religious right" tells you that you should feel shame for falling short of God, you know his standard is flawed. No one comes to God but through Jesus. And if you don't believe in God, then you can call him on his bullshit, because now you know something about the religion that allows you to see through the false teachings of the "religious right" and how they have corrupted Christianity.

On the other hand, if someone tells you that you aren't capable of overcoming some subset of biological imperatives, you know that his standard is flawed also. It fails to take into account the fact that one of those biological imperatives is vir virilis, male virtue.

If it was fear of the HIV plague alone which led men into a culture of anal penetration, then why, now that an alternative is known, do so few men recognize their own virtue to become a part of that alternative movement? Because the condom campaigns aren't, weren't, and never will be about protecting men from HIV. They will always represent a segment of this culture which seeks to destroy men, in part by removing their male virtue and telling them to embrace shame.

But pride and shame aren't based on reality -- only humility is -- and humility is represented by male virtue. There is no reality which can exist that fails to take that virtue into account. There is no biological imperative of promiscuity or effeminacy which can override entirely the natural ability for men to know and do what is right. Not unless those men believe that effeminacy and promiscuity are truly part of who they have to be. To believe that, they have to accept that no man is capable of choosing his own course in life. They must accept that virtue and heroism are a myth or some strange mistake of nature, incapable of being replicated by real men.

And that is why they will lose. Because each and every person here knows that heroism is not just possible, but that each and every one of us is capable of it. Anything short of heroism on the part of our enemies will not suffice to defeat us, and any sign of heroism on their part negates their own beliefs.

Bill Weintraub

Re: AMOR MASCULUS

1-2-2006

Thank you Greg.

Greg says,

"There is no biological imperative of promiscuity or effeminacy which can override entirely the natural ability for men to know and do what is right."

That's correct.

I would just add anal to the list: "There is no biological imperative of [anal or] promiscuity or effeminacy which can override entirely the natural ability for men to know and do what is right."

That's what Robert and I are both trying to get across.

Masculinity, Fidelity, and Phallus are natural to men.

Which is seen most clearly in warrior culture and in the erotically-bonded heroic pairs which adorn that culture.

What we have now in gay male life is a severe distortion of the historic and biological truth about men who love men.

And no culture which endorses that distortion can stand.

Nor can it make those who live within it happy -- it can only make them miserable.

Now:

So far in this thread we've seen that the Greeks viewed homosex as inimical to tyranny.

And that the Romans honored erotically-bonded warriors in, among other places, their national epic, the Aenead.

And that the Romans saw an intimate connection between being a man (vir), being masculine (virilis), and possessing virtue -- virtus.

And that the Romans considered the "barbarians" -- peoples like the Germans and Celts -- morally superior so long as they were free and able to retain their warrior code.

Which like the Roman code, honored excellence, bravery, and moral worth.

But that, the Romans believed, barbarian warrior valor perished when the barbarians were conquered by the Roman tyranny.

And we've seen that the tradition of tightly bonded warrior pairs lived on into at least the early Middle Ages, when knights swore fidelity by drinking each other's blood, and Irish warriors combined Christian ceremony with Celtic rites to marry as well.

Now I want to come back to Plato, and this statement, which I've paraphrased slightly:

in countries which are subject to tyrants, warrior lovers share the evil repute of philosophy and gymnastics, because they are inimical to tyranny;

So: tyrants dislike warrior love; philosophy; and athletics.

What do those terms mean in the Greek context?

We know what warrior love was among them -- masculine, martial, and faithful unto death.

What about philosophy?

Philosophy is the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia) -- the love of truth -- and the pursuit of philosophy means the pursuit of the truth -- no matter where that pursuit may lead.

We can see why these first two would have alarmed a tyrant.

Tyrants don't want their subjects forming faithful bonds to each other and pursuing the truth.

What about athletics?

When the Greeks spoke of athletics, they didn't mean team sports like basketball or baseball.

They did have what we'd call track and field -- foot races, both nude and in armor, and javelin throwing.

But mainly what they meant by athletics were combat sports: wrestling, boxing, pancration.

To the Greeks, at the heart of athletics was one man's strenuous physical struggle to overcome another.

It was an "agon" -- a contest between equals -- from which we get our word "agony."

The one-on-one aspect of the contest kept it pure.

And emphasized the warrior aspect of the event: one man against another.

It also emphasizes intimacy.

Here's NakedWrestler again:

going to fight school and sparring and submission grappling for real has given me an insight into real aggression. When you force another male to submit to you in submission grappling or pankration it is VERY significant. It's a feeling of being worthy, and that no male should be ashamed of. It's a power you can draw on in other aspects of life.

Another important part of the fight (and warrior mentality that Robert Loring alludes to) is the hand shake/hug after each fight. A good warrior/male role model knows how to make up after battle. THAT is bringing guys together.

So the goal of the contest is to force the other man to submit.

But the contest also bonds you to him -- emotionally and physically, and that bond is demonstrated with a handshake, a hug -- sometimes a kiss.

I've seen boxers kiss at the end of a well- and hard-fought bout.

Again, you can see where this would have bothered tyrants.

Free men, freely struggling against each other and for themselves, and bonding through the experience.

That was the Greek experience of Warrior Homosex -- of Heroic Homosex:

Fidelity and Masculinity united in a disinterested search for the truth and in those one-on-one contests which strengthened both the warriors and the warrior bond.

That was virtue.

Greg:

There is no reality which can exist that fails to take that virtue into account. There is no biological imperative of promiscuity or effeminacy which can override entirely the natural ability for men to know and do what is right. Not unless those men believe that effeminacy and promiscuity are truly part of who they have to be. To believe that, they have to accept that no man is capable of choosing his own course in life. They must accept that virtue and heroism are a myth or some strange mistake of nature, incapable of being replicated by real men.

Right.

And what we know is that virtue and heroism are not a myth; that to the contrary, not only can they be but they MUST be "replicated by real men."

Because without heroism and virtue, men's lives fail.

Remember that "heroism" can be found in small acts.

It needn't be rescuing a baby from a burning building or singlehandedly wiping out an enemy platoon.

Heroism can be found in the daily lives of ordinary people, doing the right thing by their communities and loved ones.

What's crucial to understand is that consumerism -- and promiscuity is a form of consumerism -- is no substitute for heroism and virtue.

Getting and spending is not virtue.

It's soulless.

And men cannot live a soulless life.

So guys: When I put all this energy into bringing you an account like this one of AMOR MASCULUS, I do it to make clear to you how different life can be.

Fidelity, Masculinity, Virtue.

Is that what gay male life is about today?

No.

Could it be that way?

YES.

Will it be that way?

That's up to you.

It's your decision.

It's always been your decision.

And so far you've made all the wrong choices.

Donations could not be lower.

I wonder how many of you have gone to Brokeback.

You certainly haven't been staying home and sending the money to us.

Nor have you been going but sending us an equal amount.

You've just been going to the movie and getting a little aroused, and then forgetting everything else.

That's what your life is -- one long forgetting.

You're asleep.

Wake up.

Or stay mired in the analist nightmare -- forever.