More from Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen at Mere Comments has added to his "non-scriptural arguments against homosexual marriage." His #5 is especially compelling. I once had a professor at the University of Dallas make the comment that those of us living in a post-Freudian age can no longer enjoy deep friendships among people of the same sex. The reason? Freud's musings have pathologized all such friendships. One cannot have a friendship such as the one David had with Jonathan in the Old Testament without a suspicious eye immediately darting their way. Esolen's thoughts are similar:

If homosexuality is at the least not publicly condoned, then that may clear away sufficient ground for men to forge the emotionally fulfilling friendships that they once enjoyed in the past. Such friendships have been at the base of many a cultural renaissance [...]. But the point is that the prohibition is public, and helps constitute the meaning, to oneself and to others, of one’s attachment to a member of the same sex. Not so long ago, it was conceivable to suppose that two men might share an apartment merely as close friends; if Oscar and Felix of The Odd Couple did the same thing now, homosexuality would be the first thing to cross your mind, whether you support the homosexual agenda or reject it [...].

The effect upon boys is devastating; it is hard for women to understand it. Their own friendships come easily, and in general are not based upon shared conquest, physical or intellectual. It is simply an anthropological fact that male friendship is essential for the full development of the boy’s intellect: the history of every society reveals it. But now the boys suffer under a terrible pincers attack. The sexual revolution causes them to rouse themselves to interest, or to pretend to interest, in girls long before they or the girls are emotionally or intellectually ready for it; and now the condonement of homosexuality prevents them from publicly preferring the company of their own sex.