Cause_and_Effect wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 11:19 am
Why would you consider ordaining if you are gay? Surely putting yourself in a secluded male only environment would be a temptation, especially if you encountered other gay monks. Logic dictates that the prohibition in ordaining would include homosexuals.
Because it still offers the best environment for awakening. Regarding the rule against pandakas, there are 5 types listed (which i discussed earlier in this old thread)
Asittakapandaka - A man who gains satisfaction from performing oral sex on another man and from ingesting his semen, and only becomes sexually aroused after ingesting another man's semen.
Ussuyapandaka - A voyeur, a man who gains sexual satisfaction from watching a man and a woman having sex, and only becomes sexually aroused after that.
Opakkamikapandaka - A Eunuch by-assault, testicle that are annihilated by assault or violence.[3]("still could attain ejaculation through some special effort or artifice".)
Pakkhapandaka - People who become sexually aroused in parallel with the phases of the moon.
Napumsakapandaka - A person with no clearly defined genitals, whether male or female, having only a urinary tract, one who is congenitally impotent.
The first 2 can ordain, the rest cannot. The first clearly refers to homosexual or bisexual men, meaning homosexuals can ordain according to Classical Theravāda.
As to 'active and passive' types of gays, it's true that the active one (ie who maintaines a penetrative role) is still in the role of a man and capable of attraction females. The 'passive' one is receiving and taking a role as a woman and seen as gay. However while the passive one would seem to surely be pretty prohibited from ordaining (equivalent to letting a prison queen into a male only environment) I'm not sure that one who regularly engaged in sex with males even in the active role would be a good idea to be ordained either as he would be sexually stimulates often even if he found not willing partners.
The idea around pandakas seems to be that of men who do not act in gender conforming ways, rather than to do with the sexual orientation itself which really wasn't recognised back then. Those men who received we seen as compromising the masculinity, whilst those who gave were still seen as men but were usually considered to just be less fussy about where they got their sex from.