User13866 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 1:18 pm
Prison is the best example in our world today. Sexual desire is strong, and just like other animals, when no females are around men will go with other men. This isn't all straight men of course. Some won't at all, but a number will.
I've never heard of two straight men doing gay things in prison.
I've heard of men who claim to be straight rape other straight men.
I've heard of supposedly straight men make use of gay men.
I have
never heard of two straight men engaging in consensual gayness.
If consensual gayness occurs among adult straight men this is incredibly rare, so rare that it's virtually non-existent.
Having known people who were in prison (one for murder) these things do happen. It's also what we see in other animals too. Two lone lions will mate with each other, but it's a stretch to say they are homosexual. Once they find some lionesses, they then mate with them exclusively. Rape is a different issue. When another man rapes another, it can be a dominance thing. I'm not talking about rape here, but consensual sex between two straight men. It happens amongst straight women too, but to be fair women's sexuality is more fluid than male sexuality anyway. On it's occurrence, it depends on the context. It hardly occurs when a man has access to women, but in a context where that isn't the case then it occurs more frequently.
This is true for straight men. For gays this is not the same because they will be attracted to other monks.
A straight man doesn't live with bhikkhunis for a reason.
So why on earth would living with men be ideal for the gay?
They can be yes, and I did say it can be harder, but it's not impossible. Whilst the segregation of monks and nuns likely involves the idea of reducing chances of any violations of the Vinaya, it likely it's there due to the cultural norms of Iron Age India at the time too. Regardless, if we accept that the Buddha knew what a homosexual was, he never then made a rule prohibiting all gay men from ordaining. He made a rule against Paṇḍakas ordaining, which doesn't mean "all gay men". When you look at the story too, it's clear that the real issue was how the community was being viewed. They were being viewed negatively by having Paṇḍakas amongst them, which is why they were then banned. It doesn't suggest they were banned because of potential sexual encounters with other monks. A lot of the Vinaya rules are there because of how the wider society viewed such things, at the time. Monks and nuns can't dig earth for example, because Jains found it offensive to do so (because to them the earth also had consciousness).