Thanks for your message. I, too, suspect that the substance of my posting
is off topic for b-greek, so I'm responding to you directly.
It was not my intention to give the impression that in the Symposium Plato
himself
supported the idea of fulfilment in male-male union. Just as you noted,
Socrates (and therefore Plato) seems to diavow this in his report of his
conversation with Diotima. But surely, the speeches of Phaedrus and
Pausanius imply that this was at least a position taken seriously by some
of the elite in Athens. The fact that Socrates/Plato in someways argue
against it would seem to mean that it was also a conensus of sorts.
As to Paul, I'm following J.H. Yoder, who notes that while the household
codes in Ephesians formally mirrors pagan codes, it is quite extrodinary
that the typically inferior member (woman/slave) is addressed first (a
reversal of the usual order), and that the fact that they were
counseled to subordinate themselves implies a hearing of a previous
message such as Gal. which would seem to imply that given the liberation
found in the Gospel, they were no longer under the old order and actually
had liberty to dispense with its prescriptions. The counsels are asking
them to voluntarily submit, and thus recognize that they are indeed moral
agents.
Jeffrey Gibson
jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu