Being repulsed by another man's sexuality does not necessarily correlate with self-loathing, any more than being gay implies narcissism. In my case, for example, I am disgusted by other men's sexuality because I am disgusted by the sexuality of the man that molested me when I was five years old. Which has not led me to be homophobic either, albeit mildly uncomfortable around graphic depictions of gay sex, and even hetero porn.

It's a rather (and usually literally) sophomoric idea "we are all a little bit gay/straight." As AKA points out, human sexuality is rather more complicated than either a yes/no switch OR a shaded two dimensional continuum.

And I never thought I would say this, but I actually thought the Anonymouse was pretty funny.

Do I pity my partners? Well I never. No, I pity all the women who will never get the chance to experience the screaming ecstasy delivered by Canuckistan Bob's superlative lovemaking and greek god of a body. Indeed, I would be tempted to rectify the situation as much as I could, but Mrs. Canuckistan rather greedily (I feel) insists on keeping all the sexy Canuckness to herself.

Do you really believe that garden-variety heterosexuality is based on self-loathing? Which also is what drives homophobia? What a peculiar idea.

Amy Winehouse (& Courtney Love, &, I suppose, Britney Spears for that matter) are just doing what male rock stars have been doing from day 1. Puts me in mind of Keith Richards or Sid Vicious. So in an odd sense it might actually be considered empowering.

And damn but Winehouse can sing. I hope she has an outcome more like Richards' than Vicious.

Jim Morrison. On stage in Florida. Got busted for it too.

The thing is, I don't recall much questioning or gossip about whether say Indira Ghandi or Margaret Thatcher or Benazir Bhutto were lesbian, and all three women proved that women politicians are just as corrupt, violent, and disgusting as the male variety. But only in America is sexual and drug orientation and experimentation such an obsessive issue.

Most of the rest of the world understands and accepts that leaders have clay feet and you are probably better off being represented by an attack-dog with lots of warts than little lord faultenroy all spotless and moral and stupid. Bush would not be electable in any other modern mature democracy, I think, precisely because questions around personal moral behaviour would never really matter much, and that was around 90% of his appeal (likely all lies though it was). Which is why Obama might be the stronger candidate: inexperienced, christian, and apparently naive.

Frankly, tum podem extulit horridulum because caput tuum in ano est". (Gosh I love swearing in Latin.)

Late Republican/early Imperial Roman history matters a great deal (the Clinton-Bush parallels are extreme), and have just a little teeny tiny bit more depth than the tv knowledge gleaned from the Discovery Channel on a couple of stoned afternoons.

Potes meos suaviari clunes you bozo.

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar?

I have read Tacitus, Suetonius, Ceaser, Virgil, Livy, etc, usually in the original language, which I am pretty sure you haven't, and let me assure you, you are talking out of your ass.

And the "cryptic nonsense" is called Latin, cepe indicum, just try googling the bits you don't understand, I picked each phrase to be easy to find for those whose knowledge of classical history and languages might be a little, ahem, rusty.

I'm tempted to say: "antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem;" but instead, I'll leave you with "die dulci fruimini."

You found a quote on early christian fathers attempting to legislate family matters 300+ years after Augustus, and this is evidence for Augustus' establishment of marriage as we now know it? (Which was your original point.)

As an aside, did it ever cross your mind that when dictators spread across several centuries furiously legislate again and again against the same "problem" it is either a) unbeatable human nature or b) phantom menace (peasantry, for the manipulation of, cf "war on terror/drugs/whatever"). Hitler actually passed similar laws.

Back to the original point, Augustus' connubial legislation, like his sumptuary legislation, ended up mostly being used to indict political opponents, and were flagrantly abused by pretty much everyone, notably the imperial family itself. It surely changed very little in the mores and behaviour of even the aristocracy, let alone the plebes. Or Constantine would hardly have had to have another go at it 300 and some years later. To about the same effect at that time. And to very little effect, I would think, on us some two thousand years later.

I think you have to look elsewhere for the roots of misogyny. And stop shooting yourself in the foot in the meantime.

And apologies to everyone else, but I do get touchy about classical history, which keeps on getting cited for this or that cause, in the presumption that everyone is ignorant of it.

Which is that the men and women were equally incompetent. The guys tended to just dive in and start swinging, clicking buttons randomly. The women tended to try and work incrementally from what they knew. Both approaches have their value, in different situations. Both approaches can be equally catastrophic.

And I don't see that the "softer" colours were tested for, they might have done the same thing with harsher colours, whatever that might mean. Perhaps the women just liked having more options, more tentative maybes than simple binary yeses/nos. Which could indicate rather higher intelligence, at least for non-computer related complex problems.

I'd love to see this done cross-culturally, to find out if the tendency really is socialized, or genders do have a slight disposition to one approach or the other. We can all speculate pretty interestingly and baselessly until then (personally I'm waiting for someone to bring up hunters and gatherers and how using a debugger is analogous to killing a mastodon).