Conclusion

In Greco-Roman antiquity, the predominant form of same-sex sexual relationships was pederastic, but in the modern West the predominant form is androphilic. Hence, the pederast in contemporary times is definitely a minority within a minority.

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Moreover, what was an institutionalized practice in ancient Greece is frequently seen as a subversive and corrupting activity in the contemporary West, with the adult partner subject to draconian penalties for engaging in sexual activities with an underage boy.

The glbtq movement for equality has largely distanced itself from pederasty, in part because have often accused homosexuals of child molestation and "recruitment," but also because there are real questions about the effects of age-asymetrical sexual relationships on adolescents.

Although most pederastic relationships are consensual, and often involve mentoring and support for the youthful partner from the adult, there is nearly always a power imbalance that makes such relationships unequal. Many adults who had such relationships in their adolescence remember them fondly. Not all do.

The institution of pederasty (paiderastia) was a conspicuous feature of ancient Greek public and private life, but other forms of male-male sexual relations flourished in the Greco-Roman cosmopolis of the second and third centuries C.E.

Ancient Greece holds a unique place in the heritage of homosexual literature as it was a society that openly celebrated same-sex love in its poetry and prose.

Roman writers on homosexual or bisexual themes generally followed Greek models; but unlike the Greeks, Romans condoned sex with slaves.

The Uranian poets, who lived and wrote from the close of the Victorian era to the middle of the interwar period, celebrated love for adolescent boys.

Editor, photographer, and activist, Adolf Brand was the leader of a faction of the early German homosexual emancipation movement whose cultural views were expressed in Der Eigene (The Self-Owner), the first homosexual literary and artistic journal.

The Scottish-German John Henry Mackay, who wrote in German, dedicated himself to the cause of gaining sympathetic recognition of man-boy love.

The aim of NAMBLA's small but determined membership has been to attack social and legal proscriptions against sexual relations between adults and pubescent or teenage boys.

Italian rhetorician and philosopher Antonio Rocco is author of an early classic of pederastic literature, L'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola (Alcibiades the schoolboy), which was written in 1630 and published anonymously in 1652.

Whether or not the Marquis de Sade was himself bisexual, homosexual activity is an important item in his program of revolutionary sexual libertinism.