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Historical pederastic couples

• Articles for deletion/Historical pederastic couples
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Historical pederastic couples (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This article began its life as a list, but has over time become the storinghouse for any uncited claim of any person in history whom any editor wants to claim was involved in pederasty. In a number of cases (e.g. Leonardo DaVinci and Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein), material appears in this omnibus which has been roundly rejected from the main article, thus turning this list into a de-facto POV WP:FORK. Lastly, the decision for this to be a list, rather than a category (which might be defensible) smacks of original research: the desire to synthesize and publish original commentary on Misplaced Pages, which violates WP:NOR.

This article was nominated for deletion a couple of years ago, but the discussion surrounding it was very lightweight, on both sides of the issue. I'm hoping this nomination will get a bit more serious attention and thorough discussion. Nandesuka (talk) 12:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Delete: "Pederast" is a term of law, not nature, and someone attempting to do political graverobbing is either trying to convict a number of people of a crime posthumously or trying to pile up so many corpses as to argue that the act is no crime. Either thing is bad. The "list" cannot be legitimate unless it serves a function as a list that a category wouldn't perform. Finally, this list is only valid if every single biographical article of every figure contains the information that X and Y were "pederasts." If the authors and editors of those articles eject or reject it, then this is a POV fork. For three reasons: delete. Geogre (talk) 12:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
• Where is it "a term of law"? Is it even mentioned in the penal code? Please elighten me. Fulcher (talk) 02:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Seems to me to be a serious, generally well-referenced article. Pederast is not a legal term, as claimed, but a term that has been used historically in exactly the way it is used in the article. It was prodded a few days ago by someone who obviously had a POV reason to get it deleted and claimed it was an attempt to "legitimise paedophilia" (as Geogre also suggests above), which it is clearly not. I can see no attempt here to legitimise anything, just to document. If the "pederasty" is only an allegation then that should be reliably referenced, and in most cases it is (and if it is not, then of course it should be removed) - if an allegation against a deceased person has been publicly made and is appropriately referenced then it is encyclopaedic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Please to find a historical usage of "pederast" that is not an allegation of a crime. Do this first. Second, the list is not documented at all. Having a rumor is having a rumor, and reporting as fact the rumor is foolhardy intellectually, and illegitimate politically. I still await an explanation of what this list does as a list instead of a category that is useful. Geogre (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
    • The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a pederast is "A man who has or desires sexual relations with a boy." No allegations of crime (note the "desires"!) or description as a legal term. As to documenting rumour: should we not document rumour if that rumour is significant and generally believed? If it appears in a reliable source then of course it should be documented. Should we not document who was "rumoured" to be Jack the Ripper or that King John was "rumoured" to have had his nephew murdered? Of course we should. The rumour is a fact, even though the thing rumoured may not be a fact. As to categories over lists, this is a longstanding debate but there is no WP policy or guideline against lists and a list does what a category cannot: it provides information in one place. I find this to be an interesting list not because I have any desire to legitimise paedophilia (and as I said, I can see no evidence that it has been created for that purpose), but simply because it is an interesting list! -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:18, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep but remove uncited examples even if that's 90% of the content. There's precidence for that. I do understand the nominator's objections and concerns. Lists like this soon degrade into unencyclopedic OR, but we're not allowed to ban them based on that. We are, however, allowed and encouraged to remove uncited content especially if it is whatsoever provocative or controversial. - House of Scandal (talk) 14:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
  • It would be 90% or more. Let's put it this way: you find a letter where X says that Y loved him deeply and the two spent all their days together one summer. It was written in 1580. Homosexuality? No. You can find Thomas More and Erasmus speaking that way of each other, and the two were models of probity and heteronormative behavior. In prior ages, it is stupid (not ignorant, but outright stupid) to interpret "love" as more than affection. Discourse changes over time. "Homosexual" as a category did not exist before the 19th century, and therefore something like pedophilia+homosexuality+power (a rough equivalence of "pederasty") is impossible as an application. Unambiguous documentation is so rare as to be unheard of (Oscar Wilde is about as early as anyone may go), so anything about prior ages is speculation or pointed interpretation. Those who read Foucault's History of Sexuality will know that even the ancient Athenian (not "Greek") culture had something where elder men were expected to have younger men, but this very rarely involved sexual intercourse, and these men were also with women (and temple prostitution was rife), so trying to use a contemporary term to limit such lives is inexplicable except to forgive contemporary political and criminal outlaws. Geogre (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• I wish this article and hundred like it were never created but think this one has a right to exist under current guidelines. I thoroughly understand your argument. Really. Really. But saying "it is stupid (not ignorant, but outright stupid)..." adds no weight to your argument and seem unnecessarily uncivil towards editors who might make good faith errors in interpreting references to events of past centuries. To make such errors would indeed be caused by ignorance of specific cultural context. That's very much a different thing from “outright stupid”-ity. More opinions may be added here that differ from yours. Do stay cool. (c :17:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Were the distinction and historicism of "love" rare or hard to obtain knowledge, I would be quite tolerant, but I suspect that this list owes existence to bad faith. Again, can someone ignorantly assume and mistakenly state? Of course. Would someone create a list, though, whose purpose is to establish that there are numerous persons from ages prior to the 19th century who were "pederasts?" That's a special term, and I invite anyone to find a lexical definition that treats it as culturally ambiguous or non-criminal. It is a word that from Greek onward is denotative of abuse. To use such a special pleading and then suppose that there is a list that will serve a function? No. That's too many mistakes to attribute to bumbling, too much politics to attribute to pluralism. List articles are special on Misplaced Pages, because their function is duplicated by categories, so a list has to prove itself as a list. This one does not, because it requires rather than invites or allows assumptions and very prejudiced interpretation. I am, I assure you, quite cold about this matter, but tolerance is not apathy. Geogre (talk) 19:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Good points, perhaps valid. But might not an argument based on lexonographical conservatism invite someone (not me!) to suggest a rename to "Historical intergenerational all-male couples" or "Teenage/Adult sexual and/or male romatic couples in history" or whatever? Then we'd have the same ugly article with an even uglier name. If some feels there just has to be an article about "Dead chickenhawks and their boy toys" (how's that for a rename suggestion!) it might not be preventable. - House of Scandal (talk) 19:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep but remove any unsourced material. This page is well written, has a huge number of RS, and otherwise seems to stand up. The only problem is potential BLP issues and the ICK factor. Hobit (talk) 15:56, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep after thorough scrubbing. This is bound to need regular oversight (in the non-wiki sense of the word) to guard against inappropriate bias, but clearly a proper article can be written and maintained with proper sources. Once the unsourced and poorly sourced material is removed, what remains is appropriate Misplaced Pages fare. Xymmax _{So let it be done} 16:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete from the same reasons mentioned by Geogre. --Olahus (talk) 17:30, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
• Speedy keep

1. Only lightwieght and spurious arguments have been advanced against it. "Pederasty" in academia is different from the term is law, thus that argument is irrelevant here.
2. Whether the main articles cover this or not is immaterial - the information either is valid or is not, on its own terms.
3. Most entries are referenced, only the early ones were not because they were compiled before the new standards went into effect. They are the easiest of all to document as most are common knowledge and widely documented. Leave fact tags and I or someone else will get around to it. Haiduc (talk) 17:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• For living persons, I think things will need to be removed rather than "fact tagged" immediately per WP:BLP. And given the nature of the subject and the feelings associated with it, I'd go with the same for everyone else too. Hobit (talk) 18:53, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Why are we covering up homosexual relationships? Are we doing the same from now on with heterosexual ones as well? Haiduc (talk) 20:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Note that Haiduc is a major author of this article and a proponent of changing biographical articles that reject these claims as flimsy to state that these persons were "pederasts." "Common knowledge" by his account is frequently, in my assessment, rumor. It is the kind of 'documentation' that would say that Malory was a rapist and Machievelli worshipped Satan. Geogre

(talk) 19:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I wish you would not personalize this, and address the issues, rather than the individuals involved in the conversation. Haiduc (talk) 20:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Equally speedy keep

Haiduc's reasons for keeping this article mirror my own. Welland R (talk) 20:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - Wow! Here I was inventing an article like this over at the Dominionist AfD as an example as to why these lists are bad ideas, and son of a gun if one isn't actually here. Quoting from the article: The nature of the relationships have ranged from overtly sexual to what is now commonly referred to as platonic .... so based on this any adult male who has had any kind of relationship whatsoever with a young unrelated male is a pederast? The problem here is that someone has come up with a loose definition. Fine. There are people who are likely admitted to being a pederast, or have eyewitness evidence that they were engaged in a physical relationship. Again, OK, fine. The problem here is that there are a lot of people on this list who are here because they "fit the definition" (and sourced against that definition). I mean, I am a teacher, and I have non-romantic friendships with former students after they graduate. By this definition, you could add me to this list. LonelyBeacon (talk) 21:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Haiduc's arguments were the most convincing ones of this discussion. Fulcher (talk) 02:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Effectively novel synthesis, grabs a whole load of alegations from various sources, and rams them all together.

• Note that the attempts to insert cross-links to this article into the Bernard Montgomery article were by socks of the banned user:DavidYork71. David Underdown (talk) 07:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Note that it is Montgomery's principal modern biographer with full access to his papers who has documented this aspect of his life, and who has further documented the fact that he himself had a relationship with Montgomery when he was a boy, one that was chaste but nevertheless homoerotic. I add this here because David's brief note is easily misread so as to inappropriately cast a dubious light on this legitimate topic. Haiduc (talk) 11:18, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Haiduc's insistence on this point is, I think, the best demonstration of the inevitability of this article being used as a sort of floating POV fork. Nandesuka (talk) 11:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but it is you and your pals, here, who seem insistent, and on a matter where you presume to counter a recognized scholar (Hamilton) with desultory chit-chat. Fine for you to bandy your opinions on each other's talk pages, not fine for you to impose it on the articles. Haiduc (talk) 11:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment concerns about what an article might be "used for" or the negative turns it make take in the future are never valid arguements for deletion. The converse, how an article might be improved, is often put forth as an argument and holds weight in the editorial community. Likewise, editorial agendas (pro and con) are not really relevant. Focus on articles, not editors. - House of Scandal (talk) 13:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
  • A nice idea, but when the deletion is over the article being a POV fork, then there is no way to avoid talking about both intention, reception, and use of an article, and that means people. Yes, talk about the article, but you cannot talk about a gun in an insane asylum as if it were the same as a gun in a museum. Utgard Loki (talk) 14:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Delete Delete any list whose unifying purpose is that listed persons have had certain allegations leveled against them. Unless the facts are broadly agreed-upon, it is an inappropriate way of tying people together. The allegations may or may not be true, but that can be discussed on the subject's own article. The counter-argument that the list might be kept while "removing uncited examples" will not solve the problem. Some of the examples (such as da Vinci) do have citations, but the allegation has been moderated by consensus on the subject's own page. A page like this, which affirms the allegation by its very title, cannot possibly achieve the required subtlety. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 15:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Not materially different from List of LGBT couples. Plus, your slanted approach is out of place. Would you use the same language about interracial couples, that they "have allegations leveled against them?" The "unifying purpose" of this list is that these people have been in relationship with each other, not that some bigot got on their ass about it! Haiduc (talk) 00:02, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
• Neutral - This is a list that can be easily used to list people who really don't belong, and I suspect it already has been. The list needs to be seriously gutted, but deleting it would, in the most positive outcome, lead to its recreation with a proper listing. AfD is not for cleanup though. Having checked some of the sources, there are too many "supposed" relationships that are being labeled here. Given that I see people improperly listed already, I suspect it will be in the future. I'm not sure where to go from there. Certainly, a list of people confirmed in multiple reliable sources, self-admitted persons, and caution to BLP need to be looked at. LonelyBeacon (talk) 17:37, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

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