>>42718852 (continued further)
>>42609812
> You're right that it doesn't have to be sexual per se (though sometimes it was), but it's undeniably emotionally intense and, dare I say, romantic. The liturgical language was often about love, unity, and fidelity: I'd die for you, and you'd die for me.
> But modern categories don't map neatly onto these older cultures. They were different societies with different frameworks, homosexuality as an identity didn't exist. So we're comparing apples to oranges anyway.
> For me, it's this thought that tingles my bicurious side, if you're already partners in all things, why not become true™ partners?
I didn't give you enough credit earlier; should've read the exchange. Apologies.
To answer your question at the end there, it doesn't work (speaking from my own experience and that of others). It introduces something antithetical to your mutual higher impulses. What you want is a zeal-eroticism rather than a sexual one—you don't want to mix the two or you kill it. Again, it's like incest. There are shades of it you don't get in fantasy.
This might sound confusing or arbitrary, but think about what the basis is for these "brotherhoods": they share some kind of vision or dream—an "other world". They see the zeal for that in each other, and that's what attracts them together.
Zeal (even if purely human and psychological, rather than divinely inspired) is a form of libido, and one that's maintained and fostered by making a continuous effort to keep yourself mentally in the "other world" (whatever that may be).
But if you expend your libido on funny business, what do you have left over to pursue that "other world"? And how can you, when you've innoculated yourself against being there mentally? Funny business has it's own "world" (and a very bad one, taken to its logical conclusion), and you're now sensitized to gravitate there when you see the guy who was supposed to struggle with you toward an entirely different "world".
A lot of people get stuck in this kind of shadowy playpen where they connect based on aesthetic taste-markers of their compatibility for higher pursuits, but waste all that potential by sexualizing it and directing their libidinal energy into useless if not self-destructive directions.
It's almost a law that you'll never find a brother through funny business.
