About whether homosexuality/perversion/sins of the flesh actually exist in the Forgotten Realms. A bit of a dialog I encountered some 4 years ago while playing the game:
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<KELDORN> One must maintain constant discipline and remember the four principles of virtue...that is my motto and everlasting burden.
<JAN> Virtue, eh knighty?
<KELDORN> Indeed, little one. 'Tis not virtuous to refer to me as 'knighty'.
<JAN> Another human with his shorts in a knot. But I digress. Anyway, Keldy, my mother wrote a book on virtue.
<KELDORN>Did she?
<JAN> Oh, yes. A book on the virtues of erotic love. "Sins of the Flesh Golem", it was called. Excellent sales in the paladin's spouse market.
<KELDORN> A wholly inappropriate jest, Jan. You should be ashamed.
<JAN> It is no jest. I'll send you copy, if your wife does not already have one.
<KELDORN> Never speak of my wife, gnome. Your lack of respect is appalling.
<KELDORN> It is not your place to judge my affairs. You must learn to respect your leaders.
<JAN> I do respect my leaders. This has nothing to do with them. This reminds me of the chapter where the paladin first makes passionate love to the flesh golem. What a beautiful scene...
<KELDORN> Begone, gnome, lest my honor demand I perform acts that you shall regret.
<JAN> 'Fleshy, honey,' the paladin said. 'Yes, baby?' said the golem...
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From the text above (which is clearly taking place between Keldorn and Jan), I believe it is quite clear there is such a thing such as 'sins of the flesh' even in the Forgotten Realms.
I do not see how homosexuality is different than fetishism (as Jan was clearly mentioning above for the 'paladin' his mother wrote about) or any other perversion. If fetishism (having sex with the flesh golems, generally having sexual pleasure from non-living objects) is appaling for Keldorn, so would be homosexuality and any other perversion. Generally, anything not following the *standard* of a man & woman making family is to be considered corruption for a paladin.
And I'm saying that if it's ok for a paladin to have premarital sex, as in Anomen's case (written by Bioware, btw), and if the creator of the Realms (Greenwood) says that homosexuality isn't considered unnatural or uncommon in the Realms (implying that most gods wouldn't disaprove of it), that it is therefore logical to assume that "permission" to have premarital sex would be extended to paladins of either gender preference.
Anomen is a weird case. For starters, he is not a paladin and never becomes one. He is not even Lawful Good in alignment. Even after he is knighted, he keeps boasting and saying appaling comments for people he doesn't like. Anomen is by no means the exemplar of a paladin behaviour, so it would not be right to say pre-marital sex is allowed in the
FR for paladins, just because Anomen did it.
That's basically my point in answer to the complaint about the Dante the paladin being homosexual on the grounds that paladins shouldn't do that kind of thing ...
perhaps true -- but in all honestly, I don't think there is a pill to choose one's sexuality.
And at the very beginning, Dante's more closer to "What's Sex?" camp.
This is my point about homosexuality. It is most likely in one's nature whether he likes men or women or anything else, but what he does with his body is his choice (not obligated by nature). Having the natural liking for men by no means implies that one should not become a paladin. It's the way he acts, however, that counts.
I hope you realise you are condemning a homosexual paladin in the same way you are with a promiscuous one. Now, if being homosexual makes a paladin go "out of their way" will a heterosexual paladin do the same if he/she has sex with someone of different gender? Or paladins only "go out of their way" when they have sex with people of their same gender?
If that's what you understood out of what I wrote, then I'm afraid anything else I say won't do any good for you. The whole thing is not about the 'who you're sleeping with', it's the fact that you're doing it. Does it make much difference for you, whether the paladin *sleeps* with a man or a woman? It's the fact that if the paladins and the clerics (the exemplars of behaviour in a society) start sleeping with harlots and join massive 'celebrations' of the kind, the peasants are surely about to do much worse things.
And I'm not condemning anyone, I'm trying to point out that a consious paladin would definitely be worried about his homosexual 'deeds'.
