Symposium

There was something in D'Emilio's first chapter of "Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities" that reminded me of a reading done at my cousin's wedding in San Francisco last month. The reading was from Plato's Symposium, which I had never heard of at the time. I looked in vain to identify the exact passage they used, but failed to find words that were familiar. It was the blatant acceptance of members of the same sex loving each other that I found so stimulating. Being read at a wedding between a ma and a woman seemed to be saying "We recognize it is unfair that we can marry and others can not, but at least we care." Now realizing that Plato's Symposium is where the term "Uranian" came from, I deamed it absolutely necessary to find this passage and complete the connection.

Here is the closest I could find to what was used in the wedding:

Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male...
And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.