Engels on Homosexuality

[Sky]

In Chapter 2, Section 4 of Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, F. Engels writes:

The Athenian family became in time the accepted model for domestic relations, not only among the Ionians, but to an increasing extent among all the Greeks of the mainland and colonies also. But, in spite of locks and guards, Greek women found plenty of opportunity for decieving their husbands. The men, who would have been ashamed to show any love for their wives, amused themselves by all sorts of love affairs with hetairai; but this degradation of the women was avanged on the men and degraded them also, till they fell into the abominable practice of sodomy and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm

Is there a thorough interpretation on what Engels exactly means?

[Neutrino]

I think it's pretty clear what Engels meant.

[TC]

Its really not. In ancient Greece, marriage between citizens was for arranged for property transfer and reproduction for family alliances not for love; male citizens were limited to hetairai, which is to say non-citizen prostitutes, and teenage boys. What Engel's is describing as anyone who knew the history and anything about ancient greece would know, is sexual relations between heterosexual adult men and pubescent boys who were clearly being exploited;

Engel's is describing pederasty as an abomination, not homosexuality. The people who engaged in it were straight men in dominant positions in the greek patriarchal system; just as most people who molest male children are today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece