earth. The androgynous creature was an offspring of the moon. Since they were like two individuals in one, their strength and power was enormous. They had great ambitions and made an attempt on the gods. They tried to make an ascent into heaven to attack the gods. On account of this, Zeus (the head of the gods) and the other gods met in council to decide what to do. They couldn’t just kill all humans since that would mean no more worship and sacrifices by the humans. After some great thought, Zeus came up with a plan. He decided that if the androgynous humans lost their power they would stop misbehaving. To do this he would cut them in two. With doing this not only would the humans be less powerful, but also it would benefit the gods because there would now be more humans to offer sacrifices. Zeus then proceeded to cut them in half and ordered Apollo to turn the androgynous humans face and neck towards the newly formed wound. Apollo healed the rest of the wound and made a mouth and a stomach and a naval. He smoothed out the wrinkles on the humans and shaped the breasts. Since each of these humans had been cut from two, they longed to reunite with their other half. Theses humans would reunite and throw their arms around each other but would do nothing else until they died. Zeus decided that their genitals must be moved to the front in order to reproduce more efficiently. He made the man’s genitals on the outside and the woman’s on the inside, this was in order that when a man and woman would embrace they would conceive children together and if a man and a man would embrace there would be no children but still satisfaction. This is the source of the desire of humans to love one another. He explains that if a male were split from a woman, he would be a heterosexual. If a woman were split from a woman she would be a lesbian. If a male were split from a male, he would be male-oriented. It is these men...
