In a work titled Laws, Plato discusses the officials ( archontōn ) needed for a colony or city-state. The officials selected should be ‘keepers’ in three areas: city stewards, market stewards, and the priesthood ( Laws 6.759; cf. Aristotle, Politics 6.1322b). As to the priesthood, Plato describes three groups: the priests and priestesses, a group of interpreters of religious laws, and treasurers. In the imaginary colony Plato is describing, he has in mind four classes of citizens defined by economic status. People in religious service are to be drawn from the highest class. We should note that Plato’s famous student, Aristotle, wrote a work that identifies the various supervisors of institutions in a city-state in greater detail. One such group is the priesthood. Like Aristotle, he insists that they should be drawn from citizens and not ‘tillers of the soil’ (slaves) or artisans. Aristotle also says, like Plato, that priests should be older....
Today’s (30 June, 2026) ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States deserves a note. One might want to say that it deserves applause, but should one applaud something that is, while important and appreciated, also a simple statement of fact? We do not reward students for commenting that water is wet, the sun warm, and birds fly. Be that as it may, after a season of exercises in antinatural illogic, we applaud the Supreme Court’s logic like a breeze in our sails to carry us out from the doldrums. It is this: the Court ruled that men are not women and may not weasel their way into women’s sports, whatever gender pretenses they purport. Justice Thomas simply stated: Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable “biological” characteristic…; it is binary; and “man” and “woman”, “boy” and “girl”, are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex ( West V...