Its got a lot of latent homosexuality because of all the naked, sweaty Spartans, who, according to Plutarch "After they were twelve years old, they were no longer allowed to wear any undergarments, they had one coat to serve them a year;...They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, ... By the time they were come to this age there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to bear him company. The old men, too, had an eye upon them, coming often to the grounds to hear and see them contend either in wit or strength with one another, and this as seriously and with as much concern as if they were their fathers...

What's irritating is how the movie went out of its way to portray the Persians as rather gay, while portaying the Spartans as totally straight.

Of course the Persians were gay. They were the bad guys weren't they? They weren't just gay, they were deviant gay. The kind of gay that makes good , decent Spartans (who did send their adolescents out into the woods to fend for themselves like wolves or theives) kick their drag-queen emissaries down a bottomless pit that has yet to be found, even by hopefuls like Heinrich Schliemann. The problem with this movie is that it is stupid, not that it is bigoted. It is bigoted. This is true, but the fact that it is godawful renders this to be one among many laughable things that collectively make this movie, more of an artifact of what the culture currently demands. If this is what the people want, we'd be better off taking a deep breath and thinking about why they want drivel than wondering what effect that drivel will have on the audience. Bear in mind that most people have irrational fear of harmless things because they have parents who had parents who had parents....

I really like the reference to Heinrich Schliemann's search for a gay cave. Funny stuff.

Seriously though, the persians were presented in a very homoerotic light, while the spartans did have a ton of really gay moments as well.

But so what? It really is impossible to create a "male bonding" situation without getting into some kind of homoeroticism. When you take an idea and blow it up on a giantic screen, your always going to end up somewhat over the top.