It is customary in Thailand for a young man to enter a monastery for some time. It brings honor on the family, and it's considered good training for the mind. Of course, like any society, the custom can devolve and become meaningless form. Just look at the vast majority of bar mitzvah parties in the United States. However, the issue has reached the media's attention in Thailand, as novices who in their secular lives are gay or transgendered, don't leave their sexuality, like their shoes, at the temple door.
The Bangkok Post reports that a "guide to proper behavior" is being promulgated to counter:
Some allegedly even had sex in their sleeping quarters, a severe sin under the code of conduct which incurs forced defrockment.
The course will be taught as a prototype at the Triam Sammanen school - the country's first Buddhist missionary school, located in the compound of Wat Krueng Tai in Chiang Rai's Chiang Khong district."
When a monk or novice takes the precepts, celibacy is one of the agreements. A young novice joins a monastery for three months. Similarly, when one becomes a monk, the hair is shaved, and one takes the robes — it involves an erasing of a kind of individuality as a way of learning humility and to tame the ego. This is the practice.
Makeup. Fashion. Sexual expression. That's for outside. Inside, it's time for inner exploration and taming the mind's wildness, taming the ego's sense that it is all there is.
There have also been some rather scandalous goings on — abbots having affairs for example. Of course, this is nothing new anywhere in the world. Clerics are, after all, human. Great teachers from Krishnamurti to Trungpa Rinpoche are known to have suffered from these failings, not to mention the more hypocritical among them, the Haggards and his ilk.
When hyprocrisy is the order and boundaries are violated, it is a serious issue. But we all struggle, and no one can judge.
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