That's because "pagan" does _not_ mean "libertine", "free-lover", "free-liver", "free-thinker", "modern, enlightened bon vivant", or "New Age experimentalist". It means just the opposite.

The word "pagan" originally meant "country-dweller", "rustic", or, in today's terms, a "hillbilly", "redneck", "Red Stater", "the rubes out there in flyover country". In other words, it referred to the Roman farmers out in the hinterlands who were the last to convert to Christianity or to any of the other Eastern "mystery religions" becoming fashionable in the cities, religions such as Mithraism, Gnosticism, or Isis-worship (which, while native to the Egyptians, was foreign to the Romans). It meant those who held fast to the Gods of their ancestors. In other words, the most conservative Romans.

I must also note that, until Constantine, Christianity was regarded by the Romans as a subversive force, and even atheistic, much as Communism has been regarded in the modern West. Perhaps the emperors who persecuted the early Christians could be accused of "McCarthyism", though the Senator never actually threw anybody to the lions.

For the next thousand or so years, after all of the Roman Empire was finally converted to the worship of the crucified Jew, "pagan" or "heathen" referred to the Celts, Slavs, Germans, and Vikings who held to the Gods of their ancestors. In other words, again, it meant the conservatives of Northern Europe.

After all of Europe was finally converted to Christianity, and the Near or Middle East to Islam (viewed as a heretical offshoot of Christianity), and men of the Western world began exploring and sending missionaries to other continents, the word "pagan" or "heathen" referred to the polytheists of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, also conservative when they held to their ancestral Deities and refused to convert to Christianity.

The closest pre-Christian equivalent to these "pagan" conservatives would be the ancient Egyptian peasants, priests, and Pharaohs who opposed Akhenaton's monotheism and restored the worship of old Gods and Goddesses after his death (as well as Egypt's military might, which Akhenaton had sorely neglected during his brief revolution).

The closest modern equivalent to the ancient "pagans" would be, ironically, fundamentalist Protestants, orthodox Catholics, and Orthodox Jews, as well as, I will say, serious Asatruars or Odinists, who are looked on by many of today's soi-disant "pagans" as dangerously Right-Wing and even Nazi. Among atheists, their equivalent would be, I think, the Peikovian Objectivists. In other words, the most conservative Americans. In Europe, they would be the admirers of Alain de Benoist.

I have been saying all this for years. I'm going to say it once again here and now: An "EVILution!"-hating snake-handler who reads Chick tracts in the middle of Tennessee, or an old Italian woman praying her rosary before a statue of the Virgin Mary, or a member of the John Birch Society, has far more kinship with the real pagans of old than does a "New Age" faddist in San Francisco who burns incense, dabbles in Zen Buddhism, lives on tofu, and sports "peace" and "ecology" slogans on his or her Volvo.

I'm proud to a "pagan" in the old, true sense of the word, a conservative, a reactionary, a "square".

From what I understand for a time the worship of Antinous DID compete successfully with Christianity as a religion of slaves/low born. I suspect, though, that it was regarded as scandalous by Hadrian's successors and they stopped "pushing" it and, of course, eventually the state embraced Christianity. (And the scandal was not, of course, that the young man was male, but that he was low born and possibly a freed slave [not sure about this, though, as there was some statuary record/indication he wore the toga. OTOH, at least in Saylor's mysteries he has a freed slave wearing the toga -- so perhaps I am confused about the rules there.])

Or course the worship of Antinous had... ahem... more interesting ritual. Some mention to the "divine nights of Antinous" sticks in my mind and though I no longer remember why -- and half of my library is packed and inacessible -- I got the bizarre idea it involved both word games (perhaps as a form of scrying?) and sex.
But in Greece he was viewed mainly -- and perhaps strangely -- as a protector of women and young children and his worship persisted for longer than anywhere else. According to a book (again, packed) there are indications of his cult and shrines persisting into the eighth century in remote areas though locals talked of him as a "saint".

I've always thought it would be fun to do an alternate world story (or novel) in which the worship of Antinous survives to modern times and has eclipsed Christianity. Absolutely no idea who would publish it, though. Meisha Merlin, perhaps?

Weirdly 99% of my practising pagan friends are very conservative politically. Or perhaps not weirdly considering Cato the Elder's point.

The reason we haven't got on your case about election fever is that we have it too. I can't wait till November so I can stop chewing nails and start working again.

P.