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You wrote, "He reads a great deal of homosexuality into this painting. Hello?! I'd never heard of those interpretations in previous art history texts. Where do they get these ideas from?"

From Plato's writings, no doubt. There is no evidence I know of that points to Socrates as homo- or bisexual--Socrates had a wife, for one thing, which tends to put him in the heterosexual camp by default. Plato, however, waxed rhapsodic on the 'purity' of love between men, and so on ad nauseum. The critic's logic seems to be that if Plato, Socrates' premier student, was gay, and the culture of Athens was accepting of homosexuality, then the young man in the painting must be Socrates' lover. Wishful thinking by queer theorists, if you ask me. We know that Socrates detested effeminacy in men from his admonishment to the weeping disciples gathered around him to stop 'acting like women' as he drank the hemlock. We also know from Xenophon's writings that while Athenian homosexuals were not punished for their, er, predilection, they weren't held in much esteem, either. The critic must be confusing Athens with Sparta.