No, I'm Not Going Gay Community ...

I saw a little list ... well to some people I have lived with, liking of music such as Gilbert and Sullivan, when age peers preferred ACDC and Iron Maiden and highways to hell and stairways to heaven (the latter is musically good, but doctrinally insipid).

Quotes from Thom Senzee in Italics.

Other quote, or quotes if more than one, indented. Even in relation to general indention.

Own comment straight. No more indented than the text in Italics.

I give upper case Roman Numerals (I, II ...) for those I do not agree were "queer" and lower case Roman Numerals (i, ij ...) for those I agree were so.

I Alexander the Great

Although historians point out ad nauseam the so-called inappropriateness of applying modern constructs such as "gay," "bisexual," "homosexual," or "queer" to an ancient king like Alexander, no serious historian doubts that history's penultimate warrior-monarch was attracted to men.

Right ... not one single indication he was committing sodomy with anyone, only that there was a per se non-sexual context in which he liked male company. An indication he was "gay"? No, an indication the writer is rabidly suspicious of contexts in which men gather together.

II Hatshepsut

Transgender because in Egypt "ruling queen" is expressed as "female king"? Who not "Emperor Eirene" (genuine Byzantine title of the Empress who helped defeat Iconoclasm, but in doing so was barbarious enough, though a Saint, to blind her own son, which was why Charlemagne considered East Rome had fallen into Barbarism)?

III Leonardo da Vinci

Acknowledgement of Leonardo' gayness is almost universal.

Almost. Especially among the sex role "fundies" who consider androgynity as necessarily homosexual.

There is a little village of unreducable Gauls, however ...

i Alan Turing

Without looking at text : yes, I know. He was also bright enough to feel guilty about it.

He was also non-Christian and fatalist enough to feel incapable of getting out of it. His way out was suicide.

Who but a computer geek royal would give Alan Turing as an example to set before men?

My source is of course not this gobbledigook by Thom Senzee, but straight old wiki!

IV Michelangelo

Before looking : let me guess, he scultured a David as a nude ... in his day that was convention.

Not quite wrong, not quite right. Pietro Aretino, an atheist, had "suggested pederasty", and we are left wondering whether the allegations of Aretino about contemporaries were true and that drove him to atheism, or whether his atheism and misanthropy drove him to allegations simply over unreasonable suspicious.

Apart from that, the University of Illinois has an expert assessment of where his erotical interests lay:

"None the less, the physical beauty of many of his monumental male nudes ... gives a clear indication as to where Michelangelo’s erotic interests lay."

OK, if he had been in love with women, all his male nudes had been ugly? Would that have made him straight or just incompetent as a workman?

"In addition, in 1532 Michelangelo met and fell in love with a young Roman nobleman, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, described by the humanist Benedetto Varchi as possessing ‘not only incomparable physical beauty, but so much elegance in manners, such excellent intelligence, and such graceful behavior’. Tommaso married in 1538 and had two sons, but Michelangelo remained devoted for the rest of his life, dedicating numerous poems and several presentation drawings to him (e.g. The Rape of Ganymede, 1532)."

Supposing there was an "affair", Tommaso is proof homosexuals can marry - a thing I have been saying for quite a while.

The scientific article is not citing very precise evidence "fell in love with" is an accurate description of what happened to them.

"However, when Michelangelo’s nephew and namesake eventually published over one hundred poems in 1623, any suggestion of homosexuality was effaced by altering the gender of the poems’ subjects and addressees."

OK, so the published version has female adressees?

"John Addington Symonds‘s translation of a selection of the poems, together with his biography of the artist, sought to redress this suppression of Michelangelo’s homosexuality which, even if largely unknowable, was none the less a key aspect of his art."

I sense a lack of epistemic coherence.

If it is unknowable whether Michelangelo was homosexual, or whether something else was going on, it is also unknowable whether "his homosexuality" or something else is a "key aspect" not of his art, but of his making of the art.

You see, a work of art is distinct from the artists personal secrets about its fabrication and guesses on the latter is not a valid form of art criticism.

If his art strikes some moderns as homosexual, that may furthermore be their modern outlook, not that of Michelangelo who lived in the Renaissance.

Also, it seems we must rely on Symonds to know that original adressees were indeed men, Tommaso and others. And that they were so tender the intention must have been erotic.

I suppose the foreword of his translation does explain why he has other gender than original published adressees. If he did find these in preserved original manuscripts, that would be explained in Symond's foreword. Or footnotes or endnotes.

It is at least not explained in the page I am looking at.

"Increasingly recognized as a notable literary achievement in their own right (despite their density of language and often complex construction), Michelangelo’s poems also provide useful insights into his beliefs and aesthetic precepts such as the broadly Neoplatonic notion that physical beauty could be a conduit to transcendent spiritual beauty, for example ‘beauty … moves and carries every healthy mind to heaven’."

Fine enough, as long as he is not primarily meaning that of male nudes.

"However, while Neoplatonism was part of the culture of the Medici circle, and of Michelangelo himself, and may also have fostered an emergent homosexual identity (see Saslow), ..."

OK, why should I believe Saslow on it?

They don't even give the reference, they presume Saslow is a known name in "queer studies" or sth.

Here we should however look at the rest of the story, I'll give it in full:

"... claims that Michelangelo’s art illustrates a fully developed Neoplatonic system (see Tolnay) have been downplayed in recent scholarship. Neoplatonic influences upon Michelangelo should also be placed within a broader framework of Christian belief affecting his art, particularly from the late 1530s; indeed, the contrasting moral codes of Neoplatonism and Catholicism may partly account for Michelangelo’s ambivalent sexual feelings. In his later years Michelangelo also witnessed the emergence of the austere spirituality of the Counter-Reformation, especially in Rome, where he had settled permanently in 1534. His Christian faith was reinforced by his friendship with Vittoria Colonna, the Marchesa di Pescara, whom he met in 1536 and with whom he remained in close contact until her death in 1547. Her dedication to Catholicism strongly influenced his own devout religiosity as expressed, for example, in his sacred poetry that gave voice to a growing preoccupation with death and salvation.

In 1563 Michelangelo was elected an academician of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno and, despite his old age, he continued to work on a number of projects (principally architectural) until his death in Rome(“The Gay 100”, p68)."

ij Barbara Gittings

She was a lesbian and did half of a good job : 1973 American Psychaitric Association revoked its designation of homosexuality as a disorder.

Good.

Sodomites should be punished, or not punished, preferrably punished.

Cyprus had a good law up to 1998 or sth.

But Homosexuals should not be brought to mental institutions for evaluation. Especially not when the mental institutions are evaluating whether they are Homosexuals or not.

iij "Christine" Jorgensen

No, his name is George Jorgensen. He had fought the Nazis. He's American, not Danish, check out Jorgensen (Statten Island spelling) versus Jørgensen (Danish spelling of his ancestors' name.

Also, a Dane is responsible for committing the crime. You know, the nation which, unlike Sweden, resisted the Nazis.

He "literally became a guinea pig for Dr. Christian Hamburger, already a renowned Danish endocrinologist."

A Scandinavian medical doctor ...

iu Sally Ride

A proof positive homosexuals can marry.

"Although she had been married to a man until the mid-1980's, by thetime of her death in 2012, Ride had been in a 27-year old relationship with a female partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy."

"Ride only came out as a lesbian posthumously. But that had more to do with her very private nature, according to her sister, Bear Ride, than it did with a lack of being gay. Bear Ride is also a lesbian and, as an activist and an ordained Presbyterian minister ..."

Say. No. More.

This just confirms my prejudices against astronauts male and female, NASA or its counterpart in Baikonur, and against female ordination, and against Presbyterian ministers.

Just mentioning, the Swedish Church I was into for about two years after rejecting Evangelicals was close enough to these Presbyterians - among my surroundings, but not on my part. Such people tend to invoke what the Reformation was about and believe they frighten conservatives into compliance by telling them "if that is how you feel why not as well become Catholic".

u Harvey Milk

I am in favour of the Briggs Initiative if it was about people who openly identified as gay themselves. I am against it if it also includes people just suspected of being so.

If he was assassinated, could it be because he staved off the Briggs Initiative and gave one man the opportunity to approach one boy whom his murderer had reasons of family to care about?

uj Tammy Baldwin

She agreed multiple causes were involved in Orlando. Obviously her priority was about freedom for gay nightclubs, not freedom for normal people to have guns.

Or, perhaps not quite:

The focus is on legislation introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California “that would allow the attorney general to ban gun sales to suspected terrorists, including those on watch lists, if there is ‘reasonable belief’ the weapons may be used to carry out an attack,” as USA Today reports.

However, as with being stamped as gay so also being stamped as a potential terrorist.

A mental patient who would use a gun in legitimate self defense would perhaps be barred from buying a gun? Or, perhaps that is nothing new ...?

So, if she would not disarm normal people seen as normal people, she would perhaps encourage more and more discriminations about who was seen as normal and not.

How about closing down gay nightclubs, as police tried in Stonewall?

uij Wachowski sisters (?) have come out as transgender

Does that mean they are really Wachowski brothers?

uiij Ellen DeGeneres

She and Obama (on same picture) are really an incitament for me to believe that LGBT community does recruit members.

My situation seems to indicate they have wanted to recruit me, for very long. God help them to failure if so, and to seeing it quickly!

So far, they have fooled psychiatrists or had accomplices who were so, the psychiatrists have fooled Catholic Church men about me. And these have fooled girls in their parishes I had fallen in love with.

ix Barney Frank

Wants openly homosexual people to be not discriminated.

Do they really want to suggest he had an ulterior motive?

x James Baldwin

Seems to have suggested it as openly as Jonas Gardell did in Sweden. Except Jonas Gardell is blond and blue eyed. And not working class.

Much as I like reading, they are not on my reading list!

xj Bayard Rustin

Proof Martin Luther King was sometimes in bad company. And I don't mean because he was black.

xij Troy Perry

Before looking at text. The "minister" on the picture wearing a rainbow stole reminds me of the fact that God's next action about sodomites won't be a world wide deluge. Doesn't mean there isn't coming any at all.

Looking, yes, Troy Perry is that "minister", he is styled "Rev". I am not likely to visit the Metropolitan Community Church, even apart from the fact that as a Catholic I can't.

xiij Harry Hay

"In order to earn for ourselves any place in the sun, we must work collectively ... for the first-class citizenship of minorities everywhere."

Sorry, but Geocentrics and Gays won't work collectively for each other's first-class citizenship.

Perhaps you are too much of a Commie to appreciate that "collectively" doesn't rule every human endaveour.

Or were.

xiu "Laurence Michael" Dillon

No, Laura Maud Dillon.

Buddhist "monk" and author of two books about spirituality ... I don't feel like emulating her in any respect.

xu Oscar Wilde

God grant his repentance was valid! RIP!

V Deborah Sampson

If she was a tomboy, that doesn't make this hero lesbian. Even though it seems she had an episode.

In the article "20 LGBT People Who Changed the World" By Thom Senzee which I am not linking to, I am glad I didn't find Queen Christina, even if the person linking to the page mentioned her in connection with the people on this one.

"This is changing now and people can read all they want about Oscar Wilde's or Queen Christina of Sweden's homosexuality."

Except, she arguably was a tomboy but not lesbian.

I'll check with a friend who is historian, just to be sure, but as I recall, her evaluation (and she did some research, since Christina of Sweden was also a post-Reformation Swedish convert to Catholicism and a very famous one) was that lesbian she was not.

I see a little problem with the list. Maria Supplisson linked to.

It seems to have the intention of giving "great men of renown" as role models for budding homosexuals. Such an idea is at least one type or degree of recruitment of homosexuals.

If I hadn't had other ideas about who the great men of renown were (see Mahabharata, the heroes of which are very renowned in India, some even accepted as gods, at least Rama and Krishna, though they were men), the compilation of such a list as this would have given me an idea, if not of who, at least of what kind.

Most of them, including Sally Ride, I had no idea about anyway. They weren't great men of renown to me.

Most of those I did know, I don't think the writer presented very credible evidence for homosexuality.

Most of them I accepted as homosexuals were nobodies before I read to me and after I read became moral equivalents of cold coffee heated without milk. I spared my readers some of the worst. If you want to read the article in full, which I don't recommend, you are free to google it.

Two homosexuals I do like, despite this, Oscar Wilde (who I hope is where such things are no longer relevant, beyond Purgatory, in Heaven) and Gittings. Her fight against psychiatry was a good deed, if not totally without ulterior motives. Not because homosexuals are specially good, but because psychiatry is too bad even for them.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Thursday after
Second Lord's Day in Lent
16.III.2017