Saturday 7 August 2010

''Gay''...


''Gay'' is a word that gets bandied about so much that I consider the term entirely meaningless. In the playground it seems to mean all manner of things - stupid, geek, even homosexual(!). The Oxford English Dictionary (alas I do not in fact own a copy) lists a plethora of meanings. I was often called ''gay'' at school, in the land of Philistia - usually by ignorant gargoyles when they had lost an argument with me. It is so often the case with people (and this mentality is not solely limited to school children) - someone is different in some way (in my case, in many ways) and they are demonized. But what is it about ''homosexuality'' that people are so reviled by it? I have met many morally disgraceful people - liars, cheaters, thieves, people who fornicate and masturbate wantonly, people who are generally dim-witted (you'll find this class of people around football stadiums and a lot of pubs - I also, to my sorrow, happen to work with a lot of them), who froth at the mouth at homosexuality as though such men are afflicted with some grievous and hideous malady, and which is contagious in some way. I would like to know exactly how lying is any different, or masturbation...

It just so happens that many of the greatest men who ever lived would now be considered homosexual. Socrates was a deeply pious man, the archetypal philosopher; Michelangelo is the greatest of all artists; Oscar Wilde, a very witty and urbane man (with a double first in Literae Humaniores from Oxford) - although such men as these belonged to a superior Classical pederastic tradition. I think that their peculiar inclination, this Mos Graecorum, strongly influenced their art and philosophy. Could Michelangelo have made so wonderful a David were he not so inclined? Try explaining this to the Philistines though...

6 comments:

  1. Gospodi pomilui. They should re-introduce a commination service at the beginning of Lent...How would you translate "buggery" in latin without referring to st Peter Damian?

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  2. Although I'm not at all sure "Michelangelo is the greatest of all artists" (I love his sculpture and of course architecture, but I think his painting suffers from his low opinion of the medium and, perhaps, his never actually having seen a female body...) what a really honest and good entry. (And, of course, he couldn't!)

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  3. It must be holidays or else the usual folk have been scared by the title of this post...de toute les manières, Patricius, have you read Pseudo Dionysius?

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  4. Before you post a meditation on Mary Renault's The Charioteer, speaking as someone who was thinking along very similar lines thirty years ago, I feel obligated to point out that there is very little romantic about homosexuality in practice, unless you find narcissism and sex addiction romantic.

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  5. Thanks all for your comments - I have been too busy of late to respond until now.

    F.G.S.A, Peter Damian goes a bit far in my view. High ecclesiastics often tend to treat of homosexual men as demoniacs - often they are just more educated philistines, and many ordinary Catholics are still too judgemental, thinking that their petty sins are superior to the sin of homosexuality. The whole point of this post was that there are considerably worse things...and no there are not so many people on holiday as you might think! I seem to have upset one or two Trads on a certain forum.

    Mystra, Michelangelo is in my view the greatest of all artists. His painting is less good, I'll concede, than his architecture and sculpture, but he was an unparalleled master. The above painting is one of the Ignudi from the Sistine Chapel - a male nude, most likely an Angel. He had encyclopedic knowledge of the Scriptures.

    Tawser, that may be so, but I hope that I didn't imply this in the blog post?

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  6. My experience is that when people start listing famous homosexuals and their contributions to western Civilization, the rainbow flag will be coming out before long. Forgive me if I misunderstood. I am almost 50 and I've lived through the entire dreary process of the legitimation of homosexuality, with all its subterfuges and dishonesty. It tends to make one a tad suspicious.

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