''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...