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Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-History of Same-Sex Unions Explored
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ben Boxer comments: Much of the material in the article below has already been discussed on this list, but it supplies a superb overview which makes entertaining reading. Enjoy! Headline: Text: Nothing like this had ever been seen before, certainly nothing like it had ever been reported. Here was rather irrefutable evidence of what could only be construed as gay life in ancient Egypt. It was the tomb of Ni-ankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep, palace functionaries and royal confidants, and the underground crypt was designed to be shared by both of them. Children are present in the banquet scenes, but no wives, although there seems to be a seated female image chiseled off the wall.
To top it off, both men were "chief overseers to the King's manicurists." What more proof is needed! It couldn't have been more fortuitous if they had been pharaoh's hairdressers. In the quiet dusty propriety of Egyptian antiquity, this Saqqara tomb from 2400 BC has been quaintly designated the "Tomb of the Brothers," although no interior inscription even hints at a family relationship. Greg Reeder, who has done extensive research into the homosexuality of the ancient world-a field in dire need of extensive study-believes that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were lovers and portrayed themselves as such to be together for eternity. Why else would they be nuzzling and touching, acts which are only shown as the exclusive province of a married couple? It's fascinating and unlike anything yet discovered beneath the sands of Egypt. In their beautiful, colored-splashed tomb, these guys have been together for more than 4,000 years. Their lapidary embraces give new meaning to long-term relationship. The ancient world was inundated with sex, filled with an amoral, non-judgmental attitude that decidedly blessed and favored the male. In Greece, homosexual sex was part of growing up, an initiation rite for the sons of the elite where the older gentleman admirer initiated the youngster into all realms of adult life: sex just happened to be one of the lessons to be taught the teen. Sex, male or female variety, was no-big-thing. Yet, there were numerous occasions of long-term bonding between peers, not just man and boy, but between man and man. Aristotle in his "Politics," recalls Philolaus and his Dioclese. This is a classic case of brains and beauty. Philolaus was a respected Theban legislator who fell for the hunky Olympian athlete. They met, fell in love, and remained together all their lives. Their joint tomb was one of the busiest tourist attractions in ancient Athens. What would set Generals Colin Powell's and Norman Schwarzkopf's eyes to cross would be the old Attic attitude that co-mingled masculinity, same-sex attraction, and military valor into one dreaded, very successful fighting machine. There were whole battalions of lovers in the city-state armies, fighting side by side, such as Gorgidas' "Sacred Band of Thebes," composed of 150 male couples. Phaedrus describes their passion in Plato's "Symposium:" "for a man in love would surely choose to have all the rest of the host rather than the one he loves see him forsaking his station or flinging away his arms… the influence of love inspires him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born." The Greeks had a passion for such hero couples: Achilles and Patrocles, Pelopidas and Iolaus, Epaminondas and Asopichus, and celebrated these two-somes in epic verse where their deeds and love would be extolled into the centuries. Love between same-sex equals was noble, fair, perfect. When the known world was swallowed up by rapacious Rome, the "Greek practice" followed, although in the hothouse Mediterranean world it didn't need any push or a special name. Gay sex, although in the minority even in hedonistic Rome, was never sanctioned, punished nor ostracized. No laws proscribed it, no one condemned it. Often, especially in the romance literature of the Empire, it was extolled as "above the love of women." "The Satyricon" of Petronius has a same-sex couple as its protagonists who finally triumph over failed love affairs and amorous advances from both sexes, tumbling into each others' arms at tale's conclusion; Iamblichus in his "Babyloniaca" includes a rare lesbian couple, Berenice and Mesopotamia, who actually get married when they're reunited after a long absence; in Lucian's dialogue, "Affairs of the Heart," gay love is equally weighed in value to straight love. Julius Caesar, though probably not in a marriage, per se, nevertheless had a torrid youthful affair with Nicomedes, King of Bithynia. Caesar's soldiers called their leader the Queen of Bithynia-not to his face, though. Nero, psychotic and campy-the worst combination-castrated his inamorata Sporus to turn him suitably girlish and then proceeded to marry him in a spectacular public marriage ceremony. He dressed the boy as a empress and elevated him to the highest ranks. The joke going around Rome at the time, according to Suetonius, was that Rome would've been a much better place if Nero's father had only married a girl like that. When Nero was assassinated, loyal Sporus was at his side. The emperor Hadrian, a rough-trade general if ever there was, had an abnormal fixation on his Grecian honey, the beauteous Antinous, who had caught the lonely Emperor's eye a few years earlier. They were inseparable. When his beloved suddenly drowned in the Nile, Hadrian, despondent and overcome with grief, had his "favorite" deified. The empire was awash with new cities bearing his name. Statues of him were everywhere; his face on every coin; athletic games held in his memory. The chroniclers all say that Hadrian never got over the death of his partner, that he wept every night. Their love affair, even as early as 130 A.D., had assumed a high romantic gloss. The couple was, and continues to be, the most famous real-life pair of male lovers from antiquity. Most of what we can decipher about ancient lives come skewed from the paternalistic point of view. Only in Egypt were women the equal of men, about which Herodotus grumbled in his "History," the world's first tour book. In the powerhouse empires of Greece and Rome, though, the women-even noble born-were viewed as property and married off for dynastic reasons, never for love, an extremely modern concept. They weren't important enough to be talked or written about. The exceptions were the extreme: Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Poppaea, Sappho, but everyone else fit into a man's world. Perhaps, the most intriguing discovery has been the rediscovery by eminent medieval scholar John Boswell of liturgical ceremonies from Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that sanctioned-and sanctified-same-sex partnerships in the early medieval world. Strikingly similar to heterosexual marriage ceremonies, these rites, which include prayers, sermons and blessings, consecrate gay love with bountiful inclusiveness. Numerous versions of such commitment ceremonies, pre-12th century, have been found throughout Europe and eastern Asia. Given the moniker, "prayer for making brothers," taken from the Roman example, Boswell contends that these rites, known to scholars as the "Adelphopoiia" liturgy, celebrate gay marriage.
But what else can one make of this 13th century text from the monastery of Sinai? "Lord our god and ruler, who makest humankind after thine own image and didst bestow upon us the power of life eternal, do Thou vouchsafe unto these thy servants grace to love one other and to abide unhated and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives… that they be granted love in the spirit and [that they] honor each other, that the Lord grant them blameless life and pleasing conduct, that they be saved from all danger…" These words don't sound especially cold and contractual, as some critics of Boswell content. The liturgy follows the heterosexual marriage model almost verbatim and uses the same trappings: candles, hands upon the Gospel, holding right hands, binding hands (or covering their heads) with the priest's stole-i.e., tying the knot-an introductory litany, the Lord's Prayer, Communion, a kiss, and sometimes circling the altar. Even the ritual of a wedding feast was practiced by gay couples, as an illuminated manuscript clearly shows Byzantine Emperor Basil I partying with his male lover at their "brotherhood ceremony." According to the modern conception of marriage, as Boswell points out so clearly, this same-sex union was a voluntary, permanent, emotional union acknowledged and recognized by the community. It's a personal relation, undertaken for personal reason, but with society's blessing and the imprimatur of ecclesiastical force. By 1300, because of seismic social changes brought about through the Crusades and its accompanying mass xenophobia and Christian intolerance, homosexuality was fairly stigmatized throughout Europe. It had taken the Church almost 1,000 years to drive it underground. This time, the pagans went into the catacombs. But the same-sex union ceremony persisted. In 1908, sexologist P. Nacke witnessed a ceremony in Albania. Yet, by the time anthropologists and scholars came round to studying these crinkled manuscripts, they only saw what they wanted to see: "artificial kinship" or "collateral adoption." Please, they said, no sex.
Gay marriage will never be the same thanks to John Boswell's pioneering, exemplary work. With his steamroller archeology he unearthed our fascinating history that had lain willingly forgotten or untranslated. Sadly, he died of AIDS in 1994, but his exceptional work in gay historical studies has brought us all out of the closet. We await the next intrepid discoverer.
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Bush Snubs Gay Pride Month,
But His Word Is Ignored Secretary Norman Mineta is set to give the opening remarks Wednesday in Washington, D.C. at "Embrace Diversity," a Department of Transportation (DOT) program that recognizes June as national Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. At the same time in Detroit, members of Ford Motor Company's affinity group GLOBE (Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Employees) are expected to sit down to write letters to President Bush to express their displeasure with his decision to forego signing a proclamation supporting gay-pride celebrations around the country this month. So much for the power of the White House word. "Obviously, they carry a huge microphone," said David Smith, the spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a gay civil-rights organization. "But they are apart from other agencies within the Bush administration that are going ahead with observances of the month." Smith said HRC had confirmed that most agencies of the federal government, excluding the president's office and the departments of Defense and Justice, were planning to sponsor gay-pride celebrations this year despite the word from the Oval Office. And the word, according to White House spokesman Jimmy Orr, is that Bush "believes every person should be treated with dignity and respect. He does not believe in politicizing people's sexual orientation. That's a personal matter." Smith noted that Bush had signed proclamations for Black History Month, Women's History Month and Irish-American Heritage Month. "Clearly, Gay and Lesbian Pride Month is analogous to cultural heritage months representing various groups of Americans," Smith said. "He is clearly excluding an important constituency in America." Executives of U.S. companies are very likely to ignore America's chief executive on the gay pride issue, Smith said. "It displays an insensitivity on the part of the president to a large group of Americans," he added. "We' re seeing a growing trend in corporate America to recognize and value diversity. We're seeing a trend toward healthy respect for gays and lesbians. Corporate America, with some exceptions, is leading the way. And as corporate America goes, so goes public policy." Robert Wagner, marketing liaison for Ford's GLOBE, said the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender group had about 250 members worldwide, and that members would celebrate the organization's seventh anniversary at the end of this month.
While Wagner's only comment on the president's decision was to say that
members of Ford Motor's GLBT employee group were likely to write letters to
Bush, he suggested the news could lend itself to cleverly worded advertising
campaigns for the GLBT audience. End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #264
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The two men press their faces together, nose to nose, one's arm around the other's back in intimate embrace usually depicted as between man and wife. There are seven such scenes of them up close and personal. Even their names have been written together to read "joined in life, joined in death." 