Just like the idea that marriage is about procreation — or even love — the idea that gays should be barred from serving openly in the military is actually a new phenomenon in human history. As recently as Ancient Greece (which, to be fair, was around the 8th century B.C.E.), the homos were donning armor, shields and swords with the breeders. Then everything came crashing down.
“For the ancient Greeks, gays serving in the military were no big deal,” Kayla Webley reminds us. “Indeed, Plato wrote in his Symposium that a small army composed of lovers and those they loved would be more than a match for much larger armies: ‘For love will convert the veriest coward into an inspired hero.’ But for the most part, that’s where support of gays in the military ended. Following the Crusades, the Knights Templar were persecuted and many members burned at the stake for their same-sex affairs in the early 14th century. In the Napoleonic wars, four men aboard the British ship H.M.S. Africaine were hanged in 1816 for ‘buggery’; two other crewmen were whipped for ‘uncleanness’ (a term used to describe deviant sexual behavior). Even General George Washington discharged an American soldier in 1778 for participating in homosexual acts.”
And then along came World War II, with screenings for effeminate characteristics among the enlisted, and some 4,000 troops kicked out by the time we pulled out of Germany.
And now, a mere three thousand years later, the world’s militaries are finally working on fixing things. But bring back those shorty shorts, won’t you?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Same Crap
The last time? Are the queerty editors drunk again this morning?
Dirty Ole Man
I didn’t read this article, but it reminded me not to miss this weekend’s episode of Spartacus Blood and Sand on the Starz network. Plenty of Hot Meat on that show.
Thanks
Ionos
As usual, the morons editing Queery get their history wrong. Gay soldiers can server openly in modern day in several armies, incl. our northern neighbor and our biggest aid recipient. (In case you don’t get the latter, its an ally country in the Middle East.)
JSP
And an additional musing — 8000 years? 800 B.C.E. + 2010 = 8000?
Drake
You mention George Washington. Read Charley Shively’s “George Washington’s Gay Mess: Was the Father of Our Country A Queen?” Very interesting. The photographs included of Washington portraits which he actually sat for, will get everyone’s gaydar meter to the max.
K
errr…What about Great Britain, Israel, and Canada? I’m sure there are many others as well, those are just the first that come to mind… Google is your friend. Use it.
DR
If this editorial was directed at the US military, you ought to say so. Gays have been serving openly in Israel, the United Kingdom, Italy and many other countries for years.
REBELcomx
It’s sad about Washington, considering that the man Ben Franklin sent him to get his army into shape was a big ole queen. Unfortunately, the life of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben isn’t mentioned in classrooms as part of the history of the American revolution. Thanks to his Prussian military training, he whipped Washington’s rag tag army into a force to be reckoned with, helping them go from a failing fighting force to actually winning the war.
Dionte
People have to have someone to hate, it’s in their nature. Gays seem like a great place to channel it. Hate brings people closer together than love.
chango
Thinking Sparta might not be the best model to dangle in front of the religious right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_pederasty
scott
le sigh. to add to the general disappointment about the post, it assumes that homosexuality as it is understood in the US today is the same as it was BCE. with the possibility of marriage (which has also changed), adoption, and notions of relationship equality, they’re not the same thing
romeo
The Roman Empire didn’t have any problems with it either. But Sparta was particularly hilarious, especially in light of “300” which was wonderful to look at, but completely inaccurate historically. Men and women were segregated and lived in separate barracks. Children were raised by the women until age 7 (I believe) Then transferred to the men’s quarters for martial training. Homosexuality WAS REQUIRED BY LAW to further unit cohesion!!! I’m not kidding. Look it up. LOL
romeo
I should point out that Sparta was an anomoly even for homoerotic Greece. The Spartans took an extreme view toward their survival in an admittedly violent bronze age. Spartans were born into the army. There was very little art or commerce. The rest of Greece was far more pleasure loving and moderate in their pursuits, and they thought the Spartans were a little nuts. LOL But, mind you, nobody wanted to go up against the Spartans. They were some badass butch buncha bastards. LMAO!
tavdy79
Japan once had a very similar military culture to that of ancient Sparta. In both cultures sex with men was seen as superior, more masculine and more befitting a warrior to sex with women, which was restricted to a purely procreative role.
chango
@tavdy79:
Again, Japan, like Sparta was institutionalized pederasty (i.e. wakashudo). Beware of using other cultures from several centuries again to draw any conclusions about how our military should conduct itself.
Surely you aren’t advocating that our military should kick out all the women and start buggering little boys.
chango
“several centuries ago…”
I clearly need to learn to edit before posting.
romeo
Chango, once again you’ve missed the point deliberately to further your agenda. LOL We’re talking about gays being good soldiers. You know, like Alexander the Great, the greatest ass-kicker of all time.
romeo
BTW: Alexander was no pederast either. He was once offered a gift of some little boys by a diplomat. He refused them saying to the man, “What do you think I am?” Like most of us, he liked grown up guys with muscles. The ancient world wasn’t so inferior to ours. And in many respects, the pre-Christian world was superior to ours. Except we have electric dishwashers.
Too many straight people have been allowed to write the history of gay people, and it’s full of lies about us.
chango
@romeo:
What’s with all the LOLs in your posts? Step away from the nitrous.
But again, my POINT is that comparing Ancient Greek (or Japanese) pederasty with modern day homosexuality is a dubious enterprise.
Apples, oranges, etc.
Not sure what “agenda” that would be except, well, maybe that I’m against specious reasoning?
chango
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederastic_relationships_in_classical_antiquity
And Alexander and Bagoas (for example) was, what, apocryphal?
romeo
Lives were shorter and you reached your majority sooner in ancient times. Bogoas was an adult when they met. You’re reducing and limiting the discussion to ancient “pederasty.” When it comes to the ancient world’s military, we’re speaking of love between adult men here.
romeo
As for my “LOL’s” Hey, I’m a cheerful guy. Also, I just clicked your link and saw you were using Wikipedia for your scholarly source material. Really “LOL’d”.
chango
@romeo:
Although a flame war on a rainy SoCal day is somewhat tempting, I will allow you the last word about why anyone would bother with Turabian cites on a blog. And as much as I’d love to whip out my Master’s Degree in Classical and flog away, I have tastier fish in a barrel to shoot at the local pub, and besides, KJ Dover did it far better than I could and 30 years ago to boot. Toodles.
chango
grrr. damn lack of an edit function.
should read
“Degree in Classical Studies…”
bbnicker
800 bc may be a little too far back….Id say 300-500 bc and then that would have only been 2300-2500 years ago, not 8000 years ago.
Wade macMorrighan
Don’t forget, the Celts (who enjoyed making love to someone of the same sex!) strode into battle naked, wearing tribal woad tattoos!
John
I love Queerty but sometimes I think some of your writers aren’t the brightest kids in the class!
P.S. Gays have been serving openly in Canada’s military since the mid-90s.
Warrior Monk
Apparently, to write a blog requires no demand to open a history book. Your comments about the various examples of supposed military units embracing homosexuality is absolutely laughable.
You make a point of using the example of the Knights Templar, and deliver your example like a minister of King Phillip IV’s kangaroo court of the early 1300s.
There are plenty of historical references you could have looked through to show this allegation to farce. At the very least you could have looked at Barbara Frale’s recent discovery of the trial minutes in the Vatican archives, where they were declared innocent of the charges by the Pope and his inquisitors.
I need not go any further than to point out a very statute of the Rule put together by the Church and the Order’s founders that governed the Knights Templar’s day to day lives:
Primitive Rule of the Templars (Translated by Upton Ward) Statute 21. We command by common consent that each man shall have clothes and bed linen according to the discretion of the Master. It is our intention that apart from a mattress, one bolster and one blanket should be sufficient for each; and he who lacks one of these may have a rug, and he may use a linen blanket at all times, that is to say with a soft pile. And they will at all times sleep dressed in shirt and breeches and shoes and belts, and where they sleep shall be lit until morning.
Not a command directive that would have been very conducive to your weakly researched allegations I would say.
romeo
@ Warrior: I, for one, do not doubt that the Church has been a catastrophe for any natural expression of human love. Your post is more to our point than yours I suspect. Beyond the fact of how unhygienic it was to sleep fully clothed that way, we can still assume there is plenty historically to read between the lines, as well as between the sheets. Are you forgetting that the Church was always on the take, then as now. You could get away with anything if you had the dough. Had a lot to do with that German dude nailing that stuff to the Cathedral door. LOL (sorry, Chango).
k
Sexuality was actually regarded very differently in the ancient world. For the ancients there was no “homosexuality.” But there was no “heterosexuality” or “bisexuality” either. Pederasty was common but people who limited themselves to relationships with one gender were rare. We can’t call them “bisexual” or “omnisexual” because our categories didn’t exist for them. What was important to them was appearances and living up to appropriate gender roles in relationships. An ideal Roman manly man could have sex with whomever he wanted as long as the person was below him in status: a boy, a woman, a foreigner or a slave. And a woman who was attracted to women was a totally different category, not at all believed to have anything in common with a man attracted to men as we categorize today under “homosexuality.” So declaring the ancients to be “homos” doesn’t really work…
romeo
@ K: It does work. Labels are artificial constructs, but orientation and behavior are not. And exclusive same-sex behavior was undoubtedly as common then as now. The difference then being that bi-sexuals were free to act on their impulses since the concept of masculinity had everything to do with power and virtually nothing to do with sexual orientation. You didn’t carry any religious baggage into the bedroom then. After all, Zeus himself was bi, as was Hercules — two of the most important religious figures of the Romans, Alexander being another figure held in the highest of esteem by the Romans. All symbols of masculine power.
romeo
Sorry about mixing cultures, Zeus was “Jupiter” to the Romans. Same guy, different name.
hephaestion
George Washington had loads of gay men around him. He was also obsessed with musical theatre, he designed his own clothes, and he had to be pressured into marriage for political survival. Just sayin’…
hephaestion
There have always been rough tough lesbian warriors in every Indian tribe.
Invert
Speaking of ancient history, oh for those days of yore when queer boys had ideas of their own and didn’t just clamor to imitate straight men by kicking the world’s ass. There’s plenty of ass-kicking going on without our participation, and I don’t see that it’s solving any of the world’s problems. How about a little empathy, a little cooperation, a little less greed and rapaciousness?
romeo
@ Invert (35) writes: “How about a little empathy, a little cooperation, a little less greed and rapaciousness?”
Taken a look at the real world lately, Invert? How do you think you get those things?
jimmy
Romeo or Chango: My understanding with regard to male on male love in classical times is that it glorified ‘maleness’ as superior and served the purpose of teaching young men the ways of manhood. It is also my understanding that penetrative anal sex within the pederastic relationship was still culturally frowned upon, and certainly was so when it occurred between men of the same social standing.
Is this inaccurate?
k
@ Romeo: Exclusive same-sex behavior was not as common then as it is now. Exclusivity in sexual attraction to one sex was very rare, whether to the opposite sex or same sex. There are only a few documented examples of Roman men who we absolutely know preferred one gender or the other. On the other hand, there is very, very little we “absolutely know” about the ancient world, so I guess you can just carry on with whatever you’d like to think. I am gay and I’d like to indulge in my narcissism and impose my own beliefs about sexuality onto the ancients as much as you apparently do, but sometimes it really just doesn’t work…
@ Jimmy: I’m not sure about the penetrative anal sex part being frowned upon part, I think as long as the partner who was considered to be socially inferior was the one being penetrated it was fine. But I’m not sure. You are certainly right about sexual relationships between men of the same social standing being a major taboo though.