Yesterday the California assembly signed a bill turning all kids gay requiring public school social studies classes to teach about the LGBT civil rights movement and the historic contributions of queers. It also adds sexual orientation and gender identity to existing anti-discrimination laws.
Democratic Govenor Jerry Brown hasn’t said whether he will sign it or not. He should. And we should expect anti-gay fundies to freak out about schools “forcing students to accept a lifestyle their parents may not agree with.” But seeing as students are also forced to learn about corrupt politicians and military types who sent thousands to die, these fundies should STFU.
The bigger question really is which historically famous LGBTs the schools should include in their curriculum. We have a few unexpected suggestions:
1) Socrates, Alexander the Great, and Herman Melville – The schools should make sure to bring already famous cultural figures out of the closet so all kids will know just how queer their education already is.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
2) Lorraine Hansberry, Frida Kahlo, and Eleanor Roosevelt – Don’t forget to take the already famous lesbians and bisexual ladies out of the closet too, especially people of color who normally get overlooked in other classes. Queers represent diversity and our history should too.
3) Roy Cohn – Yes, students should absolutely know about the closeted Angels in America villain who assisted in the McCarthy hearings and later died in the AIDS epidemic. He could be an example of how self-loathing homophobias hurts everyone.
4) Albus Dumbledore – LGBT education also means highlighting famous LGBT characters in literature. That includes Shug Avery in The Color Purple, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, and countless Shakespearean characters who fall in love with women dressed as men.
5) Maatkare Hatshepsut – The 5th Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt is not only the first female monarch in recorded history, but she also wore male clothing and a fake beard. The jury’s still out on whether she was a lesbian, but students should know that gays and transsexuals also existed waaaaaay back in history and helped build some of the strongest kingdoms the world has ever known.
6) Billie Jean King – This astounding athlete who won the singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles titles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Championships should be part of a larger athletic history that stretches as far back as the Olympic. All kids gay and straight need positive athletic role models, especially strong, talented women who pioneered into predominantly males sports, fundamentally changing the game and breaking world records too.
7) Chaz Bono – He’s just one example of a successful openly-trans media role model. The classes should demonstrate that all parts of LGBT spectrum can achieve success and that their battles and influence persist today and well into the future.
Who do you think should be included in California’s queer curriculum?
christopher di spirito
No Harvey Milk reference? Very curious.
Daniel Villarreal
@christopher di spirito: He’s the obvious choice. We tried to go with LESS obvious and unexpected choices.
christopher di spirito
@Daniel Villarreal: That may indeed be the case but, Harvey Milk is far more empowering for young LGBT Americans than Roy Cohn.
Paco
Hatchepsut is a bit of a stretch as she had a long lasting affair with her architect. She would have dressed as a man more to represent the normality of her reign as that is what Pharohs would wear. It was a part of the traditional regalia. THAT said it should be mentioned that same sex relations were approved on various levels and at various time periods throughout much of the Ancient World including Egypt, Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, and Phoenicia.
Tchaikovsky the compose of the 1812 Overture should also be mentioned. And if you’re going to mention artists we should look at Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Theophilus Brown, Paul Wonner, but most importantly Gertrude Stein. Without Gertrude there would have been little to no support for Picasso, Braque, and other experimental artists of the early 20th century. Francis Bacon did a great series of expressionist portraits of his partner dying a slow and painful death that are absolutely breathtaking, grotesque, but breathtaking.
ToyotaBedZRock
WHAT ABOUT Alan Turing?
He is only the father of Modern Computer Science, helped developed modern encryption, discovered how to decrypt Nazi encryption during WWII.
Then was chemically castrated when he was found out to be gay.
Tom
Where’s Alan Turing?
Daniel Villarreal
@christopher di spirito: No argument there. But we need our villains as well as our heroes, no?
Matthew
Wittgenstein, Turing, Wilde.
Cocteau
We can worry about villains in a few years. I was also wondering where Turing is. And Wittgenstein, Woolf, Tchaikovsky, Tennessee Williams, Auden, Byron, Caravaggio, Aaron Copeland, etc.?
Mike in Asheville
Annoyed with your inclusion of Elanor Roosevelt — can’t a strong willed unafraid woman be just who she seems to be? Loving and protecting wife and mother, open minded and caring to others. Just because Saturday Night Live, with Helen Mirren as Elanor, produces a comedy skit about inaccurate histories [about the Roosevelts and others] they were poking fun at TV writers who ignore history and accuracy, not shedding light on an illicit affair between Elanor and Marilyn Monroe — and including Elanor is as silly as SNL’s notion of Elanor and 5 year-old Norma Jean.
***********
BTW, leaping over accuracy to include someone as a member of our club is as inane wingnuts like Frothy Santorum who claim they have gay friends.
***********
And where is Walt Whitman? Author a the very gay and open Leaves of Grass — BEFORE EVEN THE CIVIL WAR!
J
Alan Turing; one of the most intelligent people ever to have lived, decoder of thousands of Nazi messages, father of computer science and missing from this list? Without him there is serious doubt as to if the Nazi’s would have been defeated, and it’s also questionable if computers would be what they are today without him.
Daniel Villarreal
@Mike in Asheville: There is ample evidence that Eleanor Roosevelt had a lesbian love.
As for the repeated mentions of Turing and others, we encourage you to keep adding new names to our list. We didn’t set out to make a comprehensive list, just a list of unexpected candidates.
christopher di spirito
@Mike in Asheville: True. Walt Whitman and Gertrude Stein.
QJ201
Leslie Feinberg is a better example of a trans man who has done something. Chaz Bono is nothing more than the queer child of a celebrity icon.
Caliban
Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and his contributions to the American Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Wilhelm_von_Steuben
Alan Turing certainly, including his “chemical castration” by the British gov’t and eventual suicide.
Roger Rabbit
Greg Louganis and all out Olympic Athletes, past and present,
Out actors that have made a difference (since there’s too many out actors to list)
Adam
LGBT issues have no place in school. Period. Our schools are failing at teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/education/22cnd-test.html
Students are not even correctly taught basic US history.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inyf5SXlcDqfHpbExTvFUk2ATV_A?docId=1d91fa4d684a4b008d9ff92bf02a861a
So for this community to insist on including this issue in curriculum is narcissistic and petty. If someone in the public schools is LGBT, I would rather have them educated and transformed into a individual ready to tackle university or technical school versus simply augmenting their individual identity to the determent of their overall education and the success of each classroom.
Tatterdemalion
Oscar Wilde, definitely.
Dallas David
@Adam: Sure, the bigger picture needs to be taught. But there should be time for one lesson on gay historical figures, along with one day for black historical figures, another for hispanic figures, another for asian, and so on. Ten etnicities ought to cover everything, and would also reinforce other lessons.
I’m not an educator, so I’ll leave the details to those who are. But all in all, I’d like to see the information included as part of other history, and not as a full semester class about ‘Famous Gays in History” or even “Famous ethnic people in History,” because the Big Picture is more important than highlighting individual players.
Dallas David
I’d like to see Rev. Troy Perry, the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church included, too. He had a significant part to play in the gays-go-back-to-church movement. Here in Dallas, there are about 30 gay churches, most of them splinter groups from the original MCC.
There ought to be a section on the first 30 years of AIDS . . . should be enough there to cover an entire semester at the high school level. One class period devoted to the Quilt, with words from bereaved, from “God Hates Fags pickets,” and the afflicted.
TheRealMannequinAdam
@Adam: Completely disagree. It’s not any more “narcissistic” or “petty” than having kids learn about African-American history or any other racial group’s history, or women’s history. If you are going to criticize GLBT history, you might as well criticize all the other “subcategories” of history, as well.
Jeff
Bayard Rustin should be included in here. He was both instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement and relatively openly gay, but his contributions to a number of causes have been regularly overlooked.
Mike in Asheville
@Daniel Villarreal: Really Daniel, referencing a single-sided gay blog review of a hack book — that is the evidence?
Well, I am not a book reviewer; I lack the breadth of historical reading and study to know when to call BS every time. I do, however, know enough to call BS when it really smells. For example, I wondered about the “truthiness” of whether most all of the “secretive” letters were burned and but a few survived. Well, no matter what one’s definition of “truthiness” is, this is bullshit.
Ms. Hickok, the suggested secret lover, provided that her complete collection of more than 3500 letters over a thirty year period with Mrs. Roosevelt be donated to the FDR library. That the author of the book “Empty Without You” chose to use selections from 300 of the letters doesn’t mean that the remaining 3200 letters were unavailable, those letters did not reinforce the author’s attempt at labeling Mrs. Roosevelt as a lesbian.
Per the New York Times review of the book you linked “Empty Without You”
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/29/books/books-in-brief-nonfiction-947105.html
“Although this collection [of letters] does not definitively answer the question of whether Roosevelt and Hickok had an affair, it does document the American landscape as seen by two intelligent, influential women who loved their country, and each other, with a passion that is rare.”
This is hardly definitive.
Further, if the effort to teach kids about gays/lesbians in history, what is the history lesson of claiming Eleanor Roosevelt as one of us? Is it that even in the highest reaches of government, lesbianism (or being gay) is untoward?; is it that a great heroine of women’s and racial civil rights was cowardly when it came to being a lesbians; is it that being openly gay/lesbian ruins one’s opportunity in high government or society?
**************
There are so many lesbians and gays in history, ones who by their definitive words and actions, were out and proud before the notion of gay pride resonated. Focus on those who stood against their day’s bigotry and homophobia, our community’s founding brothers and sisters. There are many good suggestions among the posts here.
***************
I do congratulate you on the very smart idea of including the gay “kapos”, the Roy Cohns of the world. Hopefully by education our youth about the vile nature of kapos, there will be fewer Ken Mehlmans and Richard Socarides to fuck over the community in the future.
Ganondorf
Socrates was not gay. Plato was, though I tend to question the methodology employed to assess the sexual orientation of people who’ve been dead for thousands of years. But Plato’s a bit too complex to fit into one of those “it gets better” video or survey of gay history (philosophy, even the history of phil, isn’t history) moments. Most of the people who reference Plato’s sexuality have never read anything he’s written (residents of the city of pigs, though). They should. And the evidence for Herman Melville’s homosexuality is even less compelling. I don’t think that wishful thinking and gossip should be reported as history.
RomanHans
Abraham Lincoln bought a bed and brought the store’s male clerk home with him to share it for several years. Since he looms so large in American history, though, I’m sure there’s a non-gay explanation, like customs were very different then, and people brought store clerks home with them all the time, just out of friendliness, and everybody used to spoon naked because they didn’t have radio yet.
griffinwinston
I don’t think Nick Carraway wasn’t gay… Sure there was the whole ambiguous elevator scene but other than that there is no solid proof he was. A know a few people who think he was but considering there is no factual evidence proving he was it would be irresponsible for teachers to tell students one of the most famous literary characters is gay.. Perhaps opening it up to discussion would be better..
griffinwinston
I don’t think Nick Carraway WAS gay**
Don Gaudard
@Adam: Since teaching about slavery has nothing to do with reading, writing, and arithmetic, are you suggesting that students not be taught about slavery in the US?
David Gervais
A suggestion for lesser known trans people, Wendy Carlos and Christine Jorgensen.
wendycarlos.com ; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Carlos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen
Ganondorf
what about bobby trendy and lady gaga? How about the gays on that show the a-list, dan savage and andy cohen, rupaul and the cast of drag race? Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! But hey, that’s in keeping with the queerty tradition of gay irrelevance and pop fluff.
B
No. 11 · J wrote, “Alan Turing; one of the most intelligent people ever to have lived, decoder of thousands of Nazi messages, father of computer science and missing from this list? Without him there is serious doubt as to if the Nazi’s would have been defeated, and it’s also questionable if computers would be what they are today without him.”
What made computers what they are today was (a) the discovery of semiconductors, (b) the invention of the transistor, and (c) the discovery of how to manufacture integrated circuits (I could add a bit to the list) – otherwise computers would still be massive machines with limited memory, made out of vacuum tubes or electromechanical relays. Turing’s work in founding computer science was mathematical in nature and primarily of academic interest – questions (for example) of whether you could prove that a program would run to completion – but did not have direct implications on how hardware was designed (the “Turing machine” is an abstraction of a computer simple enough to be useful in mathematical proofs, and Turing showed a Turing machine could compute anything a “real” computer could and vice versa).
Aside from that, one thing that was not mentioned is that without Turing’s work on cryptography, many more Americans would have been killed – because of his work, we knew where German submarines were going, so ships carrying our troops could avoid those areas.
tavdy79
Julius Caesar – a man so influential on history that his cognomen (a kind of formal nickname) now means emperor in dozens of languages – was bisexual.
Heliogabalus (AKA Elagabalus) was another Roman emperor from our tribe. TBH there’s no shortage or gay or bi Roman emperors, however Heliogabalus is note-worthy for being what we would now recognise as either a transwoman or genderqueer, describing herself as “delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles”, her charioteer and slave. While homosexuality was broadly accepted in Roman society, gender variance was not tolerated at all, and Heliogabalus was killed for it at age eighteen, along with both her mother and Hierocles.
Justin Fashanu was the first ever black soccer player in the UK to command a transfer fee of over £1m (US$1.65m) and the first of only two professional soccer players world-wide to come out as gay; the second, Anglo-Swedish player Anton Hysen, came out just a few months ago. Fashanu committed suicide in 1998 following an allegation of rape. He maintained that the sex had been consensual to his death.
Greg Louganis is an openly-gay four-time Olympic gold medallist in diving who would probably have had six golds had the USA not boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. He tested positive for HIV not long before the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
William Shakespeare is generally recognised as England’s greatest poet and playwright; he was also bisexual.
David Laws is a British “orange book” (libertarian) Liberal Democrat MP and former Chief Secretary to the Treasury who holds the distinction of having the shortest tenure of any cabinet member in British history, at just fifteen days. He was appointed on May 13th last year, and then resigned on May 28th following the revelation that the person to whom he had been paying rent on the Kennington home they shared, James Lundie, was actually his long-term partner. Under UK law Politicians are banned from claiming rent costs that are then paid to a partner, however Laws did not wish it to be publicly known that he was gay so claimed the rent (£40,000, about US$65,000) to hide this fact. His shame at being gay denied him the chance to be amongst the most influential men in British and European politics.
Mike in Asheville
@RomanHans: No American has been the subject of more biographies than Abraham Lincoln; no American has been the subject of doctoral dissertations than Abraham Lincoln.
Except as noted below, there has been no finding in the exhaustive letters to and from Lincoln indicating that Lincoln was or even engaged in gay relations. The few letters from Lincoln to his law clerk/secretary who, indeed, slept in the same bed as Lincoln, are, as you suggest, of the custom of the time.
The one exception is the finding by Larry Kramer’s (yes that Larry Kramer) in the mid 1990s of lost Lincoln letters, which, per Kramer, demonstrate Lincoln engaged in gay affairs with two men. BUT, BUT, BUT, those “found” letters have been judged by experts at the National Archives, as forgeries.
declanto
Sir Isaac Newton.
Paco
Hadrian of the Romans as well who not only was one of the most powerful and influential Roman Emperors of all time but was also an accomplished artist, musician, architect, and business man. Under him support for same sex unions were at all time Roman high.
SteveC
James Baldwin
Quentin Crisp
Peter Tatchell
Divine
Gore Vidal
Ken Mehlman (as the villain)
Eminent Victorian
I hope they teach math to the gays–so they can tell the difference between seven and eleven.
B
No. 32 · tavdy79 wrote, “Heliogabalus (AKA Elagabalus) was another Roman emperor from our tribe.”
I wouldn’t bring him up if I were you. He even got mentioned in the Pirates of Penzance where one of the lines in the song, “I am the very model of a modern major general,” is, “I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus claims, “During his rule, Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with a lesser god, Deus Sol Invictus (in Greek: Helios, hence the name Heliogabalos), and forced leading members of Rome’s government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, which he personally led. Elagabalus was married as many as five times, lavished favors on courtiers popularly assumed to have been his homosexual lovers, and was reported to have prostituted himself in the imperial palace. His reputed behaviour infuriated the Praetorian Guard, the Senate and the common people alike. Amidst growing opposition, Elagabalus, only 18 years old, was assassinated and replaced by his cousin Alexander Severus on March 11, 222, in a plot formed by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and disgruntled members of the Praetorian Guard. Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence and zealotry which was likely exaggerated by his successors and political rivals.[2] This likely propaganda was passed on and, as a result, he was one of the most reviled Roman emperors to early historians.”
To be a bit fairer to him, one should note his age during his reign. It’s not really clear if he was gay, bisexual, or simply horny enough to jump into bed every chance he got. He did manage to go through 5 wives at a rate comparable to that of very rich Americans getting a new car every year or so.
Aiden
When it comes to trans people I would mention Billy Tipton,Christine Jorgensen, and Lili Elbe.Though I’m sure it will only cover gays and lesbians.
Bonnie
While bi sexuality and homosexuality might have been much more common in ancient greece than we are taught in school I have NEVER heard any evidence that Pharroh Hapshetsut was a lesbian. She is my favorite historical figure and I studied her a great deal! She dressed like a man because that is how a pharroh dressed it was the only way she could be excepted as ruler. She was trying to portray herself as strong and equal to a man because she had taken on a role that was seen as a male role. Point being you loose credibility when you proclaim such a promenant figure to be a lesbian when there is no evidence. However sme of the other historical figures named do have great amounts of evidence and should be taught about at school, but if you if you jump to conclusions about people such s Hapshepsut the message will be ignored.
Bonnie
I also think eleanor roosevelt is a bit confusing I have neverf heard that however you could be right I shall research it.
Mike in Asheville
@SteveC:
Really good picks!
Read Baldwin at Berkeley, very eye opening. Capote had some fascinating comment about Baldwin.
Quentin Crisp, truly a brave brave man.
Love your inclusion of bad guy Ken Mehlman; I would put Richard Socarides right next to him.
And Divine, brilliant! Following my first SF Pride parade, 1980, at the I-Beam tea party, Divine performed, of course, “I am what I am”. Fell in love right then and there.
Jim Hlavac
Why, let’s go for the gusto! King James I of England — the very compiler of the King James Bible so crudely thrown at us was gay as a goose. He was born James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord James Darnley. Darnley was a well known and out gay man in Elizabeth I’s court and the Virgin Queen (hardly, it was said) is recorded as saying: “Send that fairy and gay Lord Darnley to my cousin Mary so naught might come of the marriage.” Yes, the word “gay” itself used for gay people in the late 1500s! And fairy, too — and he was also called a sissy, go figure. And so he went, as he was commanded to do, and he did his duty and sired the kid. Darnley lived in a small house with his boyfriend, outside the palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh, where Mary lived with her real loved Ricci. First the Scottish lords killed Darnley – they blew up his house, and when he walked out, they stabbed him to death in a bit of fag bashing, as they themselves proudly said. Then they went for Ricci. Poor Mary was taken prisoner by Elizabeth, and eventually got her head lopped off, (at the ironically named “Fartheringay Castle, too) Meanwhile, James VI, king from the day of his birth, had the strongest claim on the English throne, so when Elizabeth died he was crowned King of the newly formed “United Kingdom” in 1603. The quip at the time was “We have had King Elizabeth, and now we shall have Queen James.” He was not amused, and lopped off the heads of those who put the posters up (some are in the British archives.) Parliament, and “his ministers spiritual and temporal” did tell James — now the I and not the VI — that he did have to go visit his wife once a month whether he wanted to or not; his boyfriend Robert Chamberlain did suffer the absence in tears, it was reported. James did his duty, and Charles I was his son, who was such a hetero bully and nasty man and stupid that he got his head lopped off by Cromwell, which did push the Pilgrims, Quakers and others hither this way to found our nation’s myths. James was a brilliant man, speaking many languages, ancient and contemporary, and was quite the good administrator, and still found time to head the committee which put the Bible into English for the Anglican Church which was founded by his Great Uncle Henry VIII based on Henry’s four divorces (two by law, two by beheading). Now that should get folks into history, eh?
Oh let’s also go for Richard the Lionhearted, too. He the greatest King of England, some claim — who was the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. Born in the 1150s, he was quite the gay man, so much so that there are at least 15 letters extant between him and his mom, Eleanor, using the word “gai” spelled just like that, for it turns out that “gai” is the Provence dialect of French word for, um, Gay. Richard and King Philip of France were quite the couple, and gossiped about all over Europe, till a lover’s spat did they split up. And after Eleanor divorced Louis VII of France in 1150 (and never saw her two daughters by him again, for family values,) she six weeks later dashed off to England for Henry. Richard went on Crusade, and had a most fascinating life, like never living with the wife he married, Berengaria of Navarre, and not having kids — so when he died in combat, for he was quite the warrior king, his brother John got the throne — and John was such a bully, such a nasty man, that the English barons did pry Magna Carta out of him — the first charter of liberties for people, and the end of the absolute power of the British kings, and a document obliquely referenced by our own Declaration of Independence, that no member of the British royal family was ever named John again, since 1215! Of course, one can’t tell the story of Robinhood and his merry men without Richard, for Richard did return from imprisonment in Germany to give his blessing for Maid Marion and Robinhood’s nuptials, if the story is true. Richard was such a momma’s boy he’s buried next to her in a monastery in France.
Oh, too, Edward II — king of England for 25 years, and his boyfriend, the aptly named Hugh de la Despenser, were quite the couple until both were killed by Isabella, Edward’s wife. (Mel Gibson got one thing right in Braveheart; most wrong: William Wallace was not a peasant, he was the son of a Baron, and his castle still stands.)
Now that little bit of a gay history twist on Bible, Liberty, Pilgrims, Fairy Tales and Happy Endings should be surely mentioned in any gay history, no?
Ernest
Thanks for the gay history folks! There is an iPod app that teaches gay history I have it and as a gay man who is currently going for masters in social science, I love History, but my true love lies in Cultural Anthropology. I love how different this world really is and since the times of Christianity you can see how low this world has sunk. Without the religious restrictions humanity was flourishing and there was equality, then came the church with their knights killing all those who opposed them, Rome never fell until the reign of Christianity! If it were up to me I’d teach my students the true version of history, not the watered down edited bullshit version they learn in grade school!
Sam
@Jim Hlavac: David Riccio was murdered BEFORE Lord Darnley, in fact, Darnely was one of the murderers. And it is Fotheringhay Castle, not Fartheringay. And Mary, Queen of Scots, had a much more complex history, but I understand you were focusing on her gay (or bi) son, James I and VI. That said, you hit the nail on the head regarding the less-than-hetero James and Richard and Edward. And one final nitpick: it’s Hugh le Despenser, not de la Despenser.
B
No. 32 · tavdy79 wrote, “Julius Caesar – a man so influential on history that his cognomen (a kind of formal nickname) now means emperor in dozens of languages – was bisexual.”
This one’s problematic. Now, there were certainly rumors, and Caesar’s soldiers
apparently sang a song that went,
Gallias Caesar subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem;
Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat, qui subegit Gallias;
Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem.
In English (subegit in Latin means [he] put under or [he[ conquered):
Caesar put Gaul under [conquered Gaul]; Nicomedes Caesar.
Now behold Caesar triumphant who put Gaul under [conquered Gaul],
but Nicomedes, who put Caesar under, was not triumphant.
Citation: http://books.google.com/books?id=p_5l2FCfvF8C&pg=PT524&lpg=PT524&dq=Nicomedes+Caesar+Caesarem&source=bl&ots=jdUAroDWxE&sig=SPjMixIRIStIN40dy-R6llKDGE4&hl=en&ei=6rcXTrLkIMPUiAK_wO3RBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Nicomedes%20Caesar%20Caesarem&f=false .
What the song suggests, using a double meaning for subegit, is that Caesar may have trounced the barbarians in Gaul (basically France today), but he was a bottom. However, Caesar’s political enemies had an incentive to spread such rumors because Romans sexual practices were supposed to reflect their status in Roman society. If you were the top dog politically, you were expected to be a top sexually and it was disgraceful in Roman culture if you weren’t.
Caesar denied it (being a bottom – nobody probably cared if he was otherwise gay or straight or bi). According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Political_rumors , “Roman society viewed the passive role during sexual activity, regardless of gender, to be a sign of submission or inferiority. Indeed, Suetonius says that in Caesar’s Gallic triumph, his soldiers sang that, “Caesar may have conquered the Gauls, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar.”[112] According to Cicero, Bibulus, Gaius Memmius, and others (mainly Caesar’s enemies), he had an affair with Nicomedes IV of Bithynia early in his career. The tales were repeated, referring to Caesar as the Queen of Bithynia, by some Roman politicians as a way to humiliate him. It is very likely that the rumours were spread only as a form of character assassination; Caesar himself denied the accusations repeatedly throughout his lifetime, and according to Cassius Dio, even under oath on one occasion.[113] This form of slander was popular during this time in the Roman Republic to demean and discredit political opponents. A favorite tactic used by the opposition was to accuse a popular political rival as living a Hellenistic lifestyle based on Greek and Eastern culture, where homosexuality and a lavish lifestyle were more acceptable than in Roman tradition.”
According to http://papersiwrote.blogspot.com/2005/12/real-catiline.html, Cicero accused Cataline of a similar offense, “The saying that the winners write the history book is glaringly true in the Catiline conspiracy. None of Catiline’s own speeches or writings have survived. The two main sources we have about the conspiracy come from Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Gaius Sallustus Crispus, both of whom had good reasons to place Catiline in an unfavorable light. From their writings Catiline emerges as a figure of satanic proportions. He was accused of almost every crime imaginable including murdering his brother in law, sister, step son, and wife, raping a vestal virgin, and practicing homosexuality. Virgil, in The Aenied, didn’t think twice about placing Catiline in hell.”
and,
“If all the crimes Catiline was charged with were believed to be true, he would not have been elected praetor or been allowed to stand for consul twice, much less have his array of powerful friends. In fact, few believed the crimes because it was common in ancient Rome to accuse an opponent of imaginary crimes. In schools of rhetoric, advocates were taught to make use of colours, a way of presenting insignificant facts, mixed with a few useful lies, to produce what appeared to be evidence of shocking guilt. “It had become a habit,” said Cicero (as quoted in Hutchinson 31) referring to this practice, even though he did it often himself. Also, in the law courts of the time, there were no rules of evidence. It was the duty of the prosecutor to create a maximum of prejudice. It is unfortunate that many of these fake crimes have leaked into history (Hutchinson 29-35).”
So, it might be true that Caesar was gay or bi, but there was a rumor mill too, slandering political enemies was standard operating procedure in ancient Rome (in Caesar’s case, that he was a bottom), and Caesar had a lot of enemies.
Mike in Asheville
@Jim Hlavac: Just a short clarification of your comment that James I (VI) as the “compiler” of the King James Bible: James was not an active nor even a passive participant in the translating and compiling of the King James Bible. James’ extremely important participation was that of “commissioner” of an English translation of the Bible for the Church of England, dubbed, the Authorized King James Version. And indeed he was a big old queen as well as king of England.
K
@B apropos your comments about Turing. First, it is not true that a real computer can compute anything a Turing machine can. Indeed, any actual computer has finite memory, whereas Turing machines have their two-sided infinite tapes.
As to the academic nature of Turing’s work, it is true that much of his work (especially his early work) was purely academic. Notably, the famous *On Computable Numbers* where the Turing machine and the halting problem were introduced is a brilliant exercise in mathematical logic written as an alternative to Church’s ?-calculus. However, Turing’s work was not entirely of academic interest. In particular, 1) he designed the Bombe based on his and others’ work, helping establish that “universal computers” could actually be built, 2) more generally, he and von Neumann wrote the seminal papers on the structure of stored program computers which underlies the construction of the modern computer, though it is von Neumann’s that usually is cited as the inspiration for such famous constructions as EDSAC and ENIAC, and 3) his (and Church’s) work have been quite influential in the design of modern programming languages. Of course, you are correct that the size, capacity, and speed of modern computers (and hence their ubiquity) are the result of the discoveries you cite, but the inspiration for their design owes much to Turing.
B
No. 48 · K “@B apropos your comments about Turing. First, it is not true that a real computer can compute anything a Turing machine can. Indeed, any actual computer has finite memory, whereas Turing machines have their two-sided infinite tapes.”
While all computers have finite random-access memory , they can also use virtual memory or an arbitrary amount of magnetic tape, limited only by the amount of tape you can manufacture. Of course, no physical realization of a Turning machine would actually have an infinitely long tape.
Regarding Turing’s other work, what I was pointing out is that “What made computers what they are today” (the phrase I was replying to) is really based on semiconductor technology – the wording of that phrase distinguishes today’s computers from those available when Turing was alive. The ENIAC was made out of vacuum tubes and its memory was limited to about 100 words (added in 1953), it could do 5000 additions per second, it filled what today would be a small house, it failed several times per week due to vacuum tubes burning out, and it needed a 150 kilowatt power source to run. Without semiconductors, you would not have computers in people’s homes with over 3 GHz processors, many gigabytes of memory, and a modest power requirement.
Darrell Hitchcock
Dr. Thomas Anthony Dooley III – Famous for his humanitarian efforts in South East Asia, both while in the Navy and afterwards (forced to resign in 1956 due an investigation into “homosexual activity”).
Leonard Matlovich- The first gay service member to fight the ban on gays in the military. His tombstone in the congressional cemetery, which does not bear his name, serves a as memorial for gay veterans. It reads, “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”
Dallas David
Leonard Matlovich. The USAF Tsgt who got the ball rolling for allowing gays in the military.
Nikola Tesla. Never married, kept a seperate apartment for purposes that nobody discovered. Son of a minister, and fluent in several languages, wrote poetry, was insatiably creative (invented the AC power distribution system we have today) and AC motors, the Tesla Turbine, and lots more.
Tchkaisvkosky (sp?) composer of the 1812 overture and more.
Dave Kopay, the US Football star.
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I don’t know if there would need to be a complete course on who’s gay and who’s not. But since lots of school books mention people and their wives and children, it would make sense to mention that our gay and lesbian heros were gay and didn’t have children, and what they accomplished.
But a school display every year for Gay Pride Month would fit in just dandy.