When attempting to look back, garner information about gay life down through the centuries, it is not the easiest of tasks. There are many web sites and articles devoted to the subject, both positive and negative. What is difficult is trying to weed out the abjectly slanted and inaccurate from those that present a reasonable possibility of factual basis. Why do I use the term "reasonable possibility" ?

When trying to do an educational study of our community's history, sadly, much has been left to speculation. Most of our history was not chronicled or left down through the ages accurately. Yes, we can go back through some centuries and find information that was recorded, but often this was in light of judicial censure, court trials, and the most deviant and socially unacceptable. ..even in our community... behavior. For the every day life of a gay or bi man or even woman, the historical accounts remain either mute or allude without providing much meat.

There are many revisionists on both sides who attempt to "prove" or "disprove" the sexuality of historical figures, leaving the reader or researcher to draw his or her own conclusion as to the accuracy of the information presented. But this not true only of gay history, but of all history. So was Alexander the Great gay, bi or straight? Does it matter? Does it change who he the man was or the impact he had on the world? Get my point? There is evidence to support any of the three.

Quite often as we make this journey back we want to winnow out the bad, leave only the good. Even with our own personal memories, we tend to forgo the bad times and think only of the good times. We could have been in a very abusive relationship and, yet, some how as we think back, we see remember the times we laughed and shared and amused ourselves rather than see the hell we went through. Of course this is not always the case...sometimes we allow the bad of the past to eat away at us with bitterness like a poison that permeates through our system. At other times, we turn the stumbling blocks of the past into building blocks for a better future.

As we make our journey through gay history, we must take the good along with the bad. This brings about balance. It wasn't just the positive gay or bi men or women who influenced and shaped our community and world we now live, but equally those with shady or questionable behavior or ideology, who also had a role in our development. We may not always like what we unearth or agree with the sentiments and thoughts of some of those within our history, but they are still part of our collective history.

Today we have a lot of divisions within the gay community. But then again, since when was the straight community united? We don't all think alike. We don't all act the same. We are not all effeminate. We are not all "straight-acting" (whatever that is). We are not all "tops" or "bottoms". We are not all oral. We are not all into anal. The list goes on and on. Our politics are not all the same. Our thought patterns are not all the same. But it is this very diversity that unites us all...heterosexual, homosexual, tri-anything- sexual, asexual.

How does it unite us? It unites us all as human beings...and the essence of humanity is diversity.

OK...I'm off my soap box now.

Remember your thoughts, your memories, your pictures, your questions are welcome...so don't be shy!

Studlover

I am not really sure that the human condition can be accurately separated into Gay and Straight...

Both are variations of feelings of love expressed sexually, which by the way, is a rather low expression of love, as it is said.

Still, without sexual expression, it is incomplete, unless of course, something prohibits that expression. Be it physical, mental or both, age has it's way with us and so does many other considerations with life.

So, we continue on remembering, we are not the first humans, nor will we probably be the last, and those that came before us and those who follow us will have had or will be having similar experiences to us.

Such is the human condition. There is nothing new under the sun in the annals of time. There is only the re-hashing of old feelings and experiences of living, perhaps in different contexts, but certainly not unique.

A-1 (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:49 pm I am not really sure that the human condition can be accurately separated into Gay and Straight...

Both are variations of feelings of love expressed sexually, which by the way, is a rather low expression of love, as it is said.

Still, without sexual expression, it is incomplete, unless of course, something prohibits that expression. Be it physical, mental or both, age has it's way with us and so does many other considerations with life.

So, we continue on remembering, we are not the first humans, nor will we probably be the last, and those that came before us and those who follow us will have had or will be having similar experiences to us.

Such is the human condition. There is nothing new under the sun in the annals of time. There is only the re-hashing of old feelings and experiences of living, perhaps in different contexts, but certainly not unique.

Foucault has some helpful suggestions about thinking about sexuality--some notions that transcend thinking in terms of the labels hetrosexual, homosexual, or other such notions. I have not read enough to comprehend them. The hatred of sexuality that developed in late antiquity infected Christianity. Again, I am still too much into my studies to grasp the debate. A-1 has made some helpful remarks about the topic. Studlover has done a good thing to introduce this topice. I hope others will post.