Beard of the Week XIX: NCOD
Today,# here in the US, it's National Coming Out Day, a day chosen to commemorate the first "March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights" on the same date in 1987. I didn't make it to that one, but I was there with Isaac for the next March in 1983, along with about a million of our friends. That was certainly an exhilarating day; maybe I'll tell some of those stories on another occasion.
Anyway, this week's beard belongs to Hadrian, emperor of the Roman Empire from AD 117 to 138. There are many reasons why we're fond of Hadrian around our house, including the fun we had visiting Hadrian's villa outside Rome (see our photo album of Hadrian's Villa) in 2001, and his attractive beard, as seen in the photo of this bust of Hadrian (that we took in the Vatican museums in 2001).*
For today, however, the interesting fact about Hadrian is that he was gay, at least insofar as the category would apply. The link above relates the story of Hadrian's love for Antinuous (variously spelled "Antinous"). Tragically, Antinuous died by drowning in the Nile on a trip there with Hadrian in 130. Hadrian was devastated. As the fascinating list of "Milestones: A Timeline of Gay and Lesbian Artists and History" of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation puts it (the entry at 117 – 138 C.E.):
Hadrian & Antinuous, Emperor Hadrian in his agony of grief over the death of his young lover, the beautiful, Bythnian youth Antinuous, raised the boy to godhood.
Throughout the Roman Empire hundreds of busts and full statues of Hadrian and Antinuous appeared. Although all the artists were not necessarily gay — (but many surely were) — all these busts and full statues were created to glorify and memorialize one of the great gay loves of history.
Such a romantic!
I don't often notice National Coming Out Day with the attention that I once did since I've pretty much settled these issues for myself finally some 15 years ago (still rather late, since I was 35 when I came out). However, this does not mean that I discount the importance of coming out and living out. For some time I have felt that the best support I can give to those still in their closets is to go about my life as though being gay is entirely routine and acceptable — because it is!
Just this week we heard about a new poll done by Harris Interactive reporting that now 7 out of 10 heterosexuals (i.e., 70%) know someone gay. Isn't that amazing! It was not so long ago, easily within my memory, that the vast majority of straight people would claim that they didn't actually know anyone who was gay, and now 70% claim they do know a gay person. For years it has been received wisdom among gay people that the single best strategy for gaining equal rights was to come out and put a face on the "gay agenda". It seems that people have been listening.
Is it working? I think it is. Oddly, the anxiety and hysteria of reactionary forces is part of what convinces me that things are changing. I find particularly curious the gay angles to all the carrying on about the situation with Mark Foley. Leave aside for a moment all the issues about just what he was up to and how creepy it was (yes, I think it was very creepy), and the curiosity of the apparent cover-up by Republican leadership, and listen to what people have to say whenever they come near the "gay issue".
In particular, this is a very peculiar time for gay Republicans who — if you ask my opinion — have always been in a peculiar situation anyway. I'm interested in how multi-faceted are the barrages being hurled at them. On the gay activist side is the issue of outing — I have to admit I feel no sympathy at all for closeted gay Republicans who work for reactionaries who would continue to oppress gay people. On the reactionary side, all the fundamentalist forces who want to purge their party of the gay menace, convinced that it's an internal conspiracy to take over their party. In the middle: the poor gay Republicans who like to believe that there are bigger issues than their personal "lifestyle" — I don't agree on that either, but it's a bigger topic for another time.
In the end, the message should become clear that it's not a winning proposition to be a gay Republican, but the issue also serves as a catalyst to make clear to many Americans all the bogus, nonsensical non-issues about gay people, the chimeras that the Republican party has been using as wedge issues since the turn of the century. What I like about it, too, is that the reactionary forces can't really win: they can't seem to help themselves when it comes to attacking the gay conspiracy within their ranks and revealing their rank homophobia, but if they could contain themselves it would just make them look welcoming, which would make them even crazier. On the whole it seems like I can just stand by and shake my head in disbelief along with those 70% of Americans who now know someone gay, and now know not to believe most of what they're hearing about the dreaded homosexual agenda.
Happy Coming Out Day!
———-
#At least it was when I started writing.
*It seems apparent that someone actually made some representation of Hadrian during his lifetime, i.e., from life, that was the basis for the various representations of Hadrian that one can find in Rome, because they all look like a real person and that person is instantly recognizable in the representations.
In: All, Beard of the Week, Current Events, Faaabulosity
9 Responses
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Friday, 13 October 2006 at 01.19
Permalink
I'm deep in the bowels (!!) of the Republican party, and I would say it is a bit less homophobic than you suggest. We have our homophobic element, for sure, but it's hard to kick every flawed character off the bus.
The larger discomfort is with the tendency of the Gay Pride movement to leverage acceptance of the gay agenda with acceptance of a larger liberal/progressive agende, i.e., accept my gayness, but also accept a bigger government with more regulation.
on Friday, 13 October 2006 at 15.53
Permalink
Good luck on escaping those bowels, Fred!
Perhaps you're right that instead of being extremely homophobic the Republican party is only very homophobic. Just as an example, here is the third section of the first article of the latest Republican platform in North Carolina:
This just fell in front of my eyes today — I didn't have to go looking for it.
As for the risable "love me, love my big government" as "leverage" — which is it, the "gay lifestyle" is so attractive that people will swallow big government to accept it, or vice versa? — I think you'll find on reflection that it just happens to be two groups riding on the same bus, and a bus that exists only in your imagination, too. While we're at it, let's not forget that the "party of small government" has done more to increase government spending that any Democrats ever did.
on Friday, 13 October 2006 at 17.43
Permalink
" let's not forget that the "party of small government" has done more to increase government spending that any Democrats ever did." Sometimes the bus drives off the road.
"which is it, the "gay lifestyle" is so attractive that people will swallow big government to accept it, or vice versa?" I would say vice versa, but there is more to it, the whole Democrat paradigm of victimology (which the Republicans are starting to play, in a revised form), where one gains political power and more access to the levers of societal change by creating, or joining, an aggrieved group.
on Friday, 13 October 2006 at 18.08
Permalink
I'm amused by the metaphor of the bus driving off the road — although it does suggest that we need a new bus driver.
But now it strikes me as interesting that "the people" would want "big government" so much that they are willing to accept the gay lifestyle. If the people want big government so incredibly much, perhaps that's what they should have? (Another alternative, perhaps your premise is not quite on target.)
Victimology I've never understood, partly because I just don't see it — therefore I tend to imagine that it was just another labeling concept invented by right-wingers (like "political correctness") so that they'd have one more bullet point about the evil liberals. On the other hand, maybe I'll gain a new understanding, since I tend to think that if I hear one more fundamentalist talk about the oppression of Christianity in this country I might scream.
on Saturday, 14 October 2006 at 09.47
Permalink
"Victimology" might be a bit perjorative, but the common view of the Democrat party, from my side, is a bunch of special interest groups clamoring for attention and space at the table of public policy. I remember as a young person those around me laughing at Walter Mondale at the 1984 Democrat national convention, as he went around kowtowing and twisting to say the right things to all the interest groups. There is this whole paradigm out there that goes something like this: "_______________ as a group have been discriminated against for many years, so we can't just remove the discrimination, we have to give them extra benefits to make up for past discrimination and any current discrimination they might suffer.
on Wednesday, 18 October 2006 at 00.04
Permalink
Well, I suppose one party's special-interest group is another party's coalition of votes. I've never understood the idea of "special-interest" groups anyway. It's just a perjorative phrase thought up by conservatives to make groups of citizens petitioning the government — as is their constitutional right — sound shifty and marginal. I do believe equality is something special, but equal rights are not "special rights".
For my money — if you'll pardon the expression — the special interest groups that I believe have no place buying politicians are groups of businesses whose owners believe that their companies deserve all the rights of actual people. They don't, and it's time to look through the diversionary rhetoric.
As for the minority-reparations strawman: it sounds good and generates the right sort of anxiety in reactionary voters, but in fact no one has taken the idea seriously except for a couple of black activists some 25 years ago. Time to let that one go, too. At the moment we have more damage being done to the country thanks to reparations being paid to the most wealthy 1% of the population who believe they've been overtaxed for too many years. Now there's a special-interest group with deep pockets.
on Wednesday, 18 October 2006 at 11.07
Permalink
"…companies deserve all the rights of actual people." I was just cruising the web and found this tag for an article in N+1 magazine:
Marco Roth
Liberals are now told that corporate bosses, policemen, and politicians have feelings that must be respected; that we must care for the strikebreaker, the prison guard, and the executive's wish for privacy. To do anything else would be elitist.
But would it be uncivilized? Becoming a responsible citizen and even an adult is precisely about knowing when to judge and condemn and when to sympathize and care.
I don't think "special interest group" is a perjorative term.
Agitating for equal rights sounds nice, but the end result is often a bunch of cumbersome/unfair workplace rules and statutory law that helps people other than the original targets.
As for reparations paid to the top 1%, I suspect they are not technically reparations, since a tax cut merely lets someone keep more of their own money. You've floated the communitarian argument that one can't make such big bucks without help from the society surrounding you, so there is some obligation on the part of the extra successful to share the proceeds. I think there is something to this, but I'm not sure how one could codify this in some philosophically satisfying way: once one starts down the road of redistribution of income, it tends to spiral into new kinds of unfairness.
on Wednesday, 18 October 2006 at 17.04
Permalink
I think the idea that all liberals believe in absolute relativism in all thinks is one of the biggest conservative strawmen thought up in recent times. And you see the conclusion: it's an excuse to condemn without guilt, and presumably without too much care for where such condemnation leads.
Yes, executives and union workers and strikebreakers are all people and deserve to be treated as people, but they're not what I was referring to when I mention "corporate people". Rather, I refer to the idea that corporations in law should be treated as people and given rights that the corporation would claim to be unalienable and God-given, on a par with constitutional guarantees [allegedly] extended to all "real" people.
I think that's a a legal concept that needs to be challenged. Corporations are not people and they have no rights, only concessions and obligations granted by the government as the representative of the people. That's what I mean by "corporate people". It's a topic I'll undoubtedly write more about in the future.
And you're right: my saying "reparations" was rhetorical hyperbole, but there you go. I was feeling rhetorical. Indeed, tax cuts just take less from the tax payer. In the overall scheme, of course, it fits into the total picture of how wealth gets created and distributed.
Yes, I think there is some input from the "communitarian" idea that you mention, but I don't think that's the foundation of my thoughts on the matter. Once upon a time I was a flat-tax thinker, since it seemed overtly "fair". The concept still seems "fair", but I think that's a naive outlook.
When we get to the philosophy of (so-called) progressive taxation and wealth redistribution, I think a better place to start is with the idea that taxation can be a reasonable price to pay for the benefits of civilization that we choose to buy. Of course, there are then a few details to work out. Therein, I suppose, lies the fun.
on Thursday, 19 October 2006 at 00.42
Permalink
I have an initial sympathy for the notion that "corporations are not people and they have no rights", but at the same time corporations are made up of people, and there is some obligation for society to suckle the corporation at some level of existance, and I imagine the "concessions and obligations granted by the government" will clash with individual rights to the extent we have now.