Dan Vera, Humor, Marriage Equality, Religion, Right Wingers

Maggie Gallagher Speaks

November 8, 2009 Dan Vera Leave a comment

You can thank Jeff Whitty (of Avenue Q) for this bit o' truth.

Building Connections & Community for Gay Men since 1989

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

0110 -

ANTINOUS born (d: 130 C.E.); If there was an All Time Beautiful Men contest, this man would have been a contender if he didn’t just walk away with the cup. And like most beauties, be married well. Antinous was a famous beauty of the ancient world who became the beloved of the emperor Hadrian.

He may have been a male prostitute when Hadrian met him, but his origins are obscure though later on he was believed to have been the product of a virgin birth. All that is known for certain is that Hadrian was immediately and utterly smitten with the beautiful 15-year-old.

From that time on, Antinous was with the emperor constantly until a journey to Egypt where he was drowned in the Nile. Some say that Antinous, knowing that a prophecy had declared the death of Hadrian unless a living sacrifice were to be offered in his place, died so that his lover might live. Others believe that Antinous, growing into young manhood, was ashamed of playing mistress to the emperor.

The most poignant story is that the boy killed himself because he couldn’t bear the idea of growing old. What we know for certain is that Hadrian’s grief at the death of Antinous was uncontained and nothing short of monumental. He deified him and founded the city of Antinopoölis in Egypt in his honor (and many other Antinopoölises elsewhere in the world) and renamed the boy’s birthplace Antinopoölis as well.

A cult was inaugurated in his honor that focused on the youth who was born of a virgin and went on to sacrifice his own life for the good of mankind. Coins were minted with his likeness and numerous busts and shatteringly beautiful statues were erected to commemorate the beauty of this youth and the love the emperor felt for him (there are so many beautiful images that are purported to be Antinous it is hard to choose which one to include here).

After deification, Antinous was associated with and depicted as the Egyptian god Osiris, associated with the rebirth of the Nile. Virgin birth. Risen from death. Sacrificed for the benefit of all people.

Sound familiar?

Antinous was depicted as the Roman Bacchus, a god related to fertility, cutting vine leaves. Sociologist Royston Lambert wrote an utterly fascinating study of the relationship of Hadrian and Antinous as well as an equally intriguing discussion of the parallels between this story of a young man, sacrificed and associated with rebirth, and another contemporaneous story about a young man from Nazareth.

Highly recommended: Check this out on Amazon .

Noteworthy

0622 -

MUHAMMAD begins his hejira from Mecca to Medina, marking the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

Born

1943 -

The great Cuban poet, novelist and memoirist REINALDO ARENAS was born (d. 1990). Despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, Arenas grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Born in the countryside outside of Holguin, Cuba, in 1973 he was imprisoned for his homosexuality and his opposition against the Fidel Castro regime. In 1980 he went to the USA. In 2000 Julian Schnabel made a movie about his life based on Arenas' memoir: Before Night Falls.

1956 -

TONY KUSHNER, American playwright, born; Kushner seized the New York theater scene by the throat with his play Angels in America and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Angels… is a play in two parts. The first entitled Millennium Approaches, and the second is entitled Perestroika. Other plays include Hydrotaphia, Slavs!: Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, A Bright Room Called Day, Homebody/Kabul, and the book for the musical Caroline, or Change. His translation of Bertoldt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children was performed at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 2006 starring Meryl Streep and directed by George C. Wolfe.

In April 2003 he and his long-time partner, Entertainment Weekly editor Mark Harris, were wed in a ceremony in New York. His play The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With A Key to the Scriptures was inspired by two 19th century thinkers and their works -- George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The play looks at the life of a 20th century thinker, a retired longshoreman, Gus Marcantonio, who's feeling confused and defeated by the 21st century. In summer 2007, he invites his sister and his three children (who in turn bring along spouses, ex-spouses, lovers and more) to a most unusual family reunion in their Brooklyn brownstone.

In the early 2000s, Kushner began writing for film. His co-written screenplay Munich was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg in 2005. In January 2006, a documentary feature about Kushner entitled Wrestling with Angels debuted at the Sundance Festival. He worked with Spielberg again, writing the screenplay for an adaptation of historian Doris Goodwin Kearns's book Team of Rivals. The screenplay for Lincoln would receive multiple awards, in addition to nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Died

1995 -

MAY SARTON, Belgian-born American poet died (b. 1912) an American poet, novelist, and memoirist born in Wondelgem, Belgium. Many of her novels and poems are pellucid reflections of the Lesbian experience. When she published her more openly Lesbian novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing in 1965, Sarton feared, rightly, that writing so strongly about Lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the previously established value of her work.

"The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing," she wrote in Journal of Solitude 1973, "to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality..."

1995 -

STEPHEN SPENDER, the English poet died (b. 1909) A poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work, Spender's sexuality has been the subject of debate. Spender's seemingly changing attitudes towards homosexuality and heterosexuality have caused him to be labeled bisexual, repressed, latently homophobic, or simply someone so complex as to resist easy labeling.

Many of his friends in his earlier years were Gay. Spender himself had many affairs with men in his earlier years, most notably with Tony Hyndman (who is called "Jimmy Younger" in his memoir World Within World). Following his affair with Muriel Gardiner he shifted his focus to heterosexuality, though his relationship with Hyndman complicated both this relationship and his short-lived marriage to Inez Maria Pearn (1936-39).

His marriage to concert pianist Natasha Litvin in 1941 seems to have marked the end of his romantic relationships with men. Subsequently, he toned down homosexual allusions in later editions of his poetry.

The following line was revised in a republished edition:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution.

It was later revised to read:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have an affair, a railway fare, or a revolution.

Spender sued author David Leavitt for allegedly using his relationship with "Jimmy Younger" in Leavitt's While England Sleeps in 1994. The case was settled out of court with Leavitt removing certain portions from his text.

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