Sublime

“We don’t believe it,” they told him. “You can’t have a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and suck cock.”

The 1895 trial and ruin of Oscar Wilde hung in the air of English society. Sex between consenting women was not illegal. Silence was the weapon of its repression.

confesses to “scripture-phobia”3 and Gary Comstock offers no theological excuses for the Leviticus text (20:13) which condemns gays to death. “How many times and in how many ways do we have to be told that we should be killed before we take it seriously? Is not once enough?”4

I hereby claim these figures as lesbians. I refuse to join the historians who deny the legitimacy of their relationships because they failed to leave a map of where they touched one another.

(“Phoebus the perfume maker fucks excellently,”

The single factor which opinion polls showed to have changed public opinion on the matter was people knowing somebody – a family member, friend or work colleague – who is gay. This factor has significant implications for other rights movements. A second obvious factor in that change in attitude has been the increasing visibility of gays in public l

These men bear the weight of public shaming, yet at the same time their shaming exposes a larger public to the reality that these forms of transgressive sex are in fact possible (even if also always threatening).

ancient Romans didn’t think in terms of sexual identity (gay or straight) but in terms of gender identity (manly or womanly).