Channeling Gay Icon Quentin Crisp into A Blog on Gay Marriage, Same Sex Marriage and Marriage Equality

Quentin Crisp(THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT), in the Age of Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Andre Gide, Sir John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde, Leonard Bernstein, Liberace, Rock Hudson, Clifton Webb, and  Edward Albee, was the most famous openly Gay English speaking Gay in the world.

He believed that there was no inherent tension between straight women and Gay men, because Gay Men were the only males sympathetic to straight women’s female afflictions. He thought there was tremendous tension between straight men and Gay men because, “straight men do not like what Gay men do in sex, and don’t want it done to them.”

Crisp’s analysis was an Ockham razor’s approach to Discrimination against Gays.Quentin Crisp

On March 25, 2013, I received an email from a Parisian sophisticate; she wrote me after watching anti-gay marriage rioters battle French riot police on the Champs-Elysees. The rioters were fighting their way to the Presidential Palace, to personally attack French President Hollande for submitting a law allowing Gay Marriage in France.

“A massive anti-gay marriage protest in Paris ended in violence yesterday as police used tear gas and batons on activists who tried to get past police barricades onto the Champs-Elysees. Hundreds of thousands of people had traveled to the French capital for what was seen as a final protest before legislation allowing gay marriage and adoption is passed by the French Senate, the BBC reports.”

On March 26, 2013, there were oral arguments in the US Supreme Court concerning the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which banned Same Sex Marriage in California.

The American judicial arguments were thoughtful, and secular. That was refreshing; that allows this Blog to discuss Same Sex Marriage or, if you are a MSNBC viewer, Marriage Equality, without reference to Paul of Tarsus.

The Old Testament does not say anything about Same Sex Marriage, but its commentary on Gays must be stated to be homophobic. Jesus of Nazareth said nothing about Gays nor Marriage for Gays; however, Paul of Tarsus, the second most important man in the history of Christianity said a lot about homosexuality. Paul of Tarsus is a homophobe’s delight. And if Paul of Tarsus is a delight to homophobes, Islam is Nirvana to homophobes, murderous Nirvana. The three religions of Abraham, (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are not kind to Gays.

So it was refreshing to hear a debate about Gays and Marriage Equality without reference to the three religions of Abraham. The fact that the oral arguments were secular allows us to step away from the Religions of Abraham and discuss Same Sex Marriage in a historical context.

This Blog found two statements by the Justices succinct in placing the Marriage Equality issue in historical context.

The first one was by Justice Alito: JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO: You want us to assess the effects of same-sex marriage, the potential effects on — of same-sex marriage, the potential — the effects of Proposition 8. But what is your response to the argument which has already been mentioned about the need to be cautious in light of the newness of the — the concept of — of same-sex marriage.

The one thing that the parties in this case seem to agree on is that marriage is very important. It's thought to be a fundamental building block of society and its preservation essential for the preservation of society. Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years. Same-sex marriage is very new. I think it was first adopted in The Netherlands in 2000. So there isn't a lot of data about its effect. And it may turn out to be a — a good thing; it may turn out not to be a good thing, as the supporters of Proposition 8 apparently believe.

But you want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cell phones or the Internet? I mean we — we are not — we do not have the ability to see the future.

On a question like that, of such fundamental importance, why should it not be left for the people, either acting through initiatives and referendums or through their elected public officials?”

The other statement was by Justice Anthony Kennedy, on Marriage Equality:” There's a wonderful destination or there's a cliff.”

As every breathing MSNBC commentator, host, hostess, pundit, guest assures us, in a consistent leitmotif, those who oppose Marriage Equality are on the wrong side of history. Really?

The Upper Paleolithic evolution, 50,000 years ago, established Mankind as the uber life form in the entire history of the Earth, all billions of years of it.

Six thousand years ago, Mankind stumbled into modern civilization; five thousand years ago Mankind started recording Mankind.

In those 5,000 years of recorded history, there has been a severe lack of memorializing Marriage Equality or Gay Marriage or Same Sex Marriage, until the year 2000 AD.

In Ancient Egypt, ancient to the ancients, Pharaohs were marrying their sisters to develop an inbred royal line, yet there is no mention of Same Sex Marriage. Gay Marriage seems to have been a greater taboo that Incest.

In Ancient Greece, the Kingdom of Sparta must have been the most Gay friendly society in history. Every Spartan soldier, including King Leonidas, hero of Thermopylae, had to have a Gay lover, HAD TO HAVE A GAY LOVER in the Spartan Army. The Spartans believed that having a Gay lover among your fellow soldiers increased unit cohesion. But there was no Gay Marriage; the Gay soldiers of Sparta married ONLY WOMEN.

The Sacred Band of Thebes, 300 crack soldiers, the Marine Corps of Ancient Greece were all Gay. When they were allowed to marry, they could not marry Gay Men. They could only marry women.

Sappho, the Poetess cum Queen of Lesbians, was nailing every beautiful woman dropping by the isle of Lesbos, but there was no same sex marriage.

Alexander the Great’s great love was Hephaestion, a male. Alexander married twice; both brides were women. Alexander thought himself a God; this Blog maintains that a male God could have married a man if he so desired. Who among us does not think Alexander the Great could have installed Same Sex Marriage if he so desired? But he did not.

In the Roman Empire, the Emperors were acknowledged as Living Gods, not only by themselves, unto themselves, but by every citizen, subject and slave of Rome. The Emperor’s words were Law, no dissent allowed.

One of the greatest Living Gods was Emperor Hadrian, the Emperor who built Hadrian’s Wall in Great Britain. His lover was the male, Antinous. The whole Roman Empire knew that the Emperor’s/God’s great love was a Greek boy. Hadrian could have decreed his Divine marriage to Antinous and no one would have  objected, the penalty to objecting being crucifixion. Yet Hadrian did not marry the Greek boy.

Antinous fell overboard and drowned on a trip up the River Nile.

Hadrian “ wept like a woman.”

After his death, Hadrian made Antinous a God. He made him a God, but did not marry him,”….. the Greeks deified him at Hadrian's request,….”

“….Deeply saddened, Hadrian founded the Egyptian city of Antinopolis in his memory, and had Antinous deified – an unprecedented honour for one not of the ruling family. The cult of Antinous became very popular in the Greek-speaking world..”

Antinous was a Dead God to Hadrian, but not a dead husband.

In China, the Emperors lived in the Forbidden City, surrounded by 10,000 eunuchs, carrying their pickled detached members in jars,yet  nary a Chinese Emperor married one. Admiral Zheng He, the greatest explorer of his age was a eunuch, who did not marry a man.

Among the Mayas,”Mayan society considered homosexuality preferable to premarital heterosexual sex, so the nobles got sexual slaves for their children….” Among the Mayas, there was no Same Sex Marriage.

Among the Caribs, there was Gay Death before Gay Marriage:” It was a doctor of Colón, Diego Alvarez Chanca, in a letter from 1494, who first gave news of that. He spoke of the Carib custom of capturing young men to those who removed all the masculine organs. These developed "feminine characteristics and the Carribeans employed them for the practice of sodomy in a manner similar to that which the Arabs enjoy their young people like eunuchs and two-spirits. ... when the time comes, and they become grown men, the Caribs kill them and eat them."

Five thousand years of history, disparate societies, none of which were influenced by Jewish, Christian or Muslim homophobia, did not experiment with Gay Marriage, or Same Sex Marriage, or Marriage Equality.

Then in the year 2000 AD, the Dutch, the dullest people in the world; a people whose national cuisine is from Indonesia, decided to bring to Civilization, Same Sex Marriage, right after they unionized their Army.

And supporters of Same Sex Marriage cannot understand why students of History are skeptical about the viability of Marriage Equality?

Because of that skepticism, supporters of Marriage Equality want the skeptics to start dying quicker.

The following is excerpted from the CNN program, ANDERSON COOPER 360; Mr Kluwe is a hip professional football player.

“KLUWE: I think there would be…. a couple of guys who wouldn't get it but that's just like society at large. You know, there are people who never will get it and you pretty much just have to wait for them to grow old and die off….. “

Mr. Kluwe is talking about my generation, sired by the generation that defeated the Nazis; a skeptical generation, that spent its youth fighting the Communists in the jungles of Vietnam and their adulthood bringing down the Communists of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

My generation, now being badgered and nagged to die, knows History, because we bled out for History, not XBOXES, nor PLAYSTATIONS, nor FACEBOOK nor TWITTER but History itself. All I can say in defense of my generation, which Mr. Kluwe wants to die quicker, is that we outlived Amy Whitehouse, and hell, we may outlive steroid stuffed Millennial football players.

Obviously Marriage Equality is trendy,(who knew the Dutch, TH DUTCH, could start a trend?) but trendy of what?

The following is excerpted from a Meghan Daum column: “The other day, I stumbled across a conversation about homosexuality on a local Christian radio station. There were three people talking, .... one of them homed in on a grand observation. Notice how you don't see many images of older people in gay literature and media. It's a party scene, a 'me-obsessed' culture." (I'm paraphrasing.)

The others quickly jumped in, painting the "gay lifestyle" as an extra-depraved wing of youth culture, a hub of vanity and the kind of body-conscious male narcissism that plays out in the shallow bacchanal of West Hollywood nightclubs. (Again, I'm paraphrasing.)..... as I sat in my driveway listening to the radio Christians assert that all gay men are preening, fashion-obsessed gym rats ....I realized how naive it is to think that long-held stereotypes can be extinguished by "Modern Family" alone....”

Is Marriage Equality a trend reflective of a shallow society? Or is it a milestone toward justice?

“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, but It Bends Toward Justice”. ― Martin Luther King

That quote from Dr. King is so prevalent among MSNBC commentators that one must believe it was incorporated into a mass hypnosis at the Training Seminar, or slipped into their Mother’s Milk when they were breast fed.

Does the rise of Marriage Equality mean that the arc of Morality is bending toward Justice? As we debate Marriage Equality, we debate it in a world in which more women are raped on a per capita basis and on an absolute basis than in any other time in human history. We are discussing Same Sex Marriage in a universe in which more women are murdered, for just being a woman, on a per capita basis, and in absolute terms than in any other time in history. We are discussing Gay Marriage in a time in which more children are dying from famine or serving as child soldiers than any other time in history. Therefore is Marriage Equality an example of a necessary social justice? Or an example of trendy Globalized Elitism?

We are discussing “Skim milk” marriage in a time in which more women and children are sold into sex slavery than ever before in history. Sex trafficking is mushrooming virulently around the world, and our society considers a Marriage Equality debate as the pinnacle of Social Justice?

Justice Alito’s comment inexorably leads reasonable people  to this question: Is Western society so far advanced since the turn of the 21^st  century that it can disregard a 5,000 year old taboo against same sex marriage? And if it is that advanced, what caused such enlightenment? Cell phones? The Internet? Nathan Lane? Ellen DeGeneres? Gavin Newsom? MODERN FAMILY? Ricky Martin? GLEE? Bishop Eugene Robinson? Anderson Cooper? MSNBC? Wanda Sykes? Rob Reiner? Mayor Bloomberg? Andrew Sullivan?

What is so different about Western society since the year 2000? Do we not still need air to live? Just as our forebears did? If cut, do we still not bleed as our ancestors did before 2000? Why is this generation, in this blip of Reality TV, wiser than every generation before it? For 5,000 years?

Is this society of Andy Cohen, OPRAH, Alex Wagner wiser than the Marriage Inequality society of the Athens of Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus?

How can this society feel so secure in defying 5,000 years of social mores? Is it Technology?

Technology?  If it is technology, does that mean if the electricity grid is taken down, same sex marriage will end shortly thereafter? Would  Same Sex Marriage be doomed, if there was no electricity to power CNN and BRAVO?

Hubris? Societal hubris can only function when there is a cornucopia of food. Famine prone nations like Ethiopia and the sub Sahara are not contemplating same sex marriage.  If there is worldwide famine, as seems likely by 2050, will that mean a rollback in marriage equality?

And how can this society indulge in hubris when it has produced hip hop rather than a Beethoven or a Mozart or a George Gershwin or a Duke Ellington?

How can this society indulge in hubris when it has produced comic books rather than a Dickens, or a Steinbeck or a Garcia Marquez?

How can this society indulge in hubris when it values the inventiveness of Steve Jobs above Thomas Edison? An elitist toy maker above a man who invented and then gave electricity to the masses.

Youth? When did societal wisdom be associated with youth? We have seen youth lead social movements before in history, The Children’s Crusade under 12 year old Stephan of Cloyes. They set out to free Jerusalem, and were slaughtered for their efforts, or starved to death, or sold into slavery. The track record of youth leading the way is not that good.

Technology, hubris and youth against 5,000 years of history, no wonder Justice Alito and reasonable people are scared witless about the advent of same sex marriage.

We, who have lived History from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy,  to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the end of Apartheid, are seen by this sound bite society as not wise from living life but only as obstacles to the installation of MODERN FAMILY as the beau ideal. We, who have lived History, see ourselves as Mountain Men, who know the trails and passes of the High Country, pleading with a modern day Donner Party to wait before they rush headlong into the High Sierra. Their response to us is that neither snow nor elements of nature matter, we will see.

This debate over Gay Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Marriage Equality is, in the cosmic sense, in the karmic sense, nothing but ether, fumes, morning mist that will be burned away by the rising sun. The real issue is this-can this debased, diminished contemporary society of corruption, scorn, selfishness, greed, violence, copycat Orwellian groupthink, aimlessness, consumerism, narcissism, Botox, tawdriness, and rape come up with ONE good societal idea, let alone a game changing idea of value?

The ascent of interracial marriage sprang from a Civil Rights Revolution honed and stropped by giants, a President who had personally accepted the surrender of the Nazis(Eisenhower), followed by a President who was a war hero(Kennedy); an iconic baseball player(Jackie Robinson), an iconic pastor(Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.), an iconic singer(Lena Horne), an iconic martyr (Medgar Evers), an iconic every woman(Rosa Parks), two iconic Supreme Court Justices(Robert L Jackson, and Earl Warren), and an iconic black attorney(Thurgood Marshall).

How can any reasonable person re-think their position on Marriage Equality when Marriage Equality is advocated by soulless midgets, or bloodless cable news’ holograms, without sinews or pulses, or rhinestone mediocre mavens of fashion and fad? Of what moral value does a man have to his neighbors when he changes his position on a issue not by moral conversion, but to satisfy his hectoring wife and petulant son? Or his political ambitions?

We know this, Marriage Equality will totally change the society, and all the inhabitants of our casual comedy will be utterly transformed.

“In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born”.”                       

This society is birthing a terrible beauty; all we know is that it will be either terrible or beautiful…but it won’t be both. To quote Justice Anthony Kennedy, on Marriage Equality:” There's a wonderful destination or there's a cliff.”