We Dast Not Speak Its Name

The year before he was implicated in the 1895 sodomy trial which sent Oscar Wilde to Reading Gaol, Wilde's "particular young friend," Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote a poem entitled "Two Loves." 

Milord Douglas

 

As literature, the poem is one of those florid pre-Raphaelite excrescences overperfumed by apostrophe, personification, atmosphere, moonlight and melancholia. In it, the young lord strolls through an untended garden where he spies two figures, one bright and frisky, the other forlorn and hang-doggy. Being a brash and sociable fellow, he flags them down, asks each to account for himself, and learns that both claim to be 'Love.' Douglas's poem concludes with him addressing the second, sorrier figure, and being answered in turn by each. The last line is familiar by now:

. . . I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame . . .
. . . I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

Homosexuality has been sparsely obscured in conversational euphemisms long before "gay" gained currency - the Victorians spoke of a "confirmed bachelor;" before that, the penchant was politely called "the Greek vice;" the stage called them "Bulgarians," and everyone knows any number of less polite words. The point being that everyone knows a few words, more or less polite, by which to refer to homosexuality without saying the word. Everyone from about the age of 12 onwards knows what it means, has seen it portrayed on television, in PG-13 movies, has by that age either been warned off it in church or been shown its finer points in church. The specifics of the Vatican's public relations problem are widely familiar . . .

. . . and it's not the hat.

In spite of the near universality of our American sexual vernacular, the Republican delegations in the state legislatures of Tennessee and Missouri, operating under the usual GOP presumption of an ignorant grassroots constituency, have each introduced sex education bills for vote which the press has dubbed "Don't Say Gay" measures. Missouri's current HB 2501 states with admirable brevity that, "Notwithstanding any other law to the contrary, no instruction, material, or extracurricular activity sponsored by a public school that discusses sexual orientation other than in scientific instruction concerning human reproduction shall be provided in any public school."

So when it comes to the spectrum of actual sexual practices, no teacher is entirely permitted to "speak me sooth" across the entire range of venery. By an act of legislative necromancy, if no one can say the word then the thing itself will magically vanish. And while they imagine no one is watching, the Republicans want to move "Don't ask, don't tell" from the back of the M1A2 Abrams tank to the front of the middle-school classroom.

"Not while I'm working, Cedric!"

And "Don't ask, don't tell" might take off in a dismaying number of directions: Missouri House member Dwight Scharnhorst (R-St. Louis), a co-sponsor of the Missouri bill, told HuffPost that teaching about LGBT issues would inevitably lead to other discussions. "There is no need to talk about Billy wanting to marry a goat," he said. Fair enough, and he's probably right - a conversation about the "homosexual agenda" would inevitably give rise to a conversation about the goat's desires and general wellbeing, and from that to PETA's radical "vegetarian agenda."

The version of the bill which Tennessee is attempting to enact further requires teachers to label adolescent hand holding as a "gateway sexual activity," so inflammatory that the teacher is not permitted to demonstrate its technique in the classroom upon pain of prosecution. Presumably, then, beneath an unspecified age it's permissible to clasp the hands in prayer, so long as the other hand is one's own.

So it may become matter of law that any form of sexual practice which doesn't result (with the best intentions, naturally) in reproduction is no longer merely the Love that dare not speak its name. It's the Love that may not speak its name, since it's a certainty that any teacher with the temerity to talk about that nasty business in class will end up as one of the nearly 2.3 million among the population currently in jail. The pupils of Tennessee and Missouri (and predictably also of states like Arizona and Alabama) are as yet exempt from prosecution for speaking on the playground about what they already talk about in pardonable ignorance mixed with a childish savoir-faire.

Rick Santorum's recent, fortunately capsized, presidential candidacy made uncomfortably clear (one might have thought) the Republican obsession over matters sexual - everything from marriage equality to contraception is now off their diminishing table, to the degree that one can only suspect a sizeable male contingent of the GOP of being either sexually ignorant, impotent or deeply, frustratedly sequestered in a dark, dank closet, fingering with sweaty palms its illicit lingerie purchases.

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves . . . ."

The Last Dictator (Who Is Not Gay)

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko addressed an accusation by Germany’s foreign minister that he was “Europe’s last dictator.” “Better to be a dictator than gay,” said Lukashenko.

                                                       -   Harper’s Magazine, “Findings,” March 12, 2012

I am Lukashenko. As you see, good looking fellow but not gay. Distinguished yes I would say. My faggot detractors in Washington and the rest of Europe call me last European dictator. And what is wrong with that, I am asking? Because I am not gay dictator, after all. I am as you can see simple dictator, man of ordinary tastes. Not like those European pansies.

I don't have nothing against the gay people. I just don't like very much. Not being gay myself, you understand. Especially that little German poofter, Westerwelle or whatever her name is. Sure, maybe I'm last dictator. Like he says. It's his problemski. Being dictator is being l'uomo premiero, top dog. Which means I'm a real guy. Not the only real guy in Belarus, because we don't have no gays I'm aware of here. Just the realest of the real guys. You see any gays here you let me know. Lukashenko.

Being dictator of course is of my own choosing. I make all decisions needing to make. Which means I'm not gay because the gays, they don't make no decisions. They just are whatever they happen to be, is can't help it. They say this. Whine, whine. So me, I decide I'm a dictator and look what. I'm a dictator. How can I be gay? Lukashenko is how you say straight shifter . . .  shooter.

You know, I like these dictator work. Best thing, dictators get to dress up. I always like Gadaffi's style may he rest in peace. That guy he knew how to dress up. Heels I'm not sure but dictator outfit was top shelf. Maybe the sunglasses a little gay but Lukashenko can fix.

And that Saddam what a guy. That guy knew how to decorate palace. Humble guy dictator like me, I could live well in one of Saddam's bathrooms. Is classy even for Belarus. Except little pump soaps is a little gay maybe.

Saddam, that guy knew a thing about lighting. In Belarus we have just overhead 10-watt fluorescent - no atmosphere to speak of, all the time snepp-crekkle-pop! No, give me a good chandellyair any day, like at chez Saddam. May he rest in peace.

Good thing about being dictator is motorcades. Better than taking walk. I can buy big American black sedan, then I give driver job to brother-in-law of late party opponent, and go out for driving with butch gang of motorcycle police. You thinking that's not gay, right? I think maybe you are beginning to understand Lukashenko.

No, I am last of European dictators.You don't find this guy out swanking around standing funny waving long silly hands in air like nancy piano player.

Not me Bub. I'm plan to keep on dictating, age gracefully looking great like Ricardo Montalban. Is he, right? Or is that Shah of Iran, not gay may he rest in peace?

Three Queers in a Tub

The GOP is having its difficulties with sassy youngsters, who won't stop asking about equal marital rights. First it was Michelle Bachmann explaining tendentiously to some Iowa high schoolers that everyone already has equal rights - just so long as they marry outside of their gender and within their species. The other day Rick Santorum walked into the same revolving door in New Hampshire with some college kids and emerged swinging, if one can use that word in the same sentence with "Santorum."

"Are we saying everyone should have the right to marry? So anyone can marry anyone else?" Santorum asked the insurgent crowd by way of countering the question. "So anybody can marry several people?" (Yes, yes, and why not?) There is always something disingenuous when an adult perpetrates an evident fallacy, particularly one hoary with age and overemployment. In this instance, Santorum offered his justifiably unruly audience a "straw man," the fallacy of exchanging whatever argument is currently on the table (equal marriage rights for everyone) for one speciously similar (three men! Oh gawd!). He then mistakenly presumed that the surrogate argument is so preposterous as not to require demolition. Like most common fallacies of informal logic, it introduces irrelevant matter into the conversation. It is of a piece with that other straw man offering, his famous "man on dog" comment (2003).

"Roll over."

Santorum, the press assumed, was likening gay marriages to polygamous ones, even though he did specifically ask one young interlocutor, "Well, what about three men?" He was understandably booed for this baldfaced evasion. Faced with a roomful of hostile youth, one wonders whether in an unchristian moment the candidate may have reconsidered, however briefly, his stand on abortion.

Constitutional

Even so he raises an interesting point. Why shouldn't anyone be permitted to marry several people, indeed? Or just foregatherings of any sexes in any numbers within a single matrimonial bond? The problem isn't an ethical one: marriage, whatever its current religious and cultural baggage, is at bottom (if I may use that phrase on the same page with "Santorum") an economic institution. The rules and the mythical status we attach to it are as purely conventional as the good manners we observe while eating. There are in nature as many ways to marry as there are to eat your lunch.

 "Nuclear" family 

No, it seems to me that as a culture, the Judaeo-Christian West just made a sheep-like dash for the simplest solution to getting the laundry and the cooking done. But it didn't have to work out this way - polygynous and polyandrous societies have been all the rage for milennia and they seem to work pretty well. Not to mention that such intricate arrangements may present a pretty serious obstacle to divorce, which would in the circumstance amount to expulsion from your accustomed part of town.

The advantages of such an arrangement are clear - everyone gets regular meals, everyone wears clean clothes, at least one adult knows what the kids are up to, and with a little bit of judicious scheduling, everyone gets regularly serviced. At the same time, the emotional baggage is lightened by being spread thin, sentiment never degenerates into the rank sentimentality of "hearts beating as one." It sounds like a no-nonsense, workable agreement.  It sounds like a "win-win" . . . or "win-win-win."

Get Your Hand Off My Asana

"Why do Baptists discourage sexual intercourse? Because it leads to dancing." (Methodist joke)

You may recall my old friend, Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist. He's back in the news, having found the Devil lurking under a yoga mat somewhere: the Daily Mail reports last week that the good father warned a group of Catholic faithful about the dangers of yoga. "You think you are doing it for stretching,” said Father Gabriele, “but it leads to Hinduism.” Here is another instance of a well-meaning and otherwise intelligent person who, having settled on a theory he particularly likes, quickly finds that everything conforms nicely to it. Father Gabriele has mounted his hobby horse, and his hobby horse (which he will ride a-crupper into the weeds 'til Kingdom come) is Old Nick himself.

The hand on your asana

This cautionary pronouncement, like the joke about sex and dancing, is a case of the "slippery slope," a fallacy of informal logic unfailingly invoked by the limp-wristed, the vaporous, the timorous and the spinsterly to spare the gleefully incautious any untimely plunge into the twin Abysses of Pleasure and Enlightenment. Vote for Obama, they whisper, and "before you know it" (the trademark phrase and present sign of the fallacy) the Christmas tree in the White House will be replaced by a slaughtered goat, the menu in the Congressional cafeteria will secretly become halal, Sh'aria law will be enacted by legislative zombies in Oklahoma or Minnesota (both states apparently preferred hotbeds of Islamist conspiracy), the American dollar - instituted and backed by a benign God since the deliverance from Egypt - will be supplanted by the yen/yuan/reichsmark/ruble/rupee/rand, schoolchildren will be taught to spell 'Koran' as 'Quran,' and we, by the waters of Babylon, shall be taught to weep. Mark my words, they invariably conclude.

I'm not saying that a good stiff regimen of yoga, properly practiced, isn't hell, but that's just metaphorical, like saying that the Republican debates or a date with Herman Cain are hell. I'm guessing that most of the people who practice it (those of my acquaintance at any rate) really are "doing it for stretching." Among other things. Of course, this omits any consideration of naked yoga, which may well be a slippery slope for the weak-minded, the intractibly lonely, the very aged or the blind - for my money, watching a middle-aged acolyte with a trust fund and a rice cooker stretch, sweat and breath studiously while naked isn't much of an aphrodisiac.

"Could you check my breathing?"

"My advice to young people," Father Gabriele adds in yet another slide into illogic, "would be to watch out for nightclubs, because the path is always the same: alcohol, sex, drugs and Satanic sects." Before you know it. 

"First a couple of G&T's, now this . . . "

The good father is bested in his logic only by Jose Benitez, the mayor of Huarmey, Peru. Hizonner has apparently been, by mysterious methods, tabulating the homosexuals in his bailiwick. He concludes that their numbers are increasing because of the high strontium content in the town's drinking water. It's probably safe to assume that the young Huarmeyeros drink the local tap water, and (assuming the mayor is right and their numbers really are growing), the mayor has stumbled on yet another informal fallacy, the hoary and bearded post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Or in plain English, since the young men are drinking the water and then (in the mayor's astute judgment) becoming homosexual (if that phrase makes any sense whatsoever), the cause must lie in the drinking water since this only happens after the male residents imbibe. Since none of the otherwise-gendered residents are affected by the refreshing draughts of local strontium, one suspects it's the mayor's problem more than the town's problem. This effectively removes the chance that his error is excusable on the grounds that he's not a chemist.