Value for Friday of Week 02 in the season of Dormancy

Inclusion Regardless of Lifestyles and Opinions

Stonewall Inn after riots, New York City, 1969

Through our lifestyles and opinions, we express our individuality. Yet we are more than our choices and opinions. Greater knowledge, and a better understanding of the science, history, literature and art about the ways in which we divide ourselves can help us live more ethically, more fully, and shape a better world.

Diversity is the bedrock on which the richness of life rests. We have jazz, blues, rock, loosely termed “classical” music in every age for the past thousand years, and music that is specific to virtually every ethnic culture, because we human beings have vivid imaginations and a myriad ways of expressing ourselves. We have a wealth of forms and styles in dress and virtually every form of art for that reason. We are free to pursue a variety of interests, and today our menu of choices is expanding because of the tremendous wealth of information we have at our fingertips through modern means of communication. We can witness two world champion events on the same day, in vivid color and in the comfort of our homes, simply by turning on our television; and then push a button and be transported undersea for a vivid survey of its scenery and wildlife. With the flick of a few switches, we can hear music that was once reserved for the ears of kings and their courts, and then flick a few more switches and hear a reproduction of sound from a modern jazz club. Because of this richness, the vast majority of people in the developed world are richer than the richest and most powerful king in the first several thousands of years of our history.

In evolutionary history, diversity began with natural selection, which created a rich variety of life forms, and blossomed when living organisms began to reproduce sexually. Sexual reproduction ensured that each organism would be not only unique, but also identifiably so.

Yet sometimes, in our quest to reduce life to terms we can comprehend, we humans have tried to squelch diversity. Because of our particular nature as a social species, we developed a natural inclination to prefer conformity. Conformity has its place but sometimes people are inclined to suppress our differences solely for the sake of personal comfort. This has led to an unfortunate tendency toward unthinking suppression of dissent and unfamiliar lifestyles.

Real

True Narratives

Currently in the United States at least, the rights of lesbians, gays, the bisexual and the transgendered (LGBT) are being suppressed and denied. However, the mere fact that there is a public struggle over the issue represents progress. Our Humanist ethic proposes a simple test for morality and ethics: what does not do harm, as far as the mind can reasonably foresee, is not wrong. It is for that reason that we stand firmly at the side of our sisters and brothers in the GLBT community in their struggle for equal treatment and equal rights.

The reader may react with puzzlement or disfavor to the juxtaposition of dissent and GLBT rights. I see them as illustrating the same point and invite the reader to consider the idea.

David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution (St. Martin's Press, 2004).
Martin Duberman, Stonewall:The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Uprising That Changed America (Dutton, 1993).
Henry Abelove, The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, andPolitic (Routledge, 1993).
Eric Marcus, Making Gay History: The Half Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights (Harper Paperbacks, 2002).
Chris Bull, Come Out Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay & Lesbian Liberation (Nation Books, 2001).
Larry P. Gross and James D. Woods, The Colombia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics (Columbia University Press, 1999).
Roger Streitmatter, Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Diane Pub. Co., 1995).
Mark Thompson and Randy Shilts, Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement (St. Martin's Press, 1994).
Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media (Columbia University Press,1996).
David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, American Queer, Now and Then (Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York during the 1960s and '70s (Bloomsbury USA, 2009).
Linda Hirshman, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2012): “tracing the history of gay rights from the early 20th century to the present.”
Bruce Bawer, A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (Simon & Schuster, 1993).
Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans (W.W. Norton & Company, 2012): “Texas justice has rarely been kind to homosexuals.”
Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History (St. Martin’s Press, 2019): “. . . a few years ago, he set up an amateur museum of local queer history in his Bushwick loft — he prefers the term ‘queer’ for its chronological sweep and denotation of gender and sexual nonconformity — and noticed that queers in Brooklyn today know little about their antecedents.”
Jan Morris, Conundrum: From James to Jan - an extraordinary personal narrative of transsexualism (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974) “. . . I used to understand every word he wrote while I was a woman and he was a man, now that we are both women he mystifies me.”
Eric Cervini, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020): “. . . for almost a decade before Stonewall, (Franklin) Kameny boldly challenged the reigning orthodoxy that homosexuality was a mental illness and led an audacious campaign against the federal government’s ban on employing gay workers.”
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, The Freezer Door (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents, 2020): “In a Gentrifying Seattle, a Queer Activist Works to Blur Borders”.
Elon Green, Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York (Celadon, 2021): “These Gay Men Frequented Manhattan Piano Bars. So Did Their Killer.”
Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (Straus, Farrar & Giroux, 2021): “Nearly every Monday night from 1987 to 1992, hundreds of people met on West 13th Street in New York City to plan and execute the fight of their lives.”
James Ivory, Solid Ivory: Memoirs (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021): “There is a wistful defiance to his sexual frankness as a Protestant gay man who came of age in an era of intense repression, as well as the Depression . . .”
James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Henry Holt & Co., 2022), “tallies the cost of homophobia on lives and careers in Washington, D.C., from the days of F.D.R. to the Clinton presidency.”
Jack Parlett, Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise (Hanover Square Press, 2022): “. . . a sweeping, meditative history of the queer summer mecca.”
James Gavin, George Michael: A Life (Harry N. Abrams, 2022): “Michael emerges as a gifted, tragic and infuriating figure, whose tortured relationship to his sexuality steered him into artistic confusion and self-sabotage.”
Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land (Liveright, 2022): “. . . learning allowed Brorby to envision a different kind of future for himself, one that would eventually lead him to places where people were more accepting of his sexuality. Education also opened up new professional opportunities that helped him to escape his 'fossil-fuel heritage' — a long history of family members working for the coal industry and damaging the very land he had grown to love.”

Religious opinion has long been a dividing line, with tragic consequences.

James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), on “Christianity’s Original Sin”

In Paris, on August 24, 1572, 20,000 Huguenots were systematically slaughtered by the Catholic hierarchy for the heresy of Protestantism in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

Barbara B. Diefendorf, The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin’s 2008).
Barbara O’Sullivan, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre at Paris, 1572 (digital).
Jesse Russell and Ronald Cohn, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (VSD, 2012).

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Documentaries about gay and lesbian people and issues:

The Times of Harvey Milk
Paragraph 175, about Nazi persecution of homosexuals
8: The Mormon Proposition: Equality for Some, about the Mormon church's attempt to deny equal rights to homosexuals
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, first-hand accounts of twenty-six people
Valentino: The Last Emperor, about the fashion designer and his life with his partner
Coming Out: Voices of Gay and Lesbian Teens and Their Families
One Nation, Under God, about efforts to "cure" homosexual men
The Celluloid Closet, about Hollywood's treatment of gays and lesbians

Documentaries about people on the outside of society:

Paradise Lost – The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, about the West Memphis 3, who were accused of crimes they may not have committed

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

Valerie Martin, The Ghost of Mary Celeste: A Novel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2014) employing “multiple voices, styles and points of view, even interpolated genres, from poetry and court records to newspaper clippings, letters and diaries.”
Gengorah Tagame, My Brother’s Husband, Volume 2 (Pantheon, 2018), is “a sweet fictional tale that scrutinizes Japan’s widespread cultural taboo against gay marriage.”
Christopher Castellani, Leading Men: A Novel (Viking, 2019): “His first achievement in ‘Leading Men’ is to create a world, one inhabited largely by young, charming gay men, that seems to be comprised almost entirely of late nights and last cigarettes and picnics on good blankets and linen suits with the trousers rolled to the knees. This writer’s scenes glitter, and they have a strong sexual pulse.”
Shannon Pufahl, On Swift Horses: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2019): “It’s a book about the midcentury American West, gambling and queer love; but it doesn’t follow the plow of stories from any of these territories. Pufahl’s voice is strikingly solid, timeworn but not nostalgic, as she unravels a cinematic story that avoids genre clichés or sentimentality.”
Brandon Taylor, Real Life: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2020): “. . . a novel that probes — painstakingly, with the same microscopic precision its protagonist uses in the lab — the ways that an anxious queer black brain is mutated by the legacies of growing up in a society (in Wallace’s case, rural Alabama) where the body that houses it is not welcome.”
Pajtim Statovci, Bolla: A Novel (Pantheon, 2021): a young man has a homosexual affair in Kosovo, at great risk.
Akwaeke Ezemi, The Death of Vivek Oji: A Novel (Riverhead, 2020): “The reader understands that Vivek’s long hair and lipstick are clues to something Kavita doesn’t have words to discuss. Neither does her husband, brother-in-law or sister-in-law, whose fellow church members attempt a 'deliverance' to flog the 'demon' out of Vivek.”
Robert Jones, Jr., The Prophets: A Novel (Putnam, 2021): “The central story . . . is anchored by Isaiah and Samuel, two enslaved boys on the Halifax plantation, also known as Empty. In each other, Isaiah and Samuel find a love that brings peace to the hearts of the many enslaved people on the plantation, until they are betrayed by a fellow enslaved man . . .”
Robbie Couch, The Sky Blues (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2021): “Sky Baker may be openly gay, but in his small, insular town, making sure he was invisible has always been easier than being himself. Determined not to let anything ruin his senior year, Sky decides to make a splash at his high school’s annual beach bum party by asking his crush, Ali, to prom . . .”
San Young Park, Love in the Big City: A Novel (Grove Press, 2021): “A Queer, Literary Coming-of-Age in Seoul”.
Tonyi Onyebuchi, Goliath: A Novel (Tordotcom, 2022): “Onyebuchi suburbanizes outer space and makes battered, almost uninhabitable provincial America the frontier. ‘Best thing that coulda happened to the planet was all the white folks left it,’ thinks one of the men left behind. Except now the white folks are coming back.”
Davey Davis, X: A Novel (Catapult, 2022): “After an intense sadomasochistic one-night stand at a Brooklyn warehouse party, the narrator fixates on X as a distraction — or perhaps a chance at salvation — as the world slips ever further into fascism. A mysterious government agency is encouraging undesirables to 'export,' or voluntarily leave the country.”
James Hannaham, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta: A Novel (Little Brown and Company, 2022): “After 20 Years in a Men’s Prison, a Trans Woman Returns Home”.
Isabel Waidner, Sterling Karat Gold: A Novel (Graywolf Press, 2023): “Waidner grounds their surrealism in the history of England’s bigotry against queer people and immigrants; in the ideas and images of other writers, artists and musicians; and in recognizable sci-fi tropes.”

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Lifestyles

Only recently in the United States, and across the world, has a right to marry been accorded to same-sex couples. Only a few decades ago, the subject was taboo, even for discussion. Benjamin Britten, who was a gay man, sought to open the door a bit through his work.

Benjamin Britten, Turn of the Screw, Op. 54 (1954) (approx. 105-115’) (libretto) (score) (recordings): adapted from Henry James' novel, this is a story about the fear of otherness. Here are links to performances on disc conducted by Colin Davis, Britten, and Harding. Here are links to video recordings of the opera, conducted by Ono and Stanhope.
Britten wrote many songs for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears. They performed many of the works together, with Britten on piano. Here they are performing Schubert’s Winterreise.

Many “classical” composers were or are believed to have been of other than “straight” orientation. They include:

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) was influential in orchestral instrumentation, and an opera composer
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), known as father of the concerto grosso
Georg Frideric Händel (1685-1759), a champion of the oratorio
Frederick the Great (1712-1786), minor composer but a major political figure of his time
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), our most prolific lieder composer
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), in the pantheon of great composers for piano repertoire
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), a great symphonist and composer of ballet scores
Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) composed mainly orchestral music and opera
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), a top composer of chamber works
Aaron Copland (1900-1990), a great American composer
Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a great modern composer
Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007), mainly known for composing contemporary operas
John Cage (1912-1992), a groundbreaking minimalist
Benjamin Britten (1917-1976): his compositional interests were wide-ranging, including opera, choral, chamber and orchestral works
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), a widely respected composer of a wide variety of works, and one of the great conductors of his time