80 More Gays Around the World: Halfway Catch-up

Here we are, halfway through “80 More Gays” and I thought I’d give regular readers a brief reminder of where the journey has already taken us and with whom. It also gives new readers an idea of what they’ve missed. You can read the full connections by following the blog backwards, or start with January 2020. Being an Olympic year I tried to incorporate many Olympic links. Little did I know when compiling this series last year that circumstances would lead to its postponement.

1) k. d. lang (b.1961) has performed at the closing ceremonies both of Winter Olympics held in her native Canada. The first was the 1988 games in Calgary. One of the most anticipated competitions at those games was the Battle of the Brians between

2) Brian Orser (b.1961) and

3) Brian Boitano (b.1963), the world’s top two male figure skaters. Orser was the world champion and Boitano was the previous world champion. Boitano just pipped Orser to the Olympic gold medal. Boitano’s short programme was set to music from “Les Patineurs”, a ballet which was originally choreographed by

4) Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988). After his death the rights to his ballets went to various friends and colleagues. “Les Patineurs” was left to

5) Brian Shaw (1928-1992), former principal dancer at Sadler’s Wells in London. Sir Frederick created a role for Shaw in a ballet called “Tiresias”, named after the mythological transgender prophet

6) Tiresias. Shaw played one of the snakes having sex that Tiresias encounters. Striking one of the snakes caused Tiresias to change sex. Another myth says he was blinded by the goddess

7) Athena as punishment for seeing her bathe naked. Tiresias and Athena both appear in “The Odyssey” as advisors to Odysseus. Athena appears to him in the form of a man called Mentor. Athena was also patron of Athens, home to the temple complex on the Acropolis. Its chief architect was

8) Phidias (living 5th century BC). Another of his works was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the statue to Zeus at Olympia. No-one listed any Wonders until 300 years after Phidias died and there was never any consensus. Among them at one time were constructions by

9) Polycrates of Samos (d. 522 BC). Among his massive projects were a wall around the island, a temple to Hera, and a tunnel. Polycrates’ name became applied to a psychological complex in which a person worries about being too lucky. One example of this Polycrates Complex is the case of

10) Paul Morphy (1837-1884), a chess prodigy. He became riddled with guilt and fear of losing. One of his most famous matches took place during a performance of the little-known opera “Norma”. Despite its obscurity “Norma” inspired a novel by

11) Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930-1999) called “The Forest House”, a prequel to her novel “The Mists of Avalon”. These novels had an Arthurian theme, a genre popularised by the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites and members of the Arts and Crafts movement like

12) Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942), an architect and designer. He built a villa in Taormina, Sicily, on the site of an ancient temple. Ashbee’s friend,

13) Robert Hawthorn Kitson (1873-1947), also built a villa there. Taormina’s main church near by was also built on an ancient temple, dedicated to a bull deity called

14) Zeus-Serapis. In an Egyptian cult the sacred bull Apis was transformed into Osiris-Apis (Serapis) when it was sacrificed. The Greeks merged Serapis with their own god Zeus, and Zeus-Serapis was born and a temple built in Taormina. Bull symbols dominate Taormina which sits in the shadow of Mount Taurus. Stars within the constellation Taurus form a group called the Pleiades which represents mythical sisters. They provided the inspiration for an initiative aimed at improving the inclusion of women in astronomy launched by

15) Lisa Harvey-Smith (b.1979) of the Astronomical Society of Australia. Lisa’s main work was in the development of the Square Kilometre Array in the homeland of the Yamatji people of Western Australia. Local astronomers learned about the significance of the stars from Yamatji elders. The Milky Way represents the creator god common to Australian indigenous nations, the Rainbow Serpent, which the Yamatji call

16) Bimarri. The androgynous Rainbow Serpent features prominently in indigenous art and was a central motif in an all-indigenous production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by indigenous actor

17) Noel Tovey (b.1934). He incorporated the Rainbow Serpent into the design of the sets and costumes. The production was part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Cultural Festival. The Sydney Olympics are, retrospectively, the most gender diverse – 12 athletes were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual, 2 identified as intersex, and 3 have become transgender, including

18) Sandra Forgues (b.1969), a French rower who competed at 3 Olympics and won gold in Atlanta 1996. In 2004 she set up a media digital support company. The biggest project was for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in 2015 at the first European Games. The EBU’s most famous broadcast is the Eurovision Song Contest. In 2019 France attracted controversy centred around its choice of a gay Muslim singer called

19) Bilal Hassani (b.2000). The contest was held in Israel. An Israeli broadcaster produced a comedy thriller about a young gay Muslim singer representing France at the “Eurotone Song Contest” in Israel who becomes caught up in an ISIS terrorist plot. Bilal received racist and homophobic abuse because of the similarity of his own circumstances (except the fictional ISIS plot). Some people took it seriously, as with a parody of the ISIS flag at London Pride in 2015, though no flag stirs up emotions more than the Nazi flag with its swastika first adopted by

20) Alfred Schuler (1865-1923). His neo-pagan, anti-Semitic ideas were a mixture of ancient Roman beliefs and mysticism. Schuler was keen to perform an ancient dance in order to cure

21) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) of his madness, but he couldn’t find a nubile young man willing to dance naked like the ancients did. The dance was to be a recreation of one performed by priests of the Great Mother Goddess of ancient Phrygia in Turkey who became known to the Romans as

22) Cybele. The cult of Cybele became the state religion of the Roman Empire for a while. With her came her accompanying rites, third-gender priests and associated deities. Among these was a deity called

23) Agdistis. The Phrygians originally regarded Cybele and Agdistis as a dual intersex deity. The Greeks and Romans believed this intersex nature disturbed their gods and in their mythology had the gods castrate Agdistis. The Greeks used this to explain the creation of the almond, a plant with mystical qualities of divine favour. It’s also the source of the most popular poison in history, cyanide, sadly used in many suicides, including that of

24) John Menlove Edwards (1910-1958). Edwards was a pioneer in climbing and an extreme sportsman. He would easily have become an Olympian if sport climbing had been introduced into the Olympics before Tokyo 2020. There could be an lgbt climber at Tokyo 2020 with

25) Alex Johnson (b.1989), having already competed in a qualifying event. She didn’t reach Olympic qualification but she may still have a chance of being selected as she is the 2019 top-ranked US female in her event. The first lgbt Olympic climber was

26) George Mallory (1886-1924) who was awarded a gold medal for his participation in the first attempt to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1922. Sadly, George was killed on the 1924 expedition and never got to see his medal. Several lgbt climbers have since reached the top of Everest. The first Peruvian woman to do so was

27) Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (b.1974). She is also the first lesbian to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on the continents. Silvia was subjected to sexual abuse in her childhood. This inspired her to create a charity offering support to other victims. Another person to use their experiences to increase awareness and support of others is author

28) Dorothy Allison (b.1949) who addresses her own experiences in much of her writing. Dorothy’s first work to win a Lambda Literary Award was “Trash: Short Stories” in 1989 for Best Lesbian Fiction. The Lambda Awards were created by

29) L. Page “Deacon” Maccubbin. In 2003 he bought the USA’s first lgbt bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York. Deacon was one of the organisers of the first modern Pride, as was a former employee

30) Ellen Broidy (b.1946). She was a member of the Gay Liberation Front and the Lavender Menace (renamed the Radicalesbians). Another Radicalesbian member was

31) Barbara Love (b.1937). Before becoming a feminist campaigner Barbara swam in the 1952 and 1956 US Olympic swimming trials but didn’t make the Olympic team on either occasion. Only one lgbt athlete is currently known to have competed at the 1952 Olympics,

32) Marjorie Larney (b.1937), who, aged 15, is the youngest javelin thrower to have competed at the Olympics. Marjorie was also a feminist activist in the 1970s and an anti-Vietnam War campaigner. One of the biggest anti-Vietnam demonstrations was the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam organised by

33) David Mixner (b.1946). In 1977 David became involved in the campaign against Proposition 6, an initiative aimed to make it illegal to teach homosexuality in schools or employ lgbt teachers. Among the other campaigners was

34) Leonard Matlovich (1943-1988), a Vietnam War veteran best remembered for being a pioneer in the fight for the acceptance of lgbt personnel in the US armed forces with support from

35) Frank Kameny (1925-2011), who had himself been discharged. Frank became an activist and supporter of other discharged personnel. The ban on lgbt personnel in the US armed forces goes way back to the War of Independence and to

36) Frederick Gotthold Enslin (c.1740- after 1778), a Dutchman in the Revolutionary army who was discharged in 1778 for being homosexual. Over a century earlier another Dutch colonial was burnt at the stake for his homosexuality. His name was

37) Joost Schouten (c.1600-1644) and he was a leading colonial administrator of the Dutch East Indies Company. He undertook several long trade and diplomatic missions to Japan. The ruling shogun was

38) Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), who later expelled all Europeans from Japan and broke off contact with the West. He was succeeded by his son

39) Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), known as the Dog Shogun. He popularised a festival based on harvest celebrations, just as Thanksgiving was becoming popular in America at the same time. One American colonist and contemporary of Joost Shouten was another man executed for homosexuality. He was

40) William Plaine (c.1595-1646).

And now we’re up to date. The remaining 40 Gays will take us on more journeys and connections leading us back to 1) k d lang. Along the way we’ll drink some wine, go quilting, join the Byzantine army, play ice hockey, remember 9/11, design a medal, and visit Atlantis – but not necessarily in that order.