(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World - Recap

I haven’t continued the “(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World” series for a while. Before I continue, here’s a reminder to regular readers of the journey so far, and for those who are reading about my “80 Gays” series for the first time.

We began back in 2022 with –

1) Emperor Hadrian of Rome (76-138) on the 1,200th anniversary of the construction of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England which he ordered to be built. Continuing his tour of the empire after leaving Britain he met…

2) Antinous (c.111-c.130), a young Turkish lad who became his lover. The relationship lasted 8 years until Antinous’s death. In his grief Hadrian “created” a constellation in Antinous’s honour called Aquila. This represented Antinous as a new…

3) Ganymede, the boy lover of the Greek god Zeus. A modern retelling of the story of Ganymede and Zeus was written by…

4) Felice Picano (b.1944), a member of the Violet Quill Club, and group of gay writers who met in New York during 1980 and 1981. The most well-known of these today is…

5) Edmund White (b.1940), famous for writing “The Joy of Gay Sex”. His partner at the time, and another Violet Quill member, was…

6) Christopher Cox (1949-1990) who died of AIDS, as did another Violet Quill member…

7) George Whitmore (1945-1989). The Violet Quill Club came to an end after a meeting in which Whitmore read his story about a gay couple splitting up. It was the negative reaction to this story from fellow member…

8) Andrew Holleran (b.1944) that led to the collapse of the group. But, perhaps the most unexpected connection comes with the final two Violet Quill members,

9) Robert Ferro (1941-1988), and...

10) Michael Grumley (1942-1988). Together they set out to find Atlantis, which they chronicled in their book “Atlantis: The Autobiography of a Search”. On his own Grumley researched legendary hominids such as Bigfoot, a famous legendary cryptid which featured as a lonely, lesbian creature in a novel by…

11) Samantha Leigh Allen, which didn’t win a Ferro-Grumley Award for lgbt fiction, an award created in 1990 named after Robert and Michael, which gives the winner a 2-week residency at the Art Workshop International, founded by…

12) Bea Kreloff (1925-2016) and…

13) Edith Isaac Rose (1929-2018) who founded the Workshop in 1981. The Workshop runs several courses in art and literature and is based in Assisi, the Italian town made famous by…

14) St. Francis of Assisi (c.1187-1226), founder of the Franciscan Order of Friars. Although Roman Catholic, a faith not known for its progressive lgbt+ stance, the Franciscans appointed an openly gay friar to a position of high authority in 2022 with the appointment of…

15) Brother Markus Fuhrmann (b.1971) as Minister Provincial (similar to a senior bishop) of the Province of St. Elizabeth in Germany. Brother Markus had previously been a pastor in Cologne, a city famous for its cathedral which claims to house the remains of The Three Kings from the Christmas story. The traditional names of the kings are…

16) Caspar, …

17) Melchior, and…

18) Balhasar. The kings are famous for presenting gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus at His Nativity. Balthasar is traditionally said to have presented myrrh, an aromatic resin from the tree of the same name. The tree itself was named after the mother of the Greek mythological character…

19) Adonis.

And there I left it. Without wanting to sound like a broken record and repeat myself, research for the Paris Olympics took over so much of my time that I didn’t have time to finish researching the rest of the “80 Gays”.

Now I am able to, but there’s another month or two to wait until after I publish the backlog of other articles that have built up. Rest assured, the series will return in January 2025. Among the links to look forward to are those that connect “Its Raining Men” to Flower Power, and puppetry to Benjamin Britten.