Game of Gay Thrones 9: Micro-monarchs

About three years ago I mentioned that I’d come across a few micronations that have lgbt+ monarchs. I suppose they are just as valid for inclusion in my Game of Gay Thrones series, as none are officially recognised by any member state of the United Nations.

Some micronations are established as part of political activism, as is the case with the Coral Sea Islands. Others are created by young people who are still attending school. With many other reasons, micronations are taken seriously by their creators and supporters.

Just to be clear, a micronation is no the same as a micro-state. Monaco and Palau are examples of micro-states. Their independence is recognised internationally at the United Nations. Micronations are not. You can find a lot of more detailed information on micronations online.

Today I have selected an lgbt+ monarch from one micronation on each of the generally accepted 7 continents, listed in no particular order.

Australasia/Oceania

Dale I, Emperor of the Coral Sea Islands

Perhaps the most well-known lgbt+ micronation, the Coral Sea Islands are situated off the coast of Australia. For more information see here.

North/Central America

Marie-Adélina I, Queen of the United Kingdom of Le Navasse

Navasse consists of several small uninhabited islands in the Caribbean, officially belonging to Haiti.

The micronation was founded in 2017 by a group of friends which included the black transgender activist Marie-Adélina de la Ferrierè, herself of Haitian descent. She was declared the sovereign of the new kingdom. Actually, Queen Marie-Adélina has a personal connection to the defunct crown of Haiti, as she claims descent from Henri I Christophe (1767-1820), the first King of Haiti. I haven’t been able to verify her descent, but succession to the Haitian throne was specifically restricted to male heirs only.

Antarctica

Travis I, Grand Duke of Westarctica (b.1980)

By international treaty, no nation can claim any territory on Antarctica, though scientific and research bases are permitted, and definitely no military bases. No new claims could be made after the treaty, and nations already established there were allowed to remain. Even so, there are still disputes over who has a claim over which part (see here).

In 2001 Travis McHenry, a US Navy Intelligence specialist at the time, founded the Achaean Territory of Antarctica on Marie Byrd Land, an unclaimed area due south of the Pacific Ocean. Three years later he declared it a monarchy and adopted the title of Grand Duke. However, because he was serving in the US Navy he was forced to “abdicate” after they threatened to remove his security clearance due to his activity in promoting his micronation.

After several years of involvement with other micronations Travis was persuaded to re-assume control of the territory, now renamed Westarctica, and he re-assumed the title of Grand Duke in 2012.

In 2014 Travis founded Westarctica Inc., a charity devoted to protecting the territory’s ecosystem against climate change.

Asia

Mona I, Empress of Schalamzaar (b.1996)

The Schalamzaar Empire existed between 2004 and 2023 in Iran.

The empire was founded by Mona Ghazvini, a Tehran native, who established herself as the monarch of the empire in 2004. As happens in all UN-recognised nations, Empress Mona found religious bigotry and persecution from several other micronations because she was Shia Muslim. An online conflict starting in 2014 which lasted several years resulted in Empress Mona withdrawing from micronationalism due to online bullying.

Mona returned in 2018 when she announced that she now identified as a transgender woman, and her former regal name had been dropped in favour of Mona. The Schalamzaar Empire was re-established as a constitutional monarchy. This lasted until the end of 2022 when Mona declared that the empire had been abandoned and renounced her royal status due to her busy personal life, but she did not rule out the possibility of a return some time in the future.

Europe

Amelia I, Queen of Lytera (b.2002)

The Kingdom of Lytera covers several residential addresses across southern England with its nominal capital in Ruislip, Greater London.

Lytera was created in 2010 by Amelia Banks, who identifies as bisexual and transgender, as a client state of Clubhausia, a micronation she founded with friends in 2008 at the age of 6. Amelia declared the independence of Lytera in 2017.

In 2021 Queen Amelia was made Princess of Essexia, another micronation. However, she was removed from power later that year. Undeterred, Amelia has claimed the throne of Essexia as its empress.

South America, Europe and Africa

Emperor Felipe I of Epasiera (b.2008)

The Empire of Epasiera is one of the few cross-continental micronations. It was founded in 2022 by Felipe de Oliveira Felmer who was then the King of Silbervia. Silbervia was founded only a day beforehand when Felipe declared his garden in São Paulo, Brazil, as a republic. King Felipe dissolved Slibervia to make way for the new Empire of Epasiera in October 2022.

The empire is divided into several duchies – 3 in Brazil, 2 in Europe, and 1 in Morocco called the Duchy of Cossobia. As far as I’m aware this is the only micronational territory in Africa ruled by an lgbt+ monarch (though information on South African micronations is sparce).

A Queer Bogeyman

Hallowe’en is with us again, with its US-inspired misappropriation and distortion of traditional European customs and neo-pagan fakery.

The world is full of monsters and evil spirits who “live” all year round in every culture. There are no supernatural spirits that are specifically associated with Hallowe’en (unlike Christmas). Some of these spirits lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting. They are a wide range of bogeymen, a general name given to the many different types of spirits and monsters in all sizes and physical forms often used by parents to keep their children in order.

In South Africa there’s a bogeyman that has some gender-bending characteristics called Antjie Somers.

While most bogeymen originate in centuries-old folk belief, Antjie Somers can be traced back to more recent times. The first printed reference appears in a South African magazine called “The Friend of the Free State”, published in Bloemfontein on 10th August 1866. I haven’t been able to track down a copy of this edition but I have found snippets and references to it from other sources. From these it seems that Antjie Somers was a devilish character who stalked the streets at night, preying on lone travellers or looking for naughty children to carry away in his sack.

Several different urban legends and folk motifs merge in this Afrikaan bogeyman. First there is the Sackman, common throughout the world in many forms, including the original 19th century American Santa Claus who has a sack from which he distributes presents to good children and kidnaps naughty children (later downgraded to a “naughty list”).

Another common folk motif in Antjie Somers is the urban myth of a highwayman or robber disguising himself as a vulnerable character in need of protection or rescue. The urban myth of a hitch-hiker who appears innocent and turns into a bogeyman is still quite common. Although hitch-hiking bogeymen are scary they are also not very intelligent. Victims who see through the disguise can easily make an excuse to stop the car or horse and carriage by saying they accidentally dropped something onto the road, or there’s an obstruction ahead and ask the hitch-hiker to get out and pick up or remove the object. The potential victim can then just to drive off at speed, leaving the bogeyman behind.

A third common folk motif is one which concerns us today, that Antjie Somers is a male bogeyman disguised as a woman. This is a variation on the preceding hitch-hiker motif (commonly referred to as “the hairy-armed hitch-hiker”). There’s several indexes of world folk motifs. In the Thompson Folk Motif Index, for example, tales of a man disguising himself as a woman is category K.1836.

The 1866 “The Field” article states that there were two bogeymen called Antjie Somers and Antjie Winter, one operating in summer and the other in winter, hence their names. The article indicates that the characters were known from the time of Lord Charles Somerset who was the Governor of Cape Colony 1815-26.

Over the decades, these urban myths merged to produce the Antjie Somers known today. Such additional myths include his ability to become invisible and to fly around in the sky, other common motifs applied to evil spirits in European folk tales. The Dutch, the ancestors of the Afrikaans, certainly had legends about female-disguised robbers, as did other European colonists.

By the mid-20th century the stories of Antjie Somers had been reduced to those told to scare children. This was part of a general global turn from traditional folk stories and customs as humanity began to turn away from old days of superstition and into the modern scientific and technological world.

When Pieter W. Grobbelaar, a South African author and folk tale collector, published his 1968 book “The Most Beautiful Afrikaans Fairy Tales”, he wrote the “full story” of Antjie Somers. Briefly, it went like this: Andries Somers was a brave and strong Afrikaans fishermen. No-one could haul in the full nets as fast as he could. One day, the other fishermen became jealous and attacked him. Andries knocked them all to the ground, but one fisherman didn’t get up. He was dead. Andries, hoping to avoid being accused on murder, stole some women’s clothes to disguise himself and ran away. He managed to find work in another part of South Africa. His new work colleagues found the stolen clothes in his hut and began taunting him, calling him by the female name Antjie Somers. Andries could bear it no longer and fled once more and was never seen again. However, children began talking about an old woman in the mountains who was always angry and kept threatening them. People believed this was Antjie Somers and that children should keep away or he would carry them away in a sack. From this Antjie developed into a bogeyman. This was Grobbelaar’s version.

By the end of the century the origin myths of Antjie Somers had been further elaborated. Rather fancifully, modern social rights were applied to the bogeyman’s origin, including sexism and racism.

The first modern interpretation came from feminist activists who claimed Antjie Somers is proof of the patriarchal misogyny of the 19th century. As mentioned above, Antjie Somers is just one of many variations of combined folk motifs. The Thompson Folk Motif Index lists other disguises used my male bogeymen in folk tales, including animals, old men, and other people. There are also folk motifs of female bogeymen disguising themselves as men, even among the Afrikaans. Even today, most female fiction writers feature men as the main villain. Very few write about evil women.

Next we come to the most obvious fake addition to Antjie Somers, the idea that he was a slave and his myths are racist. I haven’t found any reference to Antjie Somers being either a slave or black before 2000. The version by given by Grobbelaar in 1968 clearly identifies him as Afrikaans, i.e. white, and every other reference I’ve found from that period implies the same.

The black slave link seems to originate in a musical called “Antjie Somers” which premiered in South Africa in 2000. The musical sets the origin of the Antjie Somers legend in 1834 which contradicts the 1866 “The Friend” article which dates if before 1826.

The character of Antjie Somers is portrayed as a black ex-slave. The musical’s creators haven’t said why they changed his race, or why the musical is set in the wrong period. The disturbing aspect, however, is that people who saw it probably went away thinking it was historical fact, like people have who have seen the musical “Hamilton” or the film “Braveheart”.

This is probably why a South African student wrote an MA thesis in 2011 about Antjie Somers which was solely based on the “fact” that the bogeyman was based on a real slave. The student even retold Grobbelaar’s 1968 version of the legend and wrote quite specifically that she changed Antjie’s race to a black purely to suit the purpose of her thesis, not because she had any new proof. Why her university didn’t throw out this student’s pathetic attempt at academic research is puzzling.

Be that as it may, the idea that Antjie was a black slave soon spread across the internet, and every time it appears it is usually repeated word-for-word as if it was fact, so that now it is virtually impossible to find any reference that restores the original version.

One earlier attempt to discover the origin of this bogeyman to find any basis in historical fact was made in the mid-20th century. One South African historian was told a story by a respected poet and folklorist C. Louis Liepoldt (1880-1947) who, in turn, heard the story from an elderly couple in around 1900. In their youth they were told of a real un-named robber who stalked Tuin Street, Cape Town, dressed as a woman. It was a rough area and most people avoided going there at night. When his activities became too well known he feared capture and ran away into the mountains.

This may just have been a story about a different robber, and there are other origins that have been suggested, including being the ghost of someone who committed suicide. Whatever Antjie Somers’ origin story actually is, he’ll be scaring children and travellers for generation to come.

I hope I haven’t put you off going out tonight, so why not stay indoors with a nice bottle of wine. A few years ago you could have enjoyed a nice sauvignon blanc from Folklore Wines in South Africa called Antjie Somers (pictured below). I don’t think it is available now, but you’re free to search around for a bottle.

For me, I’m celebrating Hallowe’en as it was intended, by remembering our ancestors, like the ancient Roman festival in late October which inspired the Roman Catholic Church to create Hallowe’en in the first place. The neo-pagan cultural appropriation of an alleged British Celtic festival unknown to the distant Italian Catholics, is not for me.

The First Queer Evangelist?

At this Easter time, or Passiontide, as non-English-speaking nations call it, millions of people are thinking about the teachings of Christ – some good thoughts, and some bad thoughts. There are more Christian denominations with more interpretations of scriptures than there are gender identities or political ideologies, so there are bound to be differences of opinion and doctrine which offend.

With more than 2,000 years of history behind it, Christianity has much that has been forgotten or deliberately ignored. So, it may surprise you to learn that one of the first black, gender-variant evangelists appears in the Bible. He is venerated by many established Christian denominations to this day.

Whether you think the New Testament of the Bible is history or fiction at this point is irrelevant. Even as an apocryphal tale the story, in theological terms, was an attempt by the early Christians, still worshipping in small, or secret, isolated groups, to show that people of any race, nationality or identity could be accepted as a convert, and go on to be an evangelist.

The tale in question centres on an Ethiopian eunuch, as he is generally called. The Bible doesn’t give his name. In the early centuries people liked to give names to anonymous characters in the Bible. The Three Wise Men of the Nativity are a well-known example. They were given the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar several centuries later. The Ethiopian eunuch has been given different names in different denominations – Qinaqis, Actius, Djan Darada. In western Christianity his most common name is Simeon Bachos, probably first used in 180 AD by St. Irenaeus of Lyons, the person who was probably also responsible for coming up with the names of the New Testament book in which the Ethiopian features, the “Acts of the Apostles”.

Here’s the story. The evangelist St. Philip the Deacon had a vision of an angel who told him to travel down from Jerusalem to Gaza. Before he set off he spotted an Ethiopian eunuch, a treasurer to the Candace (a rank similar to Queen Mother) of Ethiopia, who was reading aloud part of the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The eunuch seemed confused by what he was reading, so St. Philip went over to help him. They discussed the passage while they rode along to Gaza. Then the Ethiopian stopped their chariot next to some water, a river perhaps, and asked Philip if there was any reason to stop him from being baptised there and then. Philip said there wasn’t if he truly believed in Christ’s teachings, to which the Ethiopian said he did. So Philip he baptised him in the water. Upon doing so St. Philip suddenly vanished into thin air, transported by the “Holy Spirit” according to the Bible, back to Jerusalem. The Ethiopian, who didn’t seem to very concerned about the sudden disappearance, continued on his way home.

Later traditions say that he evangelised the Ethiopians. There’s no written evidence of this, but it is a fact that some of the oldest surviving Christian Churches, largely unaltered in terms of doctrine and practices, are based in Ethiopia.

“The Baptism of the Eunuch” by Rembrandt, c.1626, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands.

The term “eunuch”, as applied in the Bible, is used for several different other terms that appear in the original Hebrew texts. One such definition is the word “saris” (using the Roman alphabet instead of the Hebrew). This was applied to any man who hadn’t shown any heterosexual sexual maturity or drive by the time he was 20 years old. There was no indication that these men had any difference, or absence, of sexual organs like we recognise today with the term “eunuch”, though some may have been forcibly castrated because of their lack of sex drive. In this respect a saris was like the ancient Greek agamoi. Like the agamoi, the saris was seen as a deviant and banned from places of worship.

On the other hand, a eunuch was often held in high regard. I’ve written before how some eunuchs were priests and holy people. Even the Three Kings mentioned above have often been referred to in recent decades as eunuchs or gender-variant.

The most commonly accepted origin of the Greek word “eunuch” is from a phrase which means “guardian of the bed”. This usually referred to the private royal bedchamber, the innermost living quarters of the king or emperor and his family. These “guardians” were the most trusted of servants. There was an equivalent in the UK Royal Family until the mid-20th century, the Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber which was held by senior courtiers, not eunuchs. Sir William Neville and his partner Sir John Clanvowe were appointed Gentlemen and Knights of the Chamber by King Richard II in 1381.

Over the years, the original highly trusted eunuch “guardians” came to be appointed to higher offices of state, such as treasurer or chamberlain (the man who organised the chambers of the court). It is these positions, eunuchs who held high office, which was the usual translation of the Hebrew saris in the Latin Bible. In the “Acts of the Apostles” the Ethiopian eunuch is explicitly referred to as the treasurer to the Candace of Ethiopia. He was a high ranking courtier.

I was going to go into a deep explanation about other aspects of this story, such as why the Ethiopian questioned his suitability to be baptised, because it feels too much like I’m back in my days as a Methodist lay preacher and I don’t want this to turn into a sermon. So, I’ll just leave it at that. If you want to know more, there are many sites online that cover it.

What I will say is that the Ethiopian eunuch, Simeon Bachos or whichever name he is given, is used in the Bible to signify that anyone with gender variance and of whatever race was welcomed in early Christianity.

The Controversy of the Lustful Nuns

Wouldn’t it be nice of historians agreed on everything? Sadly, politics, prejudice and (quite often) personalities get in the way. This has been the case since the down of historiography. Queer interpretations are often open to criticism, as illustrated when I’ve written about historical people being outed.

A historical figure to be given a queer identity recently is a little-known saint from a little-known (though not insignificant, with almost 36 million worshippers) Christian church. The saint lived in 17th century Ethiopia but her hagiography (saint biography) wasn’t widely available until it was first translated and published in 1912.

The saint is called Walatta Petros (1592-1642). This is an English transliteration of her name in her native Ge’ez language and means “Daughter of Peter” (St. Peter). She was born into an aristocratic, land-owning family. Her family were courtiers of the Negusa Nagast (or King of Kings, I’ll use the title emperor) of Ethiopia. Walatta Petros was briefly married as a young girl to a man who was killed by the emperor. Shortly after 1607 she was married again to one of the imperial counsellors and they had three children. Sadly, all three children died in infancy, and afterwards Walatta Petros decided to become a nun.

Portrait of Walatta Petros from a manuscript located in one of her monasteries, 1716-21.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian nations in Africa, adhering to the Coptic faith founded in the 3rd century. Over the centuries, as with other beliefs, factions and sects broke away from the main church. The church to which Walatta Petros worshipped is now called the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which was granted separate status from the Coptic Church in the 4th century at about the same time that the Roman Empire became Christian.

Portuguese Jesuit missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church went to Ethiopia in the 15th century to convert the country to Catholicism. The emperor was converted but there was unrest in the country as he attempted to ban and persecute the Coptic and Orthodox churches and Walatta Petros’s husband was sent to fight the “rebels”. Tewahedo priests helped Walatta Petros to leave her husband and join them in their monastery.

Shortly afterwards her husband led an attack on “rebels” in the town surrounding the monastery. Walatta Petros refused to return to her husband to stop the attack. She did, however, return to her home, only to find that her husband supported the murder of the Tewahedo patriarch (archbishop). That was the final straw, and she devoted the rest of her life to her faith from 1617.

Walatta Petros and the Tewahedo clergy protested against their persecution. She was summoned before the emperor twice charged with preaching orthodoxy and treason. Her family persuaded the emperor not to execute her and she was banished for three years.

From 1621 Walatta Petros founded several communities for Tewahedo worshippers who wanted to get away from the Catholic persecution. She became their spiritual leader and abbess. The emperor eventually accepted religious diversity and restored Orthodoxy as the national faith. He then abdicated.

Walatta Patros died at the age of 50 in 1642. She became one of the few female worshippers to be regarded as a saint in the Tewahedo Orthodox Church.

So, where does the controversy over her life come in? It’s all due to what a Tewahedo monk wrote in her hagiography in 1672. Most obviously, there’s a section which recounts a scene from Walatta Petros’s life in which she accidentally encounters a group of nuns having sex. She is very angry at seeing this. This has been a focus for debate ever since the hagiography was first published. Some historians and religious figures have taken the words literally while others have taken them metaphorically.

Medieval hagiographies often had allegorical and metaphorical stories of saints fighting against various temptations, whether in the form of monsters or people. In the case of Walatta Petros and the “lustful nuns” it is accepted that it was a real event in her life. But a more recent debate/controversy puts the lustful nuns into the shadows.

In 2005, an authority on Ethiopian Christian Orthodoxy, Sevir Černecov, in the last article published in his lifetime, became the first to suggest a non-gender-conforming nature to Walatta Petros’s life. This was picked up by several American historians, in particular Dr. Wendy Belcher of Princeton University who gave a series of lectures in 2014 which went further to suggest that Walatts Petros had a romantic, non-sexual relationship with her companion, a fellow nun called Ehata Kristos.

You can imagine the criticism from the Tewahedo and other Orthodox churches. Historians, too, expressed disagreement, as they often do with queer history, as much as any priest. One historian took a particularly critical view of Wendy Belcher’s lectures and her subsequent publication about the Walatta Petros hagiography. Dr. Belcher makes it clear in the lengthy introduction to her book that interpretations of past events and the words used when translating foreign languages, such as the Ge’ez language that the original hagiography is written in, is challenging.

Last year Dr. Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes of Curtin University, Australia, and an authority on Ethiopian history, published an article (at 90 pages long it’s more of a mini thesis) in which he criticised Wendy Belcher and her collaborator Michael Kleiner for not attempting to understand the Ge’ez language, or at least not knowing the language well enough to translate and interpret the original hagiography properly. He also accused them of deliberate racist and sexualisation of Walatta Petros’s life.

Belcher and Kleiner both wrote responses to Woldeyes’ attack on them, for that’s how his criticism reads. Their responses are both published on Dr. Belcher’s website here and here and go into more detail about the relationship between Walatta Petros and Ehata Kristos.

The relationship between the two women has never identified as a sexual one by Dr. Belcher, despite claims by Dr. Woldeyes. History is full of non-sexual romantic same-sex partnerships. The most well-known version is the Boston Marriage, a term used to describe female companions who lived together, so-called because there were several such romantic female couples living in and around Boston, USA, in the 19th century. Within historical monastic communities, whether male or female, non-sexual partnerships are known (St. Francis of Assisi, for example). Encounters like Walatta Petros and the “lustful nuns” are relatively rare.

The fact that Walatta Petros fell in love with another woman and remained celibate seems difficult for some in the sex-obsessed world of modern lgbt culture to understand. The lgbt community, people of faith, and critics of religion should stop equating love with sex – the medieval Christian Church did, why can’t they?

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 23) From France to Fern-atics

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 61) Hélène van Zuylen (1863-1947) was a pioneering female motor racer in a male dominated sport, and 62) Roberta Cowell (1918-2011) was a pioneering transgender motor racer, and she was also an lgbt pilot, as was 63) David Charlebois (1962-2001), a victim of the 9/11 terror attacks, who was born in a city that was once named after 64) Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934).

64) Hubert Lyautey was appointed Resident General of Morocco in 1907. The French were already well-established in Morocco, though they switched from being a foreign trading nation with a number of bases in the country to a colonial power at the beginning of the 20th century.

Local rebels and declining economy led Lyautey, in command of French troops in North Africa at the time, to move into Morocco to “protect” French interests in 1904. Morocco came under direct French military control in 1907 after rebels killed a prominent French doctor in Marrakesh, which led to Lyautey being appointed Resident General. In 1911 a power struggle between the Sultan and his brother led to further rebellions. France then declared Morocco to be a French Protectorate.

Unlike other French colonies Morocco was allowed to keep its distinctive character and laws. The Sultan of Morocco was allowed to remain as Head of State instead of the French President and the country remained a sovereign state.

Lyautey strengthened the infrastructure of Morocco, building railways, roads, bridges and ports. Kenitra was one such port. It was a small settlement before Lyautey turned it into a French military base in 1912. In 1933, after Lyautey had returned to France after being replaced in 1925, Kenitra was renamed Port Lyautey. It returned to its former name when France abolished the protectorate in 1956.

Although married to Inés de Bourgoing, a remarkable person in her own right, Lyautey was widely regarded as being gay. Gay men being married was not unusual for that period. There’s no actual proof Lyautey was gay. He never admitted being so, through it seems it was not a secret, and even the French Prime Minister was aware of it.

Lyautey’s may have provided inspiration for a literary character who brings us back to someone I mentioned several “80 More Gays” ago. Today he joins the chain in his own right – 65) Marcel Proust (1871-1922).

Although we’ll never know for sure, Proust based the character of the Baron de Charlus in his 7-volume novel series “À la Recherche du temps perdu” (Remembrance of Things Past) on Lyautey. It’s also likely that the Baron was based on another gay Frenchman, Count Robert Montesquiou (1855-1921). Marcel Proust had met them both – Lyautey in 1887 and Montesquiou in 1893. Both could easily been the inspiration, Proust selecting specific characteristics from each.

Baron de Charlus makes his first appearance in Proust’s novel series in volume one, “Swann’s Way”, which was turned into the film “Swann in Love” by 60) Nicole Stéphane. The main character, Charles Swann, falls in love with Odette. The first physical realisation of their attraction occurs in a scene inside a carriage. After a sudden jolt a flower, a cattleya, a type of orchid, becomes loosened from Odette’s dress. Swann leans over and pins it back in place and as they lean towards each other they kiss. From then on they adopt a private saying, “Do a cattleya” to mean any sexual contact between them.

It’s very apt that the cattleya (pronounced cattley-a rather than cattle-ya) plays such a large part in their relationship. It was Odette’s favourite flower. It was also Marcel Proust’s favourite flower. Every day he would buy a fresh cattleya for his buttonhole.

Detail of “Portrait of Marcel Proust” by Jacques Emile Blanche, 1892,
showing Proust wearing a cattleya orchid.

Orchids were very fashionable during Proust’s lifetime, even a craze. It even had a name, orchidelerium. This was one of several floral manias. There was also a craze for ferns, which was also given a name, pteridophilia. Although the height of the orchid and fern manias was over a century ago there’s still an appeal for them, as can be seen in the success of a fern nurseries, including one in southern England called Fernatix (pronounced like “fanatics”) created by 66) Steven Fletcher (b.1959) and 67) Kerry Robinson (b.1965).

Steven Fletcher’s horticultural career began with growing orchids in the 1980s. For a while he was Chair of the Cambridge Orchid Society. At the regular orchid shows Steven would use ferns to place around the pots to disguise them. He noticed people began to take as much interest in the ferns as they did in the orchids. This got him thinking about growing ferns and led to his decision to open Fernatix with his partner Kerry.

Steven and Kerry met on a blind date arranged by a friend and they connected instantly. When they first began displaying their ferns they attracted attention – they looked like bikers in leathers and piercings, not like gardeners at all. Nonetheless, they were accepted into the horticultural world and Fernatix soon became a successful business.

The first Fernatix display at the premier flower show in the UK, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, earned them a gold medal, and many more have followed over the years, right up to this year.

Ferns may seem underwhelming to most people but their popularity and the success of Fernatix and other fern nurseries prove they are still popular. The fern fever of the 19th century originally centred on their aesthetic value, but it led to them being studied to improve cultivation. Eventually, the study of ferns became a science in its own right called pteridology.

There may be many lgbt pteridophilists besides Steven Fletcher and Kerry Robinson, but there’s one who became a significant figure outside botany. His main area of study was in phytocytology - plant structure. If these scientific terms are a bit too technical we can be grateful to this particular pteridological phytocytologist for coming up with a short name for a new disease. This man’s name was 68) Bruce Voeller (1834-1994).

Next time on “80 More Gays”: A new disease acquires a new name, and names come together to raise awareness with a glass of wine.

Out of His Paternal Tree: Pete Buttigieg Part 2

In March I had a look at Pete Buttigieg’s maternal ancestry. Pete’s father’s line is very different and has some unexpected ethnic origins.

Pete Buttigieg’s father was originally from Malta. His name was Dr. Joseph Anthony Buttigieg (1947-2019), and he was a Professor of English. He became a US citizen in 1979, though he was born a citizen of the British colony of Malta, and then a Maltese citizen when it gained independence. The Buttigieg family is one of the oldest of Maltese families, having an unbroken recorded male line of descent for over a thousand years.

As mentioned at the end of the article on his mother’s ancestry the name Buttigieg translates as “owner of chickens” or, but it can also be translated as “chicken on a barrel”. I mentioned a coat of arms as well last time. It’s a perfect example of a heraldic pun. Whether the original family name really was actually meant to refer to a chicken on a barrel or evolved from the similar sounding name is uncertain but it has been used by the family since medieval times. I found three variations of the coat of arms for the family, and have yet to determine with certainty which one has been inherited by Pete Buttigieg (I favour the middle one).

Among the influential members of the Buttigieg family were Anton Buttigieg (1912-1983), 2nd President of Malta, and Monsignor Michele Francesco Buttigieg (1783-1816), 1st Bishop of Gozo. Along with Pete Buttigieg they are descended from Silvestrino Buttigieg (b.c.1500).

Let’s see how far back the family can be traced. From information in the Maltese National Archives and various online genealogies I’ve found that there is a continuous father-to-son bloodline for the family that probably goes back to 850 AD.

Silvestrino Buttigieg’s great-grandfather, Ansaldinu Buttigieg (b.1390), is listed as a Nobile, a title similar to the feudal lords of the manor in medieval England. Owners of these titles held great influence in the government of the Malta for several generations.

The Buttigieg’s title of Nobile was first held by Ansaldinu’s great-great-great-grandfather Antonio bin Buttigieg. You may have noticed a slight change to the surname, the “bin”, which indicates that Antonio belonged to a Muslim family. From unverified information this brings an intriguing element into Pete Buttigieg’s ancestry, because this Antonio is said to have been the son of a prince of the Muslim Kalbid dynasty.

The Kalbids were an Arab family who settled in the Maghreb, the region in North Africa between present day Morocco and Egypt. Arabs from the Maghreb captured Malta and Sicily from the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century, and al-Hasan al-Kalbi, the founder of the Kalbid dynasty and Pete Buttigieg’s direct male ancestor, because the Emir of Sicily and Malta in 947. The throne of Sicily-Malta separated in 1053 and the last Emir of Malta, Jafar III, Pete Buttigieg’s ancestral cousin, was deposed in 1240.

The Buttigiegs descend from the junior Kalbid line down to Prince Muhammad Kalbid, Hakim (i.e. governor) of Catania. Between 1000 and 1150 different lines of Pete’s ancestral Kalbid cousins were Kings of Badajoz, Majorca and Segura, and Emirs of Messina, Agrigento and Castrogiovanni.

The Kalbids were deposed by Norman invaders from Italy, led by Roger I de Hauteville (c.1031-1101), Count of Sicily. Malta thus became a part of the county of Sicily. Many Muslim family were permitted to remain and some converted to Christianity, including some of the Kalbid princes.

Pete Buttigieg’s father is also descended from the Hauteville dynasty. The bloodline goes down into the royal family of Aragon who were subsequent conquerors of Malta and Sicily. Princess Leonor de Aragona-Sicilie (c.1346-after 1369) was the daughter of Prince Giovanni, Duke of Athens and Regent of Sicily-Malta (son of King Federigo II of Sicily). Through her Pete Buttigieg acquires the bloodline from Roger de Hauteville.

Eventually this Hauteville and Aragon bloodline merged with the Kalbid bloodline in 1664 with the marriage of Giuseppe Buttigieg and the Aragon descendant Domenica Galea.

Five generations later another Giuseppe Buttigieg married Maria Micalief, a member of one of the many other influential Maltese families in Pete’s ancestry. If we follow Maria’s line back a few generations we find several lines of descent from a Spanish soldier who arrived in Malta called Jofre Albano de Borja. If that name sounds familiar it’s because his brother was great-grandfather to the notorious Italian Borgias and Pope Alexander VI.

The Maltese Borjas changed their name to Borg, and one of Pete’s distant cousins from this family was George Borg Olivier (1911-1980), who was twice Prime Minister of Malta. With Malta being a small nation it is not surprising that a very high proportion of people on the Maltese islands are interrelated or are distant cousins, more so than in the USA where there are millions of people. So, its also no surprise to learn that as well and George Borg Olivier and Anton Buttigieg (both above-mentioned) Pete Buttigieg is related by blood to most of the Presidents, Prime Ministers and medieval rulers of Malta.

Advent 1 : Making the Yuletide Gay

My regular pre-Christmas mini-series covers aspects of dating and celebrating the birth of Christ. On each Sunday in Advent I’ll present one common theory on the origin of the dates chosen and the lgbt connections they have. This first article is perhaps the most controversial. Researching into the very first dates for Christmas I read that the first people to celebrate the birth of Christ was an Egyptian Christian sect who actively encouraged same-sex activity. You could say “gay” men created Christmas Day, and it wasn’t on December 25th.

No matter what any religious or secular organisation will tell you nobody knows why 25th December was chosen as Christmas Day, not unless they have private access to some 1st century document that historians have spent the last 2000 years looking for. In recent centuries many people have favoured pagan origins for Christmas Day. This idea was first made at least 1000 years after the time of Christ and aren’t based on documentary proof but proximity to a specific date in a pagan calendar. Even some of the commonly alleged pagan origins of Christmas traditions can’t be proven.

Personally, I like the theory that the early Christians placed the conception of Christ on Roman New Year’s Day – March 25th. Nine months later Christ was born – December 25th. It’s a very neat and tidy theory which I’ll return to next Sunday. You probably prefer one of the other theories that are around, or even none of them.

The first Christians, those mentioned in the Bible and their followers, didn’t celebrate the birth of Christ. They celebrated his death and resurrection instead, after all that’s the whole reason behind Christianity. In fact, no Christian wrote anything about Christ’s life until about the year 70 (the Gospel of Mark). After that many people started writing their own version, filling in any gaps themselves.

In the 2nd century the Christian Church was beginning to get more organised and they collected all the hundreds of books together to decide which ones were most authoritative and closest to their beliefs. These formed the New Testament. The other books, which often said the same things as the ones they selected or didn’t say anything important, were put aside. Despite modern conspiracy theorists these books weren’t rejected, forbidden or supressed, they were merely put aside and then lost (like something you put in a safe place until you need it and then forget – and when you find it you’ve forgotten you put it there and why). Many elements of medieval Nativity plays came from these alleged suppressed gospels.

The first Christian to write about a date for Christ’s birth was a scholar called St. Clement in around the year 200 when he visited Alexandria in Egypt. He wrote that Gnostic sects in the city had tried to choose a date and he gave a list of all the possible dates the Gnostics suggested. Please note that it was just another ordinary date on their liturgical calendar and not the holiday we know today. It wasn't even called Christmas until 1038, and even then it was day of prayer not celebration.

The Gnostics were a varied bunch of Christian sects spread all over the eastern Roman Empire. What they had in common was that they didn’t believe Christ was resurrected so they didn’t celebrate Easter like other Christians. But they did believe in the divinity of Christ and wanted to celebrate his birth instead. To them the God of the Old Testament created an evil world. On the other hand, the God of the New Testament sent Christ to show the world how to combat the evil all around them (that’s an over-simplification of their beliefs).

The Gnostics also had interesting ideas about sex. Because the world is evil, including all the people in it, it made sense to the Gnostics to ensure that no more people are born. They believed that procreative sex was bad and that non-procreative sex with the same gender would save them from the evil world. Of course, the “catholic” Christians in Rome were all in favour of having babies, they still are, so they accused the Gnostics of being promiscuous and of having gay orgies. But there’s nothing in Gnostic writings to indicate they were having any more sex than the “catholics”. This period has been seen as the origin of the Roman Catholic Church’s problems with homosexuality.

One other Gnostic belief was that all religions are the same. In Egypt there were two popular festivals that celebrated the births of two deities on the same day. One was Osiris, the Egyptian god who was chopped into bits and resurrected. The other was a virgin goddess. To the Gnostics Orisis and Christ were the same deity, and the virgin goddess was the Virgin Mary, so they decided to celebrate Christ’s birth on their joint festival day, which on our calendar is January 6th.

The Gnostics believed that the birth of Christ was a manifestation of their God’s message of goodness. The Greek word for “manifestation” is “epiphany”, the name by which January 6th is still known.

This date caught on with other Christians, even ones who thought the Gnostics were heretics (disproving the theory that Christmas is a continuation of the Roman Saturnalia which ended several weeks before). Epiphany is still celebrated as Christmas in the oldest surviving churches – the Orthodox and Coptic churches. The Roman Catholic Church changed their Christmas to December much later.

But what happened to the Gnostics? The more organised Roman Christians persecuted them as heretics over the next few hundred years. Some Gnostic sects were pretty horribly perverted anyway, even by our modern standards. But some of their beliefs continued into later sects, including the Cathars, famous in the Holy Grail legends. Another sect in medieval eastern Europe was the Bogomils. The Catholic Church had by now got the military power and might of the Holy Roman Empire behind them and the Bogomils were suppressed. The same-sex activity promoted by the Gnostics was attributed to the Bogomils and their name became a new derogatory name for gay men. From “Bogomil” we get the word “bugger”.

By tracing “bugger” back through the Bogomils and the Gnostics we have discovered why early same-sex-loving Christians decided to celebrate Christmas Day. So, the Yuletide really is gay!

But where does that leave the popular theory of Saturnalia as the origin of Christmas? That’s what I’ll write about next Sunday, and a right royal topsy-turvy Christmas celebration it is.

Celebrating a Flood

It may seem strange to celebrate a flood as very often floods leave devastation in their wake. But if you live in a country as dry as Egypt the flooding of the Nile can be seen as a good thing.

If it wasn’t for the Nile flooding there would be no Egypt. The floods provided the water and fertile silt essential for the growing of food. The Egyptians realised thousands of years ago that the Nile flooded at the same time each year and so they could prepare their crops and fields in advance. The arrival of this life-giving annual flood was celebrated more than the gathering of the harvest itself.

Egypt still celebrates this arrival of the annual flood with an annual festival and holiday which begins this week and is called Wafaa El-Nil.

Like every other aspect of Egyptian life the flooding of the Nile had its own god, an intersex dual god called Hapi. The two parts of the ancient Egyptian nation, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, had their own specific representation of Hapi. Upper Egypt had Hapi-Meht and Lower Egypt had Hapi-Reset. They were identical except for their headdresses. Hapi-Reset wore papyrus leaves and Hapi-Meht wore a lotus flower. They were often depicted together pouring water from a vase or tying together the two symbolic plants represented in their headdresses, as in the illustration below (though this particular illustration shows him wearing the same headdress).

The more ancient a deity is the more sexually fluid he or she seems to be. Time and time again I come across references to ancient gods having intersex or transgender qualities. This is possibly an indication of the attitudes which ancient cultures had to gender identity. When we move into less ancient times and the more familiar Greek and Roman gods gender identity becomes less varied and there is a move towards sexual preference.

Quite often, as in the case of Hapi, it is the actions of the gods which effect the way they are depicted in art. As an ancient god of the Nile floods Hapi was regarded as a god of fertility. His annual flood at this time of year brings life to the flood plains and fields. The universal symbol of life and fertility is the mother figure. Quite often creator deities are female and have total or predominantly female physical attributes. The Greek creator god Gaia, one of the most ancient Greek deities, and the modern concept of Mother Earth are female constructs of a universal life-giver. For this reason Hapi is always represented as a man with female breasts.

Hapi’s skin colour is also decided by the actions of his floods. He is either blue-skinned, representing the flood water, or green-skinned, representing the vegetation fed by the waters.

The cult of this ancient intersex god goes so far back in history that his name was probably the original name of the Nile itself (Nile is a Greek-derived name). Later he began to take on various functions of an even older go, Nun, the god of the primeval water from which the world was born. Hapi also took Nun’s wife as his own as a result of this.

The centre of Hapi’s cult was on the Elephantine Island at the First Cataract of the Nile, the white water rapids which reminded the ancient Egyptians of a mother’s milk, another factor contributing to the representation of Hapi with breasts.

With much of the world having sweltered in uncharacteristic heat waves this summer it is easy to see why an arid nation like Egypt would welcome the arrival of an intersex god and his floods at this time of year while other nations fear them.

Pride Cities

As the USA celebrates the start of Pride Month and the northern hemisphere begins enters its main Pride season we look at some of the locations around the world that were the first in their region to celebrate Pride.

There is no authoritative definition of a Pride march or festival. Each Pride event is tailor-made to suit its location, but there are elements which I consider are common to most of them. These are:

1) The inclusion of the word Pride in the event’s name (a notable exception being Sydney Mardi Gras).
2) An organising committee.
3) A march or parade through public streets, consisting of more than one lgbt group, and a general community contingent, even if it’s banned or cancelled (small Prides may only manage a public gathering).
4) A celebration of diversity, inclusion and acceptance.
5) A Pride event is not held in response to a particular event or piece of legislation (e.g. the Pulse club shooting, or a protest against a specific anti-gay law) but has been planned beforehand and includes other issues. Acknowledgment of the event and legislation can take place (e.g. as the central theme). However, the earliest Prides were often organised in response to one event.

Here is a list of the first officially recognised lgbt Pride events in various global regions.

1) NORTH AMERICA
27th June 1970 - Gay Pride Week, Chicago, Illinois, USA, organised by the Chicago Gay Liberation Movement. Despite common belief the first lgbt Pride was not the Christopher Street Freedom Day Parade in New York, but in Chicago the day before. Both were held to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. A report in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday 28th June (left) also gives us the first printed use of the word Pride in relation to an lgbt event. It also suggests that the common belief that Brenda Howard first suggested a Pride Week in New York in 1973 may not be accurate.

2) EUROPE
1st July 1972 – Gay Pride Rally and March, London, UK, organised by the Gay Liberation Front.

3) CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ASIA
June 1977 – Love Parade, Tel Aviv, Israel. It is uncertain whether this was an lgbt event or one organised by the city’s nightclubs in which the lgbt community was just a part. In 1978 the Love Parade was, apparently, solely lgbt in make-up. The 1977 Love Parade is recognised retrospectively as the first Tel Aviv Pride by the current organising committee.

4) THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
June 1990 – Honolulu Pride, Hawaii, USA. The notoriously inaccurate Gay Star News reported last month that Fiji held the first Pride event in the Pacific Ocean on 17th May 2018. It is known that Vanuatu has held Pride-like events since July 2013.

5) CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
30th June 1979 – Mexico City, Mexico, organised by the Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria (Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action). Mexico holds the most annual Pride events outside the USA.

6) AFRICA
13th October 1990 – Joburg Pride, Johannesburg, South Africa.

7) SOUTHEAST ASIA
26th June 1994 – Queer Pride, Quezon City, Philippines, organised by ProGay Philippines and the Metropolitan Community Church.

8) AUSTRALASIA
7th – 14th September 1973 – Gay Pride Week, held simultaneously in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, organised by individual committees in each city though co-ordinated nationally.

9) ANTARCTICA
June 2018 – McMurdo Station, Ross Dependency, Antarctica. The last continent to hold an official Pride event. Contrary to what you read in the media published before the event we know from this blog alone that the Rainbow Pride flag and lgbt presence has been on Antarctica since at least 1992. See here and here.

 

Now, here are some other Pride events of interest.

Most Northern Pride (above the Arctic Circle)
69.9 degrees north – Alta, Norway, 2010. This seems to have been the only year Alta held a Pride though it has held lgbt events since then. The most northern annual Pride, held since 2014, is Tromso Pride, also in Norway. Tromso is at 69.6 degrees north.

Most Southern Pride
51 degrees south – Falklands Pride, Falkland Islands, first held in 2013. Until the above-mentioned Pride event in Antarctica takes place the Falkland Islands holds the record as holding the most southerly Pride.

World’s Biggest Pride by Attendance
São Paulo, Brazil, has consistently topped the table for the biggest Pride. In 2006 the Guinness Book of World Records named 2006 São Paulo Pride as the world’s biggest with an estimated 2.5 million people attending. Official estimates of succeeding São Paulo Prides have risen to at least 3 million and some put the figure at around 5 million for São Paulo Pride 2017.

World’s Smallest Pride by Attendance
All Prides begin small. There can be no definitive answer. However, the Pennsylvanian city of Erie has held a Pride event almost every year since October 1998. Erie has a population of 101,000 people today, yet its Pride has never exceeded 1,000 attendees. This, over its 20 years, may make it the most consistently small Pride in the world. 

AMENDMENT : Continuing research has brought to light other Prides which may be considered the smallest on a consistent basis. In Africa where many countries still kill people for being gay there have been several brave attempts to hold Pride marches. These have rarely exceeded a few hundred in attendance for fear of arrest. The first Pride Uganda events (2012-17) all had attendances in the low hundreds, and the first eSwatini (Swaziland) Pride in July 2018 attracted around 500 people. The refugee camp at Kakuma in Kenya held a Pride in Jun 2018 and could not have attracted very high numbers.

 

Despite the few that attended the Ugandan Prides there is one official annual Pride which is recorded as having only 3 attendees on its first Pride march. Because the location had continued to hold annual Pride marches and was not a one-off event it can be regarded as being the smallest Pride in the world. The Aomori Rainbow Parade in Japan began in 2014 with only 3 marchers. This grew to 101 marchers in 2017.

 

Of course, further research may uncover others.

World’s Shortest Pride March
(Excluding marches that were cancelled or banned) 21st October 2017 – Paekākāriki Pride, Paekākāriki, New Zealand. Being a small town the chances of having a large parade for the first ever Paekākāriki Pride were unlikely. Organisers decided to set the first ever record for the shortest official Pride march. The total route was 35 feet long and consisted solely of a pedestrian crossing in the town centre. Needless to say, the actual length of 200 marchers and pre-route assembly was much longer. The record has yet to be verified by Guinness.


Wherever you are, and wherever you attend a Pride march, I hope you have a Happy Pride.