80 Gays Around the World: Part 6) Greek Beauties

Last time on “80 Gays”: 15) Father Markus Furhman (b.1971) became the first openly gay Franciscan “bishop” after ministering in Cologne, home of the alleged relics of the Three Kings, 16) Caspar, 17) Melchior, and 18) Balthazar, the latter’s gift to the Baby Jesus traditionally being myrrh, an aromatic resin from a plant named after the mother of 18) Adonis.

The name of 18) Adonis has become a byword for male physical beauty. With the ancient Greeks putting so much emphasis on same-sex activity in the training of athletes and soldiers, it comes as no surprise that Adonis was the sexual partner of both male and female deities.

As a young teenager Adonis was the lover of two Greek gods with many gay connections of their own – Apollo (who features many times on this blog), and Dionysos (also featured several times).

Perhaps Adonis’s most well-known lover was the goddess 19) Aphrodite. It may seem strange that the goddess of love and feminine beauty should have some queer connections, but in this other “Star-Gayzing” entry I point out the dual nature of Aphrodite’s sexuality. There I explain how her birth from the severed genitals of Uranus led her to become a kind of patron goddess of same-sex couples.

At the beginning of this series of “80 Gays” I commented that a lot of botanical connections cropped up. Last time I mentioned how Adonis’s mother Myrrha gave her name to the plant myrrh. Another plant connection comes in one of the annual festivals in Athens called Adonia, which was named after him. This was a female-only festival. Women would go up onto their rooves, singing and dancing, mourning the death of Adonis. On the roof they planted lettuce and fennel seeds into pottery sherds (both plants were considered to be aphrodisiacs – there’s Aphrodite’s name again), which they called Gardens of Adonis. The women then went down into the streets and formed a procession which went to the sea shore (or a stream, it varied depending on how far away they lived from the sea), and buried, or planted, the “gardens” along with little effigies of Adonis.

Aphrodite’s floral connection also involves a garden. This time it comes in the form of one of her patronages. Aphrodite was the patron god of vegetation and fertility, and thus she was known as Aphrodite of the Gardens. There was a shrine and sanctuary to her under this name near the Acropolis in Athens. There were two statues of her, one of which was a herm.

Herm is the term given to a tall square or rectangular column with a carved head (and sometimes a torso) at the top, with a carved penis at the proportional height sticking out of the square column. The Aphrodite herm had her head at the top and a penis further down. There’s a herm statue of Aphrodite in the national museum in Stockholm, Sweden, which depicts her as fully female from the waist upwards. She is holding her dress up to reveal a square column underneath with a penis.

It is from herm statues like this that Aphrodite evolved into a separate deity – 21) Aphroditus.

Historically, Aphroditus was probably based on an earlier deity in Cyprus. Once the cult of Aphroditus made it to Greece it was assimilated into that of Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of spiritual love. What makes things more complicated is that some modern websites confuse Aphroditus with the more familiar 22) Hermaphroditus,

The more I read about both Aphroditus and Hermaphroditus the more I realise that they are not the same. I think that the confusion comes from “herm” in Hermaphrodite, and the fact that the name Aphroditus was first used in reference to herm statues of Aphrodite. Hermaphroditus seems to be a later addition to the pantheon of Greek deities. I wrote about both Aphroditus and Hermaphroditus several years ago (see here), so I won’t go into it in detail here. Suffice it to say that in the later Roman period the image of Hermaphroditus as intersex developed from Greek myths about him being the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, a god not really “invented” until a century or two after the first herm statues of Aphrodite were made. If you’re not already confused, Hermes got his name from originally being a herm statue.

But let’s get back to Aphrodite. As well as two statues of her near the Acropolis as Aphrodite of the Gardens (one of which had male genitalia, remember), the goddess had another temple and shrine in Athens dedicated to her as Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of spiritual love.

The temple was in the agora, the inner-city public square and meeting place. In the sanctuary was a statue of her made by a famous sculptor called Phidias (no. 8 in the 2020 “80 Gays” series). I’ll return to Phidias in a later entry in this current series.

Whenever ancient Athens is mentioned Adonis and Aphrodite are not the first names that spring to mind, Athena is, of course. Another thing that springs to mind is the founding of Greek democracy. So it is not surprising that on the other side of the agora there were once statues of the couple who are regarded as being the people who inspired the creation of Athenian democracy. They were 23) Harmodius and 24) Aristogeiton.

Next time: We carry a torch against tyranny, untangle a gay “incestuous” dynasty, and remove a few statues.

Advent 2: Christmas Werewolves Among Us

Werewolves at Christmas? What have werewolves got to do with Christmas?

Well, forget most of what you think you know, because the werewolf of popular culture has been influenced more by modern film than traditional folklore. Werewolves are part of almost every culture in Europe, and the majority of these tell of how werewolves are only created during the Christmas season.

Perhaps the most widespread belief our European ancestors had was that anyone born on Christmas night, between the hours of sunset on Christmas Eve to dawn on Christmas Day, was automatically inclined to become a werewolf when they reached adulthood. There are variations of this idea, including substituting conception on Christmas night instead of birth, making anyone born on the following September 24th likely to be a future werewolf. While it was known who was born or conceived on those dates there is no evidence that their communities tried to kill them before they reached adulthood in order to prevent them from becoming werewolves.

In medieval Normandy, France, it was believed that anyone who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church during Advent would turn into a werewolf every night until received back into the church by a priest. While in Germany it was believed that anyone born on any of the 12 Days of Christmas would become a werewolf.

The date on which people turned into werewolves also differs from place to place. In Poland they would only transform on Midsummers’ Day or on their birthday, Christmas Day. In Italy they transformed on December 13th, which was the date of the winter solstice before the current calendar was introduced in 1582. There is little indication that the moon had anything to do with any transformation, except from a small region of southern France, and transformation was not restricted to a wolf, it can be any were-animal. The moon effect was introduced by Universal Studios for the 1943 film “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man”.

Belief in a lot of countries say that all werewolves would transform every night after their first transformation until they were either blessed by a priest while in were-form, repented of their sins in church during the day while in human form, or were killed or died.

So, were you born or conceived on any of those dates mentioned? Are you a closeted werewolf and you didn’t know? You’re in good company, because there are many in the lgbt+ community who could be, according to traditional European belief, and here’s a selection of some of them. I haven’t included all the birth dates in Advent or 12 Days of Christmas as mentioned above because there are too many names to include if I do.

Born on December 13th

Anne-Marie Alonzo (1951-2005) – Canadian playwright, novelist, poet and publisher.

Linda Bellos (b. 1950) – British political activist; Leader of Lambeth Council, 1986-8.

Anthony Callea (b. 1982) – Australian singer and actor ("Australian Idol" 2004 runner-up).

Rev. Mari Castellanos (b. 1947) – President, Dignity US Miami chapter.

Jackie Clune (b. 1965) – British singer and actor; former Karen Carpenter tribute singer.

Michelle Duff (b. 1939) – Canadian transgender Grand Prix motorbike racer.

Peter Gajdics (b. 1964) – Canadian writer on surviving conversion therapy.

Anton Hysén (b. 1990) – Swedish footballer (soccer).

Richard Isay (1934-2012) – American writer, broadcaster and psychiatrist.

Hon. Desmond Parsons (1910-1937) – British linguist and aesthete.

Jim Quixley (1931-1991) – Australian children's author; librarian at York University, Toronto.

José Sarria (1923-2013) – American drag performer; 1st known out lgbt person to run for US public office.

Allen Schindler (1969-1992) – Radioman Petty Officer, US Navy (murdered).

Most Rev. Mark Shirilau (1955-2014) – American founding Archbishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Church.

Laís Souza (b. 1988) – Brazilian Olympic gymnast.

Theodora Versteegh (1888-1970) – Dutch classical singer.

Tom Wakefield (1935-1996) – British novelist and short story writer.

Born on December 24th/25th – I’ve included both of these dates because it is difficult to determine who was born between sunset on Christmas Eve and dawn on Christmas Day, the night during which werewolves were born.

Born on December 24th

Bethany Black (b. 1978) – British transgender comedian and actor.

Mauro Bordovsky (b. 1956) - founder member of West Hollywood Aquatics.

Eliza Cook (1818-1889) – British author and Chartist poet.

Dean Corll (1939-1973) – US serial killer (the Houston Mass Murders).

Lee Daniels (b. 1959) – Oscar-winning American film producer ("Monsters Ball").

Maik de Boer (b. 1960) – Dutch fashion stylist and social commentator.

Nathan Fain (1942-1987) – American journalist and co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis.

Deborah Glick (b. 1950) – member of the New York State Assembly since 1991.

Adam Haslett (b. 1970) – American fiction writer; Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Brenda Howard (1946-2005) – pioneering American bisexual activist.

Howard Hughes (1905-1976) – American tycoon, aviator and philanthropist.

Robert Joffrey (1930-1988) – American dancer and choreographer.

Kevin Killian (1952-2019) – American writer and poet.

Dominic Koll (b. 1984) – Austrian Olympic swimmer.

Adam Lippes (b. 1972) – American fashion designer.

Ricky Martin (b. 1971) – Puerto Rican pop singer.

Joep Mesman (b. 1981) – Mr. Gay Netherlands 2006.

Nestor Perlongher   (1949-1992) - Argentinian writer and anthropology professor.

Jim Roth (b. 1968) – Chief Deputy and Attorney, Oklahoma County Commission.

Bob Smith (1958-2018) – American comedian and writer.

Ans van Dijk (1905-1948) – Dutch Nazi collaborator (executed).

Born on December 25th

Ramona Bachmann (b. 1990) – Swiss footballer (Women's World Cup 2015).

MIanne Bagger (b. 1966) – Danish transgender golfer.

Brad Benton (b. 1974) – American gay porn actor (and “Dante’s Cove” gay soap opera)

Albert Cashier (1843-1951) – Irish cross-dressing Union soldier in the American Civil War.

Staceyann Chin (b. 1972) – Jamaican spoken-word poet and activist.

Kenny Everett (1944-1995) – British DJ and entertainer.

Noël Greig (1944-2000) – British actor, director and playwright of the early gay theatre movement.

Christine Johnson (b. 1968) – member of Utah House of Representatives 2007-10.

Christine Kaufmann (b. 1951) – Montana State Senator 2007-17.

Ismael Merchant (1936-2005) – Anglo-Indian film producer.

Jessica Origliasso (b. 1984) – Australian singer-songwriter and actor.

Conny Perrin (b. 1990) – Swiss tennis player.

Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) – Russian classical composer.

Noel Tovey (b. 1934) – Australian dancer, choreographer and actor.

Tonie Walsh (b. 1960) – founder of Irish Queer Archive.

Joey Yale (1949-1986) – American gay porn actor.

Born on January 6th

Jeff Bennett (b. 1965) – American activist; co-founder of Gay.com.

Herman Emmink (1927-2013) – Dutch singer, radio and TV broadcaster.

Juan Goytisolo (1931-2017) – Spanish novelist, poet and essayist.

Bjørn Lomborg (b. 1965) – Danish environmental economist.

Kate McKinnon (b. 1984) – American comedian, impressionist and actor.

Hon. Nancy Ruth (b. 1942) – Ontario Senator, Canada, 2005-17.

Danny Pintauro, (b. 1976) – American actor ("Who's the Boss" child star).

Charlotte Endymion Porter (1857-1942) – American editor and writer.

Walter Sedlemayr (1926-1990) – German actor (murdered).

Hugues Sinclair de Rochemont (1901-1942) – Dutch journalist; member of the Nazi Party.

Hugh Skinner (b. 1985) – British actor (plays Prince William in the UK series “The Windsors”).

Gábor Szeley (b. 1968) – Secretary of State 2006-9; 1st open lgbt member of Hungarian government.

Peter Whittle (b. 1961) – British parliamentary candidate 2015 and 2017.

John Wieners (1934-2002) – American Beat poet.

Born on September 24th

Rt. Hon. Sir Conor Burns (b. 1972) – British MP 2010-24; Minister of State 2019-22.

Luke Clippinger (b. 1972) – member of Maryland House of Delegates since 2011.

Louis Edmonds (1923-2001) – American actor (237 episodes of “All My Children”).

Michelle Ferris (b. 1976) – Australian Olympic cyclist.

Richard Groenendijk (b. 1972) – Dutch comedian, actor and writer.

Simon Hobart (1964-2005) – British club founder (Popstarz), and DJ (Heaven).

Casey Johnson (1979-2010) – American Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical heiress.

Patrick Kelly (1954-1990) – American fashion designer.

Mark Leno (b. 1951) – California State Senator 2008-16.

John Logan (b. 1961) – American playwright and screenwriter (“Gladiator”, “Skyfall”).

Paul Mills (1924-2004) – American Director of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1970-82.

Ross Mathews (b. 1979) – American tv host and personality.

Yves Navarre (1940-1994) – French novelist.

Jack Pierson (b. 1960) – American photographer and artist.

Amy Scholder (b. 1963) – American writer and literary editor.

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) – 4th Earl of Orford; British writer and gothic novel pioneer.

Next Sunday I hope I’ll give what I had originally planned for today, and explain the links between an early American gay rights organisation, British pantomime dames, and Pueblo dances in New Mexico.

(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World: Part 5) Monks, Monarchs and Myrrh

Last time on (Not Quite) 80 Gays: The Art Workshop International was founded by 12) Bea Kreloff (1925-2016) and 13) Edith Isaac Rose (1929-2018) in Assisi, a city famous as the home of 14) St. Francis of Assisi (c.1187-1226), founder of the Franciscan order of friars who, in 2022, elected its first openly gay “bishop” 15) Markus Fuhrmann (b.1971).

There are two points I need to clear up. First, despite the title, friars are not monks. Basically, monks keep themselves to themselves in a monastery, while friars go out and minister among the outside community. I thought “monks” worked better in the title than “friars”.

Second, the Franciscan order of friars does not have bishops. That is the term I used because it is the most recognisable term used for someone of a comparable position in other Christian churches. Technically, all Franciscan friars are of equal position. Those elected to take overall charge of the affairs of the global Franciscan order (like an archbishop under the ultimate authority of the Pope) is called the Minister General. The world is divided into provinces (the equivalent of dioceses), and the friar elected to oversee each province is called a Minister Provincial (the equivalent of a bishop).

In June 2022, members of the chapter of the province of St. Elizabeth, the German “diocese”, gathered in Ohrbeck near Osnabruck to, amongst other things, elect their new Minister Provincial in succession to Father Cornelius Bohd, who had served his full term of office. The chapter elected 15) Father Markus Fuhrmann (b.1971). Just a few weeks beforehand he had come out as gay.

I wrote about the Franciscan stance on homosexuality last time on “80 Gays”. The issue of homosexuality in the Catholic Church was among several issues discussed in the Synodale Weg, or Synodal Way, a series of conferences held between 2019 and 2023 by the Catholic Church in Germany. Father Markus had always been a supporter of the Synodal Way and of changing some of the Church’s antiquated and corrupt practices, as was his predecessor. Needless to say, the Synodal Way attracted a lot of criticism from within and outside the Catholic Church in Germany.

Official logo the Synodal Way

During all of this controversy Father Markus came out as gay. He was not just an ordinary friar at the time. He was the Vicar Provincial (the next level down from a Minister Provincial) to his predecessor. Just as there was criticism about aspects of the Synodal Way, so there was criticism of Father Markus’s election. The fact that the province of St. Elizabeth elected an openly gay man as their guiding minister must mean that there is a change beginning to happen in the Catholic Church, at least in Germany.

Father Markus is the third Minister Provincial of St. Elizabeth Province. The province itself is relatively new, having been formed by the merger in 2010 of several smaller provinces. Prior to this, Father Markus was a pastor to the homeless in Cologne, the city at the centre of one of the former smaller provinces, the Province of Cologne and the Three Kings.

There’s a Christmas connection here. The Three Kings refer to those in the Bible story of the birth of Christ. But what are they doing in Cologne, you might be asking? The short story is that Cologne cathedral houses their reputed remains. They were brought there by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa from Milan. Before Milan they were in Constantinople, having been taken there by Emperor Constantine the Great’s mother in the 4th century. She had found them in the Holy Land. No-one today really believes they are genuine, but they help to focus the faith of devout Christians.

I’ve written before about the Three Kings. In my Advent series in 2019 I mentioned how modern scholarship is beginning to look at the Three Kings in a historical context. The earliest translations of the Bible didn’t refer to them as kings. This is a rank assigned to them in the Middles Ages to emphasise their status as important representatives from their countries, and because of several prophecies in the Old Testament.

It is speculated that the kings were in fact priests or astrologers. Taking into account that they are said to have come from “the east” suggests that they came from the areas now covered by Iran, Iraq and Syria. During the time of the birth of Christ these areas predominantly practised the Zoroastrian faith. It is widely believed that their priests were most often either androgynous, intersex, transgender or eunuch.

So, the Three Kings weren’t kings. We don’t know their names either. People of the middle ages liked to give names to anonymous characters in the Bible (such as Simeon Bachos). We still do it. We give names to things that don’t have them (children, genders, nations, inventions, animals, asteroids, etc.). Over the centuries the Three Kings have been given many names. Different early church communities gave different names, and some even said there were more than three kings. So, if other churches had been more influential we may be calling the kings by names such as Eshtanbozon, Zual, or Walastar.

The names that we are more familiar with today first appeared in the 6th century in a famous mosaic in the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy. There, above images of the kings, are versions of the names which became the most universal – 15) Caspar, 16) Melchoir) and 17) Balthasar. Another reason why we assume there were three of them is because they brought three gifts, one each – gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Two of these gifts puzzled me as a child. They probably puzzled you as well. Gold is obvious, a precious gift. But what about the others? Frankincense is just incense, also a precious substance at the time and often presented to kings.

We can’t tell much about myrrh from its name, unless you know that is a resinous substance obtained from a thorny tree of the same name. It is used as a perfume, but also in embalming. Its significance as a gift to Christ is to represent His mortality as the only part of the Holy Trinity who could actually die.

The name myrrh is of Semetic origin and means “bitter”. It entered other eastern nations and languages, including ancient Greece. There a myth was created to explain the myrrh tree’s origin. It tells of a girl called Myrrha who fell in love with her father and tricked him into having sex with her, resulting in her pregnancy. Myrrha became remorseful and went into self-imposed exile. She begged the gods to help her out of her situation and they turned her into the tree that bears her name. As for the unborn child, the gods decided to release the child from the tree. This child grew up to be associated with sex, beauty, and fertility and have various gender-fluid relationships. His name was 19) Adonis.

Next time on (Not Quite) 80 Gays: We step into a garden and play some games.

(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World: 3) Atlantis, Bigfoot and Awards

Previously on "80 Gays": A retelling of the myth of 3) Ganymede was written by 4) Felice Picano (b.1944), member of the Violet Quill Club with 5) Edmund White (b.1940), 6) Christopher Cox (1949-1990), 7) George Whitmore (1945-1989), 8) Andrew Holleran (b.1944), 9) Robert Ferro (1941-1988), and 10) Michael Grumley (1942-1988).

9) Robert Ferro and 10) Michael Grumley met in 1967 when they were both studying creative writing at the University of Iowa. Michael Grumley was an Iowa native though had studied at several universities before landing back. Although a member of the Violet Quill, which was primarily concerned with writing gay fiction, Michael had a secondary interest outside the lgbt+ community.

The 1960s and 1970s saw an explosion of interest in esoteric topics such as ancient astronauts, mystic faiths, and the paranormal. While not having any extreme beliefs himself, Michael became a notable contributor in two of the more popular subjects – Atlantis and Bigfoot.

Michael Grumley only collaborated with his partner Robert Ferro on one work, “Atlantis: The Autobiography of a Search”, published in 1970. Officially marketed as non-fiction there are some critics who regard the book as being semi-fact.

What is contained in “Atlantis: The Autobiography of a Search” is the odyssey taken by the Ferro-Grumleys (as the couple were called from their Iowa university days) from Italy to the Bahamas, following a trail of clues and prophecies that led them to the Bimini Road, an underwater ridge of natural rock which has been clamed as the road to Atlantis. There may be elements of literary license and elaboration on the Ferro-Grumley’s part, but their book has become part of the Atlantis mythos itself.

Robert Ferro didn’t collaborate on Grumley’s 1975 book “The Are Giants in the Earth” about Bigfoot, the American forest-dwelling Yeti. Several years ago I included Michael Grumley in my piece “Queer Cryptids”. “There Are Giants in the Earth” expands Grumley’s take on Atlantis to include other ideas such as a hollow earth and lost races of humanity.I shall be returning to these ideas in another episode of “80 Gays” later this year. Although I am highly sceptical of such ideas I am fascinated by them and how they develop, or can develop, if you let your imagination run free. For instance, by combining some ideas in “There are Giants in the Earth” with others from a book entitled “Santa Claus: the Last of the Wild Men” by Phyllis Siefker, I can make a claim that Santa Claus is not based on St. Nicholas but is actually based on a Scandinavian Bigfoot called a Stallo.

Despite being such an enigmatic and elusive creature, Bigfoot ranks as one of the most internationally well-known cryptids. It’s no wonder books about him become best-sellers. When it comes to fiction cryptids provide ready-made fantasy creatures (the Harry Potter books rely primarily on established cryptids). One recent novel about Bigfoot gave a new spin on the creature. The novel is called “Pamela Wants To Cuddle”, and is written by 11) Samantha Leigh Allen.

Spoiler alert: The following paragraphs contain plot details about “Pamela Wants To Cuddle”. If you are currently reading it, or intend to, I advise you to skip to the last paragraph below so that your enjoyment of the novel won’t be spoilt.

Samantha has worked primarily as a transgender journalist, writing for such publications as The Daily Beast, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Out, and CNN, amongst others. She has a PhD in Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and wrote “Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States” in 2019.

Just before that Samantha thought about writing a novel. From a germ of an idea grew a novel that has been described as “bizarre” and “bonkers”. In effect, what she came up with was a slasher-movie/dating-show combination.

“Patricia Wants To Cuddle” is set in Washington state, USA, where stories of Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, seem to be common. The Patricia of the novel’s title is a female Bigfoot. Like all creatures who live in the wild, Patricia is very protective of her territory, so when a television cast and crew arrive to film a dating show Patricia “despatches” these intruders, one by one, in her own inimitable style. It’s all very tongue in cheek and satirical, like “Slumber Party Massacre”, the slasher novel by Rita Mae Brown (number 57 in that first “80 Gays” series). But “Patricia Wants To Cuddle” has one last twist, which I’m not going to reveal.

Let’s get back to Michael Grumley and Robert Ferro. After the deaths of both partners from AIDS in 1988 their estates were used to set up the Ferro-Grumley Foundation. In 1990 the foundation created the Ferro-Grumley Award, an annual prize given to the best lgbt+ fiction of the year. Three fellow Violet Quill members have won this award – 4) Felice Picano in 1996,8) Andrew Holleran in 1997, and 5) Edmund White in 2001. The winning author received $1,000 and a two-week residency at the Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy, which was founded by 12) Bea Kreloff (1925-2016) and 13) Edith Isaac-Rose (1929-2018).

Next time on “80 Gays”: We turn our attention to art in Italy.

(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World: 1) Love in the Stars

This time last year I began researching for the next edition of my “Around the World in 80 Gays” series. It was my intention to have it complete and ready for serialisation this year. However, the Beijing Winter Olympics and Birmingham Commonwealth Games slowed down that research because of an explosion of interest and inclusion in competing lgbt+ athletes at both events. Between them these games provided almost a hundred new names to research and catalogue.

By the end of last year I decided that I had done enough research on “80 Gays” to produce a shortened version, “(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World” Not every part of the serialisation has been written, and I am trying to expand it with more names as I go along, so I can’t say for sure how many names I will end up with.

The format will remain the same as in previous editions. Each individual will be numbered so that you (and I) can keep track of how far through the list of names we are. The first three names are of people we’ve encountered before on this blog and they are all connected by love relationships, which is quite appropriate considering yesterday was what is popularly and mistakenly celebrated as St. Valentine’s Day (see here to discover why it’s the wrong St. Valentine and the wrong date). So without further ado, here’s the new “Around the World in (Not Quite) 80 Gays.

1) The Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138) is one of the more well-known of the gay emperors. Last year we celebrated the 1900th anniversary of his visit to Britain and the construction of the famous wall named after him.

It was on his continuing travels around his empire after laving Britain that Hadrian is believed to have first met the young 2) Antinuos (c.111-c.130) in Claudiopolis (now called Bolu, a city in northern Turkey). It is assumed that Antinous was born in the area.

If estimates of Antinous’s birth are correct he would have been no more than 12 years old when he and Hadrian met 1900 years ago in 123. Hadrian, who was in his 40s, was a big fan of Greek culture, so taking Antinous as a boy lover would not strike him as being questionable, unlike it would today. Even so, there were many critics of Hadrian’s lifestyle who thought the relationship was morally wrong. One of the theories concerning Antinous’s mysterious early death in the River Nile is based on this criticism, that it was a murder to ensure the relationship stopped for good. Other theories include accidental death, political assassination, ritual sacrifice, and suicide.

Hadrian’s grief at the death of his young lover, who was not yet 20 years old, was overwhelming. Back in 2011, in the first of my “Star Gayzing” series (was it really that long ago?) I mentioned some of the tributes Hadrian created for Antinous. In that article I concentrated on the constellation Hadrian “created” and how this was to show Antinous as a new 3) Ganymede.

Ganymede was also a youth who became the lover of an older man, in this case the god Zeus. He became a very popular subject in art during ancient and classical Greece, and also from the Renaissance through to the present day. Both Antinous and Ganymede were immortalised as constellations, with Ganymede becoming Aquarius. Both young men have been inspirations for gay men’s organisations and brotherhoods, and both were deified after their deaths by their lovers. Because of Ganymede’s greater and longer significance he has more statues and images than of Antinous. He remains more prominent in modern gay male culture.

There are many directions I could take from Ganymede in our “Not Quite 80 Gays” journey, but the one I have chosen is through literature, after all, the Greek myths are only known to us through ancient writings.

The modern publication which will take us further is called “An Asian Minor: The True Story of Ganymede” by an American author called 4) Felice Picano (b.1944), and we will learn more about him and his works in a few weeks’ time.

Happy New Year, Baby

Now that we’ve come to the end of another year we are bombarded with babies! New Year babies, that is. There’s actually a gay connection between the New Year baby and Santa Claus, and it comes in the work of artist J. C. Leyendecker (1874-1951).

A couple of years ago I wrote about how J. C. Leyendecker was responsible for making our modern image of Santa Claus the one that prevailed over the many others that were around at the beginning of the 20th century. As a leading cover illustrator for the “Saturday Evening Post” he also helped to popularise the New Year baby.

Leyendecker didn’t invent the New Year baby. In fact, its roots seem to go back to ancient Greece and another queer character I’ve written about a few times on this blog – the Greek god Dionysos.

There’s no real continuity of use to prove that Dionysos was the original New Year baby. Other cultures and faiths have similar New Year traditions associated with the new-born that developed independently. In the end, all these various traditions may simply be a universal concept in humanity, simply associating babies with rebirth of the year or seasons.

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote that Dionysos had two forms, an ancient one and a later one. Consequently, there are different versions of his birth and childhood. The ancient Dionysos was the son of Zeus and either Persephone or Demeter. In this form he was also called Zagreus, and it was in this form that he distracted Prometheus from his creation of humanity. You can read what consequences this had on humanity’s gender here. This Dionysos claimed the throne of Zeus and the Titans tore him to pieces. Zeus then took the dismembered body and put it into a drink which he gave to Princess Semele of Thebes. Semele became pregnant and consequently she gave birth to the second Dionysos.

In this second incarnation Dionysos was raised as a girl to hide him from Hera, Zeus’s wife. As a result Dionysos was often depicted in adulthood dressed as a woman. Members of the cult which developed around him included the Pleiades, the patrons of drag queens.

So, the death and rebirth of Dionysos became symbolic of the death of the Old Year and birth of the New Year. Greek towns would parade a new-born baby through the streets every New Year in commemoration of Dionysos. Whether this is the direct reason why the New Year Baby is so popular today is unknowable. As I said earlier, it may be common throughout history. It is an obvious concept, after all. Anyone, anywhere, anytime could have thought about it. One particularly unsettling aspect of these Greek New Year babies, however, is the common practice in Greek culture of abandoning any physically deformed new born baby to die.

The 19th century seems to have been the period when the New Year Baby acquired its current popularity. Before then it appeared sporadically. With the invention of Christmas cards in 1842 the baby became more visible. The figure of Old father Time was already more well-known in the UK, so it was a natural process of pairing him up with the New Year Baby on Christmas and New Year greetings cards.

In the US the New Year Baby became more popular through the “The Saturday Evening Post”. This is solely down to the work of J. C. Leyendecker. He was the most prolific front cover artist for the Post and was always trying to find ways to celebrate various special occasions, hence the Santa we know today. In 1906 Leyendecker designed the first of 37 consecutive New Year covers, all featuring a baby or winged cherub. You can see here an article which shows all of them in sequence. At the top is his cover for 1923, this New Year’s centenary cover.

One of the fashionable traditions which occurs from place to place is the celebration of the first baby to be born after the chimes of midnight on New Year’s Day (particularly in places where January 1st is New Year’s Day). Needless to say, there are many of them around the world, and the lgbtq community has quite a few. So, to end with, here’s a selection of lgbtq New Year babies.

Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503).

Maurice Béjart (1927-2007), French dancer and choreographer.

C. Jay Cox (b.1962), US film director and screenwriter.

Eloy de la Iglesia (1949-2006), Spanish film director.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970), UK author and novelist.

Lafe Fowler (1959-2002), Deputy Sheriff of San Francisco, USA.

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), Director of the FBI.

James Hormel (1933-2021), US Ambassador and philanthropist.

Michael Howells (1957-2018), UK film and tv production designer.

Magdalen Hsu-Li (b.1970), US singer-songwriter and activist.

Michael Kearns (b.1970), US actor and activist.

Frans Kellendonk (1951-1990), Dutch novelist.

Peter Lankhorst (b.1947), Member of the Dutch parliament.

Albert Mol (1917-2004), Dutch actor and dancer.

Joe Orton (1933-1967), UK playwright and author.

Akil Patterson (b.1983), former US athlete, youth advocate.

Katherine Philips (1631-1664), English poet.

Austin Scarlett (b.1983), US fashion designer.

Ellen Shub (1948-2019), US photographer.

Joey Stefano (1968-1994), US gay porn actor.

W. Scott Thompson (1942-2017), US political scientist.

Nahum Zenil (b.1947), Mexican artist.

Richard Zimler (b.1956), US historical novelist.

So, Happy Birthday to everyone whose birthday is on 1st January, and to everyone else Happy New Year.