IDAHO

Tomorrow is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia – IDAHO. Here is a link to the IDAHO website. Pictured here are some logos used by them over the past few years.

Happy Mother's Day

For some of you reading this, today is Mother’s Day. In the UK we celebrate Mother’s Day on Mothering Sunday, the 4^th Sunday in Lent. Today America celebrates Mother’s Day so I thought I’d bring you a heart-warming story.

I’m very lucky to have had a mother who accepted me the way I was. I realised that she was okay with me being gay when she started sharing jokes on the subject. Her only disappointment was that I didn’t want to have children.

I know some gay people who have had no happy relationship with their mother. Some have been disowned by both parents just because they were gay. But what about children who were adopted? For those who feel a need to find their natural parents it can be like déjà vu – coming out to 2 sets of parents is a big challenge.

With 75 days to go before the Olympics here’s a story of Randy Gardner’s search for his birth mother. Randy was pairs figure skating World Champion in 1978 with Tai Babilonia, and 2 times Winter Olympian.

Randy had been given up for adoption shortly after his birth because his unmarried mother had been raped by a family friend and couldn’t look after him. There was a social stigma at the time to both being unmarried and raped.

Randy only learned by chance in 1998 that he was adopted. He spent 5 years looking for his birth mother, being careful not to reveal his actions to the adopted parents he loved dearly in case they felt he was disowning them. It’s a fear that a lot of adopted children go through.

Eventually Randy found out that his birth mother was alive and well and living in Idaho. He wrote to her, Mrs. Dottie Baca, and they corresponded regularly. Randy told her he was a “performing athlete”. The penny didn’t drop at first and Dottie suddenly realised who her son was in a flash one morning. Of course! she realised – Randy Gardner, the figure skater! She had seen him skate with Tai Babilonia many times on tv.

Since then, Randy and Dottie have been getting to know each other. He went through the “coming out to my parents” experience again, and had a whole new family to get to know.

After Randy’s adopted parents died Randy had the rare privilege of having another mother who was proud of him.

I wish Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there.

Flower Power - Hippy Aztecs

There’s an old English saying which goes “March winds and April showers, bring forth May flowers”.

picture of Xochipilli from an Aztec
codex.



So far in this little series on lgbt flower-lore I’ve concentrated on individual flowers. As a contrast today I’ll celebrate the arrival of May flowers by bringing you what appears to be a transsexual flower god of who was also a patron deity of gay sex.

The name of the Aztec god Xochipilli translates as “flower prince”. Several Aztec gods have a dual nature – both male and female. Both natures existed separately but together, each with slight differences in function. Imagine it as a twin brother and sister being one person.

Xochipilli and his trans/twin Xochiquetzal were the gods of art, beauty, flowers, dance – and sex. They presided over one of the Ages of Mankind, specifically the one preceding our own. They called it the Age of Flowers, in which the Aztecs abandoned the “manly virtues of warfare, administration and wisdom” and pursued the joys of love and sex. Sounds like 1960s Flower Power hippy movement – and they thought they were doing something new!

Xochipilli’s various manifestations reveal a very positive image compared to the more blood-thirsty gods. He was one of the 2 “excellent” Lords of the Night and one of the Lords of the Day. In this latter aspect he was the god of pleasure symbolised by a butterfly. What is appropriate is that the Spanish word for butterfly, mariposa, is often used in the Spanish-speaking world (including Mexico) for a gay man. It’s a bit like the word “pansy” in the 20^th century. I wonder if the butterfly’s association with Xochipilli, the patron deity of gay sex, is the reason?

As a Spirit of the South Xochipilli was also a god of voluptuousness, and with his brothers presided over good health, well-being and pleasure – perfect role models for the message of safe sex. Xochipilli rules the 11^th day of the Aztec week, a day also associated with pleasure. Statues of him are often decorated with garlands of  flowers and butterflies – again I’m reminded of 60s Flower Power.

Xochipilli’s female aspect, Xochiquetzal, was the goddess of fruitfulness. She personified love, beauty, domesticity and physical love. She is said to have given birth to the human race. She too also rules one of the Aztec days, the 20^th and last in their week.

Gay sex was not unknown in the Aztec world, and Xochipilli’s place as its patron deity seems to represent the non-procreative, pleasurable nature of sex among gay men, all part of what they called the Dance of the Flowers.

Aztec gods were celebrated in ceremonies which involved consuming large quantities of an alcoholic drink called pulque. Drinking to excess was believed to produce magical powers – drunken hallucinations, no doubt. In fact, the more I think about it the more stereotypically gay Xochipilli seems!


Xochipilli as envisaged by California student
Gloria Gonzaga.



Olympic Countdown

The Seoul Olympics of 1988 were first to return to some form of normality, with only 3 countries supporting North Korea’s boycott.

It was also when we really begin to see the variety of sports that lgbt athletes participate in at a high level – track and field, rowing, cycling, equestrianism, diving, swimming and tennis (4 sports with more than 1 competitor). Even though 13 lgbt athletes in total competed, none of them were out at the time. Returning to the games were Robert Dover, Beate Peters and Greg Louganis.

Greg is remembered more for his accident than becoming the first diver to win springboard and platform gold at consecutive games. While competing in the finals he hit his head on the springboard. What the public and officials were not aware of was that earlier in the year Greg have been diagnosed HIV+. No precautions were taken to stop the pool, doctors, officials or fellow divers from being infected from his bleeding wound.

With hindsight keeping his HIV status secret seems irresponsible, but at the time the AIDS crisis and general homophobia within sport scared Greg into silence. On the other hand, was it right to assume Greg was straight and not infected, and should the IOC not have taken precautions anyway? It wasn’t until 1995 that Greg admitted he was HIV+, only a year after coming out publicly at the Gay Games in New York.

Away from the controversy was a welcome addition to the 1988 Olympics. After and absence of 60 years tennis was reintroduced to the games after being a demonstration sport in 1984, and tennis players form the largest group of female lgbt Olympians, 6 of them being Wimbledon singles or doubles champions.

The first official lgbt tennis Olympian was Jana Novotná. In 1988 Jana was earning a reputation as an emerging star of the doubles circuit, winning the US and Australian Opens that year. In the Olympic final Jana and doubles partner Helena Suková were beaten into the silver position by Zina Garrison and Pam Shriver.

Back in the pool we have future Olympic champion from Canada Mark Tewksbury making his debut. He was to create ripples in more ways than one, as we shall see in future posts. But for now the ripples he was making were also silver ones. Mark was Commonwealth Games backstroke champion, a stroke he excelled in. At the Olympics he could only get a diploma for 5^th place in the 100m backstroke, but he did win a silver with the 4x100m medley relay team.

Competing against Mark in the 200m backstroke was American Dan Veatch. Dan finished in 7^th place in the final while Mark finished 4^th in the B final (12^th place overall). Dan Veatch went on to compete in the Gay Games, winning 13 gold medals.

The remaining lgbt athletes were all making their Olympic debut. They were Sherri Cassuto (USA, rowing), Patrick Jeffrey (USA, diving), Brian Marshall (Canada, athletics), Inger Pors Olsen (Denmark, rowing), Craig Rogerson (Australia, diving), and Petra Rossner (East Germany, cycling). I’ll be saying more about some of these in the future.

For more, official, information on the Games go to www.london2012.com  

Out of Their Trees - Alan Turing

In this centenary year of Alan Turing’s birth I couldn’t pass up the chance to present his ancestry. Is there anything is his background that hinted at his genius? There are two things to look at – maths and sport.

Obviously, maths is what Turing is remembered for today by producing the mathematical theory behind the computer and the mathematical logic he used when working as a war-time code-breaker. But he was also quite sporty. At Cambridge University Alan didn’t relax with the literary and academic circles but spent a lot of time running, rowing or sailing. He would run along the banks of the Cam and Ouse rivers training as if for a marathon. In this his centenary year several athletic clubs are holding special Turing running events to celebrate.

Apart from that the only sporting connection in the family is through his father’s brother Harvey. Harvey dabbled in engineering in Canada, but after World War I he turned to journalism and writing. He became editor of the “Salmon and Trout Magazine” and wrote about other sports.

The Turings were basically a colonial administrative family. They originated in Foveran in Aberdeenshire, going back to the time of Robert the Bruce in the 13^th century. In 1638 John Turing of Forevan was created a baronet by King Charles I for helping support the royalist cause in the north. John’s brother was Alan Turing’s ancestor.

When we reach Alan Turing’s grandfather the family story moves to Sherwood Forest. Rev. John Turing was vicar of Edwinstowe and Ollerton, right in the heart of Robin Hood country. He was vicar of the church where legend says Robin Hood married Maid Marian. Rev. Turing took a maths degree at Cambridge in 1848, but he wasn’t particularly gifted and became a clergyman. This seems a too small a spark to set Alan’s mathematical mind alight, so perhaps he got it from his mother’s family.

Julius Turing, Alan’s father, was Rev. Turing’s second son. He was born in Edwinstowe vicarage. He entered the Indian Civil Service and it was on a voyage from India to America via Japan that he met his future wife Ethel Stoney. Before they reached America they were engaged.

Ethel Stoney came from a family of engineers. Her father was Chief Engineer of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway. Two of Ethel’s uncles were colonial engineers. Maths is essential to engineering, and Alan’s understanding of the use of maths to create the computer is evidently inherited from his mother’s family.

As for the rest of Turing’s ancestry there is more Celt than Anglo-Saxon. His father’s family were predominantly Scottish and his mother’s were predominantly Irish. Rev. John Turing’s mother (Alan’s great-grandmother) was of royal blood. Her grandfather Arthur Dingwall-Fordyce (1754-1834) of Bruckley Castle in Aberdeenshire, was descended from two children of King James IV Stewart of the Scots (1473-1513).

The Reluctant Spy

A month ago today I told you about spies. Spies are still very much in the news at the moment with the mysterious death of Gareth Williams being investigated. I’m sure his equally mysterious obsession with women’s clothes will also be a matter of much debate in future years. At the time of his death Gareth was hoping to leave MI6 and return to GCHQ.

On 12^th April another spy died, this time naturally. He was Mark Frankland. He too was a somewhat reluctant spy, and his sexuality was not so grey as Gareth Williams’.

His espionage work for MI6 only lasted a year in the early 1960s, but it meant that wherever he went and whatever he did was seen as suspicious by both sides.

Here is his obituary from The Daily Telegraph.

The Return of St. Valentine

On February 14^th I wrote about St. Valentine’s Day. Today I’ll do the same, because today is the REAL St. Valentine’s Day.

As I said in February the reason we celebrate love and romance on St. Valentine’s Day is because Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem to celebrate the marriage of King Richard II in 1381. His theme was picked up by his great friend and gay courtier Sir John Clanvowe in a poem called “The Book of Cupid, God of Love”.

Richard II’s marriage took place on 2^nd May 1381, the feast day of St. Valentine of Genoa. As I mentioned in February I believe the reason we celebrate Valentine’s Day on the wrong date is because the Catholic Church didn’t want to associate it with the pagan festival of prostitutes called Floralia which was held in Roman times during this week. It was moved to the feast day of a different St. Valentine on 14^th February in 1641.

St. Valentine’s Day is now always associated with Cupid and his arrows of love. I his original persona of Eros he was worshipped as the patron of recreational sex – specifically gay sex. More on this can be found in my earlier post here.

So if you Valentine’s Day plans on 14^th February fell apart you can try again today!