Out Of Her Tree : Simone de Beauvoir

Of the influential philosophers of the 20^th century one name stands out because it is that of a woman, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). During her lifetime her relationship with fellow French philosopher Jean Paul Satre and others was well-known, and she also had several with women. Simone never labelled herself sexually, either as a bisexual or heterosexual. As a philosopher she would have used semantics to dodge such labels.

As a philosopher Simone’s contributions to modern thought helped to change philosophy from the stuffy gobbledigook of academia into something more glamorous and, dare I say it, sexy. It was the circles in which she moved which made it so, and like many philosophers they encompassed those of differing political, social and religious backgrounds. Existentialism was that new glamorous philosophy. For a more detailed explanation of it you can find massive amounts of information on the internet.

Simone’s immediate ancestry was centred round law, politics and banking. Her mother’s family, the Brasseurs, were important members of the political and industrial scene in Luxembourg and Belgium. Her great-grandfather Hubert Brasseur (1823-1890) became a professor of political economics at Ghent University. In 1855 he created a religious stir when he and a fellow professor denied the divinity of Christ. Even though he had the support of the Belgian Prime Minister, a practicing Catholic, the Catholic Church reacted in typical manner and declared that parents should not send their children to Ghent. Whether this legacy passed down to Simone de Beauvoir and influenced her own atheist belief is difficult to say, but her ancestry contains other differences of religious opinion.

On her father’s side Simone has a large amount of aristocratic blood. Her great-great-grandfather Claude Bertrand de Beauvoir married the sister of Edme Georges Champeaux de Vauxdimes who before becoming a Catholic priest was a lieutenant in the French infantry. In 1791 the Revolutionary government of France introduced a law forcing all clergy to sign an oath of loyalty which restricted, and in some cases abolished, certain rights of the church over the state.

Edme was one of many who refused to sign the oath was forced to escape the authorities by joining the refugee army, called the Army of Condé, in the German Rhineland. As an ex-soldier he was no stranger to armed conflict and seems to have stayed with the army until it was disbanded in 1801. In 1803 Edme got a job as a headmaster in Bordeaux and then as Professor of Philosophy at the new university of France in Orléans from 1809 to 1815.

Through the Champeaux family Simone de Beauvoir has a lot of important family connections to the old duchy of Burgundy. Her direct ancestor, Georges de Champeaux, Seigneur de Préfontaine (1701-1788) was grandson of a member of the Milletot family. Other members of that family filled many legal and official positions at the Burgundian court for several generations.

A couple of generations further back and the Champeaux’s married into another well-connected Burgundian family, the Clugnys. Perhaps the most significant of Simone’s Clugny ancestors was the wife of her ancestor Jacques de Clugny, Seigneur de Meneserre (c.1450-1512). Her name was Countess Adrienne de Bourgogne-Nevers. To genealogists she is called a “gateway ancestor” because she belonged to a family whose ancestry is well established and links to royal and imperial families that can be traced back hundreds of years. As her name suggests the Countess was a member of the royal Burgundian dynasty herself. Although born illegitimate Adrienne was legitimated in 1463, less than a year before her father’s death.

The royal dynasty of Burgundy from which Simone de Beauvoir descends through Countess Adrienne is referred to as the House of Valois-Burgundy because the male line stems from the royal French dynasty of Valois. King Jean II de Valois of France (1319-1364) granted the duchy of Burgundy to one of his sons, Prince Philippe, who married the widow of the previous Duke of Burgundy in 1369. He became Prince Philippe II “the Bold”, first Valois Duke of Burgundy. Countess Adrienne (technically a princess after her legitimisation) is one of his great-grandchildren.

Simone de Beauvoir’s unbroken line of French ancestry reaches even further back through the Valois kings of France, all the way back to the dynastic founder King Hughes de Capet (d.996), and even further back than that to the Emperor Charlemagne, King of the Franks (742-814). It is even probable that Simone’s unbroken French DNA can go way, way back to the Merovingian kings of France and their dynastic founder Marcomir de Toxandrie, Chief of the Salian Franks, who died in 281. Even I can’t prove my own unbroken British ancestry that far back!

Where did Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical heritage come from? I’d like to think that it was a mixture of her bourgeois ancestry which gave her the social ability to express her thoughts freely, and her character which attracted male thinkers to her without criticism of her gender. Female philosophers were rare in those days, and females who expressed their thoughts ever rarer.

Star Gayzing : Wave Goodbye to Theory

You may have heard or read the recent news reports about the detection of gravitational waves first theorised by Einstein in 1916. The discovery was made by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) last September but was only made public four weeks ago. The discovery could not have been made without the ground-breaking work in the early days of LIGO by a lesbian physicist called Dr. Nergis Mavalvala. On this International Women’s Day we look at her work.

Back in 2013 one of me “Ology of the Month” articles was about those very gravitational waves and Nergis Mavalvala. What I find quite interesting is that the discovery was announced just three days before the 2^nd anniversary of the date I published my article.

Let’s get to the point and see what gravity waves are and what LIGO does. Here’s a short video. In it Nergis and her colleagues explain briefly their discovery.

Here’s how Nergis became involved in LIGO. Nergis arrived at Wellesley College in Massachusetts from her native Pakistan in 1986. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy in 1990 and went to study at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). It was there that she met Dr. Rainer Weiss, the first scientist to suggest the idea of LIGO back in the 1970s. Nergis’s expertise was in designing and building interferometers, any instrument that uses the interference patterns in wavelengths to determine data and measurements.

Dr. Weiss took Nergis on as part of his team that had begun to work on the problem of detecting gravitational waves. Nergis’s research and thesis dealt specifically with the problem of creating authentically-obtained data from precisely-aligned sensors. Her research was essential in the construction of LIGO.

The figures and distances involved in detecting gravitational waves is staggering. The data has to detect distortions in space caused by a cataclysmic event so far away, as the above video mentions. Here’s the problem. Let’s make a hypothetical analogy. Imagine we had a LIGO built on Pluto. Its task would be to pick up the ripple in space created by a baby panda sneezing on the Earth when the planet is on its furthest point on the other of the Sun. That’s probably not the best analogy to make but it gives you an idea of the problem when you also consider that our hypothetical LIGO on Pluto would have to separate the ripples caused by the sneeze from those created by a tropical storm on Venus, a meteor crashing into Saturn, a volcano exploding on the one of the moons of Jupiter, and me dropping a spoon in my kitchen. All create waves in space but you’re only interested in the panda, and LIGO has to be sensitive enough to only pick up the panda sneezing.

That’s why it took nearly six months before the detection of the gravity waves was made public. Scientists had to be sure the data was right. There’s even a group of the team dedicated to creating fake waves.

When the discovery was made public Nergis Mavalvala was roped in as a panel member at the official presentation at MIT. As a consequence she soon found herself a national celebrity in her home country. Even Pakistan’s Prime Minister sent his congratulations to her and the LIGO team.

Whether the LIGO team will be nominated for a Nobel Prize or not, Dr. Nergis Mavalvala leads the way for female and openly lesbian physicists in a profession which is still predominantly male, straight and white.

The Ballad of the Murderous Toy-Boy : Part 2

Of damned deeds, and deadly dole,

I make my mournful song

By witches done in Lincolnshire

Where they have lived long

And practiced many a wicked deed

Within that country there

Which fills my breast and bosom full

Of sobs and trembling fear.

Do you believe in witchcraft? I don’t mean the modern Wicca belief but the old-fashioned notion of women with pointed hats riding on broomsticks. This traditional view of witchcraft has always been based on the Medieval Christian belief that witches were servants of Satan.

Belief in witchcraft has led to many terrible abuses and persecution throughout the centuries. Just like the Holocaust, slavery and the Crusades, there’s not a lot we can do to change it, but we can ensure that nothing like them can happen again. With witchcraft it has been women who have borne the brunt of persecution, hence the traditional Hallowe’en image of a witch on broomstick.

I want to write about three specific witches today and their connection to last week’s first article on “The Ballad of the Murdering Toy-Boy”. Both are linked to King James I and his “favourites”. Last week’s was about Robert Carr who was convicted of implication in a murder and the ballad that was written about it. Today we look at another ballad, the one whose opening lines are given above. But the link to James I’s toy-boy isn’t evident because it was only discovered nearly 400 years after it was written. Here’s the background to that ballad.

In 1613 the Earl and Countess of Rutland employed a local woman called Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Philippa as servants in their home Belvoir (pronounced “beever”) Castle. However, the other servants didn’t like them very much and accused them of stealing from the castle, whereupon the Earl fired them.

Not long afterwards the Rutland family became very ill and the eldest son and heir, Henry, Lord Ros, who was less than 10 years old, died. This was followed by the younger son, Francis. At that period in time there were many accusations of witchcraft all around the country and many people were hanged (we didn’t burn witches in England, despite what you see in the movies). The Flower women were well-known as herbalists and, more significantly, non-church-goers. Both amounted to witchcraft in those days, so the Earl of Rutland had the women arrested on suspicion of causing the deaths of his sons by witchcraft.

Joan Flower died on the way to imprisonment in Lincoln Castle proclaiming her innocence, but her daughters confessed. They were tried, found guilty and hanged on 11^th March 1619. In less than year a ballad was published about these Witches of Belvoir, as they were called.

In 2013 historian Tracey Borman published a book in which she suggested that the Witches of Belvoir were innocent, and that the Earl’s sons were actually murdered on the orders of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), who succeeded Robert Carr as the favourite/toy-boy of King James I.

New, let’s have a closer look at the story. When the Earl’s two sons died his heir was his only other surviving child, Lady Katherine. As a woman she wouldn’t have inherited the English title of Countess of Rutland, but would have inherited the Scottish title of Baroness de Ros and all the estates and income from both titles. She was a very wealthy heiress. One of the appointments her father held was Constable of Nottingham Castle, an important honorary position that had become virtually hereditary in the family for several generations.

King James had visited the Earl at Belvoir Castle many times, and the earl would have attended the king on the royal visits to Nottingham. Perhaps between them they thought Lady Katherine would be a suitable wife for George Villiers. George, however, may have been impatient to obtain the estates of his wife and contrived to remove the two Rutland boys who stood in the way of the inheritance, leaving Lady Katherine as sole heir. He had them poisoned and then framed the Flower women as scapegoats to cover his tracks.

That’s Tracey Borman’s theory. It’s probably more believable than witchcraft. Whatever the truth it is a fact that George Villiers and Lady Katherine married a year after the deaths of the first boy.

George’s plan backfired. Although the Earl passed on the appointment of Constable of Nottingham Castle to George not long after the wedding George predeceased the Earl and didn’t inherited his estates. George met his untimely death at the hands of a disgruntled ex-soldier who had served in one of George’s continental campaigns. The Earl’s estates were inherited by Lady Katherine and passed to her second husband.

But let’s return to the Witches of Belvoir and another connection to the previous article on Robert Carr. I mentioned in that other article that the king and court stayed at Thurland Hall in Nottingham, named after the grandson of John Tansley, Mayor of Nottingham. One of Tansley’s other grandchildren married into the same Flower family to which the Witches of Belvoir belonged. They may even have been descended from Tansley. The evidence is hard to find. As also mentioned previously Tansley is my 14-times great-grandfather, making the Witches my ancestral cousins.

The verse that began this article comes from the ballad of the Witches of Belvoir. It’s a very long ballad, so I’ll finish with the last few verses. They tell of the demise of my witch cousins – Joan choking on a piece of bread and her daughters hanged at Lincoln.

And unto Lincoln City borne

Therein to lie in jail,

Until the judging sizes came

That death might be their bail.

But there this hateful mother witch

These speeches did recall,

And said that in Lord Ros’s death

She had no hand at all.

Whereon she bread and butter took,

“God let this same” quoth she,

“If I be guilty of his death,

Pass never through me.”

So mumbling it within her mouth

She never spoke more words,

But fell down dead, a judgement just,

And wonder of the Lord’s.

Her daughters two, their trials had,

Of which being guilty found

They died in shame, by strangling twist,

And laid by shame in the ground.

Olympic Alphabet : J is for ...

JUMP!

To celebrate today’s Leap Day I’m looking at a group of lgbt athletes who, well, leap! The modern summer Olympics and Youth Winter Olympics are always held in a leap year so it’s a good opportunity to look at the today. And this is a bit of a bumper article because I didn’t realise how many “jumpers” there have been and I wanted to give them all a mention today, especially considering it’ll be another 4 years before I can do it again! It would take too long to chronicle all of the incidents and achievements of all of them, so this can be seen as just an overview.

There are a few Olympic sports that involve jumping or leaping. Some of them will not be dealt with today because I covered them in earlier articles in this Olympic Alphabet series. These are the decathlon, equestrianism, figure skating and gymnastics. Other sports may include some jumping elements, such as basketball and swimming, but I’ll restrict myself to sports where sports where points are scored for jumping.

“Olympic jumpers” can be divided into several neat groups – diving, snow sports, and track and field. One exception is trampolining, which is classed as gymnastics. We’ll start with that.

Ji Wallace is the only lgbt Olympic trampolinist – so far (another is hoping to qualify for Rio). Ji represented his native Australia when it hosted the Sydney 2000 games. He won a silver medal and had hoped to compete at the Beijing 2008 games but failed to be selected. After coming out he has become a leading lgbt sport advocate and was appointed a Gay Games Ambassador.

Perhaps the group with the most well-known names are the divers. The biggest name being Greg Louganis. Of the records he holds the most significant is his winning of 2 gold medals in successive Olympics in the same diving events, the first diver to achieve this. His gold medals place him third in the table of lgbt champions.

Greg wasn’t the first lgbt Olympic diver. The earliest is the Canadian Scott Cranham who, along with Greg Louganis attended the London 2012 in a coaching position. Scott’s first appearance was 40 years before that in Munich 1972. Although he didn’t win any Olympic medals he did win 2 silvers and 2 bronzes at 2 Commonwealth Games. He was also one of the first Olympics to compete in the Gay Games. In total he has won 3 gold, 1 silver, and 3 bronze Gay Games medals. Both Greg and Scott were due to attend the Moscow 1980 games but were victims of their nation’s decision to boycott them.

In the Seoul 1988 Olympics we saw the most lgbt divers compete – Greg Louganis, Patrick Jeffrey, Craig Rogerson and Jhonmar Castillo (though his participation has been queried). These were the games where Greg Louganis won his second double-gold titles and the one in which he banged his head on the board. None of the other lgbt divers won medals, though Australian Craig Rogerson was Commonwealth champion at the time.

Up to then here were no openly gay divers, but at the Atlanta 1996 games there were 2. American Patrick Jeffrey was at his second Olympics, but it is one of his team-mates who was at the centre of a dispute before the games that threatened the team spirit.

Diver David Pichler’s coach was Ron O’Brien, the man who coached Greg Louganis. O’Brien developed a deep dislike for David’s boyfriend Steve Guiffre after Steve physically attacked O’Brien’s son on a plane. The incident escalated with David accusing O’Brien of interfering with his relationship, and O’Brien got a restraining order against Steve. Accusations flew around through to the US Olympic trials. Thankfully, differences were settled just before the Atlanta games began.

The first European gay diver competed in Atlanta as well. This was Sweden’s Jimmy Sjodin’s only Olympic appearance, though he does have a connection with the current gay diving icon, Tom Daley. In 2001 Jimmy took part in a reality documentary film which followed 6 openly gay young men on a bus journey to the Burning Man festival. The director and co-start was Dustin Lance Black, Tom Daley’s fiancé.

One diver who missed out on the Atlanta Olympics was South Africa’s Rob Costa. He was one of his nation’s leading divers and had taken part in the Olympic trials. While the swimming team was selected almost immediately the divers had to put up with procrastinations before being selected, only to be told two weeks before the Atlanta games that none of them, Rob included, would be going. The reasons vary. Some say it was because the diving scores at the trials were deliberately inflated to ensure qualification. Others (including Rob himself) claim it was because the South African Olympic Committee considered the Atlanta diving events too elitist and white (in effect, boycotting them). The same fate befell their equestrian and gymnastics teams.

The next Olympics in Sydney 2000 saw David Pichler return, with Patrick Jeffrey as his coach. Sydney also saw the first of 3 Olympics appearances by Australian diver Mat Helm. He is the first of the remaining divers on the list who competed in both solo diving and the new synchronised diving events introduced in Sydney. In Athens 2004 Mat was the only lgbt diver, winning a silver and bronze medal. In Beijing 2008 he was joined by fellow Commonwealth champions, both making their debut – Matthew Mitcham and Tom Daley. All of them have won Olympics medals, and Matthew Mitcham became Olympic champion in 2008. After the figure skater Ondrej Nepala who competed in the Winter Olympics at the age of 13 in 1964, Tom is the next youngest lgbt Olympian, and the youngest Summer Olympian. He has made an additional Olympic appearance at the first ever Youth Summer Olympics in Singapore 2010.

Now let’s move on to dry land. This second, larger, group are the track and field athletes, which include the decathletes Tom Waddell and Caitlyn Jenner that I wrote about under the letter “D”, so I needn’t say more about them here.

Appropriately, the earliest track and field “jumper” is one of the greatest of all time, and the most successful of the 24 people in this group. Mildred Didrikson (1911-1956), known universally as “Babe”, made only one Olympic appearance, in Los Angeles 1932, but what an appearance! She won a gold medal in the hurdles, and a silver in the high jump, breaking the world record in both. A true all-rounder Babe went on to have a successful golfing career and was named as the USA’s greatest sportswoman of the 20^th century.

At the next games in Berlin two intersex athletes competed. One of these was Dora Ratjen in the high jump. I’ll be writing more about Dora and the other intersex Olympians when we reach the letter “X” in August.

There’s a big gap before another known lgbt “jumper” appears at the Olympics. This was in Mexico 1968 when decathlete Tom Waddell competed. In the nest two Olympics another well-known decathlete competed, Caitlyn Jenner, then known as Bruce. More about both of them is given under the letter “D”.

It was 8 years before another jumping event featured an lgbt athlete, and she was in the women’s equivalent of the decathlon, the heptathlon, which also includes jumping events. Sabine Braun competed for West Germany in Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988. Following German unification she competed in three more Olympics, winning a bronze in Barcelona 1992. Sabine is one of 6 lgbt athletes, and the first ever female German athlete, to compete in 5 or more Olympics. She was also the first female German athlete to come out.

In both 1984 and 1988 Sabine was joined by lgbt “jumpers” Greg Duhaime and Louise Ritter. Greg was a steeplechaser, which involves jumping over hurdles. Louise was a high jumper. Disappointment at being forced to boycott the Moscow 1980 games was followed by more at finishing in 8^th place in 1984 because of a recurring hip injury, but she achieved Olympic gold in 1988 in a tense sudden-death jump off against the favourite.

Another high jumper appeared in the next two games. Kajsa Bergqvist competed for Sweden in Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, winning bronze at the latter. She went on to greater success in the World and European Championships.

Sydney 2000 had the most lgbt jumpers – Sabine Braun, Kajsa Bergqvist, Peter Häggström and Balian Buschbaum. This was the only Olympic appearance by both Häggström (Sweden, long jump) and Buschbaum (Germany, pole vault). Balian Buschbaum, then known as Yvonne, is one of a surprisingly large number of transgender and intersex Olympians who I’ll cover in more detail under the letter “X”.

The last known lgbt “jumpers” is Nottinghamshire’s Rob Newton. Despite what an allegedly good BBC journalist heralded last October, race-walker Tom Bosworth is not the first openly gay Team GB track and field athlete, Rob Newton was. He competed in Athens 2004 in the hurdles (complete with flowing pony-tail). He featured in a major interview in “Gay Times” several months beforehand.

Finally, and I hope you’re not too exhausted by now, we move on to snow. There have been 7 lgbt “snow-jumpers” at the Winter Olympics. Four of these were snowboarders.

Snowboarding was introduced, along with women’s ice hockey, at the Nagano 1998 games. Both have had a complete lgbt presence ever since. At its debut we had our only snowboard medallist, Stine Brun Kjeldaas of Norway. She won a silver in the half-pipe competition. However, in 2002 she only finished 13^th.

In Turin 2006 Stine’s future wife, the Dutch snowboarder Cheryl Maas also competed in the half-pipe contest. She returned 8 years later to the Sochi games in the slopestyle competition. Turin saw the introduction of another snowboard event, the snowboardcross. Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, the first lgbt Inuit Olympian, competed in snowboardcross in Vancouver 2010, and Australia’s Belle Brockhoff competed in Sochi 2014. Both came out in response to the anti-gay laws introduced into Russia.

When you think of jumping at the Winter Olympics the first image is of a ski jumper. There have been 2 lgbt ski jumpers so far – Canada’s Eric Mitchell in Vancouver 2010 and Austria’s Daniela Iraschko-Stolz in Sochi 2014. Daniela won a silver medal with her jump. At 17 Eric was the youngest ski jumper at the games. A nasty accident in training for the Sochi games halted any further Olympic competition though he is now part of the Canadian Olympic Committee’s campaign to improve lgbt inclusion in sport.

Last, but by no mean least, in this mammoth article is British-born American Gus Kenworthy, a freestyle skier. He won a silver medal in the slopestyle event in Sochi.

And that’s about it for now. I hope you’re not too exhausted by this long article. I’ll return with the next letter in our “Olympic Alphabet” next month when I’ll write about a couple of athletes who are, but at the same time, not, lgbt Olympians.

The Ballad of the Murderous Toy-Boy

Earlier this month I did a couple of guided tours of lgbt Nottingham. One of the stops was outside a traditional English pub called The Thurland Hall. It is named after a huge stately mansion that occupied that site until it was pulled down in 1831.

I have a personal connection to this site. Thurland Hall was named after Thomas Thurland, a wealthy wool merchant and 3-times Mayor of Nottingham, who inherited it from his grandfather John Tansley, another 3-times Mayor of Nottingham and MP. John Tansley is my 14xgreat-grandfather.

The original Thurland Hall was the only place in Nottingham that was big enough to house King James I and his court when they visited the city between 1612 and 1624. The official royal residence was Nottingham Castle, but this has been left to fall into ruins by the Tudor monarchs.

When King James succeeded to the throne of England his reputation for having “favourites” was well-known. So too was his affectionate behaviour towards them. When he first arrived in London there were pamphlets circulating declaring that “Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen”, though this more probably refers to their style of reign.

King James visited the county many times. His first official visit to Nottingham was on 16th August 1612. By that time he had been separated from his wife Queen Anne and was accompanied by his then favourite/toy-boy, Robert Carr (c.1587-1645). He was considered to be a very handsome, androgynous young man, just the type that appealed to King James. Unlike the king’s later favourite/toy-boy, the Duke of Buckingham, it is probable the relationship between the king and Carr was platonic, though the king was obviously romantically smitten.

Carr was one of the most powerful people in the country thanks to the king. He became embroiled in the political machinations of the Howard family. Carr fell in love with Frances Howard, the married Countess of Essex. Carr persuaded King James to annul the Essex marriage so he could marry Frances himself in 1613.

Less than ten days earlier a friend of Carr’s, someone who was instrumental in pushing Carr into King James’s favour, died a prisoner in the Tower of London. His name was Sir Thomas Overbury. Two years later evidence emerged that Overbury was murdered, and the list of those involved included those of Robert Carr and his wife Frances, by now Earl of Countess of Somerset. Six people in all were accused of the murder, and all were found guilty and sentenced to death. The king, being an old romantic softy, pardoned the Somersets though kept them prisoner in the Tower until 1622.

And where does the ballad in this article’s title fit in? Well, in those days before film producers turned real-life scandal and drama into blockbusters, scandals and sensational news were turned into ballads. There were several which dealt with the Overbury murder and the part the Somersets played. Here is one of them.

But first, an explanation of some of the words and verses in the ballad.
“Pad” is a horse, and “Punk” is a whore.
“Nullity” means nullification.
“Perpuse” is a slang name for female genitalia.
Verse 6 refers to the Earl of Essex’s claim of virility with other women.
A “wimble” is a tool for boring holes, used here as an obvious double-entendre.
“Quo ad hanc” refers to the alleged non-consummation of his marriage to Frances.
Verse 7 refers to Frances’s examination for virginity which some claim she faked.
Verse 8 criticises the clergy who declared Frances a virgin and the Earl impotent.
“Halter” means the hangman’s rope.
The “young lord” is Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset.
“Undertaker” refers to someone “undertaking” a task, not a funeral director.
“Sweet friend” is Thomas Overbury.
“Sir Gervais” was Lieutenant of the Tower at the time of the murder.
“Glister” is an enema, the means by which Overbury was murdered.
Verse 11 refers to Overbury’s opposition to the Somerset marriage.
“Ignoramus” refers to the verdict despite insufficient evidence against Somerset.
Verse 12 refers to others convicted, called Weston, Forman and Turner.
 
1. There was an old lad rode on an old pad
Unto an old punk a-wooing.
He laid the old punk upon an old trunk,
O, there was a good old doing.

2. There was an old maid scarce sweet as they said

In a place that I dare not to mention.
She in an odd humour laid with a perfumer,
O, there was an odd invention.

3. The punk and the maid they sung and they said

That marriage was a servility.
If marry you must for change of lust,
O, well fare a trick of nullity.

4. There was a madam who did study to frame

To devise to draw up a perpuse.
She drew in so narrow a Carr might go through,
O, there was a slender sluice.

5. Her Earl did appoint her they say such a jointure

As was of no validity.
Above twice in a night he could her no right,
O, there was a strange frigidity.

6. But when as her Earl had another girl,

His wimble could pierce her flank.
His nag proved able by changing his stable,
O, there was a quo ad hanc.

7. This dame was inspected but fraud interjected.

A maid of more perfection
Whom midwives do handle while the knight holds the candle,
O, there was clear inspection.

8. Now all foreign writers cry out of their mitres

That allow this for a virginity,
And talk of erection and want of ejection,
O, there was a sound divinity.

9. There was young lord, assumed on his word

He would be a Parliament maker.
But see how things alter, he feareth the halter,
O, there was an undertaker.

10. He had a sweet friend that he did commend

To the keeping of sweet Sir Gervais.
They gave him a glister, his belly to blister,
O, there was a sweet piece of service.
 

11. This friend denied and could not abide

A match that he said would shame us.
Betwixt this matron and this grave patron,
O, pattern of Ignoramus.

12. Now West and thorn and turner do turn

And say that these plots were frauds.
They may say their pleasure to think it hard measure,
O, knaves and punks and bawds.

The Seven Heavenly Gay Virtues : Being Patient

Last year I did a series of articles entitled “The 7 Deadly Gay Sins”. I’m following that up with this first article is a new series called “The 7 Heavenly Gay Virtues”. I’m using the word “heavenly” to denote a sense of goodness and morality as opposed to any specific religious sense. After all, you don’t need to believe in any god to be a good person with admirable virtues.

First of all, a very brief history of the Seven Virtues of traditional belief. All faiths have virtues to which worshippers practice. Aristotle and Plato came up with four which were adopted by the Christians as the Four Cardinal Virtues. To this they added Faith, Hope and Charity from the New Testament. By the 5^th century all seven of these were grouped together as opposing qualities to the Seven Deadly Sins.

Each of the Virtues has an opposing Sin. As illustrated in my series of articles last year all of the Sins were assigned colours, six of which appear on the Rainbow Pride flag. I’m going to take each of the Seven Virtues just as I did with the Sins and build up a Virtuous Pride flag. Its all just a bit of fun and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, though some of the actual Virtues have very serious aspects.

So, what’s first? The red stripe at the top of the Pride flag represented the Deadly Sin of Anger. The opposite or absence of Anger is Patience. Patience sums up all of the progresses that various disenfranchised or persecuted communities have endured from time immemorial.

The lgbt community has been very patient and has waited many centuries to become accepted as equal members in society. There’s still a very long way to go before full equality reaches the global lgbt community. If studying history has taught me anything it’s that change has never come quickly.

There are qualities which the Medieval world associated with Patience. One of these is resilience. I want to quote here from an article published by Huffpost Queer Voices (then known as Huffpost Gay Voices) last year. The words are by Swami Varadan, the host of a Californian programme called “The Urban Turban Show”. The title of his article is “3 Lessons the LGBT Community Has Taught Me”. Number 1 on his list is Patience, He writes :

“They say that Patience is a Virtue. Imagine not being able to marry someone what you love? Imagine not getting the same tax benefits as your straight friends? Imagine if your lover was in the hospital but you didn’t have the ‘right’ to go se them? This is what my LGBT friends dealt with over and over again. Patience is what they learned and taught me. If you want something in life you have to have Patience. You have to have Patience during times when you want to quit...”

Another quality given to Patience is sufferance. The plight of many lgbt victims of discrimination and persecution show a great deal of sufferance with dignity. The instances of online bullying has created a destructive presence in the lgbt community. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve put into my lgbt index who committed suicide because of the online bullying they received. A response to this distressing fact was the creation of the “It Gets Better” campaign.

“It Gets Better” was created in 2010 is response to the suicides of several teenagers in a short period in the US who had been bullied because of their sexuality. The main message behind the campaign is that all the problems of bullying disappear as soon as time goes on. In the real world, however, bullying doesn’t disappear, it just goes by a different name and find a different reason to bully. And the lgbt community is not innocent of bullying members of its own community.

Here I must offer my own personal perspective. I’ve been an out gay man since 1997. In the years since then I have lived through periods when various UK governments have passed what have been regarded as anti-gay laws. Yet, none of these have actually had any direct negative effect on my life as a gay man. True, I have received homophobic abuse and taunts, but they are not what have hurt or upset me the most.

What has upset me are comments and attitudes (and, yes, anger verging on hate speech) from members of the lgbt community to my personal beliefs and politics. At Nottinghamshire Pride last July I was bombarded with propaganda and criticism expressed to me for not being one of the “atheist left-wing” majority that I left not long after the march ended. I felt abused, and depressed that the community to which I belong was rejecting me. I suppose I lacked the resilience that is associated with Patience. And it’s not the first time it happened. It’s happening in other places as well. Even London Pride has declared that its 2016 event will ban certain lgbt political and religious groups just because the people organising don't agree with their politics or faith.

My own experiences are not common but neither are they unique. The virtue of Patience applies to all aspects of our lives. I hope that I always display a degree of Patience with those who disagree with my views and never resort to Anger to counter it.

To finish let’s have our first look at the Virtuous Pride flag. Red is the symbol of Anger, so it’s opposing virtue of Patience is red also.

Next time we look at the Virtue that opposes the Sin of Gluttony.

Flower Power : Hopping Mad About Queer Beer

One of my articles during Advent was about the transgender properties of various evergreens. At the beginning of November another cross-gender plant hit the UK headlines. This time is was a variety of hops that was used to make what was labelled as the “world’s first non-binary, transgender beer”.

The Scottish brewer BrewDog launched a new beer going by the name of No Label in November in its newest pub. Situated in the gay haven of Soho, London, the brewers said that premiering the new beer in that location emphasised that “just like humans, beer can be whatever the hell it wants to be, and proud of it.”

What makes No Label beer “transgender” is that it is made from hop flowers that have changed gender. Just like the evergreens mentioned last year there are male and female plants. In hops it is usually only female plants that produce the female flowers that are used in brewing. This is because they are larger and more developed. Very often brewers remove all male plants because they have smaller seedless flowers and are sterile.

When female hop plants start to grow male flowers it is often a sign of distress. Just like the evergreens it may be a means of conserving energy and nutrients.

The No Label beer is brewed primarily from the smaller male hops flowers from a variety of hops called Jester. This recently developed variety was developed and “patented” by Charles Faram and Company, hop merchants of Worcestershire, who claim Jester is prone to “altering sex” naturally.

The new beer was developed with the intention of appealing to the lgbt community, even though some sections of the community have criticised BrewDog over their perceptions of transgender issues.

BrewDog caused controversy last September when they began running an advertising campaign which many found to be transphobic. The ad featured, amongst others, a couple of bearded men dressed as female sex-workers posing seductively in a window. The criticism wasn’t universally negative but the boss of BrewDog revealed his less than understanding nature by criticising his critics online in a less than understanding manner. He referred to people who signed an online petition as “armchair clicktavists”.

When No Label beer was launched the UK’s leading lgbt charity Stonewall gave it a mixed reception. They questioned BrewDog’s interpretation of “non-binary” and “transgender beer”. At the same time they welcomed BrewDog’s intention of donating all profits from the sale of No Label to a London-based organisation called Queerest of the Queer. BrewDog had been discussing the beer with Queeerest of the Queer for a while before it was launched. Naturally, Queerest of the Queer has nothing but praise for No Label. But things are not quite as philanthropic as it seems.

Queerest of the Queer is not a registered charity. It is a commercially-run entertainment organisation which produced festivals for lgbt performers to showcase their talents. In turn, Queerest of the Queer is a collaborative project involving three other commercially-run entertainment organisations. I don’t want to sound cynical by saying that BrewDog’s involvement is purely commercial, being as No Label will be sold at Queerest of the Queer events, but when you look at the figures lgbt charities will benefit very little.

BrewDog says that all profits from the sale of No Label go to Queerest of the Queer. In turn, Queerest of the Queer says on its website that they donate 10% of their own profits to the Albert Kennedy Trust, a charity that deals with homeless lgbt youth in London. They do not mention if they too will donate the 100% they receive from BrewDog will go to the Albert Kennedy Trust or any other charity. In effect, only 10% of the profits from No Label will actually go to charity. Queerest of the Queer hasn’t said where the other 90% might be going.

Whether the No Label beer, and the controversy, will continue or fade away only time will tell. I’m not an alcohol drinker, so I have no reason to buy a bottle, but I’m sure many of you do drink. At the end of the day it’s down to the quality of the beer, even if only 10% of the profit actually reaches the charitable causes the brewers want to be seen to support.