I feel very badly for people who cannot abide by homosexuality and who think it is the worst thing to ever happen to the world, because I think these people don't realize what they are missing. This isn't to say that I feel bad for them for missing out on gay intercourse, because I've never had gay intercourse, and so I wouldn't know what it was like, but it is to say that I feel bad for them because I think they are, quite frankly, missing out on a little thing called innovation. Yes that's right: innovation.
My interest in the homosexual community and the so called "queer rights" movement has very little to do with the actual sex aspect of it, and everything to do with the element that I have often found to coincide with the queer movements, which is, as I said, innovation and progress. For, it seems to me, after reading and studying , for years the history of the world, that homosexual "movements " or cultures tend to pop up not when things are going wrong (as so many in the religious community would like us to believe) but rather when things are going beautifully right, and well. In fact, just one quick look over the course of history and all its particularly good and progressive spots, and you're going to quickly find that homosexual seems to be almost integral to literally every progressive and innovative culture that ever was.
Many unbiased people who know what to look for, I think, tend to notice this in the modern day, because it's pretty clear to see that a lot of the LGBT movement is centered all around the various universities where people read in great depth, and also around the nations richest and healthiest cities , but a lot of these same people I've noticed, when I talk to them, don't seem to realize this integral fact about homosexualitys past history, either. There is an enormous idea floating around, in fact, that the entire practice almost has no past whatsoever.,
And personally as an "historian" I think that's quite a shame, because once one really sees just what a role homosexuality seems to have played in the past, I believe one also starts to see that all the arguments against it , as an "abomination" etc , are quite ridiculous. They don't make any sense. They aren't true. In fact it's all really quite the opposite. Homosexuality does not stand for the end of time like many religious people say it does. If anything, it often stands for the beginning of time. Good time. Healthy time. Inventive and productive time....
Yes, I know of course , these obnoxious claims about homosexuality should look ridiculous just from the get go, people shouldn't need to have homosexuality "justified" , they should understand it without help, just as it is , standing alone without any context , but it still doesn't hurt, I don't think, to display to people just how frequent homosexuality was in history, either. I find this especially to be the case in the United States, where many people seem to be utterly convinced--even gays I have met!-- that homosexuality being accepted, anywhere at all, Is brand new. There is really an enormous and very erroneous idea in many circles here in the USA where many people truly seem convinced that homosexuality, cross dressing, and yes, even transgenderism are brand new, and something that "just began" in the 1960s or 1970s etc.
They aren't . They're all as old as the sun. Including transgenderism, once you exclude the new surgeries and operations that have been figured out of course. In fact, there are 2-3,000 year old statues from Egypt and Greece, of Transgender people, and some of them (well, all of them I suppose) are in some of the greatest museums currently around on Planet Earth. Indeed, I always say: if you know someone whose got a real big problem with transgender folks and queers and the like in the modern world , you better make damn sure that person don't open up any deep history books, because they sure as hell aren't going to like what they find. Especially if they like modern medicine or art or science or writing or anything even remotely "complex" like that. This is because queers invented a whole bunch of all of that.
Ancient Greece is probably the best and, to a degree, most well known example, of a very complex and intelligent society where a certain type of homosexuality was lovingly tolerated (middle aged men with young men) whilst various very huge leaps in knowledge were occurring all around it. The Greeks gave us enormous advancements in basically every field one could think of, from politics to the arts to astrology and philosophy et cetera, and, basically, single handedly created the idea of a modern western democracy with fully functioning cities , all the while being rather gay. In fact homosexuality was so tolerated in Ancient Greece (in comparison to here) that even Achilles himself, the famous mythological Greek warrior and ultra masculine hero (now a tattoo for many queer hating homophobes, I've found ) was and is widely said to have been a bit of a queer himself with a character named Patroclus. In the famous American movie with Brad Pitt Troy, where he plays Achilles, Patroclus (who is an integra part of the myth) is introduced simply as the prized cousin of Achilles. In the text it reads differently: Patroclus was his young gay and beautiful lover , and when he went and accidentally got himself killed in battle, Achilles went insane with rage and, in the name of Patroclus, went ahead and slaughtered Hector and hectors army ET cetera. Patroclus gave us Achilles as we know him, is one way of putting it. And Achilles is basically the shining star of what we take Greece to have been: an incredibly complex and well developed, highly civilized society that was able to rather ingeniously mix the masculine and feminine traits of mankind into one beautiful pot of progress. The Greeks were essentially just as good at fighting as they were at love making , philosophizing, doing astrology etc . The scales seem to have been tipped in a very good direction in Greece. It wasn't too masculine, wasn't too feminine. To this day it remains one of the most remarkable civilizations to have ever been, and after she fell (as even the best places always inevitably fall) it took a very, very long time for the western world to come around and find the same combination of intellectual and combative glory again. Rome, for instance, which is essentially said by many to have been an "exact copy" of Greece, and which was far more obsessed with upholding an idea of "straight"masculinity than the Greeks were , was an absolutely fantastic place when it came to fighting , but literally did next to nothing in terms of advancement in many other respects. It was unbalanced. They essentially threw all their energy into combat, and it could very well perhaps be said that this was the exact reason they ultimately fell. They were utterly blind to a number of very important fields. They had a problem with femininity and this caused them to stumble.
Most of what the Romans knew, for example, about things like medicine, astrology, story telling, statue making, painting, anything at all like that, they basically stole from the queer Greeks. This even - believe it or not-- includes their style of fighting in their sword and shield military, which was the phalanx, and which the Greeks created. The phalanx is widely known to have been one of the key reasons Rome was able to go and conquer so much as they did when they did. For the time period, it was an intellectual and organized style of fighting. It prized the cohesion of the group rather than the lone strength of one single manly combatant. Ruthless masculine barbarians with arms of steel who stood as tall as a tower, many of which remind me of the modern masculine men in town here who hate queers and never cease to say they are "abominations" , were literally and gloriously slaughtered and murdered like sheep in the face of the queer Greek phalanx.
This is because , again, the phalanx relied on a dash of intellect, organization, tight camaraderie, and maybe even a bit of "poetry". The "ultra masculine" fighting style that the big armed beer swilling barbarian used against it - a fighting style which was chaotic and followed no set plan ---was essentially worthless. Even the biggest warrior that the barbarians had couldn't really hope for much against this style, and so he was defeated. For the Romans, conquering much of the barbarian world that was to the north of them was very much as easy as it was for the English to conquer the Indians with the cannonballs many, many centuries later. It didn't matter who was manly or not, in a sense. It just mattered if you followed the phalanx; again created by a queer tolerant Greek society....
All the same: Even the Romans , however, with all their problems regarding femininity and not being able to admit that they had stolen a style of fighting invented by a rather gay civilization , didn't necessarily hate gays like the modern "roughneck" American men often do. Did they like them? No. They didn't. Was the same style of homosexuality tolerated as it was in Greece? No. They insulted the legends of Greece and called them "boy lovers" and sissies et cetera..//
But did they go all out in an insane and psychotic war like we often see today against them and hang them on fences and refuse to bake cakes for them like our current Vice President "Pence the Imbecilic Stupid Donkey" seems to want? Did the Roman politicians Even sit there endlessly acknowledging the gays , from a negative angle, like our current worthless and moronic Vice President does? No, they didn't, and this was because the Romans of course had a wide array of very colorful and different gods who essentially would allow you to get away with anything....so long as it wasn't hurting someone (and even then it would allow you to hurt someone, who was an enemy of Rome of course!) . In comparison to our own society today, Rome was in some aspects surprisingly tolerant. Many Wealthy Romans, including those in power, probably had queer sex with one another with no real shame. They absolutely had drunken Orgies, in honor of the very famous wine God "Bacchus". Yes:Just like they didn't go on an all out crusade against queers , they didn't shame alcohol , and if they had drugs around, they probably wouldn't have shamed those , either. They would have sold them and realized they could boost the economy.
But of course, just like Greece before it, Rome eventually hit its bursting point and came to an end, and when it did it gave rise to a new period of the world , a period that saw all the old gods who had been around, for all of time until then, suddenly fall, and be replaced by one God all alone. A God who said he was gonna free slaves and give to the poor, but who also very much despised queers, and even , some would certainly say, women. He was also a God who seemed radically opposed to literally all of the philosophy and Medicine and art that had been being advanced upon up until that point. In fact he pretty much seemed to hate everything about the world in general. The one Christian God is perhaps one of the most cynical and pessimistic gods that's ever been created in human history : he supposedly offers eternal salvation in Paradise...but if you look at what he actually says about this world , he hates it flat out. The Greeks didn't see things this cut and dry, and neither really, did the Romans. Did they think the world was a bit vicious? Yes. But they also saw it as having redeeming qualities. The Christian God does not see things like this.....
This period of course , when the Christian God first starts to get a leg up, is a little more well known in our own time than the ancient culture of Rome and Greece etx, and it's called the Dark Ages. In my opinion, there are essentially two reasons it's called the Dark Ages: one is because a whole lot of knowledge was accidentally lost when this period began (replaced by Christian superstition) and two, it is because the idea of a democratic Republic (which was , again, Rome and Greece and now the US) was suddenly replaced all over again, like real old times, by the wretched and god awful world of kings and queens and dictators , et cetera. The dark ages were a hard time to be alive in this world--- Greek elegance and medicine began to become a fond memory/-- and , not surprisingly, the homosexuals seem to have essentially disappeared all throughout it, no where to be found. So too, of course, as I stress, did art and progress and medicinal advancement disappear with them. Many absolutely terrifying diseases were unleashed upon the (western) world during this period , and they were diseases that no one seems to have been able to figure out and solve too quickly , mostly because everyone was illiterate again (like old times) and had no idea how to do what would have been, in the Greek time, even sort of "basic" problem solving. Lifespans during the dark and midle ages wre horrifically low in many places. Progress was halted. Life was muddy and miserable. The gays seriously vanished . In many places, Men began to grow out their beards and fight in bad , disorganized styles all over again. Chaos began to rule. Cities fell into disarray and disrepair, sort of like many modern US cities. Women found themselves with a boot on their head, trapped in miserable situations that weren't just repressive but also just downright hideous (for the women's fashion styles of the Dark ages simply do not compare with the beauty that was often a Roman or Greek).
But then one day, many hundreds of years later, something suddenly began to happen again, and the queers started, bit by careful bit, to move out into the light of day again, and this particular thing (as far as the west is concerned) all began to culminate , not surprisingly, in Italy yet again, and just a hop and a skip from Rome, in the northern Italian city of Florence. This period is of course known as the Renaissance, which in the original Italian is Rinascimento, and which translates literally as "REBIRTH". Put simply, the Renaissance Is seen as a rebirth period because it's when the little society in Florence Italy began to, for reasons I can't explain at length here, rediscover all of the old knowledge that had essentially been lost since Greek times, and when the Florentines discovered it all , they didn't do what the Romans did and just copy it, they actually went ahead and started to, finally, improve upon it and advance upon it, etc. For example, if you look at the statues the Romans occasionally sculpted, you'll see their literally carbon copies of the Greek ones they had found. Look at the statues that were made in Florence, and you'll see they definitely learned from the Greek statues --- but they also improved upon them, significantly.
It's thus the case that The Renaissance period gave birth to a number of unbelievably notable figures who would, I can assure you, be regarded as "effeminate queers", in this sad modern queer hating United States. Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti, for starters, *were* queers. DaVinci is to this day known as not just one of the greatest painters who ever lived with the Mona Lisa, but also as one of the most innovative and advanced minds to have ever walked the earth. DaVinci was experimenting with ideas of flight , submarines, new musical instruments, science, medicine, and even new war machines to help protect his city of Florence, at the time, from enemy city states like Rome and Naples, etc. Florence was , in that time period, and even Venice for that matter, sort of like San Francisco or Manhattan is for us now: though it wasn't ever made official, it was considered a rather "queer" place. Gay people of the time period, more likely than not, flocked to it....perhaps in hopes of having their naked portrait painted or sculpted by an artist like Michelangelo or Leonardo or Rafael, and....trust me...all three of those artists would have been more than interested in sculpting it. In fact, the ironic truth about both the Italian Renaissance period and then the Greek time , is that the male body was prized far more than the female one, especially for sculptors. A sculptor like Michelangelo would have been far more excited to see a naked and "hot" masculine man in front of him posing for his statue , than a naked woman. This fact is of course why we have the naked David still standing in Florence, rather than a woman.
The other thing about the Renaissance is that , as it was making all of these cultural, medicinal, and astrological advancements, and also while it was having some gay intercourse and painting naked posing men , it started to see that Christianity was not so much of a blessing as it was an inhibited curse. The Renaissance is more or less the first period in history where a bit of a major war began between the Church and science and the people, etc. This war is still very much being waged in our own time of course, and if you look very closely, you're going to see, just like I said in the opening paragraph, that all the people who are queers or who are aligned with the queers in this current time period, in *extremely rich and technological* cities like San Francisco and so on, are also the same people who , just like DaVinci and Michelangelo were in their time , are aligned with the further progress of science, and medicine, and technology. Not too surprisingly, the people standing in total psychotic opposition to the LGBT movement, also seem to be the same people who know nothing of technological industries, are often illiterate, and who often seem to reside in or outside of cities that, unlike San Francisco, are absolutely in ruins, with no real industry or innovation or anything at all for that matter.
Which is why I say again, just like I said in the beginning: I really feel bad for people who hate homosexuals like the conservative psyochotics in this country currently do, because it seems to me that all of those people, throughout all of time now, live in absolutely horrific places. Too bad for them I guess. It's their loss. Literally.
------ LOGGING OFF
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