Gay Love Letters through the Centuri

Contents:

• TOP 10 FASCATG GAY TEXTS FROM HISTORY
• LETTERS TO THE EDOR: I’M GAY AND DON’T WANT TO PATRONIZE BIGOTS. THANKS, SUPREME COURT

TOP 10 FASCATG GAY TEXTS FROM HISTORY

Margaret’s love letters to Ruth, posthumoly gathered To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead (public library) — which also gave Mead’s prcient posn on homosexualy — are a thg of absolute, soul-stirrg bety, on par wh such famed epistolary romanc as those between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Geia O’Keeffe and Aled Stieglz, Henry Miller and Anaïs N, and Jean-Pl Sartre and Simone Bevoir. From the wonrful 1998 anthology My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters Through the Centuri (public library) — a diverse llectn of missiv verg the universali of romantic love, om longg and fatuatn to jealoy and rejectn to tenrns and loyalty — the rrponnce of Beat Generatn godfather Allen Gsberg and the poet Peter Orlovsky. Burroughs, another in of lerature’s gay subculture:.

Among morny’s most tragic victims of our shameful past is Osr Wil, who was imprisoned multiple tim for his “crime” of homosexualy, driven to bankptcy and exile, and fally succumbed to an untimely ath. But more than 70 years later, was disvered that G stood for Gordon, and Gilbert had been love wh a the time, not only was homosexualy illegal, but those the armed forc uld be shot for havg gay sex.

The letters, which emerged after Mr Bradley's ath 2008, are therefore unual and shed an important light on homosexual relatnships durg the do we know about this forbidn love affair? The rt of the world have no nceptn of what our love is - they do not know that is life as a homosexual the 1940s was credibly difficult. Gay activy was a urt-martial offence, jail sentenc for so-lled "gross cency" were mon, and much of society strongly disapproved of same-sex was not until the Sexual Offenc Act 1967 that nsentg men aged 21 and over were legally allowed to have gay relatnships - and beg openly gay the armed servic was not allowed until letters, which emerged after Mr Bradley's ath 2008, are rare bee most homosexual upl would get rid of anythg so crimatg, says gay rights activist Peter Rose.

LETTERS TO THE EDOR: I’M GAY AND DON’T WANT TO PATRONIZE BIGOTS. THANKS, SUPREME COURT

"There is a gay history and isn't always negative and tearful, " he says. "But spe all the awful circumstanc, gay men and lbians managed to rise above all and have fascatg and good liv spe everythg.

"Such letters are extremely rare bee they were crimatg - gay men faced years prison wh or whout hard labour, " he says. "There was even the possibily that gay soldiers uld have been shot.

Some people seem to thk that before beme legal gay people simply did not exist. Sce Febary is LGBTQ history month might be a good ia to look back history and see some of the wrgs that have survived by and about gay people. It turns out that there have always been exampl of same-sex attractn that would be labelled gay today and some gay people have wrten movgly about their experienc.