Gay Love Letters through the Centuri: T. E. Lawrence of Arabia

Contents:

• WHY WE NEED TO GET TO KNOW THE “BAD GAYS” OF HISTORY
• LAWRENCE OF ARABIA WAS A GAY MISF WHO CREATED A NEW TYPE OF WARFARE AND HELPED SHAPE THE MIDDLE EAST
• BOOK REVIEW: WAS LAWRENCE GAY ARABIA?
• WAS T. E. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA GAY ? PART 1

WHY WE NEED TO GET TO KNOW THE “BAD GAYS” OF HISTORY

Lawrence's sexualy has been the subject of much bate, wh the suggtn first ma by the thor Richard Aldgton that he may have been gay. The Gay Love Letters of Lawrence of Arabia". Excerpts om My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuri, eded by Rictor Norton.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA WAS A GAY MISF WHO CREATED A NEW TYPE OF WARFARE AND HELPED SHAPE THE MIDDLE EAST

That’s the ia behd the new podst Bad Gays om wrers Ben Miller and Huw Lemmey.

Bad Gays, focg on the “evil and plited gay men history, ” tri to tell some of the stori that get left out. And “bad” n be as slippery a term as “gay” for Bad Gays’ subjects. Bad Gays’ first episo ncerns a ls well-known figure: Nazi lear Ernst Röhm, “the world’s first openly gay polician.

” The show later turns to perhaps the first publisher of gay, lbian, and transgenr magaz — who tried to appease the Nazis.

BOOK REVIEW: WAS LAWRENCE GAY ARABIA?

Listeners also hear about a very different si of Andrew Sullivan, the ntemporary wrer who helped popularize the nservative se for gay marriage and ntu to argue agast perceived radilism the LGBTQ muny. An actual spy stggl wh layers of ncealed inty, and the season ends wh a fixture of the McCarthy era and Donald Tmp mentor, Roy Cohn, who aids a wch hunt agast imaged gay spi the US ernment. (Bad Gays labels him the “Poltar of Human Evil.

Each of the subjects be totally fascatg through Bad Gays’ lens; the rigoro rearch and eye for tellg tails evoke the feelg of unravelg a mystery. It’s also pretty funny — each episo ends wh realy TV-style snap judgments of “bad gay or not bad gay? In the meantime, our nversatn about how they choose their subjects, bat over gay inty history, “evil twk energy, ” and how we might learn om the mistak of the bad gays, is below.

I adm I probably wouldn’t listen as raptly to a Good Gays podst. So how do you crique the badns gay history vers sort of revelg ? For , the tert is not to perpetuate the ia of the good and bad role mols, but to e the ia of the “bad gay” to talk about thgs that jt focg on activist hero or thors or artists might not allow you accs to.

WAS T. E. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA GAY ? PART 1

The show is, so far, about the bad gay men of history bee, as you repeatedly note, “men are fnally the most bad.

I thk on the qutn of your stereotypil “good gay” — I mean, one of the people that we profile, Andrew Sullivan, is someone whose entire kd of public reer has been about embodyg and promotg the good gay as a liftyle.

But the stori reflect somethg more tertg about gay inty. In that particular se, the kd of “born this way” le about gay people is first ed a big splashy public settg not as an activist plea but as a kd of exce for murr, the ntext of this very strange trial.