Early gay-rights
writings found
University of Manchester academic Dr. Hal Gladfelder has discovered pro-gay writings from 1749 in the National Archives in Kew, England.
The five-foot-long handwritten scroll is a legal indictment of the printer of a book by Thomas Cannon called 'Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify'd.'
The book—which contained stories and philosophical texts in defense of male homosexuality—disappeared immediately after it was published, but the indictment reproduces many passages from it.
One surviving extract states: 'Unnatural desire is a contradiction in terms; downright nonsense. Desire is an amatory impulse of the inmost human parts.'
Gladfelder said the book 'must be the first substantial treatment of homosexuality ever in English. The only other discussions of homosexuality were contained in violently moralistic and homophobic attacks or in trial reports for the crime of sodomy up to and beyond 1750.'
Gladfelder 'came across the scroll in a box of uncatalogued legal documents from 1750.'
' [ T ] he 18th-century courts—who were trying to suppress this—unwittingly helped publicize it 258 years later,' he said.
Little is known about Cannon, but Gladfelder said he had to leave England to avoid indictment.
'Interestingly, his father was dean of Lincoln Cathedral and his grandfather was bishop of Norwich and Ely,' he said.
'It's a fair assumption that Cannon was writing for a gay subculture at the time,' Gladfelder added. 'Though he lived in anonymity—possibly because of the notoriety of his pamphlet—I certainly regard him as a martyr. His life has many parallels with Oscar Wilde, who was persecuted by the law, forced into exile, and effectively silenced for being an apologist and advocate of same-sex love.'
Former Singapore PM favors legalization of gay sex
Former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the nation's founding leader, suggested April 23 that if people are born gay, then gay sex should not be illegal.
'If in fact it is true—and I have asked doctors this—that you are genetically born a homosexual, because that's the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes, you can't help it—so why should we criminalize it?' Lee told a meeting of the ruling party's youth wing, according to the Straits Times newspaper.
'Let's not go around like this moral police ... barging into people's rooms. That's not our business,' he said.
'Gross indecency' between men is punishable with up to two years in prison in Singapore, though the ban doesn't seem to be enforced.
Lee, who was prime minister from 1959 to 1990, is presently a special cabinet minister in the government of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Gaydar founder jumped to death while on drugs
The co-founder and chairman of the popular Gaydar Web site was high on ketamine ( Special K ) when he flung himself from the balcony of his eighth-floor penthouse in London on Feb. 10, an inquest has found.
Gary Frisch, 38, reportedly shouted 'wahey!' before jumping to his death.
'I saw him standing on the balcony with his hands on the rail. He somersaulted over the top,' houseguest Darren Morris told the coroner's court, local media reported.
Frisch was under treatment for depression and had been on a weeks-long drug binge, the inquest heard.
Ketamine can cause hallucinations and confusion.
First pride set for small Saskatchewan city
The small Canadian city of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, will see its first gay pride parade June 9.
Some local Christians unsuccessfully lobbied the City Council to block the march. Preacher Rick Potratz warned of 'men walking down public streets half-naked ... wearing nothing but a G-string.'
Prince Albert, population 41,460, is Saskatchewan's third-largest city after Saskatoon and Regina. It is located near the geographic center of the province, 88 miles ( 141 km ) north of Saskatoon.
Israeli lesbian wins
full pension
Israel's Haifa Labor Court has told the Mivtahim Pension Funds to give a lesbian whose partner died a full widow's pension rather than the half-pension the company gives to widowers, the Ha'aretz newspaper reported April 22.
Attorney Dori Spivak of the Human Rights Program at Tel Aviv University successfully argued that surviving partners should be classified according to their gender, not the gender of the deceased.
Mivtahim is presently appealing another case in which the National Labor Court ruled there should be no differences between widow and widower pensions.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
