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From: rrizzo@cc6.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Gay Scientists in History
Message-ID: <459@cc6.bbn.com.BBN.COM>
Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 10:28:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: cc6.459
Posted: Tue Aug 25 10:28:07 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Aug-87 06:29:49 EDT
References: <20229@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <453@cc6.bbn.com.BBN.COM> <84@cunixc.columbia.edu>
Reply-To: rrizzo@cc6.bbn.com.UUCP (Ron Rizzo)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
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Xref: mnetor soc.motss:2062 sci.misc:465


The trouble with using the "argument from silence", i.e., lack of explicit
evidence, historically as to whether someone was gay, is that one must
conclude no one in the past was.  Even notorious Greeks, such as Plato,
Socrates & Alexander the Great have been claimed for heterosexuality
(by AR Burn & Robin Lane Fox, resp.) by citing lack of data & the
historian's own incredulity (usually a product of bigotry).

To cite just one example of the embarassment that can result: in the 
1920s, Dmitri Merejzkowski (?) wrote a thick 2-volume historical novel,
THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, predicated on the somewhat foolish
thesis that Leonardo was "straight".  Credible when it was published, 
it now is a literary white elephant, yet no "new data" were discovered 
in the intervening years to show Da Vinci was gay.  Instead, scholars 
stopped being blinded by conventional prejudices.

It's even more risky to use lack of evidence either as the PRIMARY 
basis for one's opinion or as a reason to discard a claim of homo-
sexuality and look no further.

To see how varied, complex & difficult historical argument has become
you may want to look at some of the following books:

	Kenneth Dover, GREEK HOMOSEXUALITY (Harvard U Press, 1978)
		Dover argues brilliantly to show that homosexuality 
		wasn't limited to the free upper classes in only a handful 
		of city states & only during the classical period.

		In analyzing the language of comedy, he refutes a number
		of points in Jeffrey Henderson's THE MACULATE MUSE (Harvard
		U Press, 19??), a sophisticated earlier study which Dover
		also praises.

	John Boswell, CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE & HOMOSEXUALITY
		(U Chicago Press, 1980) challenges Dover, through an
		acute analysis of texts & their cultural context.
		Derrick Bailey's HOMOSEXUALITY & THE WESTERN CHRISTIAN
		TRADITION (1955), which had been by far the best work
		on the subject, became immediately obsolete.

		Boswell's biggest innovation is to argue for bisexuality/
		pansexuality as the default, the given cultural matrix, in
                ancient Greece AND Rome in nearly all periods, making
                exclusive heterosexuality problematic, & turning upside 
                down the usual view of the ancient world.

	Bernard Sergent, HOMOSEXUALITY IN GREEK MYTH (Beacon Press, 1986?)
		is perhaps the most audacious attempt to salvage a gay
		past, comparing & dissecting myths to assemble a pre- &
		protohistorical picture of homoerotic institutions in
		primitive Greece.  Although lucidly written, the book's
		argument is so arcane & contingent it's very hard to
		follow.  Yet, even at my most cynical, I think Sergent
		has discovered something real (& completely unsuspected)
                in the very distant past.  Exactly what, is much harder to
		say.

In the case of Newton,  I'll simply point to the fact that quite a few
historians of science are now willing to entertain the idea that he was
gay.  (I've never heard of an asexual person; "asexuality" usually means
relative lack of sexual expression, or more diffuse, ungenitalized sexual
interest.  Anyway, it begs the question of Newton's sexuality.)


						regards,
						ron rizzo