WALL'S WORDS

History - it’s a long story by Roger Wheeler

February has been LGBTQ+ History Month since 1994 although why we need to ‘celebrate’ it these days is a good question and anyone interested in gay history can easily find out. There is an awful lot of gay history going back thousands of years so perhaps the word ‘history’ is a misnomer in this connection but it’s now the name associated with February.

Along with Pride it’s another reason to raise awareness of the gay community and look back at the many high-profile people who have suffered for their sexuality. In these ‘enlightened’ times it shouldn’t be necessary but we all known that it is. It is incredible to think that there are still 73 countries in the world that criminalise all homosexual behaviour. It was only in 1967 that it was decriminalised in this country and any teaching about the subject is still violently disputed in many schools, admittedly in some very strong religious areas.

It is rumoured that many famous names in history had comfortable same-sex relationships – Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, King Richard I, King James I, Leonardo and many more... Of course there was no social media in their day so all we have to go on is some very good evidence from contemporary writers. The list goes on most famously with Alan Turing being chemically castrated in 1952 for being gay under the 1885 Act. Never forget Oscar Wilde and Reading Gaol.

Looking back from our lofty position of civilised acceptance, this all seems quite ridiculous. Why is it so important to know who’s sleeping with who, do we or should we care? The answer is obvious to most of us but not to everyone even in our enlightened Western society.

Why is it so important to know who’s sleeping with who, do we or should we care? The answer is obvious to most of us but not to everyone even in our enlightened Western society

When did all this start? No one really knows, there’s some evidence of same-sex relationships as far back as 10,000 BC, if rock drawings are to be believed and of course the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Romans were famous for their gay relationships and it was accepted in the higher levels of society.

It is notable that lesbians have been given a pretty easy ride throughout history, culminating of course in Queen Victoria’s famous belief that women were incapable of such things whereas of course men were capable of almost anything. It has been reported that when she was given the law to approve making homosexuality of both sexes illegal, it was her opinion that such things would be a physical impossibility between women, so the law was never passed. She was deeply in love with Prince Albert ,hence her nine children.

We have come a long way, so much so that even the British Library has run workshops on how to find LGBTQ+ identities in standard archives (to no one’s surprise - there’s no queer subsection you can simply skip to).

So possibly there is a place for February being LGBTQ+ History Month after all.