Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) and Laurence Housman (1865-1959)
The Housman brothers were both gay and humanist at a time when these identities were still societally condemned and persecuted, and they expressed their identities in contrasting ways
Alfred was a scholar of classics and a poet Some of his creative output reflected his feelings, with varying degrees of overtness After the trial of gay poet and playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895, Housman wrote Oh who is that young sinner?, a poem that satirised the unfairness of the treatment of gay men by describing a man condemned for the colour of his hair, an arbitrary and natural feature Another poem, De Amacitia (Of Friendship), conveyed his unrequited feelings for a man he fell in love with at university, and was published by his brother Laurence after his death Like his brother, who co-founded the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, Alfred collected books on sexology a growing field of study that rejected religious condemnation of homosexuality in favour of the rational study of sexuality
Laurence was far more overtly radical in his activities, and as a writer and illustrator he published many pamphlets as part of his campaigning He co-founded the Men's League for Women's Suffrage and was an early campaigner for gay rights He joined the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for gay men that was named after an ancient Greek battalion allegedly made up of same-sex couples He was also a committed humanist, serving as Vice President of the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) and delivering the 1929 Conway Memorial Lecture on the subject of rationalism In 1945, Laurence co-founded Housmans Bookshop, a radical bookshop still open in London, and which in the ‘70s (after Housman’s death) housed the London Gay and Lesbian Switchboard: a volunteer-run support hotline for LGBT people
A few years after Alfred’s death, Laurence deposited an essay with the British Library, under stipulations that it remained sealed for 25 years It detailed Housman’s feelings for Moses Jackson, which lay behind the De Amicitia (Of Friendship) poem In the essay, he hoped that, after the 25 years had passed, ‘society may, at long last, have acquired significant common sense to treat the problem less unintelligently, less cruelly, more scientifically’
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Recognised as one of the most innovative writers of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf’s works explored ordinary life’s ‘moments of being’ Celebrated for her ‘stream of consciousness’ writing style, her best-known works include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928) She was also a second generation humanist her father Leslie Stephen having been a founding figure in the Union of Ethical Societies (now Humanists UK), and her mother Julia Stephen the author of a powerful defence of the agnostic woman
Woolf was a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, alongside economist John Maynard Keynes, novelist E M Forster, biographer Lytton Strachey, and the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant This collective consciously eschewed many of the Victorian social norms they had been born into, adopting instead a humanist worldview which celebrated sexual equality and freedom, believing that everyone had the right to live and love as they chose
Woolf’s Bloomsburian lover Vita Sackville-West was the inspiration for the central character in her book Orlando This hero lives for 400 years, undergoing gender changes while remaining forever young Considered a queer and feminist classic, the book has been adapted many times for stage and screen In 2022, Emma Corrin became the first non-binary actor to play Orlando
John Maynard Keynes (188 -19 6)
One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes’ early relationships were exclusively with men, and many of his lovers (including Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant) became lifelong friends. These friendships continued long after his marriage to the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova in 1925.
Along with Strachey and the likes of Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell, Keynes was a member of the Cambridge Heretics, who opposed compulsory worship and celebrated humanist values like freethought A key influence on the society was the philosopher and President of the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK), George Edward Moore Moore argued in Principia Ethica (1903) for the value of ‘the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects’ as the central guiding force of morality
Keynes worked for the Treasury during the First World War, and his experiences at the 1918 Versailles Peace Conference led him to challenge conventional economic thinking with his ground-breaking 1919 book The Economic Consequences of the Peace A series of books followed, forming the basis of what is now known as Keynesian Economics While professionally focused on economic theory, his personal literary interests remained inclined towards the humanist ethics of Moore, which in 1938 Keynes described as ‘still my religion under the surface’
Claude McKay (1890–1948)
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-born poet and socialist, whose Constab Ballads (1912) was published by rationalist publisher Watts & Co in 1912 Though a convert to Catholicism in his final years, McKay was a freethinker for the majority of his life, embodying humanist ideals of rationalism, liberty, and cooperation, and becoming a member of the Rationalist Press Association while in London.
McKay’s poetry often explored queer intimacy his first collections being no exception Written in the first person, Constab Ballads and Songs of Jamaica (1912) both explore a relationship with a police officer called Bennie Up against laws put in place by the fervently religious Anthony Comstock prohibiting the ‘vice’ of disseminating LGBT content in writing, authors such as McKay were under threat of criminal prosecution for their work Yet, McKay did not hide his bisexual desires and is speculated to have had a sexual relationship with the writer John ‘Buffy’ Glasco while living in Paris in 1929 His sexuality is imbued in his writing, such as the scene in McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928) where ‘the dark dandies were loving up their pansies’.
Adventure-seasoned and storm-buffeted, I shun all signs of anchorage, because The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws
- Claude McKay from ‘One Year After’ in Harlem Shadows (1922)
