* * * * *
                                        
                   Better lock up those seditious historians!
                                        
It's a pity that history isn't taught better in school. Perhaps I've been
somewhat fortunate in my schooling that I learned that not everything was
Mom, apple pie and blue skies above in US (United States) history, but never
did I realize just how wild our history has been. While it's a known triva
fact that President James Buchanan [1] was the only bachelor President of the
US, there may have been a very good reason why he was a bachelor [2].

Oh my.

Of course his term in the Oval Office [3] was spent in a near futile attempt
to keep the peace between the North and South, and thus endorsed slavery in
as much to keep the States balanced. So I suppose that if he was gay, the Gay
Community have to take the good (one of their own as the Chief Executive of
the United States, and a Democrat no less!) with the bad (one of their own
condonded slavery, thus leaving the freeing of slaves to a Republican).

Okay, I guess that's why it's not taught that well.

But those historians … they just keep at it. For instance, historian Gary
Leupp's Open Letter to Massachusetts Govornor Mitt Romney: [4]

> But this is just not true, Governor. You invoke “History” as though it's
> some source of authority, but you really don't know much about it, do you?
> “No investigation, no right to speak,” I always say, and if you want to
> talk about homosexual unions in recorded history you should do some study
> first. First I recommend you read John Boswell's fine book Christianity,
> Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1980), in
> which he documents legally recognized homosexual marriage in ancient Rome
> extending into the Christian period, and his Same-Sex Unions in Premodern
> Europe (Villard Books, 1994), in which he discusses Church-blessed same-sex
> unions and even an ancient Christian same-sex nuptial liturgy. Then check
> out my Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan
> (University of California Press, 1995) in which I describe the “brotherhood
> bonds” between samurai males, involving written contracts and sometimes
> severe punishments for infidelity, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
> centuries. Check out the literature on the Azande of the southern Sudan,
> where for centuries warriors bonded, in all legitimacy, with “boy-wives.”
> Or read Marjorie Topley's study of lesbian marriages in Guangdong, China
> into the early twentieth century. Check out Yale law professor William
> Eskridge's The Case for Same-Sex Marriage (1996), and other of this
> scholar's works, replete with many historical examples.
> 
> What the study of world history will really tell you, Governor, is that
> pretty much any kind of sexual behavior can become institutionalized
> somewhere, sometime.
> 

Via Burningbird [5], “On Marriage in “Recorded History,” an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney [6]”

Ouch!

History. It's so seditious … 

Gotta love it … 

[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jb15.html
[2] http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2458
[3] http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/life/ovaloffice.html
[4] http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12132003.html
[5] http://weblog.burningbird.net/fires/culture/for_those_who_inhabit_the_e
[6] http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12132003.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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