All language subtitles for Before Homosexuals 2017

If rocks could talk, oh, what stories
they could tell.

Here in the early part of the 21st
century, on the small Greek island of

Astapalia, Dr. Andreas Vlahopoulos, a
noted archaeologist,

found rocks here that told an ancient
story of same sex.

The markings chiseled into the limestone

say that 2,500 years ago, two men were
having sex here on this spot.

They memorialized their love the way
lovers still do.

Some would say that theirs was an
unnatural act. I know that charge

firsthand as I was arrested for
soliciting another man to commit an

unnatural act.

It was Boston.

1975.

A jury, dressed up to celebrate an Irish
Catholic holiday, convicted me.

Then and now, I never thought my
same-sex desires were unnatural.

And neither did they when they
proclaimed their love centuries before

the word homosexual was invented.

We know experiences in which people
clearly desired same-sex relationships

that went beyond the norm of
heterosexual relations.

Lesbians, gays, transvestites,
transgenders existed in Asia for

centuries.

And I find so much of same-sex
references, etc., in our temples,

depictions.

The how

and

why we were able to rediscover so much
ancient same-sex material just recently

is in itself an exciting part of our
story.

All of my work in the ancient world is
based on archives of an ancient sort

because without preserving this, our
lives are totally wiped

out. You know, each fragment, I mean, it
depends upon each fragment of

information being saved.

What was it about people like me that so
disturbed so many

others?

Was it fear?

Affect?

And what made so many lovers hide?

Was it shame?

Or the despicable acts committed against
people like me?

Some material we found is pretty ugly.

It's part of the story.

But I find myself drawn more to the
beauty from our past, the heroism, an

ability to struggle, to survive, and
even flourish.

To insist, we will be remembered.

There are monuments now to our dead.
Berlin has a big concrete vault.

to commemorate the many homosexuals who
were murdered by the Nazis.

But what picks me up are the monuments
to our cultural artifacts.

This one, across town, preserves the
traces of our vivid path.

In Amsterdam, on my way to lecture about
gay history,

I lay flowers at another monument to the
gay dead.

But suffering is just a part of our
history. People are being arrested,

hung, killed and also celebrated all
over the world.

And stories are being told and history
is being made.

The thing about history being...

circular, is that yes, history repeats
itself, but the circles get bigger and

bigger and bigger, and at some point you
better be sure that it doesn't go off

the fucking edge.

The Nazis burnt the first gay film ever
made.

Some brave soul saved a copy. We found
it hidden in Prague.

And so the circle repeats, making,
destroying, hiding, and saving.

We started with an old shoebox.

This says René Vivian, 1906, this one
here.

I'm teaching in my class how local
resistance was organized to fight.

When C.P. Kefafi, the famous Greek poet,
wrote Hidden Things in 1908, He must

have expected that someday somebody
would find it.

From all I did and all I said, let no
one try to find out who I was.

The past, as Qafafi says, is not
finished.

Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else, made just like me, is

certain to appear and act freely.

During the 60s, like many students, I
was involved in the anti-Vietnam War

movement. Free speech and academic free
speech here at the university.

For me, it was also a time of the sexual
revolution.

Free love was in the air and the Kama
Sutra was fast becoming our Bible.

But I knew then that some things had
been left out.

They just don't have that chapter. So
most people are not aware that that

chapter is there.

Even the glossy coffee table kind of
versions of the Kama Sutra that float

around in the West, they're all
heterosexualized. You don't have this

stuff in it. So people don't know this
about the tradition.

There's a chapter in the Kama Sutra. It
divides people into men who desire women

and men who desire other men. And then
goes on to give a very detailed

description of oral sex, like sucking a
mango and so on. Quite non-judgmental

and even quite playful.

But back in the early 1980s, when three
young producers, including myself,

began to make the film before Stonewall,
we ran into some obstacles.

We weren't able to do...

Anything earlier than 1920, when we did
Before Stonewall, basically

there was hardly any material.

Who gets to define and analyze history?

With the gay revolution of the 1990s in
academia and anthropology, all of a

sudden gay folks in these worlds had
influence.

That is, they had tenure at
universities, grants for research, and

the like.

which meant a new focus on same-sex
history.

Anti-gay forces tried to suppress any
knowledge of the historical existence of

gay people or gay feelings or any kind
of self-expression of those feelings.

So just excavating them and getting them
back from under the years of

neglect and censorship was a way of
saying...

We are here.

But gay and lesbian academics of the
1990s did more than find and save

material. They also went about
reinterpreting some of the classic

stories with a gay sensibility.

Michelangelo's David is a titanic work
of art in the Renaissance as an

artistic culture.

Now, what it means to me personally, he
is...

David, not only the killer of Goliath,
but David, the lover of Jonathan.

David, who says when Jonathan dies, your
love to me was more beautiful than that

of women.

Then Jonathan and David made a covenant
because he loved him as his own soul.

And Jonathan stripped himself of the
robe that was upon him and gave it to

David.

Certain individuals would live those
desires out, even in the face of taboos

or laws.

And so we've come with that heritage up
to the present time.

that we could have begun before
Stonewall thousands of years ago in the

caves of Zimbabwe or under the streets
in Prague.

One thing has become very clear.

Genes don't lie.

Our genes have been around for a long
time, and so have the gay genes.

If you're talking about Neanderthal men,
they probably had gay genes too.

What the research shows is that sexual
orientation has a strong genetic basis.

It's the most important single
contributor to whether people are

attracted to members of the opposite sex
or the same sex or to both sexes. And

since our genes have not changed over
the last 50,000 years, we can be sure

that there were gay genes and bisexual
genes and lesbian genes long, long, long

before the word homosexual was invented.

Even the scientific community kept from
us information about our closest genetic

relative, the fun-loving bonobo.

The bonobo life is the life of the
sexual candy store.

When I was invited to do this lecture, I
realized many of you don't even know the

difference between a monkey and an ape,
let alone a bonobo and a LGBTQ.

They not only use sex for everything,
they have sex with everyone.

Male, male, female, female.

I'll show you some footage.

The males will hang from trees and
they'll do what's called penis fencing.

They fence.

Bonobos substitute sex for aggression,
so do male homos.

Actually, gay men substitute sex for
everything.

I mean, it's a lovely thing.

The bonobos are us without repression,
religion, and shame.

I think the first thing to say about
same-sex relationships in the ancient

world is that they're quite different.

Islamic law prohibited same-sex
relationships for men, male

homosexuality explicitly.

In practice, same-sex relations were
common cultural practices.

There's a finely nuanced slang
vocabulary for all sorts of gay sex

acts, but no word for homosexuals.

The people of Huizhou call it treading
on dofu.

The people of Jiangxi call it casting a
crucible.

The people of Ningbo call it good, good.

Perhaps the best example of male
intimacy, the most controversial

example, is the tomb chapel of Neacnum
and Cnumhotep, and comes from around

2400 BC.

On the walls of the tomb chapel, the
usual iconographic position that's taken

by the man and his wife isn't taken by a
man and a woman in this tomb. It's taken

by the two separate tomb owners, Neacnum
and Cnumhotep. And the central images...

in the iconography show these two men
embracing and kissing.

We do have a few examples of less formal
texts and works of art.

There's also a long so-called erotic
papyrus. It's there for a bit of

frivolous filth, I think.

Many of our ancient myths and stories
come down to us somewhat embellished.

with bigger-than-life heroes.

These stories tended to downplay
same-sex activities.

However, in the 21st century, same-sex
myths were being reconstructed,

especially in the world of gay fan art.

First, let me tell you what the story's
about.

Stay with me now.

Horace was the god of the sky, Set the
god of the desert.

For years they fought for dominance and
the throne.

One day Set tells Horace, how lovely is
your backside.

And soon the two are locked, penis and
thighs, with Set taking the top role.

Now what Set doesn't know, in the
clinch, Horace grabs his semen and

throws it in the river.

Then Horace masturbates on some lettuce,
which happens to be Set's favorite food.

Later on, Set's bragging to the other
gods that Horace submitted to his

seduction. And as proof, Set summons his
semen, but it springs forth from the

river.

When Horace summons his semen, it
springs from Set's forehead in the form

of a golden disc, proving his dominance.

Thus did Horace become king.

But in ancient Greece, same-sex was very
much a part of the culture.

The Greeks were moving in a direction
that you might say mainstreamed

sexuality.

In Athens, same-sex relationships
between free-born men were sort of

official rite of passage.

Once it's more accepting, more other gay
people can express themselves, can be

out, perhaps more likely to come into a
position of power.

So this is sort of a classic example of
how biology and culture can feed upon

one another.

Amongst the Greeks, who had a homosexual
orientation, I'm sure some of them came

into positions of power.

Some say the gays saved democracy.

One pair of lovers was credited with the
reestablishment of Athenian

democracy.

Their story is quite unique.

They were lovers.

Aristogiton was the Erastes of
Hermodius, and Hermodius was

his Romanos. The younger one, Hermodius,
was offended by one of the rulers of

Athens at the time, Hipparchus.

And they decided to kill.

Hipparchus, and they managed to do so,
but they died in the process.

Hipparchus' murder was a political event
because that was the end of tyranny and

opened the road to democracy, as it
were.

The statues were set in the middle of
the area.

Until then, this place has had statues
only of the frauds. These are the first

statues of men in public places.

What has always impressed me was the
Greeks' ability, both for men and women,

by the way, to fold into the pattern of
being human as a perfectly normal

and natural thing, same-sex desires.

And then, of course, famously, there's
Sappho.

Would you like me to recite a Sappho
poem in Greek?

Do you know one? Oh, yeah. Just like
that? Oh, yeah.

Her life is shrouded in mystery.

In the Roman period,

there begins to be

condemnation of her life because of the
view that she had relations with women.

Now unfortunately, of her six books,
only two short

poems have come down to a complete.

Oh, this.

This only stirs the troubled heart in my
breath to tremble.

Sweat runs down in rivers. A tremor
seizes all my limbs. And paler than

grass in autumn, caught by pains of
menacing death, I falter, lost

in the love trance.

A love circle.

But in Rome, different rules apply.

As a Roman, you can sleep with whoever
you want.

It doesn't matter who you sleep with,
but how you do it.

And it's all about reinforcing
dominance.

So you have to be the active, the
penetrating partner.

And you can do it with whoever.

But I found, by looking at the Roman
world as a whole, that other people knew

that women had relations with other
women.

I think there's very little we know
about same-sex relationships between

women.

So people didn't assume that it even
existed in ancient times.

So I had to establish that there even
was such a phenomenon in the Roman

world.

The examples that to me were the
clearest were love spells that women

commissioned to attract other women.

The love spell is actually in the
category of what are called binding

spells.

So these are very racy love spells.

So you call upon what we would call the
soul of a person who has died to go

forth and grab another person and bind
the person to you.

So one woman tries to get the person
into the bathhouse, make her love her

day and night and desire nothing but
her.

Listen and do everything quickly, in no
way opposing me in the performance of

this action.

Burn. Set on fire.

Inflame, inflame her soul, heart, liver,

spirit with love.

Drive her, torment her body, night and
day.

She surrenders like a slave because this
is the will and command of the great

God.

The ancient world was full of highly
charged erotic images like the Bourne

Cup. That's a silver cup that was made
perhaps in the time of Augustus.

And this cup was bought by the British
Museum in 1999.

It was at the time the most expensive
single item they had bought.

They'd been offered it in the 1950s, but
they couldn't buy it because the

material was too risqué.

On one side, we have the traditional
scene of an older man with a young boy.

The older man has a beard, and the young
boy is holding onto a sling, and they're

very obviously having sex.

And peeking around a curtain is another
young man who may be a slave. We don't

know who he is. Who's watching them?

And we're still watching.

The Roman emperor Hadrian started it all
off with his obsessive love for a slave

named Antoninus.

the cult that developed after Antinous'
death.

That was unusual.

And they put up statues of Antinous in
their villas and in their cities.

And this cult of Antinous continued into
the 21st century.

So Memoirs of Hadrian is a novel by
Marguerite Yourcenar.

its conceit is that it is the actual
memoir of the roman emperor hadrian

i see a head bending under its dark mass
of hair

eyes which seemed slanting so long were
the lids a

young face broadly formed as if for
repose

Yes, the gay liberation movement creates
more interest and you can talk about it.

There's a certain danger in looking back
at antiquity and seeing these things as

a sort of model or something to aspire
to.

Well, I wanted to show that there were
highly developed civilizations

apart from Europe.

China hasn't been good because we have
lots of records.

迷人的男孩 你的脸

比眉红的曙光云更美丽

你能让烟的女孩羡慕

In the Han Dynasty, you have the
infatuation of emperors for various

pretty boys, you know, sort of all sort
of done in a warning tone.

These are ten Chinese emperors of the
Han Dynasty and the names of their

favorite male companions.

Many love stories have been written
about their affairs.

The most famous of these is based on
fashion, and it's called The Story of

the Cut Sleeve.

The emperor Ai of the Han dynasty, which
was essentially the first

dynasty to rule China, the emperor was

asleep and he rose to attend a meeting,
but his lover was asleep on

his sleeve. So he ordered an attendant
to shut the sleeve

so that the other man would not be
awakened.

And he appeared in this horse then with
this cut sleeve.

Other men there imitated this fashion as
a way of celebrating the love

affair. So that love between men was
very occasionally referred to as

the love of the cut sleeve.

I think contemporary lesbians, they have
an interest in Chinese history.

I have an image of two women having sex
using a double dildo. Mm-hmm.

They are both smiling, but it's a very
genial, very mild, gentle kind of smile.

So, John, this is the tunnel book based
on the poem for the... So I'm going to

read you a poem called... It's like
this.

You can see the Chinese writing in the
moon. Your slender body, your jade and

coral gurgle ornaments chime.

I want to possess the promised heart of
a beautiful woman like you.

It is spring.

Bath mists cover the five lakes.

My dear, let me buy a red painted boat
and carry you away.

While women were experiencing thousands
of... Small deaths.

Thousands of men were literally dying in
each other's arms.

So many of our same-sex stories about
men are war stories.

Perhaps the most enticing story of men
at war was that of the sacred band of

thieves.

And if there were only some way of
contriving that a state or an army

should be made up of lovers and their
beloved, they would overcome the world.

To honor these sacred bands, the Thebans
raise the statue of a lion

on the battlefield.

There is an educational role and
therefore same-sex relationships can be

positive and they can reinforce male
bonds, especially among soldiers and

warriors.

And Achilles is the greatest of the
Greek warriors.

Patroclus is Achilles' friend,
companion. The word Homer uses is

heteros, which means comrade or
companion or brother in arms.

So, you know, the Greeks have to put
forward a hero to fight Hector, who's

the Trojan prince.

But then Patroclus puts on Achilles'
armor and goes out and is killed by

Hector.

And this is an absolute catastrophe for
Achilles. His grief is described at

length by Homer. He covers himself in
ashes. He touches Patroclus' body. He is

in absolute despair.

And it is his terrible grief at the
death of his dear companion that drives

him back into battle.

That was the real example of true love.

for the samurai, and very much like we
might think in the case of the ancient

Greeks, certainly it was not an equal
relationship in the sense that very

often it was between an older man and a
younger man.

The older man would instruct the younger
man in not only sexual matters, but also

in the responsibilities of samurai.

What is it about the penis?

Even the Greeks had a demigod named
Priapus.

Billy McCoy was a boy who could play you
bet.

Oh, how they played when he played on
his old cornet.

He's got a smile and a cute little style
that's all his own.

He'd mute his old cornet and then he'd
make it moan.

Do what I do, what I do, what I do.

Codpiece comes from the Middle English
cod or scrotum and is described

as a pocket or a flap that is worn over
the male genitals as both protection

and modesty.

And it's still worn today in performance
costume and in the leather subculture.

And it was taken to its extreme by
soldiers.

It became larger and larger and more and
more outrageous.

Dressing like a peacock doesn't always
signal your sexual desires.

In most societies, for the longest time,
how you played your gender role was more

determinative. Hiding was an option.

But effeminate men and masculine women
found that harder to do.

And so new roles were created,
especially in indigenous cultures, which

offered some safety. I do think that
there was a significant number of Native

American cultures, pre-Columbian times.

in North and South America that did
exemplify the expression of same-sex

desires, which today we would refer to
as two-spirit.

For example, with the Mojave Indians,
which is one of the most important well

-documented cases.

A singing circle is prepared involving
the whole community.

Everyone gathers around.

and begins to sing the ritual songs.

And the boy, if he is destined to follow
the two-spirit road, starts to dance

in the fashion of a woman.

The boy is then declared to be a
two-spirit person.

They were not considered outcasts by any
means, and which were generally...

accepted into the cultural pattern of
their tribal group

the hijra culture is one of the oldest
ethnic

groups of the transgenders in the world
it's more of a

culture and way of living and it is
known to be the third gender they had a

position in the society and and they
were trusted they were and they were the

loyal they were the keeper of the
herons.

It's not only about having sex, but it's
the culture, it's the community,

it's what a one human feels from his own
soul.

There was this figure of the mannish
woman, women who lived their lives

passing as men. There was a kind of a
fascination with them because they were

kind of adventurers in some sort.

To have the freedom of movement, to roam
the world, practice medicine, fight in a

revolution, the only way you could do it
was as a maid.

So in the case of Miranda Stewart, she
becomes Dr.

James Berry.

She's traveling around the empire, has
her eye on the ladies, and is getting

involved in brawls over this.

And then you, of course, have Catalina
de Arauza, the Basque nun who ran away

from the combat.

Catalina goes into male dress, goes to
South America, becomes a muleteer,

a soldier, a soldier of fortune, really,
taking female lovers.

She was a real firebrand.

And at one point she was sentenced to
death and they were going to execute

her. And then she goes, but I am a
virgin.

And a nun.

And she got away with it.

And so the Pope gives her permission to
wear male dress.

And so she becomes somewhat of a
phenomenon.

So much of our history seems to
spotlight the lives and actions of kings

and queens.

However, many of these stories are being
reinterpreted by gay historians.

Without the heterosexual mantle, it was
always presumed to be present.

I think that's great.

These are stories I missed hearing about
in my history class.

Aujourd'hui, nous allons parler d'amour.

De roi, de reine et de prince.

Il y a très longtemps vivait un roi.

Le roi d'Egypte, Sennousret Ier, qui
aimait beaucoup les bisous.

Il aimait particulièrement faire des
bisous au dieu Ptah, patron de la

construction et des charpentiers.

Kingston Walter I, from around 1900 BC,
is shown embracing the god Par.

The king is kissing the god.

To us, it's easy to read a sort of
erotic aspect into these scenes.

But I think all it is is a celebration
of male intimacy.

Ah, une reine.

Christina de Suède.

Elle adorerait s'habiller.

With women, occasionally you'll get a
Christina of Sweden.

She was cross-dressing.

There's reference to her wallowing in
bed with other women. You know, very

disapproving records from male
observers.

about her sexual life.

And so, you know, she was a real case of
a recorded historical lesbian.

My theory is that she had fallen in love
with various women and

simply wanted to escape the spotlight,
so to speak.

And outside of Sweden, she could live,
actually, life.

The two of them decided to try to escape
the country when his

father's treatment became too brutal.

Frederick's father wanted them tried and
executed.

But there was so much outrage in Europe
that he did

not execute his son.

La mort est douce pour un prince si
aimable.

Frederick looked out the window and
witnessed the execution of his lover.

The idea of gay marriage is not a 21st
century concept.

History is full of extraordinary
marriages before Thelma.

Nero is said in the sources to have been
married to one of his slaves,

a chap called Dory Forrest, and Nero in
that ceremony is said took the role of

the bride.

According to the Jewish Bible, the book
of Leviticus, sexual relations between

females are not prohibited.

Well, this was somewhat disturbing to
the rabbis.

And they found a prohibition for women
marrying other women in the

biblical verse, you shall not do as they
do in the land of Canaan, you shall not

do as they do in the land of Egypt.

That may seem a little far-fetched. And
so the rabbis said, and what did they

do?

The men married other men, and the women
married other women. That's what they

did.

What's interesting is that now we
understand that they were also sirees,

same-sex sirees.

These were called brotherhood sirees and
sisterhood sirees.

The woman who was interested would send
a tray with the broker, with sweets to

the beloved, I guess.

Usually there was a dildo in the middle.
And the other woman would, if she

accepted the offer, She would take the
sweets and then she would throw a white

scarf, the sign of marriage, on the tray
and returned it back.

There was an institution in China of
female marriage resistors.

And the marriage resistors, some of them
actually became deified.

A Chinese sociologist, Pan Guangben, he
speculated that the reason for these

marriage customs is same-sex attraction.

They vowed never to marry, to live and
die together.

They would go through this ritual of
putting up their hair in a bun, okay,

and this ritual was called zi shu,
self-calming.

Ironically, monasteries and nunneries
seem to be the place.

for sanctuary, and more.

There were groups of lay sisterhoods
called the Bagines.

These women freely acknowledged to the
inquisitors that they did not regard any

kind of sexual relationships as sinful,
including women with women.

Well, they burned 50 of them at the
stake, but here's the juicy part.

Not infrequently, some of them
prostrated themselves by the exit to the

bathhouse. Naked, right?

one falling over another, where they lay
inflaming themselves until they were

exhausted.

And so within the monasteries, of
course, it was acceptable to fall in

love with a boy.

This one is really interesting.

This is about a brotherhood vow.

And this caption says, now they perform
brotherhood vows, better say they get

married.

It happens all the time in heaven.

Someday it will begin to happen again on
earth.

The men and women who are married and
the men and men who are lovers

and the women and women who give each
other light

often will get down on their knees and
while so tenderly holding their

lover's hand

tears in your eyes, listen to Julie
speak, saying, my dear, how can I be

more loving to you?

How can I be more kind?

How did the world end up going from a
pagan...

sexually fluid one, to Leviticus's,
let's put them to death by

torture, beheading, burning up a stake,
and hanging.

James Pratt and John Smith were tried
and convicted and sentenced to be hanged

here at Old Bailey.

Newgate, November 25th.

1835.

Dear William, the awful period is nearly
arrived when the offended laws of

my country demand the forfeit of my life
for the crime I have committed.

The grave will soon close over me and my
name entirely forgotten.

Your lost friend, John Smith.

A very long time ago, a small sect of
Semites formulated what would become the

Old Testament, on which so many
religions would justify their horrible

acts toward so-called sodomites.

Thou shalt not lay with mankind as with
womankind. It is abomination.

Book of Leviticus, chapter 18, verse 22.

Unfortunately, the Leviticus statute is
a simple line.

There's no rationale, no preamble. It
stands by itself. In big biblical

times, when the Jews talked about
somebody being in the manner of Sodom,

meant what we would call somebody who
was unwilling to share, you know,

nothing to do with sexuality.

We do not get a real sense of
homosexuality until

about the time of Jesus and St. Paul.

So the Apostle Paul writes in his letter
to the Romans, to the Christian

community in Rome.

Therefore God gave them up in the lust
of their hearts to impurity, to the

degrading of their bodies among
themselves.

Their women exchanged natural
intercourse for unnatural, and in the

same way also the men, giving up natural
intercourse with women, were consumed

with passion for one another.

Book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 24
through 26.

Well, that passage in Paul was a test of
lesbianism.

First mention of this and male
homosexuality is unnatural.

It is a whole new train of thought.

Because the idea of unnatural does not
appear in the Old Testament.

So that was really, unfortunately, a
disaster for men and women who loved

their own.

And those Christian missionaries, they
took their show on the road.

In ancient Hawaii and many other places,
the missionaries were particularly

outraged by the same-sex practices.

Colonial authorities and missionaries in
particular began to try to stamp out

these ritual practices. They regarded
them as heathen.

as pagan as anti-christian and even
abhorrently as monsters

before the coming of the british

in in africa

And so they made the people feel that
there is something wrong.

And when they left, they forgot to erase
that.

The Jesuits come to Japan and they are
shocked, simply shocked.

They would be preaching to the daimyo,
to the feudal lords of Kyushu, and

saying that sodomy is an abomination,
it's a terrible sin.

And they didn't realize that the very
men that they were preaching to

were great practitioners of male-male
love.

With the spread of Catholicism
throughout Europe, the church became

preoccupied with stamping out all
heretics. In the 13th century, the Pope

declared a crusade.

There were bodies organized by kinds of
fraternities who

devoted themselves to this cause of...

Around this period, sodomites became a
favorite scapegoat among many

religious fundamentalists.

Bernardino Siena was a very popular and
charismatic Franciscan

preacher. It started with the great
plague, the Black Death.

Bernardino certainly blamed the
population decline of Florence and

Tuscany and all of Italy on sodomy.

And it was a kind of easy scapegoat.

This blaming the gays for everything bad
that happens seems to be a strategy no

matter what century you are in.

Yes, absolutely.

They're saying exactly the same kinds of
things that you heard in the Middle

Ages.

The 1730 trial started with custodian of
the tower of the cathedral of Jutberg.

He started to tell indeed about all the
sodomites actually that came into the

tower and in the area.

Just from his confessions alone, I think
they got more than 100 names. All the

other people, when they were found
guilty of actual autonomy, actually

found guilty of anal intercourse, they
would be executed.

That was the highest number of deaths.

at one time that I'm aware of before his
life.

There's all kinds of wood blocks that
were being reproduced and reproduced of

the executions of the men, and they had
songs that were also printed with the

imagery. And one show had a series of
six little paintings that go from had

the gay men meeting, had the gay men
leaving their women, being arrested by

the police, put in prison, and then
being executed.

So it's a very nice picture of why
sodomites should be murdered.

The executions generally in Holland for
sodomites were

strangling at a stake, which was
typically the kind of death penalty

for women.

It was a pole.

And they put you against the pole and
then from behind they strangled you with

a cord.

The authorities gave a message to the
public.

You know, these sodomites are like
women. We kill them like women.

Near the end of the 16th century, there
were more sodomites burned than

heretics.

The reason being, they were running out
of heretics.

But there would always be a supply of
men who were involved with other men.

Obviously, same-sex didn't end with a
garage.

We practitioners of same-sex had to
adapt, had to be more creative.

In the Renaissance, ancient Greek myths
became a way to portray same-sex

sensibilities.

In the Renaissance, there was a great
rediscovery of Greek antiquity, the art,

the literature, the poetry, and a
tremendous enthusiasm for everything

Greek. But I think for a lot of people
who were homosexual or bisexual in the

Renaissance, they wanted to make images
of this.

world from ancient times.

And that included the myths about
same-sex love.

So, for instance, we have the story of
Zeus, who fell in love with a young man

called Ganymede, or Apollo and the boy
Hyacinth, or indeed Alexander

and his companion Hephaestion, which is
not mythology, but more like history.

A good example would be the artist
Sodoma.

He did a series of frescoes in a villa
in Rome for the Pope's banker, a very

high-level member of society. And in the
bedroom, there is a fresco of the

marriage of Alexander the Great. And
there he is handing over the marriage

crown to this princess. But right next
to him on the other side is his male

lover, Hephaestion, who is shown very
handsome and idealized like a Greek god.

The 15th century Tuscan poet Poliziano
wrote a poem, for instance, enjoining

men to leave their wives and find
happiness with young men as the Greeks

did.

Hi, Jove, confirms the truth of what I
said, who caught and bound in love's

delightful snare, enjoys in heaven his
own bright Ganymede.

Phoebus on earth had Hyacinth the fair.

Hercules! conqueror of the world, was
led captive to Hylus by this love so

rare.

Advice for husbands.

Seek divorce and fly far, far away from
female company.

Maria, tell me about Ganymede.

Zeus, the king of the Greek Olympian
gods, was very prone to falling in love,

which drove his wife here crazy, but he
usually fell in love with...

nymphs and mortal maidens. And there's
one story we have where Zeus turns

himself into an animal for a boy. And
that boy was Ganymede. And he was the

most beautiful boy of his generation.

So Zeus turned himself into a huge
golden eagle and came down and swept

Ganymede up in his claws and carried him
up to Mount Olympus and made him his

personal cupbearer to pour his wine for
him.

It's very clear that that kind of
intimacy is also

erotic and that this is a bedfellow and
a playmate as well as a servant.

A number of the Isaacs themselves were
undoubtedly homosexual.

I wrote, you know, about Michelangelo
and the discovery of the letters of

Michelangelo, that they had been
deliberately changed from the male

pronoun to the female pronoun.

So the nephew thought he was doing his
uncle a favor by rewriting some of these

poems to make them heterosexual, and
that was the only form in which the

poems were known for the next 240 years.

And most of what we read in the 15th,
16th, 17th century is men like

Michelangelo, for example, who was in
his 50s when he met Tommaso de

Cavalieri, who was in his 20s.

It's no wonder that Michelangelo made a
drawing of Ganymede to give to Cavalieri

because it fit their circumstances. The
older, mature, established figure

passionately embracing the younger,
beautiful figure.

Michelangelo's poetry is the earliest
surviving significant group of poems

that are written by one man to other men
in the West.

229, new numbering, and it's to Victoria
Colonna.

Here's Michelangelo's handwriting.

This is one of my favorite poems by
Michelangelo because it's one of the

ones written to Tommaso de Caligari.

He wanted to write a sonnet to his
beloved Tommaso Cavalieri.

Where Michelangelo really lets out in
the least guarded

way. So this is the poem that you've
been obsessed with for so long.

Here's Michelangelo. The kind of
fantasies that he's having and the

desires that he has toward Cavalieri.

You can't be there.

So if in the eyes you see one's heart.

Again, the eyes.

The eyes.

If the heart can be seen in the face
through the eyes, I have no other more

apparent sign of my flame.

So let these be enough, my dear Lord, to
petition for your mercy.

Perhaps your spirit, which sees with
greater credence than I dare to believe

the virtuous fire that burns me, will be
quick to pity me.

Oh, happy that day when this be sure to
happen, so that I might have my sweet

and longed-for Lord in my unworthy yet
ready arms forever.

the Greek loophole propagated same-sex
sensibilities well into the 20th

century.

With photographers like Van Gluden and
Puchow, who in Italy produced thousands

of classical photographs.

The Battle of the Greeks even went to
the U.S. Post Office when in the 1950s

it lifted its ban on Bob Meiser's
photographs, calling them art.

So there was a lot more knowledge about
sodomy. The Florentines just chattered

constantly about sodomy, and this is one
of the reasons why they had such a bad

reputation. And it was so prevalent that
the Germans invented a verb for

committing homosexuality, which was
Florenze, to Florence.

In

Renaissance

Florence, you might have found me here.

under the statue of Donatello St.

George.

It was a notorious sodomite pickup spot.

In fact, that's what they called us back
then, sodomites.

And they even wrote poetry about this
little place.

So he says, essentially, in this
wonderful Italian,

that this boy he knows, which is the
statue, will never change.

He will never change his clothes. He'll
never change his face. He'll never grow

a beard. And nothing will ever change.
In fact, as we see, he's the same as he

was 500 years ago.

And down the street, they kept record of
all the sodomites they arrested here in

Florence, thousands of them.

Court records are a good way to
reconstruct same-sex history.

One talent for me was just... To sift
through all of these thousands of pages

of documents, no one could have dreamed
that there were so many people

prosecuted for sodomy.

Something like 17,000 men and boys
appeared in the court records

over those 70 years.

There was an immense amount of sexual
activity that these records were

documenting.

Among the names appeared Leonardo and
also

Botticelli.

Cellini is an interesting case.

He was arrested and placed under house
arrest.

So, Bazzi is known as Il Sodoma and at
one point he entered a horse race

and he won.

Heralds come over and they say, well,
you know, congratulations, Mr. Bazzi,

you won the race. How do you want us to
call out your name?

And he says, oh, just say Sodoma.

So the heralds start going to the street
saying, this is the horse of the

Sodomite who won the race.

As everyone knows what the Ponte Vecchio
is, I believe there were around 50.

different individuals who were working
on the bridge and were implicated in

sodomy. There are only a couple of dozen
shops there, so they all must have known

who was being arrested, who had recently
paid their fine, who was going out with

whom. There was a lot of talk and
knowledge.

The core of homosexual networks, and you
could call it an embryonic community,

was there.

You could see networks of same-sex
people, mainly men, meeting, conversing,

picking each other up, having sex.

And that urban culture of people with
sexual minority tastes, shall we

say, kept growing.

Male homosexuality was carved into the
fabric of London.

It was on the pavement, it was in the
brickwork.

In the 18th century, there was a
phenomenon known as the mollyhouses,

which were sort of gay bars.

And we do have historical records of 30
mollyhouses in a relatively short space

of time, where men who wanted to have
sex with other men would congregate, and

they'd have rituals, they'd talk in the
female dialect, which was a kind of

camp. Polari language.

They'd call each other she.

They'd have names like Black Eyed Susan
or Betsy.

You find homosexuality in parks, in
public laboratories, in men's clubs,

in the theatre, on the street.

Homosexuality was everywhere in London.

So often we're accustomed to thinking
that the history of homosexuality is the

history of...

men hiding in corners and feeling
guilty.

And yet these men in early 18th century
London were having as much fun amongst

themselves as any drunkard in a female
of the prostitution.

But coming out would prove to be much
more difficult.

In our film After Stonewall, Reverend
Troy Perry actually called coming out

the most important action that gays and
lesbians had done in the 20th century.

That revolutionary act for me is the
most important thing.

But that revolutionary act actually
began in the 19th century.

August 29th, 1867, a very important date
here in Munich

at the Odeon Plot.

Before an audience of fellow German
jurists, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs made

history when he became the first person
to publicly declare his homosexuality.

For the first time in modern history, he
came out as a homosexual.

Until my dying day, I will look back
with pride when on August 29, 1867, I

found the courage to come face to face
in battle with an age-old, wrathful

Hydra.

What gave me strength at the last moment
finally to mount the speaker's box was

the distant gaze of comrades of my
nature fixed on me.

Ulrichs would later flee in exile to
Italy.

In 2001, his grave was found in L'Aquila
by gay Italian activists, who each

year celebrate his birthday.

Ulrichs was perhaps one of the most
important homosexuals to be rediscovered

by 20th century gay liberationists.

Before his exile, Ulrichs was part of a
group of intellectuals looking for new

names to call herself.

Ulrichs looked to Plato's Symposium to
find a word for homosexuality.

So he turned the Venus Urania into
earning, and that was his word for gay

people. And it was these things that
Edward Carpenter and John Isington

Simmons later picked up and disseminated
into the English world.

The first time the word homosexual was
used was by Austrian novelist Karl Maria

Bankert in 1867.

So it's not surprising that it's in
Europe, in Germany and in England in

particular, that you first start having
intellectuals like Ulrich or Edward

Carpenter or Magnus Hirschfeld
describing same-sex desire, describing a

people, an intermediate type, for
example, Carpenter used.

Edward Carpenter was called the gay
godfather of the British left and he was

determined to talk.

about homosexuality in the 1890s when it
was extremely difficult to do so because

it was illegal.

And so Carpenter becomes a very
well-known advocate for same-sex love.

David Carpenter, who certainly as a
pioneer socialist, as well as pioneer

feminist and sexual liberationist, spent
a large part of his life living with,

working with... politicising
working-class men.

Dear Ted, I shall be glad to see thy
dear face again, as I have such longings

to kiss those sweet lips of thine.

Fondest love from your dear boy.

Carpenter met Meryl actually on a train
coming from Sheffield to the

little village of Totley.

Their eyes met on the train.

And from that time, 1891, they are
seeing each other.

New, proud, curved-lipped youth with
brown, sensitive face.

Why suddenly did you turn full upon me,
those twin black eyes of yours, with

gaze so absorbing, so intense?

I, a strong man, trembled and was faint.

I think that it was this.

sensuous confidence that comes from the
contact with Meryl that enabled

Carpenter to really write about
sexuality for the first time explicitly.

The records of chivalric love, the feats
of an abbot knight for the lady's sake,

are easily paralleled, if not surpassed,
by the stories of Greek comrades in

arms.

I falter. Lost!

in the love trance.

You know, what we have is this.

Lesbians at this time also found
historical roots in the classical world.

Natalie Clifford Barney, an American
expatriate, reinterpreted Sappho's words

for plays performed at her salon in
Paris.

And in the late 19th century, with the
invention of the photograph, hundreds of

homoerotic and male-male pornographic
pictures flooded the homosexual

undergrounds of Paris, Berlin, London.

and Italy.

One of the important contributions of
homosexual people themselves at the end

of the 19th century was their
contribution to the development of what

we now call sexology, the science of
sex.

And what you see through this is gay
people themselves entering into a

dialogue with scientists.

Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which
is really the first gay rights

organization as we would think of them.

This liberating spirit set forth a wave
from Germany to England and

further across the Atlantic to... Here
in the United States of America.

America.

Whitman burst out of the closet in 1855,
and he just sucked in a lot of fresh

air.

Colonial with the earth, with freedom,
law, and

love.

And then in the 1860 edition, in one of
the Calamus poems, he says, Oh,

adhesiveness, oh, pulse of my life.
Well, adhesiveness was the word that

phrenologists used for a strong
affection between members of the same

sex.

Adhesiveness.

I really look upon Leaves of Grass as
the opening shot

the call for gay liberation, freedom
from homophobia, freedom to do as one

wishes. This poem to me is one of my
favorites because in a way it's a call

to arms.

One flitting glimpse caught through an
interstice of a crowd of workmen and

drivers in a bar room around the stove
late of a winter night and I unremarked

seated in a corner of a youth who loves
me.

and whom I love, silently approaching
and seating himself near, that he may

hold me by the hand.

It's a gift. The sequence, in effect, is
a gift to his gay comrades.

We two boys together clinging, one the
other never leaving, air breathing,

water drinking, on the turf or the sea
beach dancing, armed and fearless,

eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.

I love this poem, particularly that
phrase, armed and fearless.

It's very clear from the context of all
the columnist poems that they have their

arms around each other.

So it's a great evocation of gay
fraternity, homosexual fraternity.

Whitman had this vision of the manly
love, he uses those terms, the manly

love of comrades.

And that appealed to a lot of men who
didn't see themselves in the figure of

the fairy, who saw themselves more in
this Whitman-esque vision of

a shared love of equals.

In 1893, a wealthy young man called
George Ives, who was illegitimate, the

son of a general, set up the Order of
Chaeronea.

It was a secret society and its aim was
to promote social

and sexual emancipation for Uranian men.

And it's quite likely that Oscar Wilde
and Rosie Douglas were in the order.

In the 1890s, Oscar Wilde becomes one of
the most successful playwrights of late

Victorian London.

In part, he owed his international
success to his outrageous banter and

fabulous camp sensibility.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us
are looking at the stars.

Man is least himself when he talks in
his own person. Give him a mask and he

will tell you the truth.

Either this wallpaper goes or I do.

I think that sex between men was
extremely prevalent in the 19th century,

and many men, particularly from the
labouring class, from the working class,

were not even aware that it was a crime.

There is only one thing in the world
worse than being talked about, and that

is not being talked about.

This is a letter Oscar Wilde wrote to
Bosie Douglas, the knight.

before he was going to go back to court
and almost certainly be found guilty and

sent to prison with hard labour for at
least two years.

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my
lily of lilies, it is perhaps in

prison that I am going to test the power
of love.

O sweetest of all boys, most loved of
all loves, my soul clings to your soul.

My life is your life, and in all the
worlds of pain and pleasure, you are my

ideal of admiration and joy.

In 1895, Oscar Wilde is convicted.

It's an enormous scandal.

There was nothing quite as dramatic as
Wilde's case.

The first transatlantic sexual scandal
involving same-sex relations.

He was an undoubted genius.

But when he was arrested, the popularity
disappeared overnight and the underlying

homophobia, if you like, came straight
up and remained

potent for 50 or 60 or 70 years.

He's really become a martyr to the kind
of excesses of state power.

Weil said at his trial, quote, the love
that dare not speak its name.

It is that deep spiritual affection that
is as pure as it is perfect.

It is the noblest form of affection.

There is nothing unnatural about it.

And Wilde was that great turning point
in gay history.

I think the importance of Oscar Wilde...
is that he was the

first great gay martyr of the modern
age.

Oscar Wilde wrote to George I, yet I
have no doubt that we will win,

but the road is long and red with
monstrous

martyrdoms.

was vilified, and his works were swept
from libraries. The plays of his that

were in production were closed.

Yes, history repeats itself. The circles
get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Will the film you've just watched be
burned, like Different from the Others?

Will the few remaining lines of the
great poet Sappho be preserved for

future generations?

I say someone in another time will
remember us.

Will Whitman's call to arms be forever
cherished?

I sing the body electric.

The armies of those I love invert me,
and I invert them.

Will Qafafi's radical vision of a
brigade of pleasure be fully realized

one day?

Don't speak about guilt.

Don't speak about responsibility.

When the brigade of pleasure passes with
music and with flags, when the senses

shiver and tremble, it's wrong and
disrespectful to stay distant.

All the laws of morality, badly thought
out, badly applied, are nothing and

can't stand, even for a second, when the
brigade of pleasure passes with music

and with flags.

If history is our guide, then these ups
and downs of repression and freedom

shows us that there will be many valleys
to cross before we see an end to this

story.

Later,

in a more perfect society, someone else
made just like me is certain to appear

and act.

freely.