alanrodgers's Blogs

Was Oscar Wilde Right?

alanrodgers Blog Last Activity 1 year ago 593 views 11 comments

  In the current issue of Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz reviews a book by Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. which discusses artists accused of sexual misconduct, including Roman Polenski, Woody Allen, Michaei Jackson, PWR BTTM among others. But Dederer devotes a lot of space to Oscar Wilde, the gay icon who is fondly read even today, We can all laugh with him when he lampoons the stuffy prigs who dominated the press and the church in his day, much as we can laugh today at the Florida Republican half-wits. 


  At his trial, Wilde was cited for his sleeping with rent boys and boys whom he picked up casually.  He was not the gay idol we admire today, but a ?menace".  Today he would still be liable to arrest for exploiting minors.  So can we admire him still?  Oscar held that art and morality were in different spheres.  If you've ever admired a stiff penis entering and fucking a bent over male ass. to the rapture and total delight of the couple bonding, you have seen a work of art.  Recall for a moment when Kip Noll, or whomever is your gay idol now. is rapt in the intensity of fucking.  Should we turn off porno art because Ron DeSantos says so?


  Wilde warned about thee consequences of morality triumphing over art: "Art will become sterile, and Beauty will pass away  from the land."   

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patrickhenry87
patrickhenry87
1 year ago

Ron Desanctimonious attacks the LBGT community to divert attention to the fact he has no plan to protect America from its great threat: Communist China. But Lard Ass and the other Maga dolts also bash LGBT for the same reason. Chinese troops could be rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and the Magas would still be screaming about how drag queens threaten America.

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

maybe it's time for a change. we live under an uncomprimising regime now, regime change will be seemless and we really won't notice much difference. Those who will suffer the most are redundant elite. They won't be welcome by the general public not the new elite class.

alanrodgers
alanrodgers
1 year ago

  Thanks for all of your thoughtful and well-researched comments!  And I still adhere to Oscar's view of art over morality!

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

In Aberdeen we had the North British down beside Guild St. There was Jeans Bar on Union Terrace and Crazy Daisy's at the harbour on Friday nights. Those were my regular haunts when I was 17 (1975) and looked old enought to be served. 

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/02/brief-timeline-lgbt-history-scotland-2/


I must say, it comes as a shock and a massive disappointment that Scotland lagged 13 years behind England. 


1981: male same-sex sexual acts are legalised as part of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980. It has taken 13 years to equalise the law with England and Wales.


I never realised. Probably because I was absent from the UK for most of the 80's.

Scotslad2
Scotslad2
1 year ago

I know, for sure, that the age of consent in Scotland didn't happen until 1974. There was a group called  The Scottish Homosexual Right's Group., it was 'set aside' in 1974.

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

Since 1967, the UK’s age of consent had been set at 21, even though for opposite-sex couples the age of consent was 16. In 1991, 169 men who’d had sex with another man were convicted of underage sex in England and Wales, and 13 of them sent to prison.


On 5 April 1993, Stonewall backed three young gay men - Hugo Greenhalgh, William Parry and Ralph Wilde - at the European Court. It was argued that the law banning ‘homosexual acts’ was a breach of their human rights and interfered with their private lives.  The date was a significant one in LGBT history as it was the 98th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s arrest in London, which later led to his prosecution and imprisonment for sexual acts with another man.


In 1994, the age of consent for men who have sex with men was reduced to 18 – a compromise Stonewall would continue to challenge until an equal age of consent was finally secured in 2001. Northern Ireland’s age of consent was set at 16 in 2008, in line with the rest of the United Kingdom.


https://www.stonewall.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/love-wins-age-consent-equalised-gay-and-bi-men


 

alanrodgers
alanrodgers
1 year ago

RE: Bendy's comments -


King's College, London has a video on the history of gay rights there.  The age of consent was established as sixteen in 2004 or 5!  Oscar Wilde's trial was in 1894...

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

as far as I'm aware the age of participants was not a determining factor in the sentencing (UK) for the crime.

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

Better to hang for the killing of ten men than the killing of only one.

Bendy
Bendy
1 year ago

homosexuality was illegal regardless the age of participants. There was no distinction made if those involved were minors or adults. If you find evidence to the contrary please show.