Before Stonewall

Two Brazilian historians once found love letters written by a Portuguese man to another man in the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition. Given where the letters were found, you might guess that the story is an unhappy one, but maybe not in the way that you think. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-7 Video version:  Readings: Mott, Luiz and   Assunção, Aroldo. "Love's Labors Lost: Five Letters from a Seventeenth-Century Portuguese Sodomite" in The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe (Harrington Park Press, 1989). 

If the idea that Jesus and one of the Apostles were lovers sounds like some appalling thing an off-Broadway playwright or a punk rock singer would come up with, well, the idea is actually older than that, and may have even been invoked by King James I, the very man who sponsored the King James Bible! Watch to hear the very odd but woefully incomplete story of the myth of the Beloved Disciple. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-5-the-myth-of-the-beloved-disciple Video version:  Readings: There really isn't "one book" that covers the topic (yet!), but a good general reference is Louis Crompton,  Homosexuality & Civilization  (Belknap Press, 2003).

We wrap up talking about queer figures in the early histories of the "Big Three" monotheistic religions with the obscure figure of Hit. His story later became a justification for homophobia, but the earliest and most authentic versions of the story are arguably more...sitcom-y. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-5-the-prophet-muhammads-queer-friend-hit Video version:  Readings: Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq.   Homosexuality in Islam (Oneworld Publications, 2010). Wafter, Jim. "Muhammad and Homosexuality" in Islamic Homosexualities: History, Culture, and Literature , eds. Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe (New York University Press, 1997).

It's one of the shortest stories of the Hebrew Bible, but it contains compelling themes of poverty, female solidarity, and, yes, even love between the same sex. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-4-ruth-and-naomi Video version:  Readings: Greenberg, Steven. Wrestling with God and Man: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). 

For this episode, meet lesbian and cross-dressing Harlem Renaissance idol and blues singer Gladys Bentley. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-3-gladys-bentley Video version:  Readings: Bentley, Gladys. "I Am A Woman Again" August 1952  https://queermusicheritage.com/bentley6.html Newlevant, Hazel. If This Be Sin (Small Press Expo Collection, 2014). Wilson, James F. Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).

Here is the story of a successful diplomat and spy in eighteenth century Europe who suddenly declared that she was a woman, setting her up against the king and queen of France. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-2-the-chavelier-deon Video version:  Readings: Clark, Anna.  " The Chevalier d’Eon, Rousseau, and New Ideas of Gender, Sex and the Self in the late Eighteenth Century"  in Simon Burrows, J. Conlin, R. Goulbourne, & V. Mainz (Eds.),  The Chevalier d'Eon and his Worlds Gender, Espionage and Politics in the Eighteenth Century  (London:  Continuum, 2010). Kates, Gary.  Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 2001).