Before Stonewall

A small, romantic gesture between an emperor and his lover became an allegory for love between men that lasted for many centuries in China. Unfortunately, the full story wasn't quite that romantic. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-7 Video version:  Readings: Hinsch, Brett. The Passion of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexuality Tradition in Ancient China (University of California Press, 1990).

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).