The Universe of Perfection
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
In his “Meditations,” Marcus Aurelius wrote: “Everything is but what your opinion makes it; and that opinion lies within yourself.”
I hold certain opinions about matter and spirit, which opinions shape my life profitably. I begin by imagining a universe where everything is perfect: all matter in it has taken the form of a tightly ordered crystal, which never changes. Being a a crystal, such a universe would not be subject to the second law of thermodynamics: it would not move towards greater disorder. Energies flow inside the crystal structure in never-ending cycles sustaining the existence of vast numbers of spiritual beings, garnered from living planets everywhere. This is a universe of peace, tranquility, total security, and bliss.
The souls in such a heaven are linked together in a master mind, which sees to all their needs, immaterial as these needs are. Spirits in heaven exist in perfect harmony with each other. Yet, sometimes a soul will pine for living in a material world, with all its vibrant sensations, the risks and thrills of adventure. Then it is sent out to a planet outside the heavenly orb to experience material life once again, and procreate new bodies into which spirits may enter. The connection of the soul to heaven is never lost; after the death of the body, the soul returns to heaven to enrich it with new experiences and bring new growth to the universal mind.
I choose to think I am such a soul. I am not my body, but an imperishable spirit making its home in my body; my body is a possession like my clothes, house, car, discarded when worn out, not useful any more, replaced by a new body, or no material body upon my return to heaven. I can provide no scientific evidence for the existence of the crystal universe of heaven or even for the existence of an immortal soul in me inhabiting my material body; I find it helpful in my life to think and feel it is so. I choose to feel I am always tethered to heaven, no matter what dangers threaten my body. I am like a deep-sea diver or a space-walking astronaut with my lifeline to heaven and companions above. I am a surveyor craft landed on this planet to collect data and sensations, transmitting these to my home in the crystal universe for my fellows there to experience.
I am confronting dangers in my adventures here, yet my soul is always safe from harm; if my body is destroyed, or when it dies of old age, God will withdraw my spirit through the umbilical cord connecting me to heaven. I can experience my body aging, suffering injury, disease and damage; if I cannot prevent these ills, I am not concerned. I seek help from above and continue my life on earth as best as I can.
As I pass from moment to moment, I keep in mind that my spirit is priceless, being the immortal and important part of me; but my body, having evolved over billions of years through innumerable struggles and dangers, this body is also very valuable, deserving the best of care to survive long and well in order to serve the goals of my spirit.
Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid; my spirit is safe with God. If my body perishes, it will be a small loss compared to the safety of my spirit. Not that my spirit can be lost, but it may be barred from heaven, and go to a different place, a place of oppressive power, anger, and cruelty.
I remember in my daily efforts that my mission on earth is justice, peace, compassion, knowledge, and wisdom; I focus on my mission: to experience many sensations, adventures, learning, arts, actions, helping my own spiritual growth and that of family, friends, and community. To continue doing so, I also want to make my body as strong, healthy, and versatile as it can be for my age and constitution so I can cope with life's mountains and pitfalls.
How do these ideas of mine differ from religious teachings? They differ because I take them as conscious choices, assumptions, or definitions; no one can argue with definitions. The test of a definition is not its truth, because a definition is arbitrary, but the usefulness of a definition in solving a problem. I define spirit, God, and heaven as I choose, because my definitions help me solve the problem of my existence, and continued survival on earth-- posssibly even beyond this earth.
Should I discover that one of my notions is a detriment rather than an aid in my life, I am ready to reject it, replacing it with a more effective notion; so does a physician when a particular medicine does not heal a patient; the physician tries a different prescription which may help, not harm the patient. This approach of mine is also very different from the various religious doctrines, which sometimes do harm, but are not erased from the scriptures by the patriarchs, except rarely. In this respect, my approach to spiritual matters is more scientific rather than religious, evolving when I meet with new facts and experiences, and not becoming petrified.
The commandments to myself are not carved in stone; I prefer to change, adapting to new trials. I visualize my move before taking it, seeing the result in perfection, sensing that I am
guided by a beam of light from above. I become keenly aware of my surroundings, my body and mind acting deliberately to do what is right, what is proper, what brings forth good fruit, and what is beautiful.
Beauty is indeed immortal, such as we find in great works of art. And my spirit is immortal, but can it change as artistic expression changes? Can my soul get better or worse? Yes, it can, just as character changes. The spirit aims towards perfection, which is not possible on earth or any other material planet; yet that goal of perfection is clear to me. I see that goal in what I think, feel, and do. I clearly visualize the perfect moves I need to make in any game I play. When I achieve that perfection occasionally, then I am “in the zone,” as athletes say. I cannot fail in that state of mind, but can only do what is right and successful.
Otherwise, what happens if my spirit changes for the worse? Can it go back to heaven? I think admission back to heaven would be barred; heaven cannot allow an infected spirit to come back. That sick spirit needs to go through lives of purification, penance, and cleansing on other planets, before being re-admitted to the crystal orb of perfection. Sometimes a soul goes so far astray, it cannot hope to enter heaven any more and is sucked into a sphere of evil, known as hell, a place of grief, agony, and slavery.
My main effort in life is to avoid the whirlpool of hell, to seek the updraft of heaven, not just to prolong the use of my body or to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Yes, I want to prolong life to get the maximum mileage I can from this body, in order to learn more things, experience fascinating adventures, do good work for myself and my fellows. But when the time comes to go away from this sphere, I will leave without fear or regret, having done the best I could have done with the gift of life given to me.
I will have no regret upon dying, but joy instead, looking forward to joining my beloved parents and friends who passed on before me. I will be eager to arrive in heaven and be in the company of people who share my feelings and beliefs, congenial souls, those of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad, Lao-Tse, Descartes, Bacon, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Whitman, the souls which are brothers of my own. It will be great indeed to be talking to these people, remembering together our lives on earth, discussing the ideas that intrigued us all during our lifetimes and the opinions laid down in our writings and talks.
Yet, what if I am mistaken in hoping for the immortality of my spirit? In that case, my consciousness will dissipate in earth's air upon my death as my body goes still and begins to decompose. There will be no harm done to me or to any one else because I imagined a great existence in an afterlife. In the meantime, I enjoy romancing the soul; and transcendent hope sustains me, filling me with meaning and purpose, moving me to good feelings, deeds, and accomplishments.
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sex and the Senior
Sex and the Senior
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1406 Words)
The television series "Sex and the City" depicts the lives of New York women in their late thirties and early forties, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, a woman of considerable sex appeal of the sophisticated type. The film of the same name and the series have met with substantial critical and box office success. It is time for script writers and film makers now to produce "Sex and the Senior." I don't mean anything like "Dirty Old Men," where the sexual proclivities of the old are held up for ridicule and laughter, but more like "Terms of Endearment," a realistic treatment of the conflicts between men and women in middle and old age, funny conflicts, also tragic. Surely romantic love and sex are primarily for the young, Tristan and Isolde pairs, who usually marry after a few years of fooling around, producing the next generation; but today gray pride allows for older people the need and the right to enjoy love and sex, if they are up to it, for simple recreation; or, as in love birds, to foster affection and cooperation for couples in their roles demanded by family and society, to whatever extent they are able to perform these roles; for example, as grandparents, or new parents, if the woman is young enough and the man still potent.
Impecunious but ambitious younger women often marry older men who are famous or wealthy; such a marriage takes care of her needs and luxuries, her children are looked after properly, the old husband is less likely to stray, leaving her to survive on welfare; also, if he dies before she does, a likely event, she will be wealthy herself to have her choice among younger men for a new husband. Thus rich old men not infrequently continue to have children. My own grandfather on my mother's side married for the third time in his seventies a widow in her forties with children. She got pregnant but the children shamed them in aborting the child. Bing Crosby raised a second family with Kathryn. "The Odd Couple" star Tony Randall married a woman in her twenties; he was in his seventies and had two children, who sadly became orphans, but wealthy ones. Billionaire Rupert Murdock of News Corporation is raising a second family, while his older sons are taking over the reins of his empire.
Today seniors are not criticized as much for wanting love and sex, even marriage and children; we're in a liberation movement. The problem for seniors is not public criticism but private inclination. Often, due to age or illness, older people simply do not care for sex. Erections for the men are not that important in an relationship, in spite of the advertising for Viagra and Cialis. Even without an erection a man can satisfy a receptive woman if he desires to do so; consider how lesbians make love to each other. He may not have the libido to care enough to do it, or his partner may not be attractive enough to excite him.
As we age we become less attractive, even with cosmetics, liposuction, diet and exercise. Some old people, full of wrinkles, are beautiful when they display a unique character etched on their bodies, like gnarled olive trees which have born fruit for hundreds of years. That is not the sort of beauty that stimulates sexual passion. A man's libido is not raised by such beauty so he can perform in bed as men are expected to perform.
For older women the problem of finding a willing sexual partner is more difficult; men die younger so fewer of them are available in their age group for sex, and even fewer who care to engage in it or are able to do it. In recent years some women go to poor African or Asian countries for sex with younger men who are willing to love them for money. For men, commercial sex has been around for a long time in poor countries or rich ones; sex workers are available to take care of your sexual needs, if you have any and if you want that kind of quick entertainment.
A more lasting partnership may emerge between an old wealthy person and a young one who needs financial support to get educated or simply to get ahead and survive. It's not exactly prostitution if they like each other and both realize it's a temporary relationship until the young person has advanced or the old person has died or lost interest in sex. When my dad was in his sixties and separated from my mother, he was approached by poor young women who wanted that kind of relationship, but he declined; he thought such activity was undignified and dangerous. He liked to point out to old friends who got involved with young women, losing their money, health, and even their lives prematurely. A few years later, while walking in Hollywood streets for exercise, women would stop him and ask him if he wanted a date. He declined again but was puzzled that such women would offer their services to an old, obviously respectable man. Now my mother started wearing a black dress and shawl when she turned fifty; even then she was very charming and vivacious, and when living alone, she got offers from older men for sex or marriage until she became too old and decrepit. She always declined these propositions, but she liked to brag about them.
Clearly my dad and mom were biased against senior sex, even for themselves, where most people turn a blind eye. Such a bias was prevalent in their time but is now fading. We have a way to go before this bias disappears, as we do with race prejudice; we'll get there eventually as people realize old people are just old, not dead to the world while their bodies are still alive.
What is not fitting or proper is for old women to dress up and behave like chicks, or old men with wigs and pork bellies to strut around like young bucks. Being honest and acting your age is proper, without limiting yourself in behavior as long as you are decent and fair to others. Your partner, as old as you are or younger, should benefit from the relationship. You should promote the life of your young partners and be prepared to let go of them when they are ready to fly on their own or to other lovers. Engage in safe sex as much as you want without shame for your age; don't let your children, relatives, or friends make you feel you are doing something wrong just because you are old.
Old or not, most of us need sex for happiness and health as long as it is safe. Sexuality goes back billions of years in our ancestors, plants first, then animals, a basic tool of evolution, mixing genes to produce new varieties of beings. Sex in plants is seen in their flowering to attract insects for pollination; in animals, displays with color and sound are often used to attract a partner for reproduction: the female becomes receptive during heat, the male courts her and mounts, ejaculates quickly--for most species coupling is all over in a minute or two. Different behavior is seen in animals that mate for life, such as penguins and other birds, when both parents are needed for the successful rearing and survival of the offspring--and in humans for similar reasons. Couples continue to court each other, kissing and fondling. Parents stay together for the sake of the children. Some couples stay together for the sake of the grandchildren, also a good reason. My parents eventually got together again for the sake of their family and lived unhappily with each other until their ends in their nineties.
Other human couples stay together because they like each other as partners in life, loving each other till the end, or remain wedded because of habit, fear of being alone, lack of adventurous spirit, many reasons. Most such arrangements usually do not involve any sexual activity. One day one partner dies, or walks away, and an old person is left alone to fend for happiness. That person may desire sex still and seek it, but cannot find it in decent contacts--a difficult challenge.
What can we advise such a person? Reach out and touch someone if you like or love them; it's worth the trouble and the risk; it's part of the challenge of staying alive--and living--as we age.
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1406 Words)
The television series "Sex and the City" depicts the lives of New York women in their late thirties and early forties, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, a woman of considerable sex appeal of the sophisticated type. The film of the same name and the series have met with substantial critical and box office success. It is time for script writers and film makers now to produce "Sex and the Senior." I don't mean anything like "Dirty Old Men," where the sexual proclivities of the old are held up for ridicule and laughter, but more like "Terms of Endearment," a realistic treatment of the conflicts between men and women in middle and old age, funny conflicts, also tragic. Surely romantic love and sex are primarily for the young, Tristan and Isolde pairs, who usually marry after a few years of fooling around, producing the next generation; but today gray pride allows for older people the need and the right to enjoy love and sex, if they are up to it, for simple recreation; or, as in love birds, to foster affection and cooperation for couples in their roles demanded by family and society, to whatever extent they are able to perform these roles; for example, as grandparents, or new parents, if the woman is young enough and the man still potent.
Impecunious but ambitious younger women often marry older men who are famous or wealthy; such a marriage takes care of her needs and luxuries, her children are looked after properly, the old husband is less likely to stray, leaving her to survive on welfare; also, if he dies before she does, a likely event, she will be wealthy herself to have her choice among younger men for a new husband. Thus rich old men not infrequently continue to have children. My own grandfather on my mother's side married for the third time in his seventies a widow in her forties with children. She got pregnant but the children shamed them in aborting the child. Bing Crosby raised a second family with Kathryn. "The Odd Couple" star Tony Randall married a woman in her twenties; he was in his seventies and had two children, who sadly became orphans, but wealthy ones. Billionaire Rupert Murdock of News Corporation is raising a second family, while his older sons are taking over the reins of his empire.
Today seniors are not criticized as much for wanting love and sex, even marriage and children; we're in a liberation movement. The problem for seniors is not public criticism but private inclination. Often, due to age or illness, older people simply do not care for sex. Erections for the men are not that important in an relationship, in spite of the advertising for Viagra and Cialis. Even without an erection a man can satisfy a receptive woman if he desires to do so; consider how lesbians make love to each other. He may not have the libido to care enough to do it, or his partner may not be attractive enough to excite him.
As we age we become less attractive, even with cosmetics, liposuction, diet and exercise. Some old people, full of wrinkles, are beautiful when they display a unique character etched on their bodies, like gnarled olive trees which have born fruit for hundreds of years. That is not the sort of beauty that stimulates sexual passion. A man's libido is not raised by such beauty so he can perform in bed as men are expected to perform.
For older women the problem of finding a willing sexual partner is more difficult; men die younger so fewer of them are available in their age group for sex, and even fewer who care to engage in it or are able to do it. In recent years some women go to poor African or Asian countries for sex with younger men who are willing to love them for money. For men, commercial sex has been around for a long time in poor countries or rich ones; sex workers are available to take care of your sexual needs, if you have any and if you want that kind of quick entertainment.
A more lasting partnership may emerge between an old wealthy person and a young one who needs financial support to get educated or simply to get ahead and survive. It's not exactly prostitution if they like each other and both realize it's a temporary relationship until the young person has advanced or the old person has died or lost interest in sex. When my dad was in his sixties and separated from my mother, he was approached by poor young women who wanted that kind of relationship, but he declined; he thought such activity was undignified and dangerous. He liked to point out to old friends who got involved with young women, losing their money, health, and even their lives prematurely. A few years later, while walking in Hollywood streets for exercise, women would stop him and ask him if he wanted a date. He declined again but was puzzled that such women would offer their services to an old, obviously respectable man. Now my mother started wearing a black dress and shawl when she turned fifty; even then she was very charming and vivacious, and when living alone, she got offers from older men for sex or marriage until she became too old and decrepit. She always declined these propositions, but she liked to brag about them.
Clearly my dad and mom were biased against senior sex, even for themselves, where most people turn a blind eye. Such a bias was prevalent in their time but is now fading. We have a way to go before this bias disappears, as we do with race prejudice; we'll get there eventually as people realize old people are just old, not dead to the world while their bodies are still alive.
What is not fitting or proper is for old women to dress up and behave like chicks, or old men with wigs and pork bellies to strut around like young bucks. Being honest and acting your age is proper, without limiting yourself in behavior as long as you are decent and fair to others. Your partner, as old as you are or younger, should benefit from the relationship. You should promote the life of your young partners and be prepared to let go of them when they are ready to fly on their own or to other lovers. Engage in safe sex as much as you want without shame for your age; don't let your children, relatives, or friends make you feel you are doing something wrong just because you are old.
Old or not, most of us need sex for happiness and health as long as it is safe. Sexuality goes back billions of years in our ancestors, plants first, then animals, a basic tool of evolution, mixing genes to produce new varieties of beings. Sex in plants is seen in their flowering to attract insects for pollination; in animals, displays with color and sound are often used to attract a partner for reproduction: the female becomes receptive during heat, the male courts her and mounts, ejaculates quickly--for most species coupling is all over in a minute or two. Different behavior is seen in animals that mate for life, such as penguins and other birds, when both parents are needed for the successful rearing and survival of the offspring--and in humans for similar reasons. Couples continue to court each other, kissing and fondling. Parents stay together for the sake of the children. Some couples stay together for the sake of the grandchildren, also a good reason. My parents eventually got together again for the sake of their family and lived unhappily with each other until their ends in their nineties.
Other human couples stay together because they like each other as partners in life, loving each other till the end, or remain wedded because of habit, fear of being alone, lack of adventurous spirit, many reasons. Most such arrangements usually do not involve any sexual activity. One day one partner dies, or walks away, and an old person is left alone to fend for happiness. That person may desire sex still and seek it, but cannot find it in decent contacts--a difficult challenge.
What can we advise such a person? Reach out and touch someone if you like or love them; it's worth the trouble and the risk; it's part of the challenge of staying alive--and living--as we age.
Homosexuality and Its Discontents
Homosexuality and its Discontents
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(2135 words)
Some societies, such as the ancient Hebrews, medieval Christians, and modern Muslims, declare homosexuality to be an abomination, especially between men, punishable by stoning, burning at the stake, or hanging. To this day, fornication between men is a capital offense in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and several other Muslim countries. Other societies, like the ancient Greeks and the Japanese, were more tolerant towards homosexuals, and love of man for man was considered more romantic and important than love of man for woman, encouraged as a valuable bond between men in battle. In most advanced countries, gay men, lesbians, bisexual persons and transvestites are free to carry on their lifestyles; but straight men sometimes attack gays with deadly force and society in general discriminates against all sexual deviants. We may feel what gays do for sex is disgusting; gays view straight sex similarly, because for them what we do is abnormal. Let gays be, let any people be; be kind and respect their personal freedoms, provided they do no harm to others.
In medieval Europe homosexual men were not treated kindly. In 1482 the Swiss Knight von Hohenberg and his squire were burned at the stake for the crime of sodomy. Executions for sodomy continued in the Netherlands until 1803 and in England until 1835.
In Renaissance Italy, Florence and Venice especially, man-man love flourished as in ancient Greece and Rome, despite priests and monks, or because of them. In 1532, Michelangelo, 57, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and poet penned this ode to his dead lover, Tommaso dei Cavalieri, 23.
The flesh now earth, and here my bones,
Bereft of handsome eyes, and jaunty air,
Still loyal to him I joyed in bed,
Whom I embraced, in whom my spirit lives.
This was the classic ideal of gay love, of an older man for a young lover, which often gave way to carnal desire, as it does for straight people.
Michelangelo’s competitor in the arts was Leonardo da Vinci, 23 years older than Michelangelo. Leonardo was a universal talent also: engineer, scientist, architect, and a great painter. He was not known to have had any relationships with women, except a friend, Isabella d’Este. He had feelings both loving and passionate for his pupils Salei and Melzi. Some of his paintings such as John the Baptist and Bacchus suggest androgynous eroticism.
Today in America, homosexuals are a minority of about 4% of the population. They are different from the rest of us. Is that any reason to hound and hurt them? Women find gay men amusing, often befriending them. Straight men do not object to lesbians, without malice allowing one woman to love another, even finding that interesting. Why hate those who deviate from our own sex? We are all deviants in one way or another; we are all grotesques, as in Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio.” Be tolerant; be kind to all who cause no injury.
Preaching kindness and charity, some religions are not kind or charitable to gays. What is the justification for this attitude which preachers offer us? God revealed the evil of homosexuality to their prophets. I reject any argument based on divine revelations alone. Some truths may occur to prophets and saints; but not all notions they perceive in their meditations can be trusted completely. The heavenly messages are too mixed, contradictory, noisy, and confusing from one religion to another. What about sacrificing children or unblemished maidens to the gods? We would do best to consider these messages merely as suggestions on how to conduct our lives, not as infallible laws to be obeyed. God or Nature has endowed us humans with reason, the ability to think logically, arriving to sound conclusions. Let us use reason to judge homosexuals.
Scientific studies have identified over 1,500 animal species with homosexual individuals. Why has evolution produced these deviants? The percentage of such deviant individuals in animal populations is too high to consider homosexuality as a simple defect occurring randomly. It may be that mating between individuals of the same sex acts as a curb to population growth when the density of the population in a territory is too high. We know that unchecked growth in a population can lead to catastrophic food shortages. It may be that homosexuality reduces excessive aggression between members of the same sex at the cost of less reproduction.
Even so, 50% of gay men and 75% of lesbians do have children. So the genes responsible for homosexuality continue; they may also come about from spontaneous mutations. In either case, these genes may serve some function. Consider the case of sickle-cell anemia. It is a disabling disease, but not as bad as the sleeping sickness transmitted by the tsetse fly. Sickle-cell anemia renders immunity to the sleeping sickness. Any variation arising in the gene pool by mutation, if not fatal to the organism, has the potential of being a survival trait under certain circumstances. All species need variability in their gene pools for their survival, and Homo sapiens has too little gene variability because it is a relatively new species.
The mutation that started human evolution probably prompted other primates to kill many carriers of human genes before humans prevailed.
The Nazis were concerned about breeding and thought of homosexuality as a degenerate behavior that had to be eliminated in the master race. One of the Nazi leaders, Ernst Röhm was a closet gay, but Hitler had him assassinated when Röhm challenged Hitler’s authority. Eventually, as many as one million gay men were arrested by the Nazis and many put in concentration camps together with other people targeted for extermination, such as Jews, gypsies, and communists. The Nazis believed the Aryan race needed to be purified from such elements. They executed many gays; physicians committed medical experiments on some; and Courts ordered the castration of many gay men, as if that would make effeminate men less so. Ironically, Adolph himself may have been one quarter Jewish from his mother’s side, and a crypto-gay, according to some rumors.
Well, we all have some Semitic genes as members of Homo sapiens, and we all have some hormones of the opposite sex; but homosexuals are different from the rest of us. In 1993, Dean Hamer reported on a genetic marker, Xq28, on the X chromosome of gay men. A later study in 1995 disputed Hamer’s conclusions, but statistical results show 52% of identical twins, if one is gay, the other one is too. Other researchers place the cause of homosexuality on environmental factors, starting in the fetus. Less testosterone in the fetus causes changes in the brain and other organs. Several organs in the brain are different in gays. Even their underarm odors are different from those of straight men. Gay men respond differently to sexual pheromones. They are more fluent, tend to be left-handed, and are better at locating objects than straight men. Lesbians have not been studied as much, but also have differences.
Lesbians like ancient poet Sappho and Gertrude Stein and gay men have done much good work in the arts. Gays tend to work in certain occupations, such as dancing, hairdressing, and interior decorating. Famous actors Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift were gay. The great American playwright Tennessee Williams was an open gay and was beaten at least once for his sexual preference. He scripted the beautiful plays “The Glass Menagerie,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which showed his great sensitivity and understanding of the souls of women. Oscar Wilde, another accomplished playwright, was prosecuted and convicted for gross indecency in Victorian England. Wilde served two years at hard labor. He was the author of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” His career was destroyed and he died at 46. Wilde had met the greatest of the American poets Walt Whitman, declaring that he had a kiss from him and that Whitman was definitely gay.
Whitman was probably bisexual, AC/DC as some call bisexuals. Bisexual people enjoy both worlds: the straight and the gay. You might say they are privileged individuals, except that their behavior may get them into trouble with their spouses as well as their lovers. Asexual people have the least trouble, especially since then tend to reproduce the least, and thus avoid trouble with children. But, as Zorba the Greek said, “Life is trouble.”
I never had any trouble with homosexuals, although when I was younger and more attractive, I was approached by some in my native Greece and in America. They offered gifts or favors, depending on their wealth. When I declined, finding male love unappetizing, they left me alone. I believe people are born gay, and are not made so by the contacts they make, but a suitable seduction by an experienced gay can trigger a homosexual bent that has been latent. I can understand how a father may feel about his young son and heir being enticed by an older gay man. The father feels his hope of grandchildren from the son fading and can be very angry. His anger is probably useless if the son is indeed gay in nature and unnecessary if the son is born straight.
Among people born gay, Truman Capote was an open homosexual as well as a man of prodigious talent. He published at a young age the best-selling novelette “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” The main character Joel grows up lonely in a strange house, discovering his identity as a queer person, and finding liberation in accepting his destiny as a gay man. Later on in life, Capote achieved even greater fame with his novel “In Cold Blood,” based on a multiple murder in Kansas. Capote did not encounter the difficulties of Oscar Wilde, but hobnobbed with the rich and famous until his death in 1984, aged 59, due to liver damage from alcohol and drugs.
The great romantic composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrestled with his homosexuality all his life and suffered from cyclothymia. He even tried marriage to attain respectability, with disastrous results. The composer of “Swanlake,” “The Nutcracker,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” and the “Pathétique” symphony died in 1893 during a cholera epidemic, some say by suicide. He was 53.
Homosexuality is less well known among men of science and technology. Alan Turing was gay. He was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma codes during World War II in England. He devised the Turing machine and is credited for inventing the stored-program computer. He was working on codes for his country when he was exposed as gay. Turing was convicted of gross indecency and lost his secret clearance. He took his own life in 1954, aged 42, by biting into a cyanide-laced apple.
It is clear that being gay is hazardous to your health. Gay people have a higher incidence alcoholism, drug addition, and suicide, in addition to AIDS, than the general population. Not surprising, since they face discrimination in jobs, housing, and social organizations, including churches. Believing homosexuality is a choice, well meaning people try to change them and treat them for their disease. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that evidence does not support the theory that a gay sexual orientation can be changed, that it is not a disease, and that it does not require treatment.
If we believe that a human is a composite of body, mind, and an immortal spirit, we can speculate about the condition of homosexuality as a spiritual phenomenon. In the 1985 Oscar-winning film with William Hurt, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a gay man says to the straight cellmate in a South American prison: “I am a woman in a man’s body.” He falls in love with his cellmate although he was placed in prison to spy on him, and finally seduces him, but does not betray him to the authorities, and he is killed by them. Who knows what channels placed a female spirit in a male body? What scientist understands the phenomenon of a child prodigy like Mozart? Western science has discovered much about the evolution of our bodies and minds, but not much about our spirits. Perhaps we should look to Eastern sages for answers to these questions, those who have studied the evolution of spirits, like the Buddha or Laotse. The Hindus believe in both a male and female divinity; and so do Catholics and Greek Orthodox Christians, worshiping the Madonna as much as the Son. The Chinese describe the universe in terms of yin and yang, the female and male principles, pictured in a circle as dark and light tadpoles with a dot of yin in the yang and a dot of yang in the yin area. Perhaps our spirits too, as well as our hormones, contain some of the opposite sex. Why do I, a man surely, have nipples? Why does a woman have a small penis called a clitoris? Male nipples and the clitoris are clearly organs with the sole function of being sources of pleasure. So, gays seek pleasure too, in their own ways, to be happy and not get depressed in the face of life’s shocks, to live and to survive,
In any case, the time has come to accept gay men and lesbians as people deserving respect like the rest of us. The time has come to stop persecuting these souls, many of whom possess rare creative talents. The time has come to appreciate gays like Michelangelo, da Vinci, Turing, or Tchaikovsky for the persons they are, to allow them to live their lives to the fullest and to encourage them to contribute their precious gifts to human civilization.
Vista, CA February 2008
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(2135 words)
Some societies, such as the ancient Hebrews, medieval Christians, and modern Muslims, declare homosexuality to be an abomination, especially between men, punishable by stoning, burning at the stake, or hanging. To this day, fornication between men is a capital offense in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and several other Muslim countries. Other societies, like the ancient Greeks and the Japanese, were more tolerant towards homosexuals, and love of man for man was considered more romantic and important than love of man for woman, encouraged as a valuable bond between men in battle. In most advanced countries, gay men, lesbians, bisexual persons and transvestites are free to carry on their lifestyles; but straight men sometimes attack gays with deadly force and society in general discriminates against all sexual deviants. We may feel what gays do for sex is disgusting; gays view straight sex similarly, because for them what we do is abnormal. Let gays be, let any people be; be kind and respect their personal freedoms, provided they do no harm to others.
In medieval Europe homosexual men were not treated kindly. In 1482 the Swiss Knight von Hohenberg and his squire were burned at the stake for the crime of sodomy. Executions for sodomy continued in the Netherlands until 1803 and in England until 1835.
In Renaissance Italy, Florence and Venice especially, man-man love flourished as in ancient Greece and Rome, despite priests and monks, or because of them. In 1532, Michelangelo, 57, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and poet penned this ode to his dead lover, Tommaso dei Cavalieri, 23.
The flesh now earth, and here my bones,
Bereft of handsome eyes, and jaunty air,
Still loyal to him I joyed in bed,
Whom I embraced, in whom my spirit lives.
This was the classic ideal of gay love, of an older man for a young lover, which often gave way to carnal desire, as it does for straight people.
Michelangelo’s competitor in the arts was Leonardo da Vinci, 23 years older than Michelangelo. Leonardo was a universal talent also: engineer, scientist, architect, and a great painter. He was not known to have had any relationships with women, except a friend, Isabella d’Este. He had feelings both loving and passionate for his pupils Salei and Melzi. Some of his paintings such as John the Baptist and Bacchus suggest androgynous eroticism.
Today in America, homosexuals are a minority of about 4% of the population. They are different from the rest of us. Is that any reason to hound and hurt them? Women find gay men amusing, often befriending them. Straight men do not object to lesbians, without malice allowing one woman to love another, even finding that interesting. Why hate those who deviate from our own sex? We are all deviants in one way or another; we are all grotesques, as in Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio.” Be tolerant; be kind to all who cause no injury.
Preaching kindness and charity, some religions are not kind or charitable to gays. What is the justification for this attitude which preachers offer us? God revealed the evil of homosexuality to their prophets. I reject any argument based on divine revelations alone. Some truths may occur to prophets and saints; but not all notions they perceive in their meditations can be trusted completely. The heavenly messages are too mixed, contradictory, noisy, and confusing from one religion to another. What about sacrificing children or unblemished maidens to the gods? We would do best to consider these messages merely as suggestions on how to conduct our lives, not as infallible laws to be obeyed. God or Nature has endowed us humans with reason, the ability to think logically, arriving to sound conclusions. Let us use reason to judge homosexuals.
Scientific studies have identified over 1,500 animal species with homosexual individuals. Why has evolution produced these deviants? The percentage of such deviant individuals in animal populations is too high to consider homosexuality as a simple defect occurring randomly. It may be that mating between individuals of the same sex acts as a curb to population growth when the density of the population in a territory is too high. We know that unchecked growth in a population can lead to catastrophic food shortages. It may be that homosexuality reduces excessive aggression between members of the same sex at the cost of less reproduction.
Even so, 50% of gay men and 75% of lesbians do have children. So the genes responsible for homosexuality continue; they may also come about from spontaneous mutations. In either case, these genes may serve some function. Consider the case of sickle-cell anemia. It is a disabling disease, but not as bad as the sleeping sickness transmitted by the tsetse fly. Sickle-cell anemia renders immunity to the sleeping sickness. Any variation arising in the gene pool by mutation, if not fatal to the organism, has the potential of being a survival trait under certain circumstances. All species need variability in their gene pools for their survival, and Homo sapiens has too little gene variability because it is a relatively new species.
The mutation that started human evolution probably prompted other primates to kill many carriers of human genes before humans prevailed.
The Nazis were concerned about breeding and thought of homosexuality as a degenerate behavior that had to be eliminated in the master race. One of the Nazi leaders, Ernst Röhm was a closet gay, but Hitler had him assassinated when Röhm challenged Hitler’s authority. Eventually, as many as one million gay men were arrested by the Nazis and many put in concentration camps together with other people targeted for extermination, such as Jews, gypsies, and communists. The Nazis believed the Aryan race needed to be purified from such elements. They executed many gays; physicians committed medical experiments on some; and Courts ordered the castration of many gay men, as if that would make effeminate men less so. Ironically, Adolph himself may have been one quarter Jewish from his mother’s side, and a crypto-gay, according to some rumors.
Well, we all have some Semitic genes as members of Homo sapiens, and we all have some hormones of the opposite sex; but homosexuals are different from the rest of us. In 1993, Dean Hamer reported on a genetic marker, Xq28, on the X chromosome of gay men. A later study in 1995 disputed Hamer’s conclusions, but statistical results show 52% of identical twins, if one is gay, the other one is too. Other researchers place the cause of homosexuality on environmental factors, starting in the fetus. Less testosterone in the fetus causes changes in the brain and other organs. Several organs in the brain are different in gays. Even their underarm odors are different from those of straight men. Gay men respond differently to sexual pheromones. They are more fluent, tend to be left-handed, and are better at locating objects than straight men. Lesbians have not been studied as much, but also have differences.
Lesbians like ancient poet Sappho and Gertrude Stein and gay men have done much good work in the arts. Gays tend to work in certain occupations, such as dancing, hairdressing, and interior decorating. Famous actors Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift were gay. The great American playwright Tennessee Williams was an open gay and was beaten at least once for his sexual preference. He scripted the beautiful plays “The Glass Menagerie,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which showed his great sensitivity and understanding of the souls of women. Oscar Wilde, another accomplished playwright, was prosecuted and convicted for gross indecency in Victorian England. Wilde served two years at hard labor. He was the author of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” His career was destroyed and he died at 46. Wilde had met the greatest of the American poets Walt Whitman, declaring that he had a kiss from him and that Whitman was definitely gay.
Whitman was probably bisexual, AC/DC as some call bisexuals. Bisexual people enjoy both worlds: the straight and the gay. You might say they are privileged individuals, except that their behavior may get them into trouble with their spouses as well as their lovers. Asexual people have the least trouble, especially since then tend to reproduce the least, and thus avoid trouble with children. But, as Zorba the Greek said, “Life is trouble.”
I never had any trouble with homosexuals, although when I was younger and more attractive, I was approached by some in my native Greece and in America. They offered gifts or favors, depending on their wealth. When I declined, finding male love unappetizing, they left me alone. I believe people are born gay, and are not made so by the contacts they make, but a suitable seduction by an experienced gay can trigger a homosexual bent that has been latent. I can understand how a father may feel about his young son and heir being enticed by an older gay man. The father feels his hope of grandchildren from the son fading and can be very angry. His anger is probably useless if the son is indeed gay in nature and unnecessary if the son is born straight.
Among people born gay, Truman Capote was an open homosexual as well as a man of prodigious talent. He published at a young age the best-selling novelette “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” The main character Joel grows up lonely in a strange house, discovering his identity as a queer person, and finding liberation in accepting his destiny as a gay man. Later on in life, Capote achieved even greater fame with his novel “In Cold Blood,” based on a multiple murder in Kansas. Capote did not encounter the difficulties of Oscar Wilde, but hobnobbed with the rich and famous until his death in 1984, aged 59, due to liver damage from alcohol and drugs.
The great romantic composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrestled with his homosexuality all his life and suffered from cyclothymia. He even tried marriage to attain respectability, with disastrous results. The composer of “Swanlake,” “The Nutcracker,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” and the “Pathétique” symphony died in 1893 during a cholera epidemic, some say by suicide. He was 53.
Homosexuality is less well known among men of science and technology. Alan Turing was gay. He was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma codes during World War II in England. He devised the Turing machine and is credited for inventing the stored-program computer. He was working on codes for his country when he was exposed as gay. Turing was convicted of gross indecency and lost his secret clearance. He took his own life in 1954, aged 42, by biting into a cyanide-laced apple.
It is clear that being gay is hazardous to your health. Gay people have a higher incidence alcoholism, drug addition, and suicide, in addition to AIDS, than the general population. Not surprising, since they face discrimination in jobs, housing, and social organizations, including churches. Believing homosexuality is a choice, well meaning people try to change them and treat them for their disease. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that evidence does not support the theory that a gay sexual orientation can be changed, that it is not a disease, and that it does not require treatment.
If we believe that a human is a composite of body, mind, and an immortal spirit, we can speculate about the condition of homosexuality as a spiritual phenomenon. In the 1985 Oscar-winning film with William Hurt, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a gay man says to the straight cellmate in a South American prison: “I am a woman in a man’s body.” He falls in love with his cellmate although he was placed in prison to spy on him, and finally seduces him, but does not betray him to the authorities, and he is killed by them. Who knows what channels placed a female spirit in a male body? What scientist understands the phenomenon of a child prodigy like Mozart? Western science has discovered much about the evolution of our bodies and minds, but not much about our spirits. Perhaps we should look to Eastern sages for answers to these questions, those who have studied the evolution of spirits, like the Buddha or Laotse. The Hindus believe in both a male and female divinity; and so do Catholics and Greek Orthodox Christians, worshiping the Madonna as much as the Son. The Chinese describe the universe in terms of yin and yang, the female and male principles, pictured in a circle as dark and light tadpoles with a dot of yin in the yang and a dot of yang in the yin area. Perhaps our spirits too, as well as our hormones, contain some of the opposite sex. Why do I, a man surely, have nipples? Why does a woman have a small penis called a clitoris? Male nipples and the clitoris are clearly organs with the sole function of being sources of pleasure. So, gays seek pleasure too, in their own ways, to be happy and not get depressed in the face of life’s shocks, to live and to survive,
In any case, the time has come to accept gay men and lesbians as people deserving respect like the rest of us. The time has come to stop persecuting these souls, many of whom possess rare creative talents. The time has come to appreciate gays like Michelangelo, da Vinci, Turing, or Tchaikovsky for the persons they are, to allow them to live their lives to the fullest and to encourage them to contribute their precious gifts to human civilization.
Vista, CA February 2008
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