Here you will discover the back stories of kings, titans of industry, stellar athletes, giants of the entertainment field, scientists, politicians, artists and heroes – all of them gay or bisexual men. If their lives can serve as role models to young men who have been bullied or taught to think less of themselves for their sexual orientation, all the better. The sexual orientation of those featured here did not stand in the way of their achievements.
Clement Hugh Gilbert Harris (1871-1897) was an English composer and pianist who was an intimate friend of Siegfried Wagner, the homosexual son of famed composer Richard Wagner and grandson of pianist/composer Franz Liszt. Although Clement was born in Wimbledon and educated at Harrow, he met Siegfried while a student in Germany, where he was studying piano with Clara Schumann, wife of composer Robert Schumann. Clement was wealthy, handsome, sensitive and charismatic, and Siegfried was soon besotted with him.
In 1892 Clement and twenty-three-year-old Siegfried embarked on a six month world cruise and fell deeply in love during that journey. At the onset of their tour, which began in London*, Clement introduced Siegfried to Oscar Wilde. Upon arrival in Hong Kong, Clement convinced Siegfried to abandon his plans to become an architect and instead take up a career as a composer and conductor, thus following in the footsteps of his famous father.
During that same voyage Harris sketched his symphonic poem Paradise Lost, after Milton. The work was completed in 1895 and performed that year in the exclusive spa town of Bad Homburg, Germany, in the presence of the Prince of Wales, the King of Belgium, and various and assorted Grand Dukes and Duchesses. However, the English premiere did not take place until 1905 in Birmingham Town Hall, eight years after Harris's death.
Siegfried was composing on this voyage, as well, working on his symphonic poem, Sehnsucht (Yearning).
*Clement was the son of a wealthy London shipbuilder, and their cruise was on the Wakefield, one of his father’s vessels. The two men were the only passengers, except for the captain and crew and various pets picked up along the way - canaries, a monkey and a Chinese dog. When Siegfried returned to Bayreuth, full of effusive praise for Clement, those close to Wagner referred to this voyage as “Siegfried’s honeymoon.” Several musicologists concur that in Harris, Siegfried found and lost the love if his life. Although Wagner married in 1915 when confronted with a likely outing of his homosexual proclivities, he continued to engage in sexual activity with men, particularly during visits to Berlin, where the anonymity of a big, permissive city reduced the risks to his reputation.
Harris was an admirer of Greek culture who had the fateful misfortune of confronting the outbreak of the 1897 Greco-Turkish war while traveling through Greece. Harris organized his own battalion of mercenaries to fight on the Greek side and was tragically killed in action at the Battle of the Five Wells at Pente Pigadia, Epirus, on April 23, 1897 – three months shy of his twenty-sixth birthday. Wounded early in the day, Harris refused to leave his post and died setting an example of gallantry that was not shared by his fellow officers and soldiers, many of whom deserted their position. He was subsequently buried in the graveyard of the Anglican Church of St. Paul's in Athens, although his family did not know of it. When Clement's communication with his brother Walter ceased, they harbored hope that perhaps Clement had been kidnapped, instead. There is a plaque at St. Paul's (Athens) that commemorates Clement Harris. In 1905 his parents made a memorial gift of a pipe organ in his honor at Withyham Church near Turnbridge Wells, forty miles SE of London. The organ is a two-manual instrument built by the esteemed J. W. Walker & Sons organ builders.
Clement's death was also commemorated by Stefan George in the poem “Pente Pigadia” found in his collection, Der Siebente Ring (The Seventh Ring). Stefan George (1868-1933), also homosexual, was an influential German poet, editor and translator.
Siegfried Wagner (right) composed the symphonic poem Glück (1923) as a memorial to Harris, and Wagner kept a photo of Harris on his desk for the rest of his life. In his 1923 autobiography, Wagner joyfully recalled his travels with "Clementchen" (a German term of endearment best translated as “dear little Clement”) and mentioned their sharing a bed like "Orestes and Pylades," a mythological gay couple. He recalled their travels to Singapore, where they found an idyllic spot for nude bathing like "two Adams."
Although he died before he could mature musically, the extant compositions of Clement Harris do not suggest a major talent, and Harris is known today primarily as the youthful lover of Siegfried Wagner.Nevertheless, Harrisleft a small body of compositions that include the aforementioned symphonic tone poem, piano pieces, art songs, and chamber works for violin, piano, clarinet and cello. His derivative musical style is indebted to Richard Wagner, Brahms and Schumann.
Clement’s diaries, which detailed his close friendship with Oscar Wilde, were published in German by Claus Victor Bock.
Siegfried Wagner: Glück (dedicated to the memory of Clement Harris)
For a brief sound sample of Harris’s tone poem Paradise Lost, click on this link:
A note from your blogger: I have wanted to publish this post for some time but have been frustrated that I can find no photographic image or portrait of Harris. If a reader is aware of one, please contact me at b2655@aol.com
Gay rights at the forefront Of Obama's inauguration speech
Obama’s
inaugural address a few minutes ago made history, in that he linked the
struggle for gay rights (Stonewall) with the women’s movement (Seneca
Falls) and civil rights for black Americans (Selma).* It is assumed that
this speech was heard by millions, and when gay marriage and gay
equality were mentioned, those words received some of the loudest cheers
from the huge crowd (the mall was at capacity, and authorities had
to turn away many who were among the last to arrive).
*We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
Equality
for gay Americans was mentioned several times*, and the icing on
the cake was a poem – “One, Today” – written and recited (just after
the public swearing in) by openly gay Latino poet Richard Blanco. I had
to pinch myself, because a little more than four years ago I would have
thought this unimaginable. Blanco followed in the footsteps of our first
inaugural poet, Robert Frost, who was chosen by President John F.
Kennedy in 1961, and Maya Angelou, who was chosen by President Bill
Clinton in 1993.
*Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
I have already made a post about
Richard Blanco, but I have since learned a little more about him. The
roots of his writing began in 1968, when his parents fled Communist Cuba
and went into exile in Spain. At the time, Blanco’s mother, a teacher,
was pregnant with Richard, her second son. After five months in Madrid,
where she gave birth to Richard, they immigrated to New York. As a boy,
she said, Richard always had an interest in exploring his Cuban roots.
"I
always had questions about Cuba, about the family we left there," he
said. On his website he refers to himself as being “made in Cuba,
assembled in Spain, and imported to the U.S.”
That
sense of not belonging and trying to belong seeps through his books of
poetry, which often feature his family and their efforts to hold on to
their traditions. Richard got to visit the homeland his parents yearned
for when he was growing up. His relatives, who feared he would not speak
Spanish and would feel uncomfortable, were surprised when he picked
yucca in the fields, jumped into the canals and danced a lot – just like
everyone else. That trip as a young man would shape the poet’s future
work, in which he writes about his roots.
“I would say
that poetry is the place we go to when we don't have any more words –
that place that is so emotionally centered,” says Richard. “It is the
place we go to when we have something that we can't quite put a finger
on, that we can't explain away, that we can't easily understand with the
mind. It's the reason I come to poetry as well. As I love to say in my
writing classes: If you sit down totally convinced of what the poem is
going to be, don't even sit down, because writing a poem is a discovery
process.
I immediately found a reason for writing
beyond the love of the words. I had something that I wanted to discover.
All of a sudden I was twenty-something thinking: Wait a minute, I'm not
as Cuban as I thought and I'm not as American either. That kind of
trumped a lot of sexual identity questions.
My third
book is sort of the book in which I came out of the literary closet. Its
theme and topic was the intersection of these identities, or how they
collided. What does it mean to be a gay Cuban man? Asking that really
opened the door. It piqued my interest in that sense. And now I've been
with my partner for twelve years, and I'm 44. It's almost like my mind
couldn't handle negotiating both things at the same time, until this
third book.
My work has to do with searching –
searching within myself, but searching for what the universal experience
is that poetry taps into as well.”
Or click on this link for video of Blanco delivering his poem during Obama’s inauguration:
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes,
spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains,
then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one,
a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper –
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives –
to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent today, and forever.
Many prayers, but one light breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues,
warmth onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands,
hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm,
hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables,
hands as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind – our breath. Breathe.
Hear it through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony of footsteps,
guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me – in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives without prejudice,
as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always – home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country – all of us –
facing the stars.
Hope – a new constellation waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it – together.
Judge Thorne-Begland Confirmed To Virginia Court January 15, 2013
The Virginia General Assembly confirmed Tracy Thorne-Begland as the state’s first openly gay judge, who will serve on the Richmond General Circuit Court. Thorne-Begland had been appointed to the court last June to fill a vacancy on the bench after lawmakers had rejected his nomination, an act most assume was because of his sexual orientation. This interim appointment infuriated Delegate Robert G. Marshall, a Republican who led the charge against Thorne-Begland's nomination. Marshall opposed the judicial nomination, insisting that “sodomy is not a civil right.”
Although twenty-seven other Delegates voted against Thorne-Begland, Virginia Equality applauded his confirmation. “This is a big step forward after last year's actions made embarrassing national headlines. Equality Virginia is pleased that the House of Delegates could see that Thorne-Begland is a qualified candidate with integrity and a long history of public service. He has served his country and his city with honor and unquestioned competence, first as a Navy pilot and then as a prosecutor. We're glad the House of Delegates took a second look at his candidacy, ...this time basing the decision on his qualifications, and not on who he is – or who he loves.”
On January 15 the House of Delegates elected Thorne-Begland to a full six-year term to end on January 31, 2019, by a vote of 66–28, with one abstention. The 28 votes against him were all cast by members of the Republican party. The Senate followed with a vote of 28–0, with 12 Republican senators not voting.
Tracy Thorne-Begland (b. 1967 as Tracy Thorne) grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida, the son of a surgeon who was a Korean War vet. Following Tracy's graduation from Vanderbilt University, he entered the US Navy in 1988, was first in his flight training class, and served in a jet combat squadron at Oceana Naval Air Station, flying the A-6 Intruder.
Tracy lives with his partner, a Richmond attorney born with the name Michael Begland. They combined their surnames, and both now go by Thorne-Begland. They had a commitment ceremony in 2001 after eight years of partnership, and their twin children, a girl and a boy, were born to a surrogate mother in 2005.
