Huck, Is That You?

Huck Finn has never been hotter. More seriously, we can learn a lot from the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Even though the book is sometimes (and in my opinion, stupidly) considered controversial because of its use of the "N" word. The words used in this book are based on historical accuracy of the time, and when the book is taught that should be something that is explained.  Twain was a very open and non-prejudiced.  He often showed just how ignorant hate-filled language and derogatory terms can be.  Controversy aside, we can still learn some valuable lessons in the book. The developing friendship between a white boy (Huck) and a black slave (Jim) is the main driving force of this novel. It is this friendship that makes Huck’s decision of whether to help Jim escape slavery so difficult. Huck's ultimate choice pits him against everything he had previously known to be right. Huck makes several comments throughout the book that let us know how seriously he takes his friendships. He values loyalty most highly, and that leads him to stick with Jim (who proves his loyalty to Huck several times) to the end.

If we could all apply this lesson to our own lives, just think how much happier we could be.

A Little Inspiration

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as the beloved Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 on Howard Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. Ted's father, Theodor Robert, and grandfather were brewmasters in the city. His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, often soothed her children to sleep by "chanting" rhymes remembered from her youth. Ted credited his mother with both his ability and desire to create the rhymes for which he became so well known.

Although the Geisels enjoyed great financial success for many years, the onset of World War I and Prohibition presented both financial and social challenges for the German immigrants. Nonetheless, the family persevered and again prospered, providing Ted and his sister, Marnie, with happy childhoods.

The influence of Ted's memories of Springfield can be seen throughout his work. Drawings of Horton the Elephant meandering along streams in the Jungle of Nool, for example, mirror the watercourses in Springfield's Forest Park from the period. The fanciful truck driven by Sylvester McMonkey McBean in The Sneetches could well be the Knox tractor that young Ted saw on the streets of Springfield. In addition to its name, Ted's first children's book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, is filled with Springfield imagery, including a look-alike of Mayor Fordis Parker on the reviewing stand, and police officers riding red motorcycles, the traditional color of Springfield's famed Indian Motocycles.

Ted left Springfield as a teenager to attend Dartmouth College, where he became editor-in-chief of the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's humor magazine. Although his tenure as editor ended prematurely when Ted and his friends were caught throwing a drinking party, which was against the prohibition laws and school policy, he continued to contribute to the magazine, signing his work "Seuss." This is the first record of the "Seuss" pseudonym, which was both Ted's middle name and his mother's maiden name.

To please his father, who wanted him to be a college professor, Ted went on to Oxford University in England after graduation. However, his academic studies bored him, and he decided to tour Europe instead. Oxford did provide him the opportunity to meet a classmate, Helen Palmer, who not only became his first wife, but also a children's author and book editor.

After returning to the United States, Ted began to pursue a career as a cartoonist. The Saturday Evening Post and other publications published some of his early pieces, but the bulk of Ted's activity during his early career was devoted to creating advertising campaigns for Standard Oil, which he did for more than 15 years.

As World War II approached, Ted's focus shifted, and he began contributing weekly political cartoons to PM magazine, a liberal publication. Too old for the draft, but wanting to contribute to the war effort, Ted served with Frank Capra's Signal Corps (U.S. Army) making training movies. It was here that he was introduced to the art of animation and developed a series of animated training films featuring a trainee called Private Snafu.

While Ted was continuing to contribute to Life, Vanity Fair, Judge and other magazines, Viking Press offered him a contract to illustrate a collection of children's sayings called Boners. Although the book was not a commercial success, the illustrations received great reviews, providing Ted with his first "big break" into children's literature. Getting the first book that he both wrote and illustrated, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published, however, required a great degree of persistence - it was rejected 27 times before being published by Vanguard Press.

The Cat in the Hat, perhaps the defining book of Ted's career, developed as part of a unique joint venture between Houghton Mifflin (Vanguard Press) and Random House. Houghton Mifflin asked Ted to write and illustrate a children's primer using only 225 "new-reader" vocabulary words. Because he was under contract to Random House, Random House obtained the trade publication rights, and Houghton Mifflin kept the school rights. With the release of The Cat in the Hat, Ted became the definitive children's book author and illustrator.

After Ted's first wife died in 1967, Ted married an old friend, Audrey Stone Geisel, who not only influenced his later books, but now guards his legacy as the president of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.

At the time of his death on September 24, 1991, Ted had written and illustrated 44 children's books, including such all-time favorites as Green Eggs and Ham, Oh, the Places You'll Go, Fox in Socks, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. His books had been translated into more than 15 languages. Over 200 million copies had found their way into homes and hearts around the world.

Besides the books, his works have provided the source for eleven children's television specials, a Broadway musical and a feature-length motion picture. Other major motion pictures are on the way.

His honors included two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award and the Pulitzer Prize.

A Sixty Year Romance

The picture above has a very interesting story attached to it.  However, because the story was originally published in the New York Times, I am not able to repost it here, but I urge you to check out the following link: On Carrie Bradshaw’s Block, Romance Over 6 Decades by Diane Cardwell.

Autumn Fires

Bonfires always remind me of fall: the big bonfire before the homecoming game, sitting around a bonfire telling stories, ghost stories around the campfire. All these things remind me of autumn.

In some parts of the world, bonfires are identified, not with autumn, but with the summer solstice. In Latvia, Midsummer is called Jāņi . It is a national holiday celebrated on a large scale by almost everyone in Latvia and by people of Latvian origin abroad. Celebrations consist of a lot of traditional elements - eating Jāņu cheese, drinking beer, singing hundreds of Latvian folk songs dedicated to Jāņi, burning bonfire to keep light all through the night and jumping over it, wearing wreaths of flowers (for the women) and leaves (for the men) together with modern commercial products and ideas. Oak wreaths are worn by men named Jānis in honor of their name day. Small oak branches with leaves are attached to cars in Latvia during the festivity.

In the western town of Kuldīga, revellers mark the holiday by running naked through the town at three in the morning. The event has taken place for the past seven years. Runners are rewarded with beer, and police are on hand in case any "puritans" attempt to interfere with the naked run.

I just never got the chance to run around them naked, what about you? Do bonfires remind you of autumn? Have you ever run around one naked.

Just as I think of bonfires and autumn together, the following poem by Robert Louis Stevenson is not what I usually associate with Stevenson. I usually associate stories of pirates and life at sea. However, this poem shows that there was much more to Robert Louis Stevenson.

Autumn Fires
Robert Louis Stevenson (1913)

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The gray smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

More about Robert Louis Stevenson after the jump.

Nude Equestrianism and Pot

First of all, I am not condoning or condemning the use of marijuana, however, I heard about this on NPR the other day, and found the whole thing fascinating. The Chu Valley between Kyrgyzstan and Kazkhstan is the home to an extremely hardy type of marijuana that resisted Soviet-era efforts to stamp it out. Law-breaking marijuana farmers in the region harvest the crop normally, but they also procure their stick-icky using a tried and true method that’s been around for centuries: nude equestrianism.

Every August, naked horseback riders descend on the Chu to gather resin for a highly concentrated form of smokeable marijuana known as “plastilin.” Plastilin is so potent that a few pieces the size of pinheads will get the user proper goofy. Explains Radio Free Europe:

It begins with a freshly showered person riding naked for hours on a clean, washed horse inside a two-meter-high "forest" of marijuana.
Afterwards, the human body and that of the horse are covered with a thick layer of resin mixed with sweat.
This produces a substance that is usually dark brown in color, which is then thoroughly scraped off the human and horse's bodies [...] But it is a lot harder to produce this form of the drug because you need more time to make it.
Imagine 10, 20, or 30 individuals running or riding naked in a field of wild marijuana. It goes without saying that they are more exposed and it is easier to catch them. Nonetheless, people do it and they have been doing it since time immemorial.

The substance produced and scraped from the penis could give a whole new meaning to the euphemism "smoking the pole."  Just a thought...

Source: io9. 

After Apple-Picking

After Apple-Picking


My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
--Robert Frost (1914)

Born in San Francisco, Frost spent most of his adult life in rural New England and his laconic language and emphasis on individualism in his poetry reflect this region. He attended Dartmouth and Harvard but never earned a degree, and as a young man with growing family he attempted to write poetry while working a farm or teaching school. American editors rejected his submitted poems. With considerable pluck Frost moved his family to England in 1912 and the following year a London publisher brought out his first book. After publishing a second book, Frost returned to America determined to win a reputation in his own country, which he gradually achieved, becoming one of the country's best-loved poets. Unlike his contemporaries, Frost chose not to experiment with new verse forms but to employ traditional patterns, or as he said, he chose "the old-fashioned way to be new." Despite the surface cheerfulness and descriptive accuracy of his poems, he often presents a dark, sober vision of life, and there is a decidedly thoughtful quality to his work.
In the poem above we see how, like Wordsworth, Frost takes an ordinary experience and transforms it into a meditative moment, a philosophical musing. Apple-picking slides gradually away from merely harvesting fruit to considering how life has been experienced fully but with some regrets and mistakes. The reference to winter coming on feels like the presence of mortalilty. The question about what kind of sleep to anticipate suggests untroubled oblivion or possibly some kind of new life just as the woodchuck reawakens to fresh life in the spring after his hibernation.

Moment of Zen: Autumn

Autumn is here and you can certainly feel it. The weather is wonderful here. Highs in the upper 70s and low 80s, with Lows in the 60s at night. This is the first comfortable day in nearly six months. It probably won’t last long, but I love fall weather. Hopefully, it will continue to get cooler.

To celebrate the Fall Season, here is William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” to get you in the mood for Fall.

Sonnet 73

by William Shakespeare (1609)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.Autumn (2)2

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the deathbed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Sexual Freedom Day

Celebrate with The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance and Federation in Washington, DC

September 23, 2011, is the 173rd birthday of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation's namesake, Victoria Woodhull. Every year on this day, Sexual Freedom advocates gather to learn, share ideas and celebrate the sexual freedom movement’s big day!

This year, the WFF focuses on freedom of sexual speech and expression is highlighted in their educational program, “Sexual Outlaws: The Prohibition of Pleasure.” WFF hopes you will join them to find out more about the war on sex and why right now is a crucial time for advocates of sexual freedom. WFF has already confirmed human rights leaders, academics, community advocates, writers, educators and performers and the WFF hopes they can count you in as well!

After the exciting afternoon of Sexual Freedom panels and discussions at the Pew Charitable Foundation Conference Center, WFF will be moving to the Hamilton Crowne Plaza for a Sexual Freedom Gala, a cocktail reception, fabulous raffles, an awards ceremony hosted by Carol Queen and Nina Hartley, and the fun and fabulous Pamala Stanley whose unparalleled voice encompasses everything from the most intimate whisper to the soaring “bel canto” that is her trademark.

Event Schedule

• 1-5 p.m. “Sexual Outlaws: The Prohibition of Pleasure” Panel Discussion (PEW Conference Center)
• 6-7 p.m. VIP Cocktail Reception (Hamilton Crowne Plaza)
• 7-7:30 p.m. Cocktail Reception (Hamilton Crowne Plaza)
• 7:30-10 p.m. Sexual Freedom Gala and Awards Ceremony hosted by Carol Queen and Nina Hartley with entertainment by the fabulous Pamala Stanley! (Hamilton Crowne Plaza)

Full schedule and event details here

About Victoria Woodhull

by Barbara Goldsmith

Recently, when I mentioned to a friend that the title of my book was Other Powers – The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull, she asked: “Just who was Victoria Woodhull anyway?” It seems a simple question, but Victoria was not a simple person. She was conceived in 1837, during the frenzy of a religious revival in Homer, Ohio. Her father was an itinerant con man and a thief; her mother was illegitimate, illiterate and a religious fanatic. As a child, Victoria was raised in filth and squalor, beaten and starved, given little education and exploited in her father’s traveling carnival show as a clairvoyant and fortune-teller. Unexpectedly, she demonstrated such powers as accurately recalling past events and predicting future ones, finding missing objects and people, and affecting cures. She also relayed messages from loved ones who had “passed over.”

From childhood, Victoria maintained that she was guided and protected by the spirits, who occasionally let her visit a utopian world in heaven unlike the chaotic, miserable world in which she lived. Like Joan of Arc, she listened to voices that told her she would rise from poverty one day to become “ruler of the nation.” At 15, in order to escape her father’s brutality, Victoria eloped with an alcoholic doctor who fathered a retarded son and so botched the delivery of their daughter that the baby nearly bled to death. After five years, Victoria left him and struck out on her own. Eventually, her belief in the spirits enabled her to form alliances with such powerful men as Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, to become the first woman to own a Wall Street investment firm, to found her own newspaper, to speak before Congress demanding that women be given the vote and finally, to run for U.S. President in 1872 against the popular incumbent, Ulysses S. Grant, and the powerful newspaperman, Horace Greeley. In short, she set America on its ear.

In the decade that it took to write my book, I came to know Victoria Woodhull well, and she taught me a great many lessons – not the least of which was that the common wisdom on most subjects is frequently wrong. She made me realize that people must always think for themselves and never accept circumstances that seem unfair, unkind or uncomfortable.

Of course, Victoria’s time was a much more difficult one for women, who then had almost no rights to property or person. If a married woman worked, her wages were given directly to her husband. She could not dispose of her property upon death. If she divorced, she automatically forfeited custody of her children. Women could not enter universities, law schools or medical schools. They could not serve on juries, and they could not vote.

Most significantly, women had no control over their own bodies: There were no laws to protect them from physical abuse at the hands of their husbands or fathers, although some states stipulated the size of the objects that might be used to inflict discipline. They had no right to deny their husbands sexual access. The professions open to women were few: domestic drudgery, factory work, teaching, prostitution and, for the exceptional few, writing.

Men were allowed all means of sexual license, but a woman who committed adultery was subject to a jail sentence. In 1868, from the lecture platform, Victoria Woodhull boldly instructed women to demand a single sexual standard and not to accept the view that sexual desire in females was vulgar. “What! Vulgar!” she said. “The instinct that creates immortal souls vulgar…be honest…it is not the possession of strong powers that is to be deprecated. They are that necessary part of human character.”

Victoria preached a doctrine called “Free Love” that included the odd notion of marrying for love, as well as an easement of the divorce laws. She was radical even by today’s standards, asserting: “Women are entirely unaware of their power. Like an elephant led by a string, they are subordinated by just those who are most interested in holding them in slavery…Sexual freedom means the abolition of prostitution both in and out of marriage, means the emancipation of woman and her coming into control of her own body, means the end of her pecuniary dependence upon man…means the abrogation of forced pregnancy, of anti-natal murder of undesired children and the birth of love children only.” Ideas stated in the extreme make one think and question and argue, and that was what Victoria accomplished.

Victoria Woodhull was a fervent Spiritualist who searched for meaning in a society not so different from our own, in that most people felt overwhelmed by financial manipulations and technical achievements they could not comprehend. They felt they had little control over their own destinies. Women, in particular – even the strongest – desperately needed the courage to combat the criticism and isolation they felt in the battle for their most basic rights. Victoria’s belief in spirit guidance empowered her and her followers to challenge the law, the church and the entrenched male establishment.

Victoria’s spiritualism usually is dismissed as a fad by historians, but in studying her, I realized that many of her beliefs were a utopian version of what people already accepted. For example, the Spiritualists’ conviction that the dead can guide us did not differ radically from the view of the regular clergy. Even today, when our loved ones die, clergymen tell us that they are not gone – that they are with us still in thought and deed, that they are always by our side. Victoria’s friend, Isabella Beecher Hooker, summed it up when she wrote: “I know she [Victoria Woodhull] has visions and is inspired by spiritual influences, but her inspiration seems very like my own, a simple reliance on a Heavenly Father.”

Victoria demonstrated that a belief in oneself gives us the strength to accomplish a great deal. She was a pioneer in many things we think about today: diet, exercise, comfort in dress. In her day, many people ate seven-course dinners accompanied by liquor and wine, but Victoria adhered to the diet prescribed by Sylvester Graham (known for the tasty, ginger-colored crackers that still bear his name). Graham had been a sickly child and cured himself through proper diet. He recommended no alcohol, caffeine, meat, lard or other types of shortening.

Women of the day were thought desirable if they were languorous and frail, but Victoria advocated vigorous exercise, rode horseback and walked at least three miles a day. She said that drinking at least two pints of water a day and eating fresh fruit were accountable for her good health and vigor.

Whenever I see a woman tottering about on 5-inch stiletto heels, I have a fantasy that Victoria is walking down the street in her sensible boots and says to her, “My dear young girl, you are ruining your health and risking a terrible accident.” Women’s clothes in her time cinched in the waist so tightly that organs were often displaced. The dresses were so heavy that women moved like hobbled horses. Not Victoria. She often wore men’s clothing and urged other women to do the same.

While male physicians did not examine female bodies, they nonetheless prescribed morphine, isolation, purging, bloodletting and starvation as cures for most female ills. Victoria, on the other hand, embraced a benign alternative medicine. She practiced homeopathy, a treatment begun by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, who took a minuscule amount of a disease-causing agent and diluted it with liquid to create what he called a “spiritlike essence.” Dr. Hahnemann believed that when this substance was introduced into the body, the person would be cured of the disease. Victoria was also a well-known “magnetic healer.” The use of therapeutic magnets dates to the ancient Greeks, who used them to halt bleeding, soothe inflammation, purge infection and promote general healing. The theory is that the magnets themselves do not heal, but induce the body to heal itself. Many of the medical treatments in which Woodhull believed are becoming increasingly popular today, as is the conviction that we are participants in our own good health and medical treatment.

Because Victoria Woodhull shocked and astounded and antagonized, a campaign was organized to bring her down. She was jailed repeatedly on charges of publishing pornography, and the press depicted her as “Mrs. Satan” and “The Prostitute Who Ran for President.” But, in truth, she was a woman who lived a century before her time. The lessons she taught – to question, to be honest, to believe in your power, to value your mind and body, to fight for what is right – are all lessons for today.

• Source: http://www.woodhullalliance.org

Adelphopoiia Rite

A Same Gender Union from the Eastern Orthodox Church

Translation by Nicholas Zymaris

Published in 1647

Sergius and Bacchus

This service is a rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church dating from very early times and assuming its present form between the fourth and ninth centuries AD. This service is translated from the Euchologion of Jacobus Goar, which was printed in 1647 and revised in 1730. A facsimile of the 1730 edition, published in Graz, Austria, in 1960, is the edition available in many theological libraries. With the rising influence of western ideas in recent centuries, this rite ceased to be practiced widely and was largely forgotten or ignored except in isolated areas, most notably Albania and other areas in the Balkans, where it flourished throughout the nineteenth century and up to at least 1935. Both men and women were united with this rite or similar ones.

This rite is called "spiritual" because the relationship between spiritual brothers is not one of blood-relation but of the Holy Spirit, and also to distinguish the rite from blood-brotherhood, which the Church opposed. In the service, the saint-martyrs Sergius and Bacchus are invoked, who were united in spiritual brotherhood "not bound by the law of nature but by the example of faith in the Holy Spirit". These saints were tortured and martyred late in the third century AD. when they refused to worship the emperor's idols. In their biography by Simeon Metaphrastes (available in J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 115, pp. 1005-1032) they are described as sweet companions and lovers to each other."

"This rite is incorporated into the Divine Liturgy. It begins with the usual blessing and prayers of a Liturgy. During the Great Synapte, petitions for the couple to be united in spiritual brotherhood are added to the usual petitions. After the First Antiphon, two special prayers are said for the couple, after which they kiss the Gospel Book and each other. After the priest sings a hymn, the Liturgy continues at "Have mercy on us, O God .. ". Accounts of the use of this rite (such as Nacke, _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_ 9 (1908),. 328) confirm that the spiritual brothers receive Holy Communion together, thereby forming the sacramental bond in this union. However, Goar mentions in a footnote that in some manuscripts, the couple is only blessed with holy water."

PRIEST: Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. (3 times).
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
All-Holy Trinity, have mercy on us.
Lord forgive our sins.
Master, pardon our transgressions.
Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities for your name's sake.
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
(After this, the priest says the Troparion.)
Save, O Lord, your servants, and bless your inheritance.
(And the two who are about to be joined together in brotherly unity place their hands on the holy Gospel book, which has been prepared and placed on the table. And they hold in their hands lighted candles.)
(And the priest says the following, so that it is heard from above:
Save, O Lord, your servants. Followed by the Troparion of the day
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Holy Apostles, intercede with the merciful God to grant our souls forgiveness of sins.
Now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Through the intercessions, O Lord, of all the saints and of the
Theotokos, grant us your peace and have mercy upon us, only merciful One.

THE GREAT SYNAPTE

(The responses of "Lord, have mercy" are understood.)
In peace let us pray to the Lord.
For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.
For the peace of the entire world, the welfare of the holy churches of God, and the union of all of them, let us pray to the Lord.
For this holy house, and for those who enter it with faith, reverence, and fear of God, let us pray to the Lord.
For our Archbishop, the honorable priesthood, the deacons in Christ, and all of the clergy and laity, let us pray to the Lord.
For the servants of God who have approached to be blessed by Him, and for their love (agapesis) in God, let us pray to the Lord.
That they may be given full knowledge of the apostolic unity, let us pray to the Lord.
That they may be granted a faith unashamed, a love unfeigned, let us pray to the Lord.
That they may be deemed worthy to glory in the honorable Cross, let us pray to the Lord.
That both they and we may be delivered from all affliction, wrath, and distress, let us pray to the Lord.
Help us, save us, have mercy on us and keep us, O God, by your grace.
PEOPLE: Amen.
PRIEST: Having called to remembrance our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed, glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, with all the Saints, let us commend ourselves and one another, and all our life unto Christ our God.
PEOPLE: To You, O Lord.
PRIEST (quietly): O Lord our God, whose might is beyond compare, whose glory is incomprehensible, whose mercy is infinite, and whose love toward mankind is ineffable; in Your tender compassion look down upon us Yourself, O Master, and upon this holy house, and grant us and those who pray with us Your rich mercies and compassion.
PRIEST (aloud): For to You are due all glory, honor, and worship; to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.
PEOPLE: Amen.
PRIEST: Let us pray to the Lord.
Lord our God, who has granted us all things for salvation, and who has commanded us to love one another and to forgive each others' transgressions; now You Yourself, Master and Lover of mankind, to these Your servants who have loved each other with spiritual love, and who approach Your holy temple to be blessed by You, grant to them a faith unashamed, a love unfeigned. And as You gave Your holy disciples Your own peace, also grant these all the petitions for salvation, and eternal life. For You are a merciful and loving God, and to You we ascribe glory, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us pray to the Lord.
Lord our God, the omnipotent, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, who made man according to Your image and likeness, who was well-disposed to Your holy martyrs Sergius and Bacchus becoming brothers, not bound by the law of nature but by the example of faith of the Holy Spirit; Master, do send down Your Holy Spirit upon Your servants who have approached this temple to be blessed. Grant them a faith unashamed, a love unfeigned, and that they may be without hatred and scandal all the days of their lives. Through the prayers of Your immaculate Mother and of all the Saints. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages.
(And with the table made ready in the middle of the church, they place the holy Gospel upon it. And they kiss the Holy Gospel, and each other.)
THEN THE PRIEST SINGS: By the union of love the apostles join in the praying to the Master of all; themselves committed to Christ, they extended their beautiful feet, announcing the good news of peace to everyone.
PRIEST: Have mercy on us, O God.

(And continues the Liturgy.)

Source:  Adelphopoiia Rite (version one)

Modern Gayness and Medieval Friends: Homoeroticism and Homophilia

David and Jonathan

The following text is from People with a History: An Online Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans* History. People with a History is a www site presenting history relevant to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people, through primary sources, secondary discussions, and images.  As will all of Fordham University's Internet History Sourcebooks, this is a tremendous collection of primary sources and other documents from history.  I have many times used these sites in my classes.

What qualifies as "gay history"?

The issue is reasonably clear for the past hundred years. But before that there are complications. This is especially the case for Medieval studies.

Some commentators, both avowedly gay and otherwise, wish to distinguish sharply between historical evidence about same-sex sexual activity in the past and other evidence about same-sex relationships. In other words they wish to argue, as I take it, that while the evidence about sexual relationships may indeed relate to a history of homosexuality, other non-sexual affective relationships must be subsumed under the sign of "friendship". Often, but not always, there seems to be a belief that while sexuality is complex and constructed in particular ways, "friendship" is an unproblematic category. Some commentators, religious ones in particular, seek to see "friendship" as in some sense "purer" and cleaner than sexual relationships.

Greek adelphopoiia relationships

When looking at same-sex relationships in the past, use of the sex/friendship dichotomy induces problems. We very rarely know that two people had sexual relations. For discussion of same-sexual activity, we are often thrown to legal codes, penitentials, denunciatory sermons and so forth. We very rarely have, before the late middle ages when court records begin to survive in number, any real idea of how laws were applied. Careful analysis of Byzantine documents - but not court records - from the 12th century on, for instance, seems to indicate that the provisions against sodomy of the Justinianic code were not applied; and yet such laws are frequently taken as indicators of social attitudes centuries after they were legislated. They are no more compelling, than for instance, the argument that anti-sodomy statutes in the US stop heterosexuals having oral sex.

On the other hand we have a huge amount of material on same-sex emotional relationships: poems, letters, sometimes even sermons. We also have quite certain evidence that such relationships were, in various times and places, publically celebrated. (This is the minimal interpretation of the Greek adelphopoiia relationships: but has also been attempted, by Pierre Chaplais for instance, as an explanation of Edward II's relationship with Piers Gaveston; similar interpretations have been given to medieval accounts of men sleeping in the same bed - for instance Philip Augustus and Richard the Lionheart.) Such relationships, it is asserted, were not "sexual" and reflect a variety of other forms of male-bonding.

Edward II

Let us, for a moment, accept such a point of view - that is that all the socially affirmed same-sex relationships we see in the past eschewed sexual activity: that David and Jonathan, Alexander and Hephaestion, Hercules and Hylas, Patroclus and Achilles, Tully and Octavius, Socrates and Alciabides - that all were never understood in the past to have had sexual relationships. What would such a point of view say about our own western society? We would have to note that a very narrow range of same-sex relationships are in fact possible. The intense emotional and affective relationships described in the past as "non-sexual" cannot be said to exist today: modern heterosexual men can be buddies, but unless drunk they cannot touch each other, or regularly sleep together. They cannot affirm that an emotional affective relationship with another man is the centrally important relationship in their lives. It is not going to far, is it, to claim that friendship - if used to translate Greek philia or Latin amicita - hardly exists among heterosexual men in modern Western society. Indeed we use the word "friendship" today to describe human relationships so different from those indicated in the ancient and medieval texts that to apply the word "friendship" to those past relationships seems, to me at least, to be actively misleading. I wish to acknowledge that this may indicate a serious failing in modern society, and to admit that I may simply not understand modern friendship.

Turning out attention to modern "gayness" we find a number of interesting points, points that affect how we understand the relationships of the past, and the texts which refer to and refract those relationships.

I use "gayness", because it seems to me that altogether too many commentators have been willing to reduce "gayness" to sexual activity. In some parts of the world this may be true (leaders of the Egyptian gay community in New York have specifically claimed to me that same-sex sexuality in Egypt is "purely sexual": whether this claim is true or not, I am in no position to judge). But in the modern West, "gayness" or its predecessors, have not been understood by gay writers in this way. From the mid 19th century on writer such as Karl Ulrichs in Germany, Edward Carpenter in England, and Walt Whitman in the US have claimed that same-sex relationships are much more than sex. Specific claims about "Uranian" (or "heavenly" love, a reference to Plato), or "homophile" love were made. Famously, the early gay male organizations in the US and Britain made use of the concept of "homophilia" to describe what they were concerned with.

Now it is true, gay leaders in the 1970s rejected the term "homophile" as conformist, and as a deliberate elision of sexuality. I think, for historical consideration at least, it may be time to resurrect this terminology. "Homophilia" points to a very important aspect of modern gayness - its support of a wide array of same-sex emotional relationships, with a an equally wide degree of sexual expression. Because of AIDS there are now many fairly well formed psychosocial studies of the gay male communities of large cities. I am most familiar with the Martin-Dean study conducted from Columbia Presbyterian School of Public Health in New York City. What these studies have found is that homophilia is a central aspect of modern gayness, in relationships between men whether sexually expressed or not. Some gay men form couples in which sex plays little or no part. Many other gay men form "families", often of other gay men (some of whom may be former sexual partners) and sympathetic heterosexual women, families in which a high degree of emotional and personal closeness is achieved in a specifically "gay" context but where sex is not central.

Patroclus and Achilles

Given that human beings in the past do not "belong" to anyone modern group, I would still argue that "gay history", as an aspect of "the history of human relationships" is specifically one focused on same-sex relationships. Since "gay" in modern use covers "homophilia" as well as "homosexuality", I wish to continue to claim that placing the study of philia and amicita in the past exclusively under the sign of "friendship" and excluding from the sign of "gayness" is not only unnecessary but misleading.

Source: Paul Halsall, 3/27/96
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/pwh/medhomophil.asp

As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado

In honor of the official repeal of DADT today, I wanted to post a poem about homosexual love in the military. Long before DADT was an official policy, Walt Whitman was serving as a nurse for the US Army during the Civil War. Drum Taps (1865), Walt Whitman's sequence of poems on the Civil War that reflects his experience as a hospital volunteer, includes several poems that appreciate soldiers in more or less homoerotic terms (for example, "First O Songs for a Prelude" and "O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy").

But it is elegies such as "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night," "Reconciliation," and "As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado" that allow Whitman to express himself unrestrainedly.

In "Reconciliation," the speaker's tenderness for the fallen soldier overpowers the enmity between armies, in terms that anticipate Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting": "my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, / I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near, / Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."

As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado

As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,
The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air
I resume,
I know I am restless and make others so,
I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to
unsettle them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have
been had all accepted me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,
majorities, nor ridicule,
And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still
urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.

Walt Whitman

In this particular poem, Whitman writes a brief, but beautiful confession and declaration of his own sexuality. It is a brief, but significant love poem, and the manner of Whitman's "confession" can be explored in a number of ways, but it ultimately points to a homosexual relationship. The first obvious hint that this poem is linked to Whitman's homosexuality is his adjustment of the word "camerado." The original Spanish word is actually "camarada" with a feminine ending, and it means "friend" or comrade." By changing this specific word to have a male ending, we know that Whitman is aiming and professing this poem to a male friend. The significance of this male friend becomes more apparent as Whitman continues with his poem.  His use of the actually word "confession" within the second line - "The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume" is another example of Whitman confessing openly his sexuality. As Whitman continues to describe this poem, he draws attention to the fact that it will make others "restless" and his words are "weapons full of danger, full of death."

The intensity of the poem, although subtle but existent, is what ultimately points that nature of the poem has to do with love or at least intimacy. Whitman seems very determined in this poem, especially as he says "Dear camerado! I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated." Whitman seems to be dismissing everything else, and urging this other person to do the same. He is rejecting any significance of heaven or hell, and embracing the fact that whatever road he is going down may bring hard times. Indeed, to announce homosexuality during Whitman's era would have brought on a lot of criticism and grief.

Sources:

• "As I Lay My Head in Your Lap Camerado - Walt Whitman - Analysis." from Janna's Blog
• Leaves of Grass 1891 from Princeton.edu
• "Walt Whitman" From Wikipedia
• "War Literature" from GLBTQ

The End of DADT

'Don't ask, don't tell' repeal will be big relief for civilian partners of gay servicemembers
Article by: DAVID CRARY , Associated Press Updated: September 18, 2011 - 6:47 PM

NEW YORK - After 19 years hiding her relationship with an active-duty Army captain, Cathy Cooper is getting ready to exhale. On Tuesday, the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell" will expire. And Cooper will dare speak her love's name in public.

"This is life-changing," said Cooper, choking up. "I just want to be able to breathe — knowing I can call my partner at work and have a conversation without it having to be in code."

Much has been reported about the burdens that "don't ask" placed on gay and lesbian service members who risked discharge under the 1993 policy if their sexual orientation became known in the ranks. There's been less attention focused on their civilian partners, who faced distinctive, often relentless stresses of their own.

In interviews with The Associated Press, five partners recalled past challenges trying to conceal their love affairs, spoke of the joy and relief accompanying repeal, and wondered about the extent that they would be welcomed into the broader military family in the future.

Even with repeal imminent, the partners — long accustomed to secrecy — did not want to reveal the full identity of their active-duty loved ones before Tuesday.

Cooper, who works for a large private company, moved from the Midwest to northern Virginia to be near her partner's current Army post, yet couldn't fully explain to friends and colleagues why she moved. "It's been really difficult — it's really isolated us," she said. "I became much more introverted, more evasive."

Cooper said her partner's Army career is thriving, though she's had to hide a major component of her personal life.

"I don't know any of her co-workers," Cooper said. "She says, `You're the best part of me and I have to pretend you don't exist.'"

Looking ahead, Cooper is unsure how same-sex partners will be welcomed by the military establishment.

"Will it be, `Hey, come join all the family support programs'?" she wondered. "I'm not going to be so naive as to think that ... I'm just hoping the door is open."
___

During the long, arduous campaign to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," activists and advocacy groups tended to downplay issues related to post-repeal benefits for civilian partners. "It's not something we've been pushing very hard for yet, but it's obviously going to be the next front in the ongoing battle for equality," said Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United.

Nicholson's organization, which advocates on behalf of gay and lesbian military personnel, conducted a survey of same-sex partners last year to gauge their concerns. One widespread hope, he said, was the military might issue ID cards to same-sex civilian partners so they could gain access to bases, commissaries and support services on their own.

In general, same-sex partners will not get the same benefits that the Pentagon grants to heterosexual married couples to ease the costs of medical care, travel, housing and other living expenses. The Pentagon says the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act — which defines marriage as a legal union between a man and woman — precludes extending those benefits to gay couples, even if they are married legally in certain states.

Same-sex partners can be listed as the person to be notified in case a service member is killed or injured, but current regulations prevent anyone other than immediate family — not same-sex spouses — from learning the details of the death.

Some activists predict that gay couples will remain second-class citizens in the military's eyes as long as the Defense of Marriage Act is in force. It is currently under challenge in several court cases, and the Obama administration has said it will not defend DOMA in court.

In the meantime, some activists suggest the military could allow all its personnel — gay or straight — to be eligible for subsidized off-base housing, emergency leaves and other benefits by virtue of a relationship with an unmarried partner.

Heather Lamb, an IBM software engineer in northern Virginia, looks ahead to the post-repeal era and hopes that eventually, same-sex couples receive the same support as other military families.

How will the military handle the changes? "I think it will be like any neighborhood or city in America," she said. "There will be people in the military who are very open and accepting, and there will be people who will not be."

The advent of repeal emboldened Lamb to propose earlier this month to her partner of six years, an Air Force officer named Adrianna.

No wedding date is set, but Lamb, 35, is excited in part because marriage — impossible under "don't ask, don't tell" — offers a more secure future for their son, Jacob, who she gave birth to in April.

Adrianna took leave from her post near Washington, D.C., to be present for Jacob's birth, Lamb said, but "don't ask, don't tell" nonetheless took its toll.

"Most people at work share the news of a birth," Lamb said. "When Adrianna went back, she couldn't get congratulations. It was one of the sad things — she had to keep quiet about it."

___

For Ariana Bostian-Kentes, repeal comes at an already emotional time. Her partner of nearly five years, an Army medical supply officer named Nicole, has just started a 12-month deployment in Afghanistan with the 1st Armored Division from Fort Bliss, Texas.

Before repeal became certain, Nicole was leaning toward leaving the military after the deployment, Bostian-Kentes said. Now, there's more of a chance she'll stay in the service, and the two are discussing the possibility of marrying after Nicole returns to the U.S.

"She might go back in, since she won't have to hide her private life," Bostian-Kentes said. "Before, it was let's get out as soon as we can, and not have to lie to our family and friends."

The two women, both 28, met in 2006 while on a rugby team at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where Bostian-Kentes now works at the university's center serving gay, lesbian and transgender students. At that stage, Nicole was in the ROTC program, and Bostian-Kentes had to learn the intricacies of dating someone governed by "don't ask, don't tell."

"I'd never had to be in the closet, but I happened to fall in love with someone in the military and had to create a closet that didn't exist before," she said. "We couldn't hold hands walking down the street, couldn't write this or that on my Facebook site — it was a huge learning curve for me."

There was a brief scare last October, when a fellow reveler at a Halloween party posted a photo on Facebook of Ariana and Nicole embracing.

"I freaked out and called the guy who posted it and said, `Take it down. This could ruin her career,'" Bostian-Kentes recalled. "The guy did take it down — but it was a terrifying two hours of my life."

Bostian-Kentes, who co-founded an advocacy group called the Military Partners and Families Coalition, is hopeful that repeal will enable her to be an active part of the military community and its various support systems.

"It's so much more difficult to shoulder the burden of deployment without support," she said. "It's exhausting, it's scary — the continuous web of lies that's being weaved. I can't wait to come out of that, to come out as a military spouse."

___

The repeal process has been watched closely by Catherine Crisp, a professor of social work at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, who endured "don't ask, don't tell" for 15 years as partner of a career Army officer, Kaye McKinzie.

McKinzie, 47, a West Point graduate, retired two years ago after being promoted to colonel, and now teaches in the University of Central Arkansas College of Business.

"I felt like I spent 15 years holding my breath," Crisp said. "I did not realize until Kaye retired what a toll it had taken on both of us, that we lived in constant fear that became a part of who we were."

Crisp, 46, said both she and McKinzie were dedicated to their careers, lived apart for long stretches, and often took exhausting steps to conceal their relationship.

"In hindsight it seems ludicrous that we had to spend time and energy on stuff like that," Crisp said. "We lived in fear not of `the enemy' but of our government and the fear of disclosure and discovery under this horrible policy."

There were delicate moments along the way, said Crisp, who noted that much of her academic research has focused on topics related to gays and lesbians. She taught about "don't ask, don't tell" in some of her classes, and challenged her students to think about the plight of civilian same-sex partners.

But her own experience went unmentioned.

___

Stephen Peters, 31, knows the strains of "don't ask, don't tell" from two perspectives. He's a former Marine discharged under the policy in 2007 after telling his commander he was fed up with having to lie constantly about himself.

As Peters was leaving the military, he met an active-duty Marine who's been his partner ever since. Peters recently followed him from Hawaii to a posting in the San Diego area.

"I had to go to work and lie to people, and say I was single," Peters said. "I made up excuses about why I had to move — made it seem I was crazy."

Throughout their relationship, Peters said, there were recurring fears of being seen together by his partner's Marine colleagues.

"We'd see people he worked with and he'd make up some story about who I was, constantly creating a profile that wasn't real," Peters said.

Peters said his partner, who is 38, hopes to stay in the Marines. Peters is unsure how easy it would be for them to live together if the partner is deployed overseas, given that he would not be officially recognized as family.

On a less weighty matter, Peters wonders how he'll respond if the opportunity arises to attend a Marine Corps ball with his partner.

"Personally, I don't feel a desire to go," he said. "But maybe it's important for my partner, given everything he's sacrificed, for his family to be part of that community."

___

Online:

Servicemembers United: http://www.servicemembers.org/

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network: http://www.sldn.org/

The Campaign for Military Partners: http://militarypartners.org/

___

David Crary can be reached at http://twitter.com/CraryAP
http://www.startribune.com/nation/130067228.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue

Lynn Lavner and Homosexuality

"There are 6 admonishments in the Bible concerning homosexual activity and our enemies are always throwing them up to us usually in a vicious way and very much out of context. What they don't want us to remember is that there are 362 admonishments in the Bible concerning heterosexual activity. I don't mean to imply by this that God doesn't love straight people, only that they seem to require a great deal more supervision." from Butch Fatale--Lynn Lavner

Lynn Lavner is an American comedian and musician from Brooklyn, New York. Much of her material is based around the facts that she is Jewish and a lesbian. She is frequently billed as "America's Most Politically Incorrect Entertainer."

Lavner began her career in 1981 when she wrote the music to the lesbian themed play Ladies! Don't Spit and Holler!. After a showing of the play a fan came up to her and asked if the soundtrack was available on album. When Lavner told her it wasn't, the fan, who had recently inherited a large amount of money, offered to put up the money so the soundtrack could be adapted into an album.

Lavner's musical style harkens back to Tin Pan Alley pop. Lavner lists some of her major influences as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. Lavner initially was inspired to begin playing piano by her father, who played to entertain company.

Moment of Zen

Though I think not

To think about it,

I do think about it

And shed tears

Thinking about it.

Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚)

Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚) (1758–1831) was a quiet and eccentric Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry and calligraphy, which present the essence of Zen life.

Taking a Break Today

I'll be back to the regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

St. Sebastian in Art

To continue our look at St. Sebastian, I wanted to look at his depiction in art. Can a Christian saint be a gay icon? Apparently he can. Sebastian was a Christian martyr who died during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 288. According to legend, he was born in Gaul (present-day France) and went to Rome to serve in the army. When officials learned that he was a Christian seeking converts, they ordered his execution by archers. Left for dead, he was nursed back to health by a Christian widow. He presented himself before the emperor, who condemned him to death by beating. His body was thrown into a sewer but was afterward found and buried. In Renaissance art he was often depicted as a handsome youth pierced by arrows.

The earliest representation of Sebastian is a mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (Ravenna, Italy) dated between 527 and 565. The right lateral wall of the basilica contains large mosaics representing a procession of 26 martyrs, led by Saint Martin and including Sebastian. The martyrs are represented in Byzantine style, lacking any individuality, and have all identical expressions.

Another early representation is in a mosaic in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli (Rome, Italy), probably made in the year 682. It shows a grown, bearded man in court dress but contains no trace of an arrow. The archers and arrows begin to appear by 1000, and ever since have been far more commonly shown than the actual moment of his death by clubbing, so that there is a popular misperception that this is how he died.

As protector of potential plague victims (a connection popularized by the Golden Legend) and soldiers, Sebastian naturally occupied a very important place in the popular medieval mind, and hence was among the most frequently depicted of all saints by Late Gothic and Renaissance artists, in the period after the Black Death. The opportunity to show a semi-nude male, often in a contorted pose, also made Sebastian a favourite subject. His shooting with arrows was the subject of the largest engraving by the Master of the Playing Cards in the 1430s, when there were few other current subjects with male nudes other than Christ. Sebastian appears in many other prints and paintings, although this was also due to his popularity with the faithful. Among many others, Botticelli, Perugino, Titian, Pollaiuolo, Giovanni Bellini, Guido Reni (who painted the subject seven times), Mantegna (three times), Hans Memling, Gerrit van Honthorst, Luca Signorelli, El Greco, Honoré Daumier, John Singer Sargent and Louise Bourgeois all painted Saint Sebastians.

The saint is ordinarily depicted as a handsome youth pierced by arrows. There were predella scenes, when required, often of his arrest, confrontation with the Emperor, and final beheading. The illustration in the infobox is the Saint Sebastian of Il Sodoma, at the Pitti Palace, Florence.

A mainly 17th-century subject, though found in predella scenes as early as the 15th century, was St Sebastian tended by St Irene, painted by Georges de La Tour, Trophime Bigot (four times), Jusepe de Ribera, Hendrick ter Brugghen and others. This may have been a deliberate attempt by the Church to get away from the single nude subject, which is already recorded in Vasari as sometimes arousing inappropriate thoughts among female churchgoers. The Baroque artists usually treated it as a nocturnal chiaroscuro scene, illuminated by a single candle, torch or lantern, in the style fashionable in the first half of the 17th century.

There exist several cycles depicting the life of Saint Sebastian. Among them, the frescos in the "Basilica di San Sebastiano" of Acireale (Italy) with paintings by Pietro Paolo Vasta.

Egon Schiele, an Austrian Expressionist artist, painted a self-portrait as Saint Sebastian in 1915. During Salvador Dalí's "Lorca (Federico García Lorca) Period", he painted Sebastian several times, most notably in his "Neo-Cubist Academy". For reasons unknown, the left vein of Sebastian is always exposed.

In 1911, the Italian playwright Gabriele d'Annunzio in conjunction with Claude Debussy produced a mystery play on the subject. The American composer Gian Carlo Menotti composed a ballet score for a Ballets Russes production which was first given in 1944.

In his novella Death in Venice, Thomas Mann hails the "Sebastian-Figure" as the supreme emblem of Apollonian beauty, that is, the artistry of differentiated forms, beauty as measured by discipline, proportion, and luminous distinctions. This allusion to Saint Sebastian's suffering, associated with the writerly professionalism of the novella's protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, provides a model for the "heroism born of weakness", which characterizes poise amidst agonizing torment and plain acceptance of one's fate as, beyond mere patience and passivity, a stylized achievement and artistic triumph.

In 1976, the British director Derek Jarman made a film, Sebastiane, which caused controversy in its treatment of the martyr as a homosexual icon. However, as several critics have noted, this has been a subtext of the imagery since the Renaissance.

Renaissance artists had access to history that we currently do not. There was obviously some reason why they chose to depict him as a beautiful young man. Since Sebastian was a Gaul, it could have been influenced by the beauty of The Dying Gaul, one of my all time favorite statues. The warrior is depicted as a beautiful man, but there is obviously love and lust for his beauty that the sculptor saw. It is also likely that Renaissance artists may have known some historical gossip about Sebastian, or the loving relationships that existed between the early brothers and sisters in Christ. Who knows why they depicted him as a beautiful young man, but they have left behind a question for history and the beauty of man.  Since many of the Renaissance artists were homosexuals, St. Sebastian allowed them to depict a beautiful naked (or nearly naked) young man, very similar to those young models they often used.