Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Lovingkindness
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Via Daily Dharma: Get Comfortable
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Via White Crane Institute // SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Died
2008 -
On this date the British science fiction writer (and -- we note proudly -- longtime subscriber to White Crane) SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE died on this date (b. 1917). British writer, born in Minehead, Somerset, as Arthur Charles Clarke. He studied Maths and Physics at King's College in London.
His book "2001, A Space Odyssey" was made into a film in 1968 by Stanley Kubrick. Clarke lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka since 1956. His books include: Childhood's End (1953), The Deep Range (1957), A Fall of Moondust (1961), Profiles of the Future (1962), 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), 2010: Odyssey Two (1985), The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990), The Hammer of God (1993), The Light Of Other Days.
These accomplishments are all well-known and well-celebrated among Clarke aficionados and critics. Less discussed are the ways Clarke’s works challenged heteronormative sexual mores, particularly those surrounding men who went for men. But reviewing some of Clarke’s most notable works, one sees the author surveying the changing sexual landscape of a post-Stonewall society. Taken together, they provide a panoramic view of a gay man questioning the world in which he lived.
Clarke was a gay man, or, at the very least, queer. Though he married a woman in 1953, they separated six months later, and it’s well established that Clarke’s romantic existence was spent mostly with other men. Obsessed with the Kinsey Scale when it first came out, Clarke never believed people had strict straight or gay tendencies, a belief made clear in a number of his books.
Author Michael Moorcock wrote in a 2008 Guardian essay that “everyone knew [Clarke] was gay,” even in the ’50s, well after Clarke moved to Sri Lanka, where he found the lack of sexual policing refreshing after living in uptight England. Clarke also spent 1964-1965 at New York’s famously libertine Chelsea Hotel, romping around town with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, two of the most male-loving men of the era.
And insiders also know that Clarke and a man named Leslie Ekanayake were in love; Clarke described Leslie as “the only perfect friend of a lifetime,” and the author was buried alongside him when he died in 2008.
But Clarke would never admit his love of men. Not on the record, at least. Asked by a reporter about his bedroom activities, Clarke campily laughed, “Why, what have you heard?” He only admitted his yen for men a few times: sheepishly in his semi-autobiographical 1963 novel Glide Path, in which the sexually inexperienced protagonist makes a passing reference to “a highly refined encounter with the clergyman who had (very briefly) run the local scout troop;” and off-handedly in 1986, when Playboy journalist Ken Kelley asked Clarke whether he’d had bisexual experiences. Clarke replied with a resounding yes: “Of course. Who hasn’t? Good God! If anyone had ever told me that he hadn’t, I’d have told him he was lying. But then, of course, people tend to ‘forget’ their encounters.”
He went on, “I don’t want to go into detail about my own life, but I just want it to be noted that I have a rather relaxed, sympathetic attitude about it.” Such reticence is only natural for a man born in 1917 and who came of age during the height of the Pink Scare, when western governments branded gay people as criminal scourges, as sexual criminals. And it’s equally logical that Clarke would use fiction to explore societies that had evolved past such sexual judgment.
The author’s personal feelings on—or hopes for—human sexuality are perhaps most clear in his 1986 novel The Songs of Distant Earth. His sexiest work—almost every character is bed-hopping with another, or hoping to—Songs lays this society’s feeling out in the open with this exchange between two men at a hospital: Lieutenant Horton explains to his roommate, Loren Lorenson, that he was injured during a surfing expedition with a group of “hairy hunks” known for their homo-social ways. Loren is surprised by the revelation: “I’d have sworn you were ninety percent hetero.” Horton replies, “Ninety-two, according to my profile, but I like to check my calibration from time to time.” This prompts Loren to recall that “he had heard that hundred percenters were so rare that they were classed as pathological.” Clarke’s old interest in Kinsey’s work remained unabated. His only hope was the rest of humanity would see things as he did.
Clarke died in 2008, the same year conservatives used Proposition 8 to beat back marriage equality in California. He never lived to see the Supreme Court rule in favor of love. Nor did he see the same wave of progress sweep England, Australia, Brazil, France, and so many other lands. Today, more than a decade after Clarke’s death, millions of people live in a world in which marriage equality is a reality, in which transgender people are increasingly accepted and in which heteronormative notions of love and sexuality are steadily eroding, even though this brave new world of acceptance remains tenuous, at best.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
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Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Monday, March 18, 2024
Via DailyChatter \\ ‘A Journey of 1,000 Miles’
A Japanese high court ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, a move that has divided the country’s judiciary and could pressure the conservative government to act, Reuters reported.
The High Court of Sapporo, on northern Japan’s Hokkaido Island, said that rules in Japan’s civil code limiting marriage to two people of opposite genders are “unconstitutional” and “discriminatory.” Judge Kiyofumi Saito added that the ban violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which provides that all citizens are equal.
The ruling was the first one to use such strong language. It came after other decisions, issued by lower courts, arguing the ban was in a “state of unconstitutionality,” the Japan Times noted. Those verdicts had frustrated rights groups because they represented little progress.
The Sapporo court’s decision was met with tears of joy from activists. One of them told the Japan Times it went beyond their expectations.
The verdict’s firm language is expected to force the government to act, as the environment is increasingly congenial for advancing LGBTQ rights in Japan. A recent public opinion poll showed that nearly two-thirds of Japanese people supported same-sex unions.
However, the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic party of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida opposes the measure.
Press secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the government would monitor public opinion and upcoming court rulings, believing that “an introduction of same-sex marriage closely affects family values of the people.”
On the other hand, the Sapporo court said that “enacting same-sex marriage does not seem to cause disadvantages or harmful effects.” Advocates added that the ban could even harm the Japanese economy.
Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven – whose member states are listed among the world’s wealthiest – offering no legal protection for same-sex couples, Reuters explained.
An executive at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo told the newswire that by keeping the ban, Japan risks repelling talented foreign LGBTQ workers who could not move to the country with their partners and enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts.
So far, nearly 400 local governments in Japan have approved partnership systems for same-sex couples, with a limited set of benefits.
US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel praised the court ruling’s step on “a journey of 1,000 miles” toward legalizing same-sex marriage.
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of Suffering
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Via Daily Dharma: Turning Sleep into Practice
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