By Christopher Cappiello

18th-Century Gay Activism Text Found

While sorting through uncatalogued legal documents in the United Kingdom’s National Archive in Kew, an academic from England’s University of Manchester has stumbled upon what might be the oldest writings by a gay activist, the BBC reports.

Dr. Hal Gladfelder found a 3-by-5-foot scroll handwritten by Thomas Cannon in 1750 that appears to be written in response to the printer who refused to publish his book, Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified.

“This must be the first substantial treatment of homosexuality ever in England,” Gladfelder told the BBC about the document that pre-dates Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment at Reading Jail by a century and a half. “The only other discussions of homosexuality were contained in violently moralistic and homophobic attacks or in trial reports for the crime of sodomy up to and beyond 1750,” he said.

No copies of Cannon’s book seem to have survived, but the scroll indicates that the volume was an anthology of stories and more philosophical essays in support of male homosexuality. “Unnatural desire is a contradiction in terms; downright nonsense,” Cannon wrote. “Desire is an amatory impulse of the inmost human parts.”

Gladfelder said Cannon went into exile in Europe to avoid prosecution. “It's a fair assumption that Cannon was writing for a gay subculture at the time, which has largely remained hidden,” the scholar said. “Though he lived in anonymity, possibly because of the notoriety of his pamphlet, I certainly regard him as a martyr.”

Russian Activists Remember Yeltsin

With the April 23 death of Boris Yeltsin, the first elected leader of the post-Soviet Russian Federation, historians, journalists and activists re-evaluated the colorful and controversial figure’s legacy, including his 1993 decree repealing the criminalization of gay sex.

“[The] Russian gay community will always remember Boris Nicolaevich Yeltsin as a man who put an end to almost 60 years of criminal prosecution for male homosexual relations,” prominent Russian gay activist Nikolai Alekseev wrote on his Web site. Alekseev points out that the law took effect May 27, 1993, and “this day entered into Russian history of LGBT movement. May 27 was chosen as the date for the conduct of the first ever gay pride march in Moscow last year.”

Yeltsin’s legacy is a complicated one, to be sure. He presided over the end of the Soviet Union while also launching a widely criticized invasion of Chechnya. He abolished the KGB, but then anointed Vladimir Putin, a KGB veteran, to be his successor. And he sold off many of Russia’s industrial prizes to a small group of insiders while millions were plunged into poverty as the government-controlled economy attempted to privatize.

“Boris Nicolaevich had courage almost alone not only to destroy totalitarian system, but also to ask for forgiveness for everything that was not done properly,” Alekseev wrote, “for the promises that were not realized.”

Yeltsin retired voluntarily from leadership on New Year’s Eve 1999. He was 76 when he died.

Decriminalize Homosexuality, Says Singapore’s Founding Father

Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore and an elder statesman in the tiny island city-state, has indicated that he believes the country should lift its ban on sex between men.

“If, in fact, it is true, and I have asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual—because that’s the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes—you can’t help it. So why should we criminalize it?” he said in the country’s Straits Times, according to Reuters.

“Let’s not go around like this moral police … barging into people’s rooms. That’s not our business,” Lee said at a People’s Action Party youth conference.

Lee, sometimes referred to as the George Washington of Singapore, was prime minister from 1959, when the country gained independence from England, until 1990. His eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the current prime minister, with the father maintaining a powerful presence in the cabinet.

Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs recently announced that it was looking into decriminalizing oral and anal sex between heterosexual partners. In spite of the old laws on the books, the world’s second most densely populated country has a thriving gay scene.

French Gays Face Stark Election Choice

A May 6 run-off between the top two vote-getters in an April 22 French presidential vote will see the very pro-gay Socialist candidate, Segolene Royal, attempt to become the country’s first woman president, while Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, the front-runner, opposes gay marriage.

The first-round vote attracted an 85 percent voter turnout, the highest in more than 40 years and an unheard of number in United States elections. Sarkozy garnered 31.2 percent while Royal got 25.9 percent. The centrist Francois Bayrou attracted 18.6 percent and has refused to endorse either remaining candidate, Reuters reports.

The 53-year-old Royal has called for same-sex marriage rights in France. While serving as minister of family and children in 2000, she spoke out against anti-gay bullying in schools. “Too many young people face teasing, social exclusion, because of their sexual orientation,” she said. “School must be a place of tolerance, of welcome.”

In an interview with Tetu magazine last year, Royal supported same-sex marriage, currently available in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada and South Africa. “Opening up marriage to same-sex couples is needed in the name of equality, visibility and respect,” she said, according to Reuters.

While Sarkozy is against marriage equality, the Conservative candidate does favor improving adoption rights for gay couples. He has also spoken out against the Roman Catholic Church’s condemnations of homosexuality. “One doesn’t choose one’s identity,” he said in La Liberation in April. “One has the identity that one has.”