Was Ghandi Gay?
Mar. 31st, 2011 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mudcubWas Ghandi Gay? Please read this article:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/03/dissent-of-the-day.html
and then let me know what you think! Straight people must get tired of the question. Was Lincoln gay? Was James Buchanan gay?
If you think of homosexuality as ONLY about the sexual act, then the correct answer is = we will never know. We don't know if Ghandi ever had gay sex because we weren't there. Photo or it didn't happen. However, as a gay man, I sometimes look at historical figures and think, "Oh yeah... I can really relate to that behavior... when I was closeted, I did those exact same things."
For example, read this section from a new book about Ghandi:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908. "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom," he wrote to Kallenbach. "The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed." The two pledged "more love, and yet more love . . . such love as they hope the world has not yet seen."
But when Ghandi thought about male-female relations, he wrote this:
"I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you are a straight man reading this post... can you read the above and see yourself reflected in those quotes? That straight sex was "ugly", but with a male friend you could make love as "the world has not yet seen"?
I think Ghandi might have been asexual. Bisexual maybe. Gay probably. But definitely not straight.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/03/dissent-of-the-day.html
and then let me know what you think! Straight people must get tired of the question. Was Lincoln gay? Was James Buchanan gay?
If you think of homosexuality as ONLY about the sexual act, then the correct answer is = we will never know. We don't know if Ghandi ever had gay sex because we weren't there. Photo or it didn't happen. However, as a gay man, I sometimes look at historical figures and think, "Oh yeah... I can really relate to that behavior... when I was closeted, I did those exact same things."
For example, read this section from a new book about Ghandi:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908. "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom," he wrote to Kallenbach. "The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed." The two pledged "more love, and yet more love . . . such love as they hope the world has not yet seen."
But when Ghandi thought about male-female relations, he wrote this:
"I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you are a straight man reading this post... can you read the above and see yourself reflected in those quotes? That straight sex was "ugly", but with a male friend you could make love as "the world has not yet seen"?
I think Ghandi might have been asexual. Bisexual maybe. Gay probably. But definitely not straight.
