=Famous Homosexuals.= Homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the
men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the Greek
philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, Julius Cæsar,
Alexander the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Frederick of
Prussia, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche, etc.
=The Nietzsche-Wagner Feud= should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's
point of view. Wagner was to young Nietzsche an attractive, heroic,
father-image. The philosopher never had any real affair of the heart
with a woman. He only indulged in very ephemeral relationships which,
by their disastrous results, drove him further away from women. (Dr.
W. H. White of Washington received the assurance while in Europe that
Nietzsche died of syphilis.) Nietzsche made himself obnoxious to Wagner
by trying to be his press agent. As Wagner, however, a shrewd business
man in his old days, objected to Nietzsche's agnosticism and to his
friendship with certain Jews, Nietzsche, disappointed in his love,
abandoned Wagner and hated him fiercely. He attacked him on every
occasion, his hatred being made the fiercer by the fact that he himself
considered himself as a greater composer, one line in Nietzsche's
letters throws a strange light upon the poor paretic's feelings.
Wagner's "feminine traits" he wrote, finally disgusted him.
=Shall Perverse Love Be Recognized?= Efforts are being made in
various directions at the present day to have homosexual love legally
recognised and given perfect equality with heterosexual love. In
Germany, a number of writers, Von Kupfer, Friedlander and others have
boldly championed that futile attempt.
A cinema film was produced last year (1921) in Berlin depicting the
plight of the homosexual who is unable to control his cravings and
falls a victim to the wiles of a blackmailer. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
agreed to impersonate in that production the scientist who attempts to
enlighten the public as to the nature of homosexualism, so as to bring
about a modification of the statute punishing perverts.
=Man's Emancipation.= In 1900, Elizar von Kupfer called upon the men to
proclaim their "independence" from women. "The man who lives in bondage
to women," he wrote, "and who humors her whims, has lost his manhood.
Since woman is emancipating herself, why should not men follow the same
road?"
Illogically enough, Von Kupfer defends the mothers and wives, "flowers
who should not be rooted out of the garden of love." In Schopenhauer's
silly outbursts against woman, however, Von Kupfer sees "a test of
manhood revolting against man's humiliation" and he adds that "it is
only from the closest relation of man to man, adolescent to man, and
adolescent to adolescent, that government and civilisation will derive
real power."
Blüher considers homosexualism as an "essential human trait which must
be granted an outlet with certain restrictions (setting the age of
consent at fourteen and forbidding the use of violence)."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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