After extensive research I can reveal that Adolf Hitler was not, in fact, gay. Nor was he black, transexual, secretly a woman or neurodiverse. He was, it turns out, a straight, white, cisgendered male. As for history’s good guys – now that is a different matter. The latest to be claimed as belonging to some kind of fashionable minority is Horatio Nelson who, according to a Liverpool art gallery, was queer.
If activists want to go around trying to claim historic figures as their own, then fine. But I’m not sure why taxpayers should be funding this guff
It makes this claim based on the nothing but the old chestnut of Nelson’s supposedly last words ‘kiss me, Hardy’ uttered to Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. That seems to be that: enough to suppose that were Nelson still alive now he would be bopping away happily in Portsmouth’s gay bars and shacked up with Hardy in a waterfront penthouse overlooking the Solent.
To be fair, I guess no one can ever be sure that Nelson wasn’t gay. Maybe he wasn’t at Trafalgar at all and the painting was just a ruse to disguise the fact that he died while still in port, frolicking in a steamy sauna with his men. But I would say that the evidence we have makes it somewhat unlikely. Not only was Nelson married, but when he did fancy something on the side it tended to be with Emma, Lady Hamilton. As for being gay, absolutely the only thing we have is his comment to Hardy, which, like so many last words, is disputed in any case. If it wasn’t misheard or entirely made up, modern ears are likely to be misreading it as a declaration of homosexual love. Nelson’s life has been picked over so many times that it is unlikely any real evidence of his being gay has been missed.
It is all getting a bit tedious, trying to claim historical heroes for minority groups. Aristotle and Tutankhamun and Aristotle were, of course, black. William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln were gay. Florence Nightingale was a lesbian, and so on it goes. It is a pretty simple game: claim that heroes and heroines belonged to some downtrodden minority and you make the world seem a more diverse place, full of positive role models. It is all terribly well meaning. And utterly dishonest. It is activism dressed up as academic history. It distracts from the genuinely interesting history of how gay people used to hide their sexuality, or the fascinating history of black people in Britain before mass immigration. It also seems to me to be somewhat counter-productive for the activists involved. If all these great and wonderful things really were achieved by black, gay or transpeople, then the narrative of grievance starts to crumble. If Nelson was able to lead naval ships while living a homosexual life then it becomes harder to claim that gay people were suppressed in 18th and early 19th century Britain. Maybe everything was just fine.
If activists want to go around trying to claim historic figures as their own, then fine. But I’m not sure why taxpayers should be funding this guff. The Liverpool Art Gallery turns out to be propped up with public money. I am all for money being spent on institutions which are genuinely educational, but should there not be some kind of quality control which weeds out those which have been captured by political activists? Truth is, though, on current reckoning this could well include most of the art galleries, museums and universities in Britain.
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