Band of Thebes

The Sixth Extinction and a Central Problem of Gay History

Although it covers many die-offs old and new (especially the current demise of frogs and bats -- perversely, I wanted more catastrophe), Elizabeth Kolbert's ripping good read The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History [and Kindle] really is more interested in trickier questions like how people notice mass events that might be very quick in geologic time -- a couple hundred years -- given that each generation accepts its circumstances as baseline normal. Perception is crucial. She opens chapter five recounting a 1949 Harvard experiment that flashed regular playing cards with two alterations in the deck: a red spade and a black diamond. Students could not figure out what they were seeing. They couldn't determine the color ("purple," "brown," "rusty") or the suit of the changed cards. Inspired by that work, Thomas Kuhn studied how people deal with disruptive information. "Their first impulse is to force it into a familiar framework... Signs of mismatch are disregarded..."

"The pattern was, Kuhn argued, so basic that it shaped not only individual perceptions but entire fields of inquiry. Data that did not fit the commonly accepted assumptions of a discipline would either be discounted or explained away for as long as possible. The more contradictions accumulated, the more convoluted the rationalizations became. 'In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty,' Kuhn wrote."

To my mind nowhere is this syndrome more obvious or more prevalent than when historians or scientists are confronted with gay material. Scholars read Shakespeare's love sonnets to a young man and, exactly as Kuhn notes, they force it into a familiar framework ("friendship") and the more contradictions that accumulate (126 loving sonnets to him and the book dedicated to him vs. only 26 angry and unhappy sonnets to the dark lady), the more convoluted their rationalizations become. Historians find Lincoln in bed with a handsome young soldier while his wife is away or they read one of Eleanor Roosevelt's few surviving love letters to lesbian journalist Lorena Hickok, and suddenly they can't see what they're seeing. Even worse is scientists' global disregard of the 1,500 species of animals that engage in foreplay, mounting, penetration, pair-bonding, or co-parenting in same-sex couples. Rather than create outlandish excuses why some animals primarily have sex and pair with their own gender when the opposite gender is available, heteroists simply erase it. A profound and entertaining rescue is Bruce Bagemihl's phenomenal book, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.

Born May 14: William Percy, Magnus Hirschfeld

One of the best, most jolting, and cruelly overlooked gay books from 2012 was Benjamin Wise's William Alexander Percy: The Curious Life of a Mississippi Planter and Sexual Freethinker [and Kindle]. Born in 1885, Percy was, "a queer plantation owner, poet, and memoirist. Though he is best known as a conservative apologist of the southern racial order, in this telling Wise creates a complex and surprising portrait of a cultural relativist, sexual liberationist, and white supremacist. We follow Percy as he travels from Mississippi around the globe and, always, back again to the Delta. Wise's exploration brings depth and new meaning to Percy's already compelling life story--his prominent family's troubled history, his elite education and subsequent soldiering in World War I, his civic leadership during the Mississippi River flood of 1927, his mentoring of writers Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, and the writing and publication of his classic autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son. This biography sets Percy's life and search for meaning in the context of his history in the Deep South and his experiences in the gay male world of the early twentieth century. In Wise's hands, these seemingly disparate worlds become one."

The next time people claim the gay rights movement is a recent invention or that you’re anachronistically imposing a modern concept on a pre-Stonewall era that could not possibly have supported the idea, remind them of Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1896, he wrote and published a pamphlet on homosexual love called Sappho and Socrates. In 1897 with the leaders of the gay journal Der Eigene, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, whose motto was “Justice through science.” Their first goal was to overturn the notorious 1871 German law Paragraph 175, criminalizing male homosexuality. Not only did they campaign openly and publicly, they urged prominent people to sign their petition to repeal the law. Among the 5,000 signatories were Einstein, Tolstoy, Mann, Hesse, and Rilke. When the bill to repeal came before the Reichstag in 1898, it failed, and, infuriated by their hypocrisy, Hirschfeld contemplated outing various members of parliament who had voted against it. Undaunted by the defeat, the committee continued to get the bill reintroduced repeatedly over the next decades. 
        Thirty-four years before Kinsey, Hirschfeld collected detailed information about sexual behavior in surveys from 10,000 people

Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us

Gay author Jesse Bering PhD earns a starred PW review for Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us [Kindle]:

"In a book as informative as it is entertaining, Bering argues for the efficacy of science and logic over irrational morals when addressing sexual deviancy. Citing numerous studies and historical sources, Bering makes the claim that, deep down, we are all sexual deviants in one form or another—and that sexual deviancy is, in fact, not deviant at all... Laws and medical diagnoses controlling sexual activity should investigate whether the activities in question cause harm (though harm itself is subjective, and is therefore also a problematic way to assess behavior), rather than whether society is merely grossed out by them. This is clearly a personal topic for Bering, who is gay and, in fact, discusses his experiences of self-loathing and discrimination. . . a delightful, intelligent, and thought-provoking addition to the growing body of our sexual knowledge of self."

The book was a NYT Editors' Choice and highly praised by the Boston Globe, Kirkus, Booklist, Laurie Santos ("fascinating and surprising"), Dan Savage ("peerless"), Paul Bloom ("unusual and wonderful"), and The Scientist which said, "Against a colorful backdrop of science, history, and psychology, Bering calls on human society to stop judging people’s sexual preferences based on a personal belief about what’s normal or natural, instead asking what is harmful. [He] throws a bucket of ice-cold water on topics that often become overheated by the fires of morality, religion, and politics."

Follow him on twitter or friend him on facebook.

Born June 23: Florent Morellet, Alan Turing, David Leavitt

Never mind that he was born in Cholet, near Nantes -- "when I grew up I wanted to kill myself every Sunday because nothing happened" -- the soul of New York lives in Florent Morellet. He opened his legendary 24-hour diner in 1985, the year before he became an American citizen, and it reigned supreme for 23 years until closing in 2008, when his rent jumped from $6,180 a month to $35,000. Much of the magic is capture in the documentary Florent: Queen of the Meat Market. If his downtown has disappeared, he still has the imaginary places he's charted since childhood: His lovely maps of made-up locations have been shown in galleries in many real cities. (Florent's father is the abstract artist François Morellet.) Later this summer, he and his awesome boyfriend Peter Cameron, probably the best New York couple ever, celebrate seven years together.

Anyone tallying the cost of Britain's homophobia must include all the things Alan Turing didn't solve or invent because he killed himself at 41. The brilliant mathematician had already broken the Germans' Enigma code during WWII, become an OBE, laid the groundwork for the modern computer by designing the Automatic Computing Engine, and devoted himself to a field of mathematical biology called morphogenesis (specifically, discerning the Fibonacci numbers in plant structures). In 1952 his home was burgled by two men, one of whom was a 19 year-old Turning had slept with, and as a result of their break-in he was charged with gross indecency under the same 1885 law that felled Oscar Wilde. To avoid prison, he was forced to undergo painful injections of estrogen as a form of chemical castration. He died by eating a poisoned apple. His mother strongly believed the cyanide in the fruit was accidental, owing to her son's legendary carelessness, but his death was ruled a suicide. Timothy Ferris points out that Turing's favorite fairy tale was Snow White. The best short biography of him is The Man Who Knew Too Much by David Leavitt...

 

Raised in Palo Alto, David Leavitt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale at 21, by which time he had already published a gay themed short story in The New Yorker. His first collection, Family Dancing, appeared the following year and was nominated for an NBCC (losing to Louise Erdrich) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (won by Tobias Wolff). Since then he's published seven novels, the most recent of which, The Indian Clerk, was also a PEN/Faulkner finalist (won by Kate Christensen); three other collections of stories or novellas; his collected stories; a brief book on Florence; and, a short biography of gay birthday-mate Alan Turing. He is a professor at the University of Florida, where he and his partner Mark Mitchell co-edit the excellent literary journal Subtropics whose fiction is regularly gay and often selected among the year's best. Leavitt and Mitchell also co-edited an anthology of gay fiction from 1748 to 1914, Pages Passed From Hand to Hand. They divide their time between Florida and Tuscany and in their spare time have co-written two other books about Italy. He was named a NYPL Literary Lion.

Brainy Gay Porn Star on his Cancelled College Sex Talk

If you dream of post-coital pillow talk that's all endosymbiosis and prokaryotes, Conner Habib is your homo erectus. The 35 year-old gay porn star won Best Newcomer at the GayVN awards in 2010, and he studied with Gaia genius Lynn Margulis, whom he considered a "second mom" until her death in 2011.

Despite a signed contract with Corning Community College to speak about sex and culture during the school's week of events on sexuality and sexual health, Conner got axed by the college president who worried about linking lgbt rights with porn. Thursday night, he spoke anyway, at the local library.

Part of his essay on the controversy:

"Where I grew up, just outside of Allentown, PA, I watched, right through my adolescence into adulthood and early college years, while straight people paired off and experienced sex. They were able to engage with a basic aspect of human life that seemed unavailable and distant to me. Unlike today, there was no discussion about gay marriage, nor were there many gay characters on TV. But even if there had been, neither would have rounded out my experience as a man with homosexual feelings because so many of those feelings were — unsurprisingly for a young man — sexual. Gay sex was a lonely venture. It wasn't easy to find, and was only mentioned in slurs and the butt of jokes. "Cocksucker" and "butt fucker" were insults; stand-ins for "faggot."

"Whether I bought it from the adult video store or, later, downloaded it, gay porn helped me encounter positive images of gay men enjoying the act of sex. Gay porn was a window into gay sexuality that was free of shame and guilt, and revealed a different world where sex wasn't a lonely prospect, confined to the shadows or just my imagination.

"This same concern is amplified in places where homosexuality is criminalized or even punishable by death.

"As a porn performer of Arab descent, I've received hundreds of emails from men in Middle Eastern countries expressing gratitude and relief for my having portrayed gay sex in a positive light on camera. When a gay man lives somewhere where his identity is threatened, it's clear how sex - including pornography - and sexuality are intertwined. His sexual imagination, which is criminalized, matches the sexual images of gay pornography (which are also criminalized). Since acting out his imagination through sex would be to risk his life, the access to the images is safer. The images, created by gay men wherever it's legal to create them, provide empowerment and diminish alienation."

Conner speaks this afternoon at the William Way lgbt center in Philadelphia. Catch him every week on his segment "Ask the Expert" at NewNextNow.

The Missing Myth

I promised to do a release announcement for Gilles Herrada's book The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love [Kindle] which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "extraordinary." (More praise here.) The jacket copy says:

"If homosexual behavior is an aberration from the standpoint of reproduction, why is it widespread among humans, primates, and a myriad of other animal species, and why has it been favored by evolution? And if homosexuality is considered a moral problem based on religious beliefs, why were more homosexuals exterminated under the brief reigns of such secular regimes as the Communists and the Nazis than during the entire Christian Inquisition. Why is everything about homosexuality always a paradox?

"In The Missing Myth Gilles Herrada tackles the many questions about the role and meaning of homosexuality in the evolution of our species and the development of civilization: what evolutionary edge same-sex relationships have provided to the human species; what biological mechanisms generate the sexual diversity that we observe; why homosexual behavior ended up being prohibited worldwide; why homophobia has persisted throughout history; why the homosexual community resurfaced after World War II; and others.

"In this heartfelt, beautifully written, and painstakingly researched text, the author sculpts a vision of homosexuality that integrates its biological, sociological, cultural, ethical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. Stressing the connection between the social status of homosexuality and how same-sex love is depicted in the myths of a particular culture, The Missing Myth advocates the creation of a new mythosnot only informed by all the fields of knowledge, but also inclusive of the beauty, truth, and goodness of same-sex love."

Snow on the Sahara

A mere 14,500 years ago, the Little Sahara Recreation Area was the bottom of Lake Bonneville, nearly 20,000 square miles of water that stretched from Idaho almost to Arizona. Yesterday, the sand dunes were once again wet, this time covered in snow. If you're wondering, the best gay Utah novel is David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife [Kindle].

Sally Ride, First Lesbian in Space, Dies at 61

Pioneering astronaut Sally Ride has died of pancreatic cancer at 61. Did I miss her coming out or did it happen today in her obituary? Her partner of 27 years, Dr. Tam O'Shaughnessy, does not mention their personal relationship in her long bio on Sally Ride Science. Sally's obit posted today to the site does include their partnership; her official NASA bio doesn't. Before this afternoon, her wikipedia page had no LGBT tags.

Our community has faced many challenges in the 29 years since her first space shuttle mission. The visible support and leading example of a national hero could only have helped. She chose to stay closeted and silent.

Even more stressful than being lovers, Sally and Tam were co-authors; their books include Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System and the award-winning The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space. 

UPDATE: Brian points to this article in which the astronaut's sister Bear Ride, also gay, says Sally "never hid her relationship with Tam," and "Sally didn't use labels." Bear adds, "I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay that they know that another one of their heroes was like them." Maybe yes, and that's great. Or maybe queer kids today want their heroes to be out.

Why Indeed

Cannibalism + bestiality + gay men -- Is it a diatribe from Rick Santorum or a novel by Dennis Cooper? It's Jesse Bering's collection of science essays, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?: And Other Reflections on Being Human [Kindle], which his publisher's marketers harm with pandering jacket copy harping on "the most taboo issues":

"...a bold and captivating journey through some of the most taboo issues related to evolution and human behavior. Exploring the history of cannibalism, the neurology of people who are sexually attracted to animals, the evolution of human body fluids, the science of homosexuality, and serious questions about life and death, Bering astutely covers a generous expanse of our kaleidoscope of quirks and origins."

Otherwise, the book's science is probably sound. The thirty-odd pieces originally ran in Scientific American or on Slate and the title essay appeared in Best Sex Writing 2010. Moreover, the author is going to be great on the gay thingy because he was named Scientist of the Year by the awesome national queer sci - tech nerds association, NOGLSTP. His previous book, The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life [Kindle], was an ALA top book of the year. Yale's Paul Bloom says, “Jesse Bering is the Hunter S. Thompson of science writing, and he is a delight to read—funny, smart, and madly provocative.”

Born June 23: Alan Turing, David Leavitt

In honor of Turing's centenary today: a doodle on Google, a blue plaque in Cambridge, and an exhibit at London's Science Museum.

Anyone tallying the cost of Britain's homophobia must include all the things Alan Turing didn't solve or invent because he killed himself at 41. The brilliant mathematician had already broken the Germans' Enigma code during WWII, become an OBE, laid the groundwork for the modern computer by designing the Automatic Computing Engine, and devoted himself to a field of mathematical biology called morphogenesis (specifically, discerning the Fibonacci numbers in plant structures). In 1952 his home was burgled by two men, one of whom was a 19 year-old Turning had slept with, and as a result of their break-in he was charged with gross indecency under the same 1885 law that felled Oscar Wilde. To avoid prison, he was forced to undergo painful injections of estrogen as a form of chemical castration. He died by eating a poisoned apple. His mother strongly believed the cyanide in the fruit was accidental, owing to her son's legendary carelessness, but his death was ruled a suicide. Timothy Ferris points out that Turing's favorite fairy tale was Snow White. The best short biography of him is The Man Who Knew Too Much by David Leavitt...

Raised in Palo Alto, David Leavitt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale at 21, by which time he had already published a gay themed short story in The New Yorker. His first collection, Family Dancing, appeared the following year and was nominated for an NBCC (losing to Louise Erdrich) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (won by Tobias Wolff). Since then he's published seven novels, the most recent of which, The Indian Clerk, was also a PEN/Faulkner finalist (won by Kate Christensen); three other collections of stories or novellas; his collected stories; a brief book on Florence; and, a short biography of gay birthday-mate Alan Turing. He is a professor at the University of Florida, where he and his partner Mark Mitchell co-edit the excellent literary journal Subtropics whose fiction is regularly gay and often selected among the year's best. Leavitt and Mitchell also co-edited an anthology of gay fiction from 1748 to 1914, Pages Passed From Hand to Hand. They divide their time between Florida and Tuscany and in their spare time have co-written two other books about Italy. He was named a NYPL Literary Lion.

E.O. Wilson on the Sociobiological Advantages of Homosexuality

Two-time Pulitzer winner E.O. Wilson, 82, discusses the intrinsic wrongs of homophobia and the sociobiological benefits of homosexuality in his new book The Social Conquest of Earth [Kindle]: 

"A second example of dogmatic ethics gone wrong for lack of knowledge is homophobia. The basal reasoning is much the same as for opposition to artificial contraception: sex not intended for reproduction must be an aberration and a sin. But an abundance of evidence points to the opposite. Committed homosexuality, with the preference appearing in childhood, is heritable. This means the trait is not always fixed, but part of the greater likelihood of a person's developing into a homosexual is prescribed by genes that differ from those that lead to heterosexuality. It has further turned out that heredity-influenced homosexuality occurs in populations worldwide too frequently to be due to mutations alone. Population geneticists use a rule of thumb to account for abundance at this level: if a trait cannot be due solely to random mutations, and yet it lowers or eliminates reproduction in those who have it, then the trait must be favored by natural selection working on a target of some other kind. For example, a low dose of homosexual-tending genes may give competitive advantages to a practicing heterosexual. Or, homosexuality may give advantages to the group by special talents, unusual qualities of personality, and the specialized roles and professions it generates. There is abundant evidence that such is the case in both preliterate and modern societies. Either way, societies are mistaken to disapprove of homosexuality because gays have different sexual preferences and reproduce less. Their presence should be valued instead for what they contribute constructively to human diversity. A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself." 

560 Million Years in 2 Minutes

The video above begins 560 million years ago [mya], so you miss Rodinia, the drag queen supercontinent formed one billion years ago. Mind you, that was before the ozone layer, so the landmass was barren. It broke up around 750 mya. The animation shows the same events twice: first in nineteen seconds, then again over two minutes with helpful titles. Look how late Florida forms.

Below, Patricia Clarkson explains it all. Very helpful, but both videos would be better if they incorporated Earth's enormous changes in climate: 716 mya the entire planet was under ice and only 50 mya even the Arctic was balmy, with palms.

[Make sure to click away the white ad boxes when they appear.]

Younger Every Day

Last month, Amelia, a mom blogger on HuffPost wrote about her son happily announcing he's gay. He's seven. Predictably, a lot of naysayers claim children can't know their orientation so young, but legions of lgbt people can refute that personally. Now the boy's father, Dave, has written a post declaring his full support for his son's coming out and, he says, laughing at the ignorant comments inspired by his wife's article, like, "Isn't your son's father going to miss teaching him sports?" "Isn't not having your child get married going to just break your heart?" As it turns out, the little dude is a football jock.

On Sunday, the NYT magazine is running Elizabeth Weil's major article about the "new normal" of girls going through puberty before age ten. The story begins with the shocking detail of Ainsley growing pubic hair when she was six. Growth spurts, armpit hair, pimples, developing breasts, PMS cycling with her mother, somehow these are now issues some girls must cope with in third grade. Whatever the cause, that shift is robbing kids of childhood, not their own honesty in coming out.

Male Zebra Finches In Longterm Pairs, Ignore Females

Yet another scientific study suggests that, contrary to endless heterocentric brainwashing, maybe nature's top priority isn't always reproduction. UC Berkeley's Dr. Julie Elie led a team researching zebra finches. Raised in same sex groups, more than half the males pair bonded with another male. They exhibited the same behavior as male-female pairs including singing to each other, preening, sitting closely side by side, nuzzling beaks, and sharing a nest. The BBC reports, "Same-sex pairs of monogamous birds are just as attached and faithful to each other as those paired with a member of the opposite sex." Here's the kicker:

"In the next stage of their study, the scientists brought novel females to a group of bonded male-male pairs. Out of eight males that were engaged in same-sex pair-bonds, five ignored the females completely and continued to interact with their male partner.

"The findings indicate that, even in birds, the drive to find a mate is far more complicated than simply the need to reproduce.

"A pair-bond in socially monogamous species represents a cooperative partnership that may give advantages for survival," said Dr Elie. "Finding a social partner, whatever its sex, could be a priority."

The best book on the subject is Bruce Bagemihl's encyclopedic marvel, written for lay readers and scientists alike, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. 

Below, a male-female pair demonstrate the one-step-forward two-steps-back nature of all flirting.

Born June 23: Alan Turing, David Leavitt

Anyone calculating the cost of Britain's horrific homophobia must include all the things Alan Turing didn't solve or invent because he killed himself at 41. The brilliant mathematician had already broken the Germans' Enigma code during WWII, become an OBE, laid the groundwork for the modern computer by designing the Automatic Computing Engine, and devoted himself to a field of mathematical biology called morphogenesis (specifically, discerning the Fibonacci numbers in plant structures). In 1952 his home was burgled by two men, one of whom was a 19 year-old Turning had slept with, and as a result of their break-in he was charged with gross indecency under the same 1885 law that felled Oscar Wilde. To avoid prison, he was forced to undergo painful injections of estrogen as a form of chemical castration. He died by eating a poisoned apple. His mother strongly believed the cyanide in the fruit was accidental, owing to her son's legendary carelessness, but his death was ruled a suicide. Timothy Ferris points out that Turing's favorite fairy tale was Snow White. The best short biography of him is The Man Who Knew Too Much by David Leavitt.

Raised in Palo Alto, David Leavitt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale at 21, by which time he had already published a gay themed short story in The New Yorker. His first collection, Family Dancing, appeared the following year and was nominated for an NBCC (losing to Louise Erdrich) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (won by Tobias Wolff). Since then he's published seven novels, the most recent of which, The Indian Clerk, was also a PEN/Faulkner finalist (won by Kate Christensen); three other collections of stories or novellas; his collected stories; a brief book on Florence; and, because karma is king, the short biography mentioned above of gay birthday-mate Alan Turing. He is a professor at the University of Florida, where he and his partner Mark Mitchell co-edit the excellent literary journal Subtropics whose fiction is regularly gay and often selected among the year's best. Leavitt and Mitchell also co-edited an anthology of gay fiction from 1748 to 1914, Pages Passed From Hand to Hand. They divide their time between Florida and Tuscany and in their spare time have co-written two other books about Italy. Today Leavitt is 50.

The Radiation Network

Information junkies can now monitor radiation levels throughout the U.S., updated every minute at the Radiation Network. The fine print says the Alaska monitor, in Anchorage, is located indoors.

Your interest may be amped by conflicting reports today about Japan's nuclear woes. The Vancouver Sun begins "One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did sustain a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time on Thursday, describing finding a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel." The NYT puts these facts midway through their brief article -- "That indicated that the exposed fuel has probably melted and slumped to the bottom of the vessel in little pellets" -- and avoids using the term meltdown other than to report the plant did not sustain a "full meltdown." The reporter emphasizes the upbeat, quoting a scientist David Lochbaum from "a nonprofit group usually critical of the nuclear industry," saying, "As bad as things are, they’re getting better." Tepco had earlier said it would take six to nine months to bring the plant under control; now, it will be longer.

Yesterday Greenpeace released a study finding 10 of the 22 seaweed samples they collected 40 miles from the stricken plant contain up to five times the legal limits of Iodine-131 and Caesium-137. Seaweed is a staple of the Japanese diet and the annual harvest begins next Friday.

Born June 23: Alan Turing, David Leavitt

Anyone calculating the cost of Britain's horrific homophobia must include all the things Alan Turing didn't solve or invent because he killed himself at 41. The brilliant mathematician had already broken the Germans' Enigma code during WWII, become an OBE, laid the groundwork for the modern computer by designing the Automatic Computing Engine, and devoted himself to a field of mathematical biology called morphogenesis (specifically, discerning the Fibonacci numbers in plant structures). In 1952 his home was burgled by two men, one of whom was a 19 year-old Turning had slept with, and as a result of their break-in he was charged with gross indecency under the same 1885 law that felled Oscar Wilde. To avoid prison, he was forced to undergo painful injections of estrogen as a form of chemical castration. He died by eating a poisoned apple. His mother strongly believed the cyanide in the fruit was accidental, owing to her son's legendary carelessness, but his death was ruled a suicide. Timothy Ferris points out that Turing's favorite fairy tale was Snow White. The best short biography of him is The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Raised in Palo Alto, David Leavitt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale at 21, by which time he had already published a gay themed short story in The New Yorker. His first collection, Family Dancing, appeared the following year and was nominated for an NBCC (losing to Louise Erdrich) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (won by Tobias Wolff). Since then he's published seven novels, the most recent of which, The Indian Clerk, was also a PEN/Faulkner finalist (won by Kate Christensen); three other collections of stories or novellas; his collected stories; a brief book on Florence; and, because karma is king, the short biography mentioned above of gay birthday-mate Alan Turing. He is a professor at the University of Florida, where he and his partner Mark Mitchell co-edit the literary journal Subtropics whose fiction is regularly selected as among the year's best. Leavitt and Mitchell also co-edited an anthology of gay fiction from 1748 to 1914, Pages Passed From Hand to Hand. They divide their time between Florida and Tuscany and in their spare time have co-written two other books about Italy. Today Leavitt turns 49.

The Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

For everyone mesmerized by Werner Herzog's Antarctic documentary Encounters at the End of the World, Lucy Jane Bledsoe's rippingly good new novel The Big Bang Symphony provides a return trip into the minds of the scientists and misfits who choose to work in the extreme cold of the McMurdo Station. Bledsoe has traveled there three times (twice on National Science Foundation fellowships) and in many ways her details are better than Herzog's. After reading that first time visitors are called "fingees" (from FNG, for "f---in' new guy"), you'll never doubt her authority.

A lifelong adventure dyke, Bledsoe confidently straddles two worlds in this novel: down there and up here, but also commercial and literary fiction. The book opens with two of her three female protagonists arriving in Antarctica on an Air Force plane that hits a severe storm and has no choice but to crash land blind. Bledsoe relates this with a thrilling matter of factness, which makes sense once you realize flights spend all their fuel crossing the ocean and can't possibly turn back for New Zealand. The high drama continues apace as perpetual wanderer and camp cook Rosie (after finding a young woman who froze to death after the crash) embarks on an affair of big consequences with a married photographer; geologist Alice finally breaks free of her passive manipulative mother; and lesbian, composer Mikala overcomes serious block three years after her partner's death and must decide whether to confront a famous scientist also in Antarctica that he is her longlost father. These broad plot strokes are balanced with considerations of art, sex, science, chosen families, biological ties, and the meaning of home. With fifty-eight chapters in 330 pages, Bledsoe keeps things moving. She packs her book with lively, libidinous, oddball characters, the very most alluring and dangerous of which is the beautifully realized frozen landscape. Don't miss this chance to feel like you've spent a season there.

Catch up with Lucy on her travels this month and next:

Saturday, May 8, Corte Madera, CA

May 13 - 16, Saints & Sinner Book Fest, New Orleans

Monday, May 17, Oxford, MS

Tuesday, May 18, Atlanta, GA

Wednesday, May 19, Chicago

Wednesday, June 2, San Francisco

Wednesday, June 16, Seattle

Thursday, June 17, Portland, OR

Tuesday, June 22, Bellingham, WA

Gay Animals: Read the NYT, But Buy Bruce Bagemihl's Book

If Jon Mooallem's editor asked him for a major article called "Can Men Be Tall?" would he have profiled a guy who's 5'10"?  That's what he's done by building his 7,700-word NYT mag cover story Can Animals Be Gay? around the Laysan albatross, known for their longterm female pair bonding. The title itself is terrible; meant to be a question about anthropomorphizing animals, it implies the fact of same-gender animal sex is still in doubt. With more than 450 species regularly engaging in same-gender sex, it's a certainty. For many of those species it is their primary social ordering, and they continue to have same-gender sex even when the opposite gender is available. That crucial fact is missing from Mooallem's misguided yet mandatory article.

One that reason the albatrosses were a bad choice exemplifying "lesbian animals" is that the females don't have sex with each other. They share a nest and take turns sitting on one egg, just as male - female pairs do. Lots of the scientific head-scratching ensues. Why would they do that? Ultimately it leads to this:

"Homosexual activity is often observed in animal populations with a shortage of one sex — in the wild but more frequently at zoos. Some biologists anthropomorphically call this “the prisoner effect.” That’s basically the situation at Kaena Point: there are fewer male albatrosses than females (although not every male albatross has a mate). Because it takes two albatrosses to incubate an egg, switching on and off at the nest, a female that can’t find a male (or maybe, Young says, who can’t find “a good-enough male”) has no chance of producing a chick and passing on her genes. Quickly mating with an otherwise-committed male, then pairing with another single female to incubate the egg, is a way to raise those odds."

Mooallem gives no equal time to the animals that have sex with their own gender when the opposite gender is plentiful. Instead, the article veers back into what humans would do with the ability to control homosexuality through genetics. The researcher who accidentally discovered he would re-orient fruitflies' sexuality got a lot of desperate calls from people wanting to be changed and one letter from a mother whose college-age daughter was contemplating suicide over her lesbian feelings. Couldn't the scientist consider a human treatment to re-orient her daughter's unwanted lesbian impulses and save her?

A further diversion away from gay animals takes readers to the fa’afafine men of Samoa and one theory that the "purpose" of homosexuality in nature -- the holy grail explanation for many of these scientists, both gay and straight -- is to create a legion of gay uncles who nurture relatives' procreative streaks and offspring because it's almost their own DNA.

Mooallem only quotes my hero Bruce Bagemihl twice.

“There is still an overall presumption of heterosexuality,” the biologist Bruce Bagemihl told me. “Individuals, populations or species are considered to be entirely heterosexual until proven otherwise.” While this may sound like a reasonable starting point, Bagemihl calls it a “heterosexist bias” and has shown it to be a significant roadblock to understanding the diversity of what animals actually do.

Bagemihl's encyclopedic book Biological Exuberance was published eleven years ago. He collates thousands of peer-review animal behavior studies and creates a couple hundred profiles of species, ranking their observed same-gender sexual activity as primary, moderate, or incidental, and concisely summarizing their behavior in clear, accessible prose. Named one of the year's best books by PW and the NYPL, it's an absolute masterpiece. I own two copies.

Scientific Reminder as Maine Repeals Gay Marriage Law

Plenty of recaps and outrage today. National Geographic brings the facts:

"In general sexual intercourse between married partners expends only 25 to 50 calories, about the energy it takes to walk up two flights of stairs."