Does not every generation rewrite history to suit themselves? HisStory is just that. It is only loosely based on facts and mostly opinion. Just look at how Canadian HisStory has been whitewashed to take out all the nasty bits.
John McCrae gay??
- Thread starter Nuggler
- Start date
ewh
For goodness sake, being ".gay is an insult??" Is being black, or having blue eyes also consider an insult??
Yes, in certain times and circles, being accused of being gay is not just an insult but a deadly, mortal insult. I'm sure Dr. McCrae would have seen it that way. He was evidently quite forward-thinking and tolerant for his time - when he was in medical school he paid his tuition partly by tutoring other students, including two of the first women to become doctors in Ontario. He did this even though much of the senior medical 'establishment' firmly believed that women had no business becoming doctors. However, being tolerant is one thing; letting other people threaten your career and your life is something else entirely.
When World War 1 began, Dr. McCrae was a member of the Scottish Presbyterian church, a respected doctor with an established private practice, an internationally famous pathologist and university professor, and a veteran artillery officer from the Boer War.
He reluctantly re-joined the army at the start of WW1 because he believed it was his duty. He served first as a brigade-level field surgeon before being appointed to command a major field hospital. When he died, he had just been named Consulting Physician to the entire First British Army, the first non-Brit to achieve such a position. He was also, thanks to 'In Flanders Fields', a world-famous poet.
If, at any time during his life, Dr. McCrae had ever been accused of being a homosexual (and I use the word 'accused' deliberately), the allegation would have tarnished - and could have destroyed - his honour, his reputation, his career, and very probably his life. In that era, being known to be gay would earn you an instant dishonourable discharge from the army, possibly with stockade time thrown in, regardless of your rank. It would get you dismissed from any medical faculty, would cost you your position as an official government pathologist (coroner), and would probably lose you your license to practice medicine. It also wouldn't do wonderful things for your position as a member of a Presbyterian congregation.
I suppose as a known gay, ex-Dr. McCrae might still have had a career as a poet, but that would be about all he would have had left, and his poetry was never more than a stress-relieving hobby for him -- he never considered himself a professional poet like Siegfried Sassoon and some other WW1 war poets.
So yes, I do think Dr. McCrae would have considered being labelled 'gay' an insult, regardless of whether it was a libel or the truth.
Considering the consequences he would have faced if he were 'outed', I also think that if Dr. McCrae really were gay, any evidence of that orientation would be buried so deep in the back of the closet that it would never ever see the light of day. In other words, I would be amazed if the Bytown Museum's curator can produce a single tiny shred of contemporary evidence to support the allegation that Dr. McCrae was homosexual. Again, I use the word 'allegation' rather than 'claim', because that is what a professional man or officer of Dr. McCrae's era would have considered it.
On the subject of Lt. Helmer, Dr. McCrae's alleged 'boyfriend', I find Dr. McCrae's description of Lt. Helmer's funeral quite telling. Dr. McCrae mentioned that Lt. Helmer had carried a photograph of his girlfriend, that they recovered the photograph with a hole pierced through it by a fragment of the shell that had killed Lt. Helmer and that they then buried the photograph in the sandbag with the surviving shreds of the lieutenant's body. To me, that sounds more like a man writing about the death of a friend than a lover, especially considering that the entry is in a private diary.
The only thing for sure is that homosexuality is NOT a natural condition. You can argue back and forth the meaning of the word pathology.. but any phenomenon that leads to a such devastating consequences.. the highest rates of suicide, clinical depression, isolation, drug and alcohol dependence, disease.. and a dramitically reduced life expectancy.. of any identifiable demographic.. is best treated as a pathology, one that can be cured.. PROVIDING the will to do so is there. This cult of affirmation our society has involved itself with is doing nothing beneficial for those afflicted with a condition so steeped in neuroses and misery.
How do you become gay? Gay dogs, gay cats, gay moose, gay elephants, gay fish, gay lizards but nope humans just choose to be gay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
Yes, I do understand that back then it would have been disasterous to imply he was gay. However, whether he was or not at this juncture, he certainly isn't in a position (being dead) to be harmed by such an allegation.
What is irritating is, in this day and age, to find those who still consider one's sexual orientation an insult. It does not change how I feel about his poetry, which I hate to admit, is the only way I knew the man. From your post I now know a great deal more.
What is irritating is, in this day and age, to find those who still consider one's sexual orientation an insult. It does not change how I feel about his poetry, which I hate to admit, is the only way I knew the man. From your post I now know a great deal more.
Homosexuality is completely unique to the human condition. This mere fact should tell you that it is composed of a willful MORAL character, which only the human conscience can discern and articulate.. and rebel against.
Animals who through confusion or inexperience try to mate with another of the same gender, often is conditions of severe distress, bear no resemblance to the human phenomenon,.. which is based a choice to abrogate all responsibility to a natural, and a divine, order, in the interests of self gratification.. and self destruction.
How do you become cured of gay? Do you have any idea how many gays were killed being forced by courts to take testosterone shots in attempts to cure being gay?
Probably not.
Probably not.
Start with the realization that it is NOT natural, and in fact is not a mental illness.. it is a moral pathology, willful and deeply self destructive. The answers are not easy, but providing there is a WILL to move away from the fantasy filled neuroses of homosexuality.. there is a way.
The homosexual lobby is now desperately lobbying against this fact... by charging (especially) faith based initiatives are futile and in fact harmful to the individual. But their case is filled with lies and bias.. and monumental and subjective ignorance of the roots of the phenomenon. Faith is an implicit threat because it in fact presupposes both purpose and natural law governing the human condition
Interesting suggestion.
I had a great-aunt, who was there in the field hospital with him, and in one of her diaries she wrote, 'One of the doctors here has written some poetry...' and included a copy, which may have been in his handwriting (we donated the diary and letter to McGill University for their McCrae collection).
Oddly enough, she was a lesbian.
I had a great-aunt, who was there in the field hospital with him, and in one of her diaries she wrote, 'One of the doctors here has written some poetry...' and included a copy, which may have been in his handwriting (we donated the diary and letter to McGill University for their McCrae collection).
Oddly enough, she was a lesbian.
..................WRONG Every species has those of the "homosexual" orientation. Animals do not fall into confusion re sex, nor on the average do they come under severe stress. Damn cows and bull, caused human stress believe me. The chickens' stress levels showed up in falling egg production, not in the breeding. These days, unless one wants to incubate the eggs, a rooster is not needed but was usually left with the flock anyway. There were always hens jumping on hens, inspite of the rooster being present. (Mine were free range layers)
As to divine order, all species demonstrate a fairly stable percentage of homosexuals. Since this is so, perhaps if one is a believer in a supreme being, it might be time to investigate such things as reincarnation & Karma. The numbers are pretty steady, so this may be the intention of such a being for teaching purposes re prejudice. Wouldn't it be a shocker to find oneself in a future lifetime as a homosexual. LOL.
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You're ignoring the real dimensions of the issue. It's not homosexuality that causes those things, it's the attitudes of people like you and the subsequent ways that society treats homosexuals that cause them.
Not only has all legal, and most social stigma against homosexuality disappeared in the last 30 years. But it practitioners have been elevated to most distinguished and venerated of stati in the New Age, post structural, sentiment saturated cultural heirarchy.. that ofVictim.. and yet the carnage continues.
I figure the only folk with reason to fear homosexuality are they who have yet to step out of the closet. If you're secure in yourself, what's the problem?
Animal society has homosexuals too, without depression or suicide. Maybe it's assholes like you that help create the atmosphere where someone feels shame for being attracted to something that leads to the the distress necessary for such conditions.
Get a life loser.
Who cares? He was a great Canadian.
His sexuality straight or gay means little, except to the idiots who would bring it up.
His sexuality straight or gay means little, except to the idiots who would bring it up.
Misguided or not the man has a perfect right to his opinion. Maybe you are the loser who should get a life! Isn't it strange how so often it is the people who preach tolerance and yet are so intolerant of people who have none!