Cody
Williams
My Views
A Hero's Sexuality
Well, for those who may have used Cliff Notes to skate through Western Civ in high school Oliver Stone's motion picture 'Alexander' has taught us something we didn't know: The greatest general ever to command troops in combat swung with a double edge sword.
The closet door that for centuries suppressed, as least to common knowledge anyway, that not only did Alexander The Great sleep with men, and his own father was slain by a male lover, but apparently for centuries, Greece, the cradle of our civilization, inspiration to our modern democracies and Olympic games, was awash in men professing eternal love for other men and, pshaw, having sex with them.
Who knew? (And they had the nerve to call Abrahams descendents on the other side of the Mediterranean barbarians)
Critical trouncing notwithstanding, the major theatrical release of Stone's gay epic is a Blue State victory in just one of the many battles in America's `Moral Values' war. While the movie may be a box office and artistic boondoggle it will do what many who lead troops to war earnestly try to achieve: energize the demoralized.
The reelection of the Christian Right's George W. Bush, eleven states voting to pass what's viewed as anti-gay legislation and a call to amend the US Constitution to nationally ban same sex unions trounced a lot of folks in what looks like a modern day crusade. Comparable religious advances have destroyed civilizations, enslaved continents and plunged the planet into world wide wars.
Now the gay rights movement has resurrected a swashbuckling, play calling, brawling and brawny hero. History records that Alexander had 21 healed wounds on his body when he died. And we now know that his wounded heart was not for his Asian wife Roxanne and their unborn child, but it ached because of the death of his taller, brawnier and handsome constant male companion and long time lover, Hephaestion.
Oh, my gosh!
Will his story ever be taught again in Red State high schools. I predict that text book burning bonfires at libraries and in schoolyards will soon follow Sunday worship services and Wednesday night bible meetings.
John Jordan, a professor at William Patterson College in New Jersey, has studied the life and loves of Alexander the Great exhaustively. When asked why, he says, "Because growing up I needed to find people in history who validated my sexuality. Alexander was like me."
Jordan doesn't consider himself hetero or homosexual. "I'm just sexual," he professes.
The term `pan-sexual' has been used to describe Alexander's varied bedroom conquests. He has been linked sexually to not only his multiple wives and his long time lover but also a eunuch, Bagoas, whom he took as booty after defeating Persia's King Darius.
Well, they say to the victor goes the spoils.
Lacking a flesh and blood hero many young homosexuals live a life of shame and fear. Many hide their sexual desires from friends and family. Many fear being ostracized, rejected and ridiculed. Many live dangerous secret lives, recklessly, or just commit suicide. The world, led by some in the Christian church condemns them. Like Jordan, many have longed for the hero they can't see themselves being.
It is said that a language is a dialect with an army. Social norms too ride the bayonet of the victorious. George Bush's wish to sweep our values of freedom, democracy and human rights through the Mid-East (Ironically on the same soil Alexander conquered) hinges on the military success of our troops in Iraq.
Today an Alexander the Great would have been kicked out of Colin Powell's don't ask – don't tell armed forces.
Oliver Stone, with his movie 'Alexander' has given the gay rights movement what it lacks: an Indiana Pacers like brigade, bigger than life gladiators, with heart like the brawling b-ballers who went into stands slapping fans around to defend themselves. Alexander took his army to the edges of the then known world in combat kicking ass and taking names. They took on armies three times their size, swinging, slashing, toe to toe, horse to gigantic elephant, hand to hand -- and, ech em, man to man, so to speak.
Stone's movie may slink quietly out of theaters nationwide as a box office failure. But it planted in the minds of far too many people who didn't know that heroes of historic proportions, men who shaped the development of world civilization, gladiators, had complex sexual lives. Implanted in our hearts is the fact that human nature is too varied to be divided so neatly in two: the righteous and the unrighteous, the glorious and the shamed. We more clearly see now that our fate, our common destiny can and will be shaped by those too many of us discount as being different.
Isn't that what a well fought war does? Change heart and minds.
© Cody Williams 2004
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