From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

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 historyrCOs good guys rCo 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.

It makes this claim based on the nothing but the old chestnut of
NelsonrCOs supposedly last words rCykiss me, HardyrCO 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 PortsmouthrCOs
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 wasnrCOt gay.
Maybe he wasnrCOt 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
wasnrCOt misheard or entirely made up, modern ears are likely to be
misreading it as a declaration of homosexual love. NelsonrCOs 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 IrCOm 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.


Ross Clark
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