OutCasting Overtime; Was Alexander the Great gay?

[Sam] This is OutCasting Overtime, a special feature from OutCasting, public radio's LGBTQ youth program. OutCasting is heard online at outcastingmedia.org, on itunes, and on more than fifty public radio stations affiliated with the Pacifica radio network. Hi, I'm Sam, a youth participant at OutCasting's main studio in Westchester County, New York. On this edition, OutCaster Lucas talks about the transition in society from viewing homosexuality as a disease to an identity. [Lucas] While you scroll through Facebook you may stumble upon an article claiming that George Washington or Alexander the Great was gay. While we don't have knowledge to say whether these claims true or not, we can say that at the times that these individuals were alive, nobody would truly identify as gay, even if they did have sexual relations with other people of the same sex. Being gay as it is today has grown to be understood as an identity relatively recently. Historically, LGBTQ people have hidden what were considered contrary sexual feelings, but being able to express these emotions and urges differs greatly

from being able to identify as gay or LGBTQ. We probably can't say that these people were gay in today's definition of the word, but they may have had such sexual feelings. These new labels may form a better picture of what it means to be a homosexual, but also changes the meaning of heterosexual. Originally the definitions of homosexuality and even heterosexuality were obscure medical terms that described what were considered abnormal sex drives. In 1909 homosexuality was defined as a morbid sexual passion for one of the same sex. During the years leading up to 1973, there was a movement in the mental health community to de-pathologize homosexuality and in 1987 all aspects of homosexuality were removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or DSM, a manual that is used to identify mental illnesses. Today it is archaic to call homosexuality a mental illness, a ?inaudible?, or a phase, as it was considered in the first official medical document on this topic, titled Contrary Sexual Feeling. However, in the past having sexual feelings was simply a phase and a

feeling, not a decisive factor in who someone was. Being gay is now better understood as an identity, a way of being, rather than a problem or a short term urge. Historically strict gender roles were also defined by the creation of duties and jobs specific to each gender. This was based on the importance of procreation and further strengthened the idea of homosexuality as a problem, not only as people being strange, but as endangering the future of the community, seeing that gay people couldn't procreate with each other. This started to change in the post World War Two era when Alfred Kinsey, a now famous sexual behaviorist came along and, based on extensive primary research, introduced the idea of sexuality as a continuum. This challenged the idea of sexuality as a binary. Until then you were either straight or gay. Kinsey introduced a scale to describe people's sexual tendencies with zero being completely straight and six being completely homosexual, and one through five being at various points in between. This understanding of sexuality fell in line more and more with a more sophisticated idea of human identity. The

continuum also established the idea that's sexuality was more of an emotional aspect of a person. After many years of fighting, increasing liberal and modern thought resulted in homosexuality being removed from the DSM. These new definitions allowed people to reconsider sexual desires and experiences as legitimate, when they may not have been open-minded earlier. They can potentially understand their desires as a characteristic of their identity and not as a problem to be solved. As a straight guy living in the 21st century, I understand that in the future if I do have feelings for another guy I can consider it as a healthy and legitimate emotional connection and not as a medical problem or phase. The word gay as a more common, less medical term for homosexual became established in the 1960s. People like George Washington may have had homosexual tendencies and if they lived today they might have been considered gay and might have considered themselves to be gay. But it's not really accurate to apply today's meaning of the word gay to people who lived in times when the understanding of homosexuality was so different. [Sam] Thanks for listening to OutCasting Overtime,

a special feature from OutCasting, public radio's LGBTQ youth program. OutCasting is heard online at outcastingmedia.org, on itunes, and on more than fifty public radio stations around the country. OutCasting Overtime is a production of Media for the Public Good, a nonprofit organization. Visit us at outcastingmedia.org to get information about OutCasting, watch OutCasting videos, access our social media links, and listen to the show. Thanks, and thanks for listening.