Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II, and : Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (review)

Abstract

As the nineteenth century faded into the twentieth, Oscar Wilde stood in the dock of the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey and, when questioned, described "the Love that dare not speak its name." Drawing himself to his full height, he declaimed, "'The Love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare." As the twentieth century stumbled into the twenty-first, this Gay Name Game grew into a frenzy of books and web sites, list begetting list, vague innuendo morphing into granite fact in a cringe-inducing effort that all too often seemed to be pleading that gay people really aren't so silly, evil, and inconsequential as everyone seemed to think. Alexander the Great. Sappho. Leonardo da Vinci. George Michael. See? See?