They Made THIS a "Gay Icon"? Telegraph and Daily Mail Out of Their Mind

A few months ago, several English newspapers reported that English Heritage, a British quasi-governmental organization directly under the DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) and responsible for managing English archaeological and cultural heritage, had presented Hadrian's Wall as a gay landmark, gay icon, or part of queer history.

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Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024...
Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...

The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...
The news, although bizarre, is confirmed on the English Heritage website itself:

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/v...

where Hadrian's Wall is presented as the first of seven archaeological sites "linked to England's queer history." But what is "queer" about a 117-kilometer-long defensive structure whose purpose was to keep the Picts' raids at bay is beyond me.

The English Heritage website initially describes the characteristics of the Wall: "Stretching 70 miles across the landscape, Hadrian's Wall still shapes northern England's landscape, 1,900 years after it was built. It is a lasting mark the Emperor Hadrian left on Britain." But immediately after, without a real and sensible logical connection, we are informed of Hadrian's (supposed) sexual and sentimental inclinations: "But besides Hadrian's policies and reign, the Emperor also leaves behind a legacy associated with intense adoration for his male lover Antinous." How the sexuality and relationships of the emperor who commissioned the construction of the Wall can be reflected in the nature of the Wall itself remains a mystery, since obviously the structure itself has nothing that can refer to "queer" or homosexual aspects. If it was a statuary complex about two men lovers I could understand but a military defensive structure?

Above all, the reasoning presented, which in its intentions probably wants to be inclusive and avant-garde, actually reflects a rare form of homophobia: since the Emperor Hadrian had a homosexual relationship, any of his externalizations, works, or manifestations must be read under a "queer" lens. All the aspects that characterized the man Hadrian (tolerant, reformer, skilled politician, philosopher, lover of the arts) take a back seat, and he is first and foremost "queer," so much so that a defensive wall he built is not, as would be natural, "linked to England's military history" or "linked to England's ancient borders," or even "linked to England's Roman history," but "linked to England's QUEER history," despite the fact that nothing that happened on the wall, its intrinsic nature, or the reasons that led to its construction has anything to do with the emperor's sexuality and his (supposed) being "queer."
Then, specifically regarding Hadrian's sexuality, this is a very complex and at times thorny topic.
His relationship with Antinous, a young man from a wealthy Greek family in Bithynia (in present-day Turkey), was already known and exalted by classical historians.

Returning to the clumsy proclamation of English Heritage, in these attempts to propose the theme of homosexuality in a blatantly and grotesquely forced manner, one can perhaps glimpse the mark of the guilt that the active persecution of homosexuals by English law has left in British culture.
In fact, homosexuality was decriminalized in England only in the second half of the 1960s, and one of the most famous British citizens in contemporary history, Alan Turing, father of computer science and famous for having decrypted Nazi codes during World War II, was arrested in 1952 for being homosexual and placed before the choice of prison or chemical castration by means of female hormones, opting for the latter but then ending up committing suicide in 1954.
Certainly, making amends for a reprehensible recent past is sacrosanct, but two wrongs do not make a right, and it is not by forcibly inserting "queer" elements into its ancient history that England will be able to make peace with its problematic past in the field of LGBTQ rights.


In my opinion, the reference to the complex that England has for how it discriminated against homosexuals in the past and the bad end that Turing met is fitting, and it also protects you from easy accusations.
Considering that a shrewd reading portrays Hadrian as a sexual predator who leverages his position as emperor and Antinous as a coveted twelve-year-old, I don't know how brilliant a move it was on the part of British Heritage.

#ancientrome #lgbtq #queerhistory