Kevin's Guide to Nelson, New Zealand - Miscellaneous writings etc. on gay issues

- Miscellaneous
gay writings

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Some miscellaneous writings

THE HANKY CODE

Over the years, I have been asked various questions about the ‘Hanky Code’ - what it is, etc. At last, I have been able to track down quite a bit about the Hanky Code, something which has become part of gay folk lore. A hanky or bandanna (or many) is worn in either the left or right back pocket to indicate what type of sex, etc. you are interested in, and who with. It was particularly useful in noisy bars. Today, the code seems to have fallen out of vogue.
Some of the codes seem to have two conflicting meanings (but that could be just the excuse you need to go and chat them up), while others have the same meaning in both the gay and lesbian community (which has a few different ones).
Apparently, the hanky code started with the San Francisco 49ers. Mostly men came to dances, and in order to do dances calling for male and female participants, half the fellows wore bandannas to signify that they were the girls. Things have grown from there.
Depending on the colour of the hanky (or bandanna) - can be more than one - and whether it is worn in the left or right back pocket dictates your likes. Some examples (from about five pages in total length) are:

Worn on Left Meaning	Colour	Worn on Right Meaning
Safe sex top	Black and white check	Safe sex bottom
69er	Robin’s egg blue	Anything but 69
Suck my armpits	Magenta	Armpit freak
Into navel worshipers	Mauve	Has a navel fetish
Cuddler	Teddy Bear	Cuddlee
Likes to nibble	Houndstooth	Will be bitten
Heavy SM top	Black	Heavy SM bottom
Bondage top	Grey	Bondage bottom
Spanker	Fuschia	Spankee
Pilot/flight attendant	Airforce blue	Likes flyboys
Two tons o’ fun	Apricot	Chubby chaser
New to town	Calico	Tourists welcome

For the Birds Only??

Homosexuality, incest, infidelity, gang rape, orgies etc., are not just for the human race it seems. They are for the birds also. Apparently, pukekos (a native New Zealand swamp hen with limited flying capabilities) in particular have particularly hyperactive libidos and play musical partners with little regard for gender. A female was once witnessed to copulate 12 times with 7 different partners - in the space of 5 minutes!
Penguins may go steady for several years, but if the male is away longer than scheduled collecting food, the female will toss him out of home and find another partner the following year.
Promiscuity seems inherent to the breeding cycle. In the United States, scientists have given male red-winged blackbirds vasectomies - while their partners still lay fertile eggs.
In some gull communities, females who cannot find a mate settle for one-night-stands with nearby males and set up nest with a girlfriend to share the upbringing of their chicks. But lesbian parenting is not always a happy arrangement. With woodpeckers and jays, the dominant female will toss the eggs of their subordinate out of the nest.
So what's new?

From Strange Loves: A Study in Sexual Abnormalities, published by Dr. La Forest Porter in the 1930's, we can give you these tips on how to recognise another gay man.

Large, easily-aroused nipples (the scientific method behind this fact is missing from the book)
Mincing walk
Sloped/rounded shoulders
Hairless chest
Thick, 'luxuriant' hair
Soft, delicate skin ('...acne spots, frequently present in normal men, are usually absent')
A peculiar swinging motion of the hips due to spinal defects (thanks to science, we now call it dancing)
Lack of will-power and 'dogmatic energy'

Gay Marriage and The Church
With there being so much talk these days of gay marriage, and the present day Church's attitude towards it, the following item from the Irish Times, August 11, 1998 (shortened slightly) shines a whole new light on the subject.

WHEN MARRIAGE BETWEEN GAYS WAS BY RITE

As the churches struggle with the issue of homosexuality, a long tradition of gay marriage indicates that the Christian attitude to same-sex unions may not always have been as "straight" as is now suggested, writes Jim Duffy.

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The "husband and wife" are in fact two men.

Is the icon suggesting that a homosexual "marriage" is one sanctified by Christ? The full answer comes from other sources about the two men featured, St Serge and St Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who became Christian martyrs.

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that "we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life". More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St Serge is openly described as the "sweet companion and lover" of St Bacchus.

In other words, it confirms what the earlier icon implies, that they were a homosexual couple. Unusually their orientation and relationship was openly accepted by early Christian writers.

The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a 12-year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives, Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual "marriage" did exist as late as the 18th century.

Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved both as a concept and as a ritual. Prof Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings such as blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century Greek) or the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards. All of which are shown in contemporary drawings of the same-sex union of Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) and his companion John. Such homosexual unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th/early 13thcentury, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales has recorded.

Boswell's book, The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, lists in detail some same-sex union ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek13th century "Order for Solemnisation of Same-Sex Union", having invoked St Serge and St Bacchus,called on God to "vouchsafe unto these thy servants [N and N] grace to love one another and to abide unhated and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all thy saints." The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other,and it shall be concluded."

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic "Office of Same-Sex Union", uniting two men or two women, had the couple having their right hands laid on the Gospel while having a cross placed in their left hands. Having kissed the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Boswell found records of same-sex unions in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St Petersburg, in Paris, Istanbul, and in Sinai, covering a period from the 8th to the 18th centuries. The Dominican Jacques Goar (1601-1653) includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek prayer books.

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, it was only from about the 14thcentury that anti-homosexual feelings swept western Europe. Yet same-sex union ceremonies continued to take place.

At St John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope's parish Church) in 1578 as many as 13 coupleswere "married" at Mass with the apparent co-operation of the local clergy, "taking Communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together", according to a contemporary report.

Another woman-to-woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century.

Boswell's academic study is so well researched and sourced as to pose fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their attitude towards homosexuality.

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be a cowardly cop-out. That evidence shows convincingly that what the modern church claims has been its constant unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is in fact nothing of the sort.

It proves that for much of the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom from Ireland to Istanbul and in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a God-given ability to love and commit to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honoured and blessed both in the name of, and through the Eucharist in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

[Jim Duffy is a writer and historian. The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe by John Boswell is published by Harper Collins.]