Thursday, January 31, 2013

One can only imagine the scholarship that underpins his sermons.

"Just remember about 100 years ago, you had three homosexuals in the world as far as anybody really knew. There was a Canadian named Robert Ross, an Englishman named Oscar Wilde, an American named Walt Whitman. They led the charge in the early 1900’s and wound up in and out of the prison system and in court and so forth for a period of time. And again, there was only about three that anybody knew of and it was hardly anything that was mentioned among the established world at that time, that is in Europe, Canada and America. But you did have those three men, as far as history bears out, Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman were well-known for some level of homosexual activity, although they could not call themselves homosexuals at that time.
-Kevin Swanson, a Colorado minister, explaining history in his own unique way.

Wilde was the only one to be "in and out of the prison system." He died in 1900. Ross, who was openly gay, was Wilde's close friend and literary executor. He was never in jail. He died in 1918. Walt Whitman, whom Wilde met once on a lecture tour of America in 1882, was never in jail, either. He was a distinguished poet whose sexual orientation is still disputed by scholars.

And there were more than three.

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