King George III and the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community

by philg

Happy Pride Month! Let’s look back at an early champion of Pride.

The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (Andrew Roberts):

In September 1772, John Wilkes joined other important City figures in criticizing the King’s commutation of capital punishment for Captain Robert Jones, who had been sentenced to hang for sodomizing a thirteen-year-old boy (although surprisingly the victim’s age did not seem to have played a part in Jones’ conviction). Friends of Jones – a fireworks expert who had also popularized the sport of figure skating – produced female prostitutes who attested to his bisexuality, as though that would alleviate the seriousness of the crime. Jones (who was in fact an artillery lieutenant) was due to hang until, on the day of the execution, George commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, and then a month later allowed him to go into lifelong exile in the South of France.

Nor was it the only time that George defied the vicious prejudices of the day against homosexuality and bisexuality. In June 1766, as a favour to his theatre-loving brother Prince Edward, the King signed a document making the Little Theatre in Haymarket into the Theatre Royal, which stated that it was ‘Our will and pleasure’ that Samuel Foote, the flamboyant impresario, should have ‘a company of comedians’ act there every summer, and authorized him to charge the sums necessary to offset ‘the great expense of scenes, music and new decorations’.

A footnote showing how much we’ve been enriched by the work of Gender Studies faculty:

These labels of sexual identity were not recognized in the eighteenth century, when people thought and spoke in terms of actual sexual practices, such as sodomy, onanism and so on.

Imagine if elementary school kids, instead of being taught 2SLGBTQQIA+ vocabulary, received an education regarding “actual sexual practices”!

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4 thoughts on “King George III and the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community”

  1. As the joke goes:

    In Prussia, under Frederick the Great, a cavalry corporal was caught having improper relations with a horse. The king’s ministers were outraged and wrote a letter to the monarch, demanding capital punishment. The letter came back with dry note: “The pig is to be transferred to the infantry.”

    Happy pride month!

  2. Our Literature (and I’m referring to poems, short stories, novels and novellas and suchlike) is replete with examples for young people to read about “actual sexual practices.” And if any of the kids don’t like to read, they can just listen to “music”, browse the internet, or watch Netflix, HBO+, Disney+ and Turner Classic Movies. When I was around seven years old, I just asked my father, who told me a lot about them. It was pretty dry and to the point, but there wasn’t much I couldn’t ask him. Then for a while I had a very attractive babysitter who used to read Penthouse Forum. I never asked her much because I didn’t really need to, I had a vivid imagination and once or twice she left one of them around the house.

    Of course, as I grew into adolescence I had plenty of friends who educated me in various ways about “actual sexual practices.” Sometimes that was a lot of fun and sometimes it was frightening! I think I first read Voltaire’s “Candide” at age 11, and there are plenty of actual sexual practices in there.

    Our “Health” classes involving contraception, abortion and the changes that come with puberty were actually pretty boring from what I remember, for most of the kids who sat through them.

    I dunno. I never felt like I was undereducated or uninformed about “actual sexual practices.” One of my middle-school buddies had access to his Dad’s vast collection of girlie mags, and occasionally I’d borrow one of them – he had so many he never missed them.

    Then, when I got my driver’s license of course I could drive into NYC all by myself, park the car and walk in the Village – where you could learn all about “actual sexual practices” just walking down the street at night! You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting someone engaging in some form of “actual sexual practice.”

    I don’t think I need anything else, I’m good.

    • Addendum inre: “Actual Sexual Practices” – When I lived in a big city a long time ago, I once had a girlfriend who was interested in practicing Psychologie Witchcraft. It’s very expensive. Anyway, she got this idea at one time that I might be something like Captain Robert Jones, i.e., turned on by alternate forms of “actual sexual practices.” She didn’t have access to a plethysmograph so one day she asked me to participate in a #Scientific experiment wherein we sat on the floor on big pillows while watching a mixed gay/straight porn movie to see if she could locate my “trigger moments” more accurately – using nothing but her slender, manicured and nail-painted hand.

      After a few relatively boring minutes watching some dudes do various things to each other, she thought she detected some Delta P. She said: “Did that turn you on?” I said: “What, you having your paws all over my [thang]? My goodness yes it does!”

      I’ll leave it up to your imagination what happened next. It was all for #Science, but I don’t know what it proved.

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