“This is the first time in the history of our republic that a senior White House adviser, an alter ego of the president, has ever been charged with this alleged crime.” Peter Navarro

This is the first time in history that that reaction was required because the January 6, 2021, insurrection was the first in history that action was done.

When Cain killed Abel, the punishment for that was unprecedented.

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For the Most part, although Kinsey put gender and sexual orientation on a sliding scale, he was doing so in the time in which he lived with the people living then and, although his research and conclusion may be correct according to available evidence, historical conditions, perhaps read about in sources not available or the potential interview subjects too wary to come out, his conclusion are not perfection.

The Romans had structured their civilization on stability. There was no use working your life away hoping to leave what you accumulated to specific people as opposed to having your life’s work a grab bag for any and all who are left behind. There would chaos, never ending chaos.

After all, in spite of some people’s best efforts they may be the father to many children by many women. Who gets the stuff?

When it came to just living your best life, the Romans did not care with whom you slept provided it was clear in the law that the only issue that will inherit anything unless otherwise specified would be the first born male child of a legally sanctioned marriages. Blood was legally thicker than water.

As can be seen by the Greeks, when it comes to sex, we have so labelled and compartmentalized it that it has the people in society getting into everyone else’s business, but it was not so in those days. A person could give into any temptation, but at some point, if they wanted to insure a clean line of succession and inheritance, a person would have to enter a legally binding marriage contract, remaining free to follow any desire so long as duties to the wife and offspring are taken care of because to not do so could be used in what should have been unnecessary litigation regarding the worthiness of the heir. There may have been romance, but not getting Rome all tied up in endless litigation, was a major factor in marriage with the usual arranged ones to keep and increase fortunes. If the claimants to the inheritance want to kill each other to be left with it, those cases can be dealt with as murder trials, quick and limited, not those never ending business cases that never seem to resolve.

The Catholic Church may downplay it , but it cannot deny it though it would like it not to come up, eventually developed a ritual where same sex couples, knowing there would be no issue, except in rare cases, and so unable to get a civil marriage because there was no need for one, instituted a ceremony for same sex couples, blessing their relationships. It s an attempt to have all its members of the church welcomed and if the state would not honor a same sex union, in Jesus’s name, the church will raise up the relationship. The church might now give some excuse why such blessings were nor real ones while it continues to bless animals on a specific day, fishing fleets on another, religious items bought in gift shops, weapons of war, and any inanimate object someone light like, I have seen the things the faithful thrust in front of a priest seeking it be blessed, but somehow blessing a same sex couple was a step too far. The weapons one should have been, so that attests to the principle or lack thereof.

But it cannot deny its true history.

Over time this “civil marriage” seemed to be lacking and those who could get married in city hall wanted the church to give theirs a little spiritual boost, and the church began the sacrament of marriage denying it to those who had been the reason for it because countries were being formed and the new monarchies killed or let live according to who conformed the closest to what kept them in power. And, as the institution became larger and positions in it became the alternative to no inheritance since you were second in line and the heir selfish, and could mold the church and people to become your taxpaying citizenry, political views overpowered and replaced some fundamental and traditional firmly held religious beliefs.

A careful examination of the Historical record shows that when religion and politics wed, things like same sex activity needed to be regulated to ensure there was conformity and a continual resupply of the population could be met. If same sex coupling was allowed to continue, it would decrease the number of those needed to keep the monarch and all who benefited from his personage and largess in power as feudal armies, and the whole feudal system depended not on humanity, but a steady supply of people to send into battle and tax in order to do that. Politics often uses religion and vise versa when beneficial to those who gain from the power of either.

When same sex couples were discovered in the act, although both people might be punished, the more ostentatious kind was meted out to the one who had either, in the case of a dominant Lesbian, usurped the male role while in a male couple the harsher punishment, burning at the stake was standard, was given to the one that assumed the woman’s role and demeaned his sex.

Like Catholics and Protestants between Henry VIII and Cromwell, where you stood sexuality and gender-wise depended on monarchical tastes.

When Psychoanalysis started up, although the concept was a good one, in order to work, there had to be a normal and an abnormal, and the only delineation was that what the founders of psychoanalysis did was normal, while what they neither did nor were attracted to or found objectionable, was abnormal. They had to take human sexuality that was boundless and put it into boxes.

The term “Homosexuality” with all its assigned baggage did not come about until 1869, and then being normal and abnormal could be measured and people put in cubbyholes.

Most people are not aware that as the talk of psychoanalysis began to enter common conversation, non-Homosexuals wanted to know what they were called, and, so, in spite of the idea that their behavior was the norm, they were labeled Heterosexual.

It, like Homosexual, was coined to label an invented category.

The Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology recognizes that as our initial goal is to find Homosexual activity on whaling ships, the reality is that that designation only began when whaling was becoming a slowly dying industry and only when the artificial normal/abnormal divide was invented, so the possibility exists that even as we look back and view examples of male/male interaction on whaling ships looking for the Homosexuals, we may actually be rediscovering that there really never was and still is not l aux natural, a binary until we invented one and these men were not involved in Homosexuality but in sex.

So here we are at the fun part.

Society’s ruled did not apply on board a ship with its own micro-society. It was only when you returned to port that you had to abide by community standards, and communities can become quite judgmental and condemning if properly influenced.

While looking for Homosexuality, we might actually prove that Non-binary is the normal human condition.

Otherwise, if Heterosexuality is our natural state, how can one book in the library overpower it.

It might just turn out that all the gender studies and all the arguments and actions are not introducing anything new, but actually bringing us back to how it had always been.

Unlabeled naturalness.

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In previous blogs I have written about the times, when transcribing manuscripts at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I have come across some innocuous item that catched my attention because there was just something about it, and where pursuing that lead went, sometimes finding an accepted version of history needs to be corrected.

I became personally involved in the reclamation of history from those who have revised it according to personal, religious, and political beliefs, lack of understanding os a person or event’s significance, or, as in my cased having terms and events softened for the comfort of those reading the history. You do not get the feel of the historic moment is, having been callked “faggot by a politician in a very public forum loses something if that quote is reduced to, “He called him the F-word). 

No, he didn’t.

Between what I had been experiencing with my transcriptions and seeing my own history telling a story unfamiliar to me about a person I was not, and with the initial announcement that the last Gay bar on the South Coast of Massachusetts was closing, signaling the need for such places has lessened as society became more educated, I saw a need to begin collecting the history of the Gay Community on the South Coast and to that end spoke to leadership of the New Bedford Whaling Museum about the idea and wrote to the Network of leaders of various organizations in the city who has appointed itself as the representatives of and the speakers for the Gay Community without asking us if that was acceptable.

I have written about their insincere response to inquiries about a history committee and faced the false approach of the organization’s need to look good by claiming they had already implemented something, but whose actions related to it are insulting dismissive and reveal this is of no real interest, and after previously sending the ship log entry that so far seems to still hold the title of the first actual mention of Homosexual activity on a whaling vessel all over cyberspace making claiming the discovery tiara, and, although not being contradicted in my claim received information among which was a log entry dated 50 years before the events I had found but discovered after mine as a researcher was compiling climate data from the weather notations in 19th Century whaling log books, and some general comments from all who responded that can be summed up that there had to be but no one has found a reference.

Having had experiences as a teacher where an educational sound and beneficial program is introduced, the unfamiliarity of the person whose blessing is sought but withheld because they just don’t get it, I set up a meeting with the President and Head of Curation at the New Bedford Whaling museum to discuss a way to collect more such entries and gather this information and anything related to it to be made available to researchers, expecting to be in volved in some academic and frustrating meeting.

To my surprise, after having the differences in museums and research institutions and how a museum would house and archive discoveries but was not set up to discover was explained to me, the process of having an entity to collect such information and archiving it at the museum began. It has to be separate from but a close partner with the museum.

It was a role I thought the existing committee that had yet to meet and will, perhaps again in six month  would want to play especially with looking way back into the city’s major claim to historical fame, whaling, and finding us there.

I could die tonight.

The process here was having a second log book entry forwarded to me, a meeting set up and held with two major players at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, coming up with a name, and, as much of a Techno-Peasant as I am, with the help of two gentleman at Google, establishing a domain name, a website, and an email address so people can send anything they might find. 

And within less than two weeks of my first approaching the Whaling Museum, the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology was born with the web address www.gaywhalers.org.

I chose to call it an institute as a center implies a central physical location, and my apartment cannot be that place.

I used Non-Hetersexual in the title as before, during, and after the present time our understanding of human sexuality has grown and we are learning of new variants constantly. I don’t care what you are, if it is not Heterosexual you’re in.

Those who remember record stores and as the result of someone saying, “I don’t know the name but it goes….” and everyone in the store, employees and customers, help in the attempt to remember, will understaand why, rather than have people try to remember some complicated list of names or the correct letters in the alphabet, I just went with Gay.

One word, three letters, easy to remember. It was also the word I fought under.

Simplicity.

Archival Archaeology involves going back into accepted history to discover what was mistakenly omitted, what was changed, or what was modified to make those unpleasant moments in history more palpable to modern times, omitted and disguised because of the personal, political, and religious beliefs prevalent at the time, or simply revised for any number of reasons. It involves restoring the vocabulary at the time to it was, after it has been modified by those preferring comfort over fact.

It brings events and people to light for a full understanding. 

It corrects the “historical record” and restores history to what was, warts and all, not what is wanted, and sometimes can prevent the passing on of purposeful or accidental revisionism by making the facts known before misinformation sets in.

We safe the past and the people.

In my own case, had I not been able to correct the errors in my own story, all that would have been real in what I had seen would have been my name.

Presently, the Institutes attention is on whaling crew men because that is where my interest is at the moment and it was in whaling that we found some hidden people. The possibility is that as more people get involved and more leads have to be followed, the archaeology will spread to other areas.

Some of the local families of prominence who had begun the city as a small sea port and guided it through its hay day had what in old times might be referred to as a Skeleton in the closet which, with research, might actually have been the other half of a committed relationship.

The page is in its early stages and it is hoped that knowing at least that the idea for the research has been mentioned, those interested will move.

The institute does not control anything. It does not direct, nor does it assign.The only person who can pass judgment on the value of a led followed is the one following it and will see whether or not it ends up somewhere predictable or, better, surprising. 

Eventually I will add a forum page, but that sounds like a complicated task so it is an expectation at the moment where people can exchange ideas and finds and, perhaps, researchers will discover others with the interest.

It also answers the basic question when someone has found something interesting, “Now what do I do with it?”

This is just one attempt to get the ball rolling and if something better comes along based on its ability to find hidden history and not on being able to control a process, assume the process, and limit what could have been, either this institute will fold, or someone with a better approach than clearing house collecting and being a conduit between research and a museum is welcomed o keep i going in is bs form as his is no a shool assignment with a due date, by what will be an ongoing process as history tends to get longer with time. 

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In the present political climate, these are not good times for minorities whether based on race, gender, or any combination of them. The Supreme Court has been stacked and Clarence Thomas has expressed an idea that all un-enumerated rights, those not specifically implied in such statements that the all men are created equal with Creator bestowed rights or specifically stated ones in the Constitution must be revisited for removal.

And with this attitude and a GOP controlled House, the process of rights being challenged, mostly on religious grounds beginning with Trump’s initial anti-GLBT moves commencing at the beginning of his administration in 2017 with the process guaranteed to continue under the present life long Supreme Court Justices appointed by him, Women and Gays have lost greatly and there are more losses to come.

I completely understand the young people’s horror at this, especially as seen by the increase in the number of social media posts and memes demanding someone do something. Often, they seem so horrified that attending a rally or any of a series of regularly held ones is out of the question because it calls for visibility and action.

Each time I advertised for people to gather at a major city intersection for two hours one day a week for 6 weeks. I got a lot of likes, encouragement, expressions of support, and memes advising what must be done. At the once-a-week sit outs it was usually me and my Kindle with the occasional passer-by asking questions and getting answers and misinformation corrected.

Did the same thing one week for five days in a row recognizing that , perhaps, with the one day sit outs I might have picked a day good for my schedule but not that of others, offered a choice of day or days. Lots of passers-by, some good conversations, a dollar from a woman who could hardly speak English, letting me know she was donating to me an old man in a chair begging for money, but, otherwise, again, just me.

Posting any pictures after any of the sit outs, I got a lot of likes, bravos, praise which I suppose is supposed to be enough. The public does not see the posts that demand change,that are strong in the images and language, but this Keyboard Combatant approach is not working.

At those occasions when groups of Gay people are gathered and the present situation is being discussed, the self-initiated lectures on why the older generations of Gays have do idea what the younger generation is going through or they would be more active in protecting those rights. We elders just have no idea what it is to be young and Gay and facing loss of rights.

What they seem to forget, or ignore, is that the older Gays are losing the same rights as the youth. We are losing together and action must go beyond self pitying claims of no one understanding that come across like the Christians claiming they are persecuted because they cannot discriminate but have to follow the laws like the rest of us.

Those rights being lost came about because people fought for them, died for them, lost their careers for them. They were not always there like they were supposed to be and we did not get them because of other people’s largesse. We got them because we fought for them.

It is one thing to be losing that which you had inherited from others; it is another to lose that which you had because you had fought to get them for yourself, your contemporaries, and the future.

I, a Boomer, spent 12 years fighting the Homophobia in the Buckle of the Bible Belt to have Gay students protected in all policies and watched as one class entered first grade and graduated high school 12 years later as the first Gay students to go their whole public school careers included in policies, and then got to see the rights of the protected Trans students removed because the locals handed control of the discussion to national groups with their way of handling things who then went on to presenting their usual boiler plate arguments to keep those rights without once referring to the school district that had total protection with no harm of any sort being caused by that.

For the students in that school district, and the state it is in, this was a betrayal and the loss devastating to the future students. There were the usual memes, the “if I was there” style reactions, demands that someone do something, but then things calmed  and all the other letters of the Rainbow Alphabet and stripe on Whatever the popular pride Flag is now just took it in stride as they still had their rights.

They had not fought for those rights. They had been given them by the generation they claim is the biggest detriment to the Gay Community who fought for them knowing they themselves would not benefit, but, in the future, students would not have to go through what they had.

We knew what it was like not having those rights and we know the cost of getting them.

I had some rights when in Boston, got more in Los Angeles, lost them when i moved to Oklahoma, and at the age if 62, after my adult years fighting for them, I got my rights when I moved back to Massachusetts where anyone under the age of 30 had had rights as Gay people longer than I did, and I had fought for them. I have only had rights as a Gay man for all of 12 years. In this process I have both won and list my rights

Although at the time I was advocating for student protection I was aware that with political and religious machinations I would probably be removed because of the old killing the messenger kills the message, and actually was. I had to fight in court to be reinstated. The chanevwritge in the school policy would never affect me as, at the time, I was a Boomer in my fifties but knew the inclusion was the right thing do do and after an over 40 year career in Gay Rights Activism, If I was the one to have to do it, so be it.

Most of the students who benefited from the advocacy were born into the rights and took them for granted and lost them.

The issue was getting the rights we as a Community should have, not just ones that benefited myself. I know some very wonderful activists whose work was only realized after their deaths even as they had spent their adult lives fighting for them, if for themselves great, if just for those yet to come, that was great too.

They never saw what they had won, and, for the most part, those who have those rights take them for granted ,erasing the work of these people as they allow the rights to be taken away assuming a . meme is all that is needed.

Maybe I have become a curmudgeon after some wild experiences, but like the wrinkles, gray hair, and extra pounds I earned it.

Remember. The young are losing rights they have had. Elders are losing the rights they fought for, got to enjoy for a minute because they are being taken away and too many among us abet this.

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