Homosexuals ancient and modern

There's that famous scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Carrie lists for Charles the number of sexual partners she's had. I know lots of straight people who were horrified by that scene but I suspect - certainly for men of my generation - that many, many sexual partners over the years is usual for homosexuals. In Cucumber the young Freddie and Dean seem always to be having sex with different guys, sometimes multiple guys at the same time . So I'm highly sceptical of assertions such as those made by our esteemed Moderator that more people should be exposed to ("normal") gay couples. Is there any such thing? I know few couples who have been together for more than a handful of years and they all have what's known as an "open" relationship. Is that a "normal" relationship? I doubt it's a heterosexual norm. The most common term applied to straight people who stray is "cheating"

I was prompted to these musings less by Surfcrest's post than by a recent review of a new biography of the economist Maynard Keynes - a near contemporary of Alan Turing but one who came to a very different end. Note that word in the headline to the review - "shocking"

He was promiscuous and in Edwardian times, as now, there was plenty of cruising, if you wanted it. And Keynes did. He went "feasting with panthers" in railway carriages, Cambridge colleges, and across London тАУ Soho and Bloomsbury were centres of this demi-monde, as were public parks and baths. One list reveals his catholic tastes: "Stable boy of Park Lane; The Swede of the National Gallery; The Soldier of the baths; The French Conscript; The Blackmailer; sixteen-year-old under Etna; Lift boy of Vauxhall; Jewboy; Grand Duke Cyril of the Paris BathsтАж" He had 65 encounters in 1909, 26 in 1910, 39 in 1911тАж

That's more like it!

I read the recent census of a First World country recently. A question allowed same-sex couples to indicate that that's how they regarded themselves. A tiny percentage of what I'm estimating to be the adult homosexual population of the country, a miniscule 10%, claimed to be part of a same-sex couple

[fountainhall]

I know few couples who have been together for more than a handful of years and they all have what's known as an "open" relationship. Is that a "normal" relationship? I doubt it's a heterosexual norm. The most common term applied to straight people who stray is "cheating"

I just had an email from friends who live in Canada. They decided to get married after 44 years being together. Good friends who live in Hong Kong got married last year in New York after being together for 30 years. And the friends I'll stay with in Sydney later in the year have been a couple for 27 years.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is anything like the norm, but it does suggest there are more very long term gay relationships than we might expect. As for open relationships, there seems to be a 5 - 6 year period of monogamy whereafter 'open' can often become a sort of norm. As for straight guys, though, 'cheating' may be one term. For some, especially in Asian societies, 'maintaining a mistress or three' is surely more acceptable!!

There's an interesting article in the Australian gay magazine Star Observer on the difference in voting habits between gay men and lesbians. Gay men are less Green-leaning than lesbians (obviously far superior brain power among the men).