Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Continuing the theme, Peter Tatchell is pushing for this proposed Gays Museum for London (backed by all the major mayoral candidates except Frank Maloney, presumably), to be located at Bow Street Police Station, where Oscar Wilde was incacerated after his arrest. Find it pretty hard to get behind this idea of O.W. as a gay hero, to be honest. Of course, his imprisonment for his "crimes" is as close to the definition of breaking a butterfly on a wheel as you're going to get, but never forget that the only reason it went to trial is because Wilde insisted on taking the Marquis of Queensbury to court for his "slander". He was no martyr standing up for his beliefs whatever the consequences, he was trying to preserve his position in society. And let's be honest here, he was an extremely limited writer and his persecution has probably secured for him a place in history which would have been unachievable from his exhausting epigrams alone. In the other corner, Crisp, a man who was always true to himself and lived a genuinely brave life. There's no contest. And for the record, Quentin's funnier.
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