aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Out in the WNBA

I was at a lecture about Southern women in the 19th century last night. One story told was of a man who took his black mistress north to marry her. Those left behind tried to have the man ruled insane and his property confiscated.

A women at the time noted in her diary how odd it was that those pious people were fine with it when he had her as his mistress, but morally outraged by his marriage.

I didn’t even know who Sheryl Swopes was before this, but I’m glad she came out. James Joyner suspects that “her revelation that she wasn’t ‘born gay’ but rather ‘discovered’ it will not sit well with some in the gay activist community.”

I have no problem with it. Both can be true; you can be born gay and discover it late. But to answer James in kind, I suspect some on the Right—like those nineteenth century Southerners—were happier with Sheryl in the closet.