All three of the youthful gay political plays I saw this past month apply a contemporary, absolutist outlook to gay history: Either people are gay or they aren't. Such plays ignore the notion that past times, with their very different circumstances, might have compelled different solutions. The past offers alternatives that we tend to overlook: The same England that made Oscar Wilde into a gay martyr also produced Lord Arthur Somerset, who, during the Cleveland Street scandal, dodged the very bullet Wilde was to take by fleeing to France and living in exile. And it produced Edward Carpenter, who managed to become a gay rights crusader, living openly with another man, untouched by... More >>>