🏳️‍🌈🏺 2-GAY IN HISTORY (Bible 4)🏺🏳️‍🌈 “your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26) There are queer people in the Bible hiding in plain sight in the text. None is written with more intensity, repetition, and emotional excess than the relationship between David and Jonathan, son of Saul. When they first meet, the text tells us: “The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” The Hebrew nefesh (soul/life/self) is “knit” or “bound,” followed immediately by a covenant and a dramatic exchange of clothing and weapons—royal symbols. Samuel expounds on this love again and again: “Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.” (1 Samuel 20:17) When they part in secret, they share an ambiguous kiss: “They kissed each other and wept together—David wept the more.” (1 Samuel 20:41) And when Jonathan dies, David’s grief becomes poetry: “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26) (8:1:26) That last line has echoed for three thousand years. Ancient interpreters did not avoid it. Rabbinic tradition held David and Jonathan up as the model of enduring love—“a love not dependent on anything” (Mishnah Avot 5:16). Early modern scholars were more cautious, but many agree on this much: the language is intentionally charged. As Martti Nissinen puts it, the narrative “leaves the possible homoerotic associations to the reader’s imagination.” Is this a sexual relationship? The text never says so, but it is clearly homoerotic. It is more intimate, embodied, and emotionally elevated than nearly any other bond in the Bible. For queer readers across centuries, David and Jonathan have functioned as a mirror: proof that the Bible knows same-sex love that is loyal, covenantal, public, and mourned without shame.

🏳️‍🌈🗓️🕺🪩Fifth Saturday Disco Party🪩🕺🗓️🏳️‍🌈

🏳️‍🌈🏺 2-Gay in History 🏺🏳️‍🌈 “All they that love not tobacco & boys were fools” — Marlowe (quoted in the Baines Note) Christopher Marlowe is sometimes theorized to be the secret real identity of Shakespeare (he wasn’t), but he is so good he inspired Shakespeare, & if Marlowe had been able to write more than six plays, he’d be just as famous. Of those, you have heard of Doctor Faustus (who makes a deal with the Devil), Tamburlaine, which normalized blank verse & morally ambiguous characters. These plays inspired Shakespeare’s earliest work, as he wrote Henry VI as direct reference to them. But Marlowe let his queerness shine through in Dido, & in Edward II about a gay king: Shakespeare responded with his gayest play Richard II, possibly as a memorial to Marlowe. Because Marlowe died in 1593 at only 29…probably because he was an atheist, badass SPY! Marlowe, unlike Shakespeare, was very well educated on scholarships, but while attending Cambridge he was almost not awarded his master’s because of his long mysterious absences & suspected Catholic sympathies, but the Small Council intervened, directed by Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster Francis Walsingham. He traveled the Catholic continent, getting arrested & making connections as the newly Protestant England was facing religious invasion from their orthodox neighbors. Each time, powerful members of the Queen’s inner circle intervened to get him released and laud his service. But finally accusations of something worse came out about Marlowe, as a close friend (possible ex-boyfriend) revealed under torture that Marlowe wasn’t Catholic or Protestant, but a gay atheist. Arrested, he was released again, but now with Francis Walsingham recently dead, Marlowe was invited to a private party with three other suspected spies whom he had worked with before. Marlowe was suspiciously murdered — though there are fringe theories that these spies helped Marlowe fake his death. Regardless, we have precious few works by our gay atheist Elizabethan playwright. After his death, Marlowe’s theater company, Lord Strange’s Men, hired Shakespeare full-time and reorganized as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

Still closed for Wednesday 1/28 🏳️‍🌈🍿♟️🎧Reopening Thursday (A Tuesday Redo)🎧♟️🍿🏳️‍🌈 We will be open with a special THIRSTY’s THURSDAY— a Board Game Night in the Lounge and Vinyl in the Bar (A Tuesday Redo) And we will show the very gay Shakespearean Era play Edward the 2nd (see the history post), the 1992 amazing post modern film that stays true to the original Christopher Marlow play playing on the screens Free POPCORN, board games, Vinyl and movies for Thursday. This Saturday will be a DISCO PARTY with DJ Amy Alderman!!!