One
of the advantages of ‘those linguistically innocent days’, Alan
Sheridan correctly observes, was that people could perform homosexual
acts without naming them and ‘therefore regarded them as quite normal’.
By contrast, one of the unexpected results of the noisy debate about
homosexuality in our day is that only those who feel powerfully drawn to
same-sex love are sufficiently motivated to indulge in it at all;
casual bisexual encounters have disappeared, largely because the growing
wealth of Europe and America and the collapse of religion have meant
that heterosexual ‘dating’ now starts at puberty and no one (except
prisoners) has recourse to homosexuality merely because nothing else is
on tap. Similarly, working-class boys no longer have an automatic
respect for ‘gentlemen’ like Gide nor do they unquestioningly submit to
their whims.
Edmund White: "On the chance that a shepherd boy …", Review of Andre Gide: A Life in the Present by Alan Sheridan
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