Comments on: The Daily Agenda for Monday, October 22

By: Soren456

Soren456 — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:15:54 +0000

Bosie Douglas in later life became a man whom you’d want to avoid.

As a youth, however, he was not just physically attractive (in the opinion of many), but he was an exceptional poet and writer, and a quite competent match and companion for Oscar Wilde. In other words, he was a pretty boy with a substantial brain; Wilde had more than a single reason to find him attractive.

I’ve said before that I would love to have been a fly on the wall to overhear their conversation. I think it would have been remarkable.

By: Ben in Oakland

Ben in Oakland — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:43:51 +0000

The actual message from Queensbury referred to “posing as a somdomite.” The extra letter was apparently a big joke to Oscar and his circle. Bosie had a lot of issues with the Pater, as did his older brother, who was apparently also gay, much to Queensbury’s very butch distress. Oscar’s friends advised him not to pursue the libel suit, but Bosie really had it in for Dad. From everything îve read, he was quite the drama queen.

there was an American writer whose name escapes my aging brain– Stewart something or other, who was active in Gertrude Stein’s circle. He apparently slept with Bosie when he was a young man, simply so that he could say, “I slept with a man who slept with Oscar Wilde”.

I simply can’t imagine. However pretty Bosie may have been, he seemed to be a fairly repellant character.

By: Midwestern mom

Midwestern mom — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:33:47 +0000

Koop’s message helped, but even schools that tried to follow his advice didn’t always do a good job. I was ferrying my very young kids home from school one day and they talked about the AIDS discussion in class. They said they were told over and over the things that couldn’t cause it. I asked if they were told what did, and they said no. I looked back and them, and the poor things were terrified! They’d realized information was being held back deliberately. As far as they could tell, this disease was transmitted by some literally unspeakable means, and their imaginations were going wild.

So I said, “People catch it from having sex with someone who has it, using bad drugs, the kind they don’t get from doctors, and blood transfusions, but they’re fixing that last one so it doesn’t happen any more.”

I never forgot how relieved they were. They didn’t ask more questions. It was a big lesson to me. Just because a kid is too young to hear all the details about sex doesn’t mean you can’t say the word around them. They’ll absorb what they’re ready to learn and ignore the rest. If they need more info, they’ll ask, just the way they do with any other topic. Speaking clearly demystifies the whole subject. Hiding information creates fear even when you’re trying to dispel it.

This, of course, is a lesson lost on those who refuse to accept facts that contradict their worldview.