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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Arthur C. Clarke
March 27th, 2008
On March 19, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke died at the age of 90.
Even if you never read science fiction, there are a handful of household names that are synonymous with the genre, and Arthur C. Clarke is prominent among them. His classics include Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars, and of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I plowed through a good chunk of Clarke’s fiction in my teen years.
But not only was Clarke a contributor of classics, a television host, and a promoter of space exploration, he was also among that class of early sci-fi writers who imagined technology that we take for granted today, including geostationary orbit for satellites in what is now called the Clarke orbit, cell phones, and the internet.
But what I did not know about Clarke, and what was not in most of his obituaries, was his sexual orientation. According to one of Clarke’s correspondents, author Toby Johnson,
He demurred about coming out publicly as gay, he wrote, because he felt this fact would be used to discredit his ideas. He was 61 at the time of Stonewall, already past the sexual prime in which it’s meaningful to identify oneself as gay.
He had a cute quip about not being gay: “At my age now,” he said, “I’m just a little bit cheerful.”
He wrote that he was quite fascinated with the role homosexuals have played down through time as revolutionary thinkers. (In our correspondence, he expressed great interest in C.A. Tripp’s book about Abraham Lincoln as gay.) He kept a private collection of writing which is not to be published until 50 years after his death. I’d wager the world is going to receive the open acknowledgement of his homosexuality and of his theory about gay consciousness as revolutionary come 2058.
Johnson’s story is confirmed by Clarke’s friend, Kerry O’Quinn, publisher of Starlog:
Yes, Arthur was gay – although in his era that wasn’t the term. As Isaac Asimov once told me, “I think he simply found he preferred men.” Arthur didn’t publicize his sexuality – that wasn’t the focus of his life – but if asked, he was open and honest.
It is sad that this luminary was not more open about his orientation, though not surprising considering his generation. And it is discouraging that newspapers couldn’t get beyond his “cheerful” quip to report accurately on his life.
But to those who think that gay people should be exported because “homosexuality is destructive to society” I present a man whose life enriched the world. Now give back your cell phone.
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