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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
It's only a slight, tasteless exaggeration to say that the British empire itself was built on buggery. Buggery, or at least the ticklish thought of it, permeates barracks, messes and boarding schools, the latter of which were self-consciously modeled on the warrior homosexuality of ancient Sparta. Waterloo was won not just on the playing fields of England but also in her dormitories. In the 18th and 19th centuries, "effeminacy" in England -- the "fop," for example -- was a function of being too interested in the ladies. Or just of being French. Winston Churchill, a former First Sea Lord (so he should know), famously described the Royal Navy's traditions as being nothing more than "rum, sodomy and the lash"; the first leading of course to the second and thence to the third tradition. One of the largest Imperial possessions, the continent of Australia, was literally founded on sodomy: It began life as a "penal" colony, and as late as 1821 men outnumbered women 15 to 1 in New South Wales. The records are full of lashings handed out to men caught carrying on behind, a futile attempt to discourage the unnatural vice. Australia, you see, really was the arsehole of the world.
The transportation of convicts to Australia was eventually ended in large part because of the loud and bitter complaints from clerics and respectable Australians -- there were some, apparently -- about how widespread the sin of sodomy was among prisoners and how this was lowering the tone of the continent. Perhaps because of an Australian guilty conscience, or ancestral sore arse, today it is a well-known Australian-born media magnate who is most keen to use the "Carry On up the Valet" scandal to ridicule the British in general and bring down the monarchy in particular by lashing them in his newspapers around the world. The New York Post recently ran the puerile headline "PRINCESS CHARLES." I'd like to see him tell those Outback sheep shearers there's something essentially effeminate about a spot of situational sodomy.
Of course, being British we don't need Australians to whip us -- we like to punish ourselves for our favorite pleasures. Not only with lashes; the occasional hanging was also handed out for carrying on behind. Oscar Wilde, of course, was famously given two years' hard labor for "gross indecency" with a member of the lower orders (though arguably his real crime was giving sodomy a good, well-mannered, literate name). When male homosexuality in England and Wales was finally decriminalized by Parliament in 1967 -- against the loud protests in the House of Lords of Field Marshal Montgomery, the famous empire homo of El Alamein -- the armed forces and merchant navy were exempted. In other words, much of the sodomy going on in the United Kingdom remained completely illegal and therefore still rather enjoyable.
These days Britain no longer has an empire. Its army and navy have shriveled, and in recent years it has become more civilianized and coed. Consequently, in place of the noble lash we now mix our pleasure in buggery jokes with hypocrisy, phony moralism and faux-seriousness. Hence this recent carry-on at the palace has been widely depicted, by liberal and conservative, republican and monarchist, tabloid and broadsheet newspapers alike, as "the worst crisis since the death of Diana" and one that seriously "threatens to bring down the House of Windsor." So the uncorroborated allegation, by an alcoholic ex-servant with a documented penchant for uncorroborated sightings of homosexual acts -- rather like the British media and public, in other words -- that he saw Charles being intimate with a male valet is going to end hundreds of years of British monarchy? As Kenneth Williams would put it: "'Ere! Stop messin' abaht!"
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of the allegations (which no one has gone on record as saying they believe) the truly shocking thing would be if a member of the royal family, former public schoolboy, and former serving officer in the British Army had never had sexual encounters of any kind with other males. What kind of bloody pansy would that be? A life of pristine heterosexuality might be suitable for the delicate sons of the suburban middle classes -- and contemporary Australians -- but hardly for a future king of England.
But the press in England today, even the popular press, is irredeemably suburban and middle-class, or owned by Australians, and the alleged act, which even if it did happen would be utterly inconsequential, consensual and legal, has been widely described as "ghastly" and "shocking." Even the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, a professionally politically correct figure, saw fit to talk about this "revolting and sordid gossip," although if the gossip revolved around an allegation of royal naughtiness with, say, a willing black female servant instead of a white male one, he would be admonishing himself for his own rash choice of words.
Some have prissily suggested that if there is any truth to the rumor it means that a) Charles is gay or at least bisexual and b) this will cause major constitutional problems for the heir to the throne, as the English monarch is also the head of the Church of England.
As you may have heard, the Church of England has been pulling its hair out lately -- and scratching its eyes out -- over the issue of homosexuality and the consecration of the openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire. Until Charles helped us out, most of our buggery jokes lately have revolved around the "split," "rupture" and "schism" that the "big issue" of homosexuality is threatening to cause in the Anglican "base."
Leaving aside the issue that a spot of male-male sodomy does not necessarily make you "gay" or even particularly "bisexual," but perhaps nothing more than slightly hung-over and embarrassed the next morning, the Anglican Church should get down on its knees and thank the Lord for buggery, since without it half the church would have nothing to do on Saturday night -- and nothing churchy would ever get on TV or in the newspapers. In the largely secular United Kingdom, hardly anyone gives a toss of holy water anymore what the Anglican Church thinks about anything -- except homosexuality. Divorce, abortion, adultery, drugs, underage sex -- forget it. Who cares what the god-bothers' opinion is? But buggery? Oh, yes, let's get the dean of Big Bottomly Cathedral in the studio now, quoting from Leviticus.
This isn't because we're impressed by their theological arguments or their serious, pallid faces, but rather because, as you know, we find men in frocks on telly talking about sodomy a real hoot. As the blessed Mr. K. Williams, archbishop of Carrying On Behind, would put it: "Ooh! Matron! Take them away!"
