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Parting Glances: Slava! Il sodoma!

My favorite coming-out story is about Dennis, a friend and computer wizard who, before his retirement a few years ago, brought expertise to a nationally known local publishing company of research and library compendiums.
When in his mid-20s, Dennis – who now, 40-plus years later, says he's a religious skeptic, humanist, gayly proud – studied for the Russian Orthodox priesthood. Slava! (Glory!) Slava!
"At the time it seemed an intense authentic calling for me," he recalls. "Nonetheless, it was a troubled and confused time as well."
As a priesthood candidate, Dennis found himself emotionally attracted to other men on the narrow spiritual path. "Scripture says that too often thinking about sinning is as serious as committing the act itself. A no-win situation for would-be celibates."
Dennis decided, after much daily reflection and soul searching, that a priest's life was not really "my cup of unhoneyed tea – hot or iced." He left, as he puts it, "Without letting my right hand know what my left hand wasn't doing."
"If you can't serve the Almighty," reasoned Dennis at the time of his departure, "do the next best thing: join the State Department." (It helped that Dennis was fluent in Russian and – though not married or possessed of an even remotely believable girlfriend – still a virgin. Possibly straight. He hoped.)
Seemingly a new career door was ajar for him. That is, until Dennis was asked to take a lie detector test as a matter of State Department applicant review. "Have you ever had sexual relations with a man?" he was unsuspectingly questioned. "No," said Dennis, telling the truth. (He wanted to, but God wouldn't let him.)
Slava! Slava! The recording marker danced – "It chardashed all over the graph sheet," says Dennis – outing him as possibly with "homosexual tendencies" and not acceptable to the State Department – a candidate for blackmail.
(Years earlier, in a mid-1950s Sen. McCarthy-induced witch hunt, 325 homosexuals were dismissed from government service. It was not until after the Nixon years in the '70s that "known homosexuals" were eligible for obtaining a passport.)
"What the hell," says Dennis. "I'd never slept with a living soul – let alone been to bed with a guy – so I decided right there and then that if my sexual orientation was authenticated for me by the State Department, it was high time I got some action, with or without national security clearance."
On the subject of coming out: Possibly the first recorded act of public acceptance happened 460 years ago. The honor goes to Giovanni Bazzi, an Italian High Renaissance artist and wealthy fashon plate who, although married and a father, collected exotic birds and equally exotic young men found cavorting in his native Sienna. He also painted nude male saints. (Quite a market for tiny nimbuses I understand.)
Neighbors gossiped that Bazzi, "loved more than was decent." His friends nicknamed him "Il Sodoma," the sodomite. (When I was a Cass Tech High School art student, we learned of Il Sodoma quickly in art history class. Teacher Don Brackett winked slyly as a subliminal comment, but this was an historical two-point perspective we gay students quickly zeroed in on. At least I did. Slava!)
Bazzi also kept racehorses. One of these festooned fillies won an important annual race. Bazzi insisted that the winning horse and his – Bazzi's – boytoi jockey be trumpeted loudly through the streets of Sienna with shouts of Il Sodoma! Il Sodoma!
Shortly thereafter another filly – his daughter Faustina – demonstrating 16th century all-in-the-family values – married the painter's favorite model and jockey for a little competitive side-saddle riding of her own.
Win, place, and show me yours.

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