Lennox Grant

?The love that dare not speak its name has come out, and ac­tu­al­ly now dares to be out­spo­ken. A�love de­f­i­n­i­tion at­trib­uted to Os­car Wilde in 1895, flash­es for­ward along­side terms coined for new­ly recog­nised, and new­ly cel­e­brat­ed, re­al­i­ties. Af­ter a pas­sage�to�Toron­to last month, I�may well be�writ­ing�as a lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al nev­er-see-come-see.

For I was tak­en by words. New words, words�for new hu­man pre­oc­cu­pa­tions, words more pre­cise­ly char­ac­ter­is­ing old hu­man in­cli­na­tions, new­ly un­der­stood. Cer­tain­ly new to me, a per­ma­nent res­i­dent of some­where far from the world cross­roads of ideas and ex­pres­sion. Os­car Wilde, play­wright, es­say­ist and nov­el­ist, for his sound­bites–short, sharp, and smart–was once�a lit­er­ary heart-throb.

The 1960s Port-of-Spain Pub­lic Li­brary,�the hard-copy equiv­a­lent of Google and Wikipedia to­day, had show­cased a pic­ture book about the tri­al of Os­car Wilde, which re­port­ed on his lat­er im­pris­on­ment in Read­ing Gaol, for�be­ing a "Sodomite." Wilde had been�ac­cused by the fa­ther of the young Lord Al­fred Dou­glas.�A con­stant�com­pan­ion�of Lord Al­fred, Wilde had sued the peer's fa­ther for li­bel.�

He end­ed up, how­ev­er, be­ing him­self tried and con­vict­ed for the prac­tice, or the rep­u­ta­tion, of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, then the ac­knowl­edged moral con­ta­gion of Sodom, the Bible's ul­ti­mate mea­sure of de­prav­i­ty, which al­so bore the civ­il stig­ma of a le­gal abom­i­na­tion. As a cham­pi­on of�that ac­cursed ori­en­ta­tion–the love that dared not speak its name–lit­er­ary celebri­ty Wilde was 38 when he be­gan a re­la­tion­ship with the 22-year-old Lord Al­fred.

Wilde of­fered a mem­o­rable de­fence, as he stood in the dock: "It is the no­blest form of af­fec­tion. It re­peat­ed­ly ex­ists be­tween an el­der and a younger man, when the el­der man has in­tel­lect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glam­our of life be­fore him." More than 100 years lat­er, new words are avail­able. Lord Al­fred could to­day be called a "twink," for be­ing "young and hot." His old­er men­tor-friend, a man of greater lit­er­ary and eco­nom­ic sub­stance, could earn the la­bel of a "Nu­traSweet dad­dy"–a health-con­scious up­dat­ing of "sug­ar dad­dy."

Such ad­di­tions to vo­cab­u­lary reached me, as some­one giv­en to pick­ing up strange and won­der­ful shells and rocks on any beach of lan­guage. In Toron­to, over days pre­ced­ing the June 28 Pride pa­rade, a hoard of such col­lectibles was avail­able from the hard-copy and dig­i­tal me­dia's build-up re­port­ing of a pa­rade that once was called sim­ply "Gay Pride."

Now, "gay" by it­self won't do. So I was ed­u­cat­ed by a 32-year old so­cial work­er who, op­er­at­ing in to­day's Toron­to, needs to know the nu­ances. He broke down the cat­e­gories that, once, were loose­ly sub­sumed un­der the broad head­ing of "gay," or "ho­mo­sex­u­al." The com­mu­ni­ty for­mer­ly so-called now claims dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in­to sub-sets cov­ered by the amaz­ing acronym, LGBT­TIQQS–les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al, trans­sex­u­al, trans­gen­der, in­ter­sex­u­al, queer, ques­tion­ing and two-spir­it­ed.

Nu­mer­ous syn­onyms and catch­words are ap­plied to the en­thu­si­asms now bur­geon­ing out as sex­u­al pref­er­ences.�So that, in the fine print of an­nounce­ments for shows, par­ties, and fo­rums, peo­ple pre­sum­ably find one an­oth­er, hav­ing been tagged in terms such as "dyke-iden­ti­fied," "trans-iden­ti­fied," "tran­ny," "trans­man,"�"in­ter­sexed," and "scen­ester." �I saw "cruise" used as a tran­si­tive verb, trans­lat­able as "to track." Be­fore spec­ta­tors es­ti­mat­ed at hun­dreds of thou­sands, 164 groups as­sem­bled to flow in�the Pride Pa­rade's rain­bow-flagged�riv­er of love.

The event tends to be com­pared with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val and�its Carib­ana de­riv­a­tive.�What I saw last week, how­ev­er, was a much more mul­ti-racial and so­cial­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive pa­rade of bands of men and women, ex­hibit­ing free­dom to ad­ver­tise va­ri­eties of love, for cen­turies con­demned, hap­pi­ly�now, "out­ed" and open.

Ban­ners an­nounced par­tic­i­pa­tion by the An­gli­can Church and the Unit­ed Church; the Uni­ver­si­ties of Toron­to, York and Ry­er­son; the city's po­lice and fire­fight­ers; and par­ti­sans both for and against Is­rael. Men in frilly pink min­is and tops il­lus­trat­ed "trans­gen­der;" a band of�most­ly mid­dle-aged men wore noth­ing at all�but shoes; ful­ly clothed women spec­ta­tors lined up to pose for pho­tos with them.

A Car­ni­val re­sem­blance is com­pelling in re­spect of the mu­sic trucks, ban­ners, floats, moko jumbies, bat wings, biki­nis, boas, and bare­back body men wear­ing plumed hel­mets, loin­cloths of chain mail, and car­ry­ing swords, ad­ver­tis­ing the Tro­jan con­dom brand. "Love is a bat­tle­field," said a large pink ban­ner in Toron­to's Pride pa­rade, in a de­c­la­ra­tion of ap­par­ent in­ter­na­tion­al rel­e­vance. On the fol­low­ing day, I re­ceived an e-mail mes­sage from a coali­tion clev­er­ly claim­ing the cov­er of a pres­tige-heavy T&T "art form." Caiso!

That's how they name their acronym, which stands for Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion as a con­sti­tu­tion­al right. The bat­tle­field of Tri­ni love that dare�not speak its name�had been�de­lin­eat­ed in a state­ment re­port­ed from Gen­der Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, sug­gest­ing�a�re­fusal of of­fi­cial�recog­ni­tion for�"same-sex unions, ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion."

Those were tak­en as fight­ing words by T&T's own GLBT, gay, les­bian, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der cit­i­zens. They at once formed the Caiso coali­tion. In T&T, too, love that dare not speak its name has out­ed it­self and its ad­her­ents will be speak­ing out, with oth­ers,�for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.