September 19th, 2012 at 4:12PM
  • Interviewer: But did Wilde identify himself as gay?
  • Stephen Fry: No, I don’t think he did. He talked about his nature — he was aware of what people’s natures were, to have sex with their own kind. He wasn’t an idiot — he was fully aware there was such a sexual orientation, but the noun “homosexual” did not yet exist in the English language. I think Wilde had that advantage that he lived in a time when people were not nouns. You didn’t ascribe labels to them. While he was aware of his nature and never apologized for it, he didn’t shout it from the rooftops in the manner of a modern actor with a Larry Kramer sort of gay sensibility. And I think those who try to read that into Oscar won’t find it there. You might as well wonder why Oscar didn’t have a Web site. He was more mature than our age is. I mean, he had very little interest in sins of the flesh, or he realized that it isn’t very important whether you call them sins of the flesh or not. The only things that matter are sins of the spirit. In that sense Oscar was quite religious. That’s what so ironic — the religious complain about sins of the flesh, but sins of the flesh are not the kind of thing that Christ would object to. What you do with your penis or your bottom or anything else is so supremely irrelevant in a moral sense. It’s what we do with our personalities and other people that matters.
  1. toomanyducttapetoomanyrope reblogged this from tinaofficial
  2. mediuming reblogged this from griottm
  3. magnificentflyingpig reblogged this from fuckyeahstephenfry
  4. twotickets reblogged this from stephenfrycunninglinguist
  5. digital-expressionism reblogged this from 1000reasonsnottostartmakingart
  6. jacejames reblogged this from hannibalkanibalas
  7. sarrieberrie reblogged this from hannibalkanibalas
  8. hannibalkanibalas reblogged this from curseisfoiledagain
  9. lucifersinging reblogged this from curseisfoiledagain
  10. curseisfoiledagain reblogged this from stephenfrycunninglinguist
  11. jvndlst reblogged this from stephenfrycunninglinguist
  12. izzyv1o reblogged this from insanity-by-proxy
  13. onefoot-in-thesea reblogged this from kitstokes
  14. kitstokes reblogged this from danikamcclure
  15. glassfamilytherapist reblogged this from chazspalace
  16. chazspalace reblogged this from danikamcclure
  17. colcase reblogged this from buildingmosaicsoutoflife
  18. danikamcclure reblogged this from the-sun-snarer
  19. the-sun-snarer reblogged this from walruswords
  20. walruswords reblogged this from buildingmosaicsoutoflife
  21. devilswearwestwood reblogged this from camorri
  22. vooluroo reblogged this from fuckyeahstephenfry
  23. deranged-souls reblogged this from mishacollins-tongue
  24. maestersarella reblogged this from mor-iarty
  25. agirlsri reblogged this from obsessedfool
  26. camorri reblogged this from accumulus
  27. accumulus reblogged this from adubs132
1,113 notes Source: salon.com
Short URL for this post: http://tmblr.co/ZBHmYyThw7vm
Follow @bricktop01