Queer History Goes Medieval . . . and Chaste.

Emily Hale thinks that feminism and conservatism can engage in productive dialogue (h/t Nick), and I hope I'm not the only one who feels the same way about conservatism and queer theory. Even apart from the fact that a family-values trad who doesn't know Stonewall from Stonehenge is like a neocon who doesn't know Shi'a from Sunni, there are things in queer theory that the anti-gay marriage side has every reason to get on board with. From Richard Dellamora's Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism, the story of Amis and Amile:

In the 1877 revision of the chapter ["Aucassin and Nicolette," from Studies in the History of the Renaissance], now called "Two Early French Stories," Pater has added a new element, The Friendship of Amis and Amile. While he describes this work as a thirteenth-century romance, the story exists in one version as early as the late eleventh century, and the version that he uses belongs to the genre of saints' lives. Although John Boswell has observed in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality that "there is no hint of sexual interest between the knights," he also notes that their love for each other explicitly takes precedence over every other commitment." [...] Friends from childhood, "the two children fell to loving one another so sorely that one would not eat without the other, they lived of one victual, and lay in one bed"; later they embrace and kiss when they meet as adults. Though these contacts are not sexual, they are physical. Body is important in their friendship.

Feminism put a lot of legwork into uncovering the hidden systems of power at the patriarchy's disposal, only to have conservatives of the next generation turn it around on them and suggest that, instead of insisting on equal access to obvious forms of power, feminists get creative about exercising less obvious forms. ("If that boy others you again tomorrow, you just other him right back.") The success of Boswell and Bray at finding homosexuality in medieval Europe is in danger of backfiring on gay marriage advocates in a similar way — if sexual interest between men were something that medieval texts had to be cagey about even hinting at, then we would read the story of Amis and Amile with a nod and a wink. The more success gay historians have in discovering queer texts from medieval times, the more credibility conservatives have in pointing to Amis and Amile's chaste passion as an alternative rather than a coded endorsement.