"To leave behind the hated but familiar masculine ways is like forsaking the world and going into a monastery or a leper house. To quit the world of trousers for the world of the brassiere is a kind of death, isn't it also comparable to suicide. A transsexual is thus a sort of monster and hero combined."
In the battle between imagination and mediocrity, Oscar Wilde makes an artistic defense of his homosexuality much to the chagrin of the literal-minded prosecutors who refuse to understand where he is coming from and are determined to corner Wilde at all costs. Since the Article 377 goes back to the year 1861, the prudish Victorian era, I thought it is only apt to quote a statement of Wilde from his trial, merely to denote that even a great artist could not escape the fate imposed on him by a stupid and hypocritical society.
"'The Love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the 'Love that dare not speak its name,' and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and 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. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."
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