FEATURE 34 | JULY 2015 By Otep Shamaya Fags, Dykes and the Rise of Human Civilization iStock_000005971175_Large. PENTHOUSE FORUM | 35 T oday, I scribe this from the dazzling white beaches of Aruba. The sun is high in the azure sky and a southern breeze whispers softly through the emerald trees. The beach sparkles like dazzling daytime fireflies under the blazing rays of the yellow sun. And next to me rests a vision of beauty. A woman with a beautiful mind and a body to match. We lounge beneath a Tunisian tent surrounded by cush- ions so soft they could make an angel cry. My beloved paramour sleeps gently beside me. Her long body is bronzed by the sun and her wavy brown locks gently cover her face and shoulders. After a few sips of my exotic tropical elixir, I remember that my fingers should be tickling the keys of my laptop and not running down the length of her spine. That’s where my lips belong. But I digress. Unlike many states in freedom-loving America, here in the Con- stitutional Monarchy of Aruba we won’t be persecuted for the carnal deeds we committed last night (and this morning). But rest assured, if the Holy Roman Church were hip to our intimacies, I’m sure they’d call for an exorcism. But I digress. Actually, none of this is factual. In truth, I write this from the sterile confines of a hospital bed. You may or may not know that I’m an avid rocket enthusiast. I know, a lesbian aeronautics engi- neer. Sounds unbelievable, like a bigfoot sighting! But two nights ago I finished a project I’ve been working on for five years. With- out revealing too much, it’s a personal flying vehicle that runs pri- marily on coconut oil, solar circuitry and bovine excrement. The initial test flights were successful and the level of excitement I felt was indescribably intense. I mean, we’re talking about revolution- izing travel for every single soul on the face of the planet here! My assistant and I packed his van and sped out to the desert. We arrived in the late afternoon, made camp and set up our test site. We slept hard and fast among the wild things that inhabited that strange land I woke in the early hours and began my initial flight preparation. Everything seemed perfect. I stood with this sleek contraption strapped to my back and gave the thumbs up. My assistant, again, reminded me that lesbians have no place designing rockets. I waved him off but this time gave him a differ- ent finger. He mashed the ignition switch hard and then BOOM! The damn thing exploded like a Tijuana firecracker. My glorious assistant had blended the fuel mixture improperly so one part of the craft detonated into a trillion pieces and the other screamed into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, that was the part I was attached to. So there I was, strapped to a flaming contraption of molten metal, my face and neck splattered with coconut oil and burning bovine excrement, hur- tling through the air at 900 miles per second over the east California desert. It soared high and long and then sput- tered and dropped into a cactus patch. As bad as I got it, I made out better than my assistant who, because of his proximity to the explosion, will never have eyebrows or be able to grow a proper beard ever again. Actually, I’m fine and wasn’t involved in a small rocket explosion. My actual duty here is to enlighten you on the many ways Gays and Lesbians have moved civilization forward. Again, I’ve used deception to lure you further into this article so that by the time we reach the list of those you should know, it won’t seem so laborious or textbook. The list will be as extensive as the edi- tors will allow, but I’ll do my best. So it is. To the meat. First, if you’ve checked your smart phone or your computer within the last few moments you can thank a GAY. Thank you GAY Alan Turing for invent- ing the computer. Thank you GAY Alan Turing for using your infinite genius to crack the Nazi enigma machine and help end World War II and for giving us all a way to watch porn, post on Reddit and troll Twitter from the anonymous safety of our homes. It’s too bad Mr. Turing wasn’t treated as the genius or hero he was but instead was forced by the British gov- ernment to be medically castrated for being a “poof” because homosexuality was illegal then. It didn’t matter that he helped end the war and saved thousands of lives. It didn’t matter that he invented the computer that would change the world. Two years after try- ing to medical- ly castrate the homo out of him, he com- mitted suicide. Perhaps this is too recent although maybe you saw the movie about Mr. Turing played by the glorious Benedict Cumberbatch. So let’s travel back in time a bit to another era, when Repub- licans and former Iranian leader Mah- moud Ahmadinejad claimed homosex- uality didn’t exist. In the 16th Century, Sir Francis Bacon helped advance civilization well beyond its expected potential. He’s considered “The Father of Modern Sci- ence” for devising a system for deduc- tive empirical research known today as the scientific method; he also originat- ed the phrase “Knowledge is Power.” But historians have chosen to omit his awesome GAYNESS for fear it would take away from his accomplishments. An absurd thought. But you can’t defeat invincible ignorance, although I’m stubborn enough to keep trying. 36 | JULY 2015 Alan Turing Fine Art Images/Heritage Imagesi/Getty Images But I digress. Let’s travel to the ancient era and discuss a gargantuan GAY badass con- sidered the greatest warrior-statesmen of ancient Thebes. The mighty Epami- nondas destroyed the military domi- nance of Sparta and transformed the balance of power among the Greek city-states by making Thebes a political juggernaut. Although very GAY—he had two boyfriends, Asopichus and Caphisodorus—he was an esteemed statesman and military tactician and a respected leader who liberated a group of Peloponnesian Greeks enslaved under Spartan rule for 230 years. It wasn’t just him. For 50 years dur- ing the 4th Century, a small force of 300 elite Theban soldiers left a path of broken bodies on battlefields across Greece, annihilated their enemies and scorched the earth without mercy. They were The Sacred Band of Thebes and were the core of the Theban’s mili- tary might. They also consisted of 150 pairs of GAY couples who vanquished all who stood against them. These men were not only honored for their mili- tary might but also for their love and vows to each other. Let’s not forget Alexander the Gay, er, Alexander the Great, King of the Ancient kingdom of Macedon. It’s said that he was a military genius. A lethal fighter and tactician who, before his 30th birth- day, personally c o m m a n d e d the Macedo- nian army and conquered and dismantled the powerful Per- sian Empire. He r e m a i n e d undefeated in battle during his lifetime and created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, which extended from Greece to Egypt and reached all the way into northwest India. To this day, his military tactics, logistics and strate- gic visions are taught and implement- ed, which has allowed our beloved America to remain a military super- power for more than 70 years. So thank a GAY for our own bad-assery, because Alexander’s greatest love was his boyhood friend and closest confi- dant, Hephaestion. A Macedonian nobleman, he was Alexander’s person- al bodyguard, a celebrated general, engineer and diplomat. He was tutored along with Alexander by Aristotle, who recognized their love as “one soul abiding in two bodies.” How’s your mind? Blown? Let’s move on to ART! Many of the master Italian Renaissance artists were won- derfully GAY including Donatello, Raphael and, surprise, Leon- ardo da Vinci. A genius math- ematician, sci- entist, scholar, e n g i n e e r , inventor, anat- omist, painter, sculptor, archi- tect, botanist and musician, he was argu- ably the GAY- EST badass of the lot. History tells us that at the age of 24, he and some friends were charged with sodomy involving a well- known male prostitute. The charges were dropped, most likely due to the powerful influence of the family of one of the other men accused. We also PENTHOUSE FORUM | 37 Alexander the Great Leonardo da Vinci DeAgostini/Getty GraphicaArtis/Getty Images 38 | JULY 2015 know his most b e l o v e d apprentice, a man named Salai, spent 25 years with Leonardo. He was described as “a graceful and beautiful youth with curly hair, in which Leonardo great- ly delighted.” Later, Leonardo would take on an assistant named Francesco Melzi, who was described as very beautiful and very much loved by da Vinci. Upon Leonardo’s death, Melzi inherited da Vinci’s artistic and scientif- ic works, manuscripts and collections. Lest we forget Michelangelo. Yep, he too was a GAY, a fact the Catholic Church has done a damn fine job of keeping hidden. A master sculptor, painter, architect, poet and engineer, he painted the Sistine Chapel and sculpted his masterpiece David before he was 30. His love for men is evident in his poetry. To a man named Cavalieri he wrote, “I feel as lit by fire a cold coun- tenance/ That burns me from afar and keeps itself ice-chill/ A strength I feel two shapely arms to fill/ Which without motion moves every balance.” Cavalieri replied, “I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you.” So if you ever get a chance to go to Vatican City and end up in the Sistine Chapel, just look up at all that artistic beauty, breathe in the hypocrisy and remember to thank GAY Michelangelo for it. Some of you might be thinking, “Of course those hummus-sucking Greeks and macaroni-munching Italians were dainty, limp wristed poofs. No surprises there.” Well, shame on you for conjur- ing such intolerant thoughts, but there’s more, gentle reader. Much, much more. Homosexuality has existed since humans stood upright. Archeologists have uncovered a female warrior bur- ied as a man dating from the Meso- lithic period. In 2011, archaeologists unearthed the 5,000-year-old grave of what they believe is the world’s oldest known GAY caveman. He was buried with all the trimmings and ornaments normally reserved for esteemed female burials. The earliest evidence of a gay couple comes from an Ancient Egyptian tomb of two male royal officials, Niankhk- num and Khnumhotep. Their effigies were in a pose common for a married couple and they likened themselves to Horus (God of the sun) and Set (God of the desert), who were also an intimate couple. Even the term Lesbian comes from the Greek island of Lesbos, the birth- place of Sappho, whom Plato regarded as the tenth muse. She was a teacher and priestess of a feminine love cult that celebrated women loving women in poems and song. In fact, not to be confused with muff-diver or carpet- muncher, the term Sapphic was once a more sophisticat- ed term for lesbi- an. After her death, ancient h o m o p h o b e s destroyed most of her writing. Today, only frag- ments exist. For you red- blooded Ameri- can patriots out there, the lyrics to “America, The Beautiful” were written by a full frontal Sapphic Sappho Francesco Melzi Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Leeimage/Corbis n a m e d Katherine Lee Bates. An Eng- lish pro- fessor at Wellesley C o l l e g e , she had a 2 5 - y e a r relation- ship with Katharine C o m a n , another Wellesley professor. So, the next time you’re belting out, “O beau- tiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain,” remember to thank a GAY for that. And yet, gentle reader, there’s even more. So much more. Next, we go where no man has gone before to discuss astronaut Sally Ride. At the age of 32 she became the first woman in space, and she remains the youngest American astronaut to travel to space. She served as the ground-based capsule communica- tor (CapCom) for the second and third space shuttle flights and helped develop the space shuttle’s robotic arm. She’s the only person to have served on both investigative com- mittees for the Challenger and Colum- bia space shuttle disasters. After her death in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, it was revealed that her partner of 27 years was a woman named Tam O’Shaughnessy, a professor at San Diego State University. Sally Ride is the first known LGBT astronaut. (If I really had an assistant for my rocket research, I’d fire his ass immediately. But I digress.) For you Old West fanatics, we can’t forget One-Eyed Charlie, a hard-drink- ing stagecoach driver known for his itchy trigger finger and quick temper and celebrated as one of the best stagecoach drivers in the Wild West. But after Charlie died in 1879, the cor- oner discovered he was actually a SHE. It’s believed she was the first woman to vote in a presidential election before women got the right to vote some 41 years later in 1920. But there’s still more dear patriots. Let’s venture, for a moment, into the civil rights movement. One of the men key to Martin Luther King’s elevation to leadership in the a n t i - s e g re g a t i o n movement was a man named Bayard Rustin. Rustin was not only African American during a time when lynching was a public sport, not only did he help advance nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to combat police violence, not only was he the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, not only did he initiate the 1947 Freedom Ride, he was also, you guessed it, a GAY. And as a GAY he was also a leading public advocate for gay Katherine Lee Bates Sally Ride Bayard Rustin Bachrach/Getty Images NASA Archive/Alamy Robert Maass/Corbis rights. In the ’50s he was arrested for an immoral homosexual act (whatever that is) and subsequently attacked as a pervert by adversaries including white segregationists and black power mili- tants. Undeterred, he continued to fight for equality for all. Twenty-six years after his death, he was posthu- mously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But it doesn’t stop there, dear patri- ots. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person to be elected when he ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervi- sors, and Leonard Matlovich, who received the Purple Heart for his service in the Vietnam War, was the first gay man to come out while serving in the U.S. Air Force. Should we discuss music? Three words. Freddie Fucking Mercury. Enough said. So the next time you’re at a football game and the entire stadium erupts into “We will, we will rock you,” remember to thank a fabulously tal- ented GAY for that. Now, all you fantasy baseball fanat- ics who rely heavily on the brilliant stat- istician Nate Silver better brace your- selves. Nate is, indeed, a GAY. He created PECOTA (a sabermetric system forecasting Major League Baseball player performance), that’s considered one of the most accurate sports fore- casting methodologies in the world. His gift for statistics and analysis extends to the political field. He cor- rectly predicted the vote in 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 Presidential elec- tion and correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races, leading Time magazine to name him one of their 100 Most Influential People in the WORLD in 2009. In the 2012 Presiden- tial election, he correctly predicted the outcome of all 50 states. Nate is openly gay and lives with his longtime partner Robert Gauldin. After seeing a series of flagpoles in Chicago memorializing various gay Americans, he stated he’d like to be remembered for being himself. “I don’t want to be Nate Silver, gay statistician, any more Leonard Matlovich Nate Silver Bettmann/Corbis David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images 40 | JULY 2015 than I want to be known as a white, half-Jewish statistician who lives in New York.” Yes, a day we all wish for. Finally, gentle reader, I must make a confession. I, too, am a GAY. A lady- loving, carpet-munching, muffdiver with a dastardly reputation for being a “recruiter.” I’m not sure that’s an entirely accurate title for me since all human fetuses begin from a female template (hence male nipples). My belief is that most humans are proba- bly bisexual with heavy tendencies toward one gender or the other and that true homosexuals and true het- erosexuals are actually rather rare. The women I’ve been with who have dated mostly men and for whom I’ve been their first Sapphic experience, admit to having tendencies for women but always feared how their friends or fam- ily would react. So I’m not actually recruiting anyone, I’m liberating them from their own fears and anxieties. Yes. That’s it. Though it does seem like some things are better for us GAYS with regards to public opinion on same-sex marriage, we still have some serious issues. As of 2012, it was still legal in 29 states to be fired for being openly gay. I know. Unbelievable. But it’s true. Lisa Howe (Tennessee), Vandy Beth Glenn (Georgia), Michael Carney (Mas- sachusetts), Jodi O’Brien (Wisconsin) and Peter TerVeer (District of Columbia) were all fired for being openly gay. In the 21st Century this seems to be beyond archaic. But this is still a savage nation in some places, poisoned by intolerance and governed by human colostomy bags. If you’re a resident of one of these states and find this appalling, then use your GAY smart phone or GAY com- puter to write an email or call your state Representative and demand they stop this heinous practice. Is your state one of these bastions of intolerance? Here’s the list: Alaska, Alabama, Arizo- na, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Mon- tana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylva- nia, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. And those who claim being GAY is a choice? They’re wrong. If it is, ask them when they chose to be straight, and watch their mind twist and shrivel trying to form an answer. I didn’t choose to be right-handed, blonde, green-eyed, freckled or this fucking talented nor did I choose to be Sapphic. Religion is a choice. Intoler- ance is a choice. Apathy is a choice. Love is not. PENTHOUSE FORUM | 41 Otep Shamaya is a GLAAD-nominated singer, songwriter and winner of BAFTA award and the MTV Music with a Message Award. An author and spo- ken word artist, she’s an advocate for equal rights, animal rights and spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Con- vention on behalf of Rock The Vote. Vandy Beth Glenn ZUMA Press/Alamy