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Those Not Gay Husbands
To the Editor:
Commenting on your “BTW” squib about
the TLC show,
My Husband’s Not Gay
[March-April issue], I finally watched the
show on my DVR. I was surprised at how
open these guys were about their gayness. I
thought it was refreshing to see someone try
to live such a tightly balanced life.
As to what they got out of it: When the
one single guy said he wanted a wife and
kids, I had to wonder why he doesn't settle
for a husband and kids. Same-sex marriage
is legal in Utah, and, as of next year, two
men will be able to have a baby without
using an egg (it will be done using their
stem cells). So they would both be the bio-
logical parents. He didn't mention living
within religious dictates, so I assume a hus-
band and mutual children might satisfy him.
I did notice that the three married guys
married women who were not in their
league. I can see why the women settled, as
they could not land a straight guy as attrac-
tive as their gay husband. I do feel for
them, always living on edge and wondering
what the husband is really doing when he’s
off with the boys.
Scott Orrell, Rochester Hills, Michigan
To the Editor:
My Husband’s Not Gay
was such a bad
idea for a TV reality show. And this show
was an instant ratings failure, too. Does
anybody remember
Boy Meets Boy
? Let’s
bring that one back—but without the gim-
mick that some of the fifteen dateable can-
didates were actually straight, unbeknownst
to the show’s “main man.”
Raymond Banacki, Brooklyn, NY
Get Your Rooneys Straight!
To the Editor:
In Andrew Holleran’s assessment of
The
Imitation Game
(Mar-Apr 2015), he refers
to Keira Knightley’s time onscreen as call-
ing to mind “those old Judy Garland-Andy
Rooney movies.”
Of course,
Andy
Rooney never appeared
in a Judy Garland movie. It was Mickey!
Time to tune your history gay-dar!
Dean Waller, Seattle
A Distant Mirror
To the Editor,
Readers of Karl Whittington’s fascinating
article (“Jesus’ Penis and the Seed of Faith,
March-April 2015) on the cartographic rep-
resentation of Jesus’ penis in a medieval
map drawn by Opicinus de Canistris were
certainly challenged in making sense of
your “flopped” reproductions. I could only
understand his piece by viewing the images
in a mirror.
Jean-Francois Vilain, Philadelphia
Reply from the Author:
The image was indeed somehow reversed
in the publication process. I noticed it when
I received the issue, but the drawing is so
strange, I didn’t think anyone would give it
a second thought.
There are two different issues: First,
Opicinus wrote the captions facing a num-
ber of different directions, so there is no
true “top” or “bottom” to the image. Sec-
ond, the reversal of the image that produced
the backward writing was a mistake. How-
ever, note that even when printed correctly,
some
of the writing is still backwards!
Karl Whittington, Philadelphia
Editor’s Note:
In my desire to show the figures right-
side-up, I made the mistake of “flipping”
the image, which had the effect of reversing
the writing. The proper procedure would
have been to rotate the image 180 degrees,
which also rectifies the map of Europe. By
the way, I did notice that the Latin text was
reversed but assumed this was some sort of
medieval gambit to further encrypt the hid-
den meanings of this extremely strange and
symbol-laden drawing.
So here are two new views of the page in
question. At the top is the image as it was
received, presumably its orientation in the
original codex. The two main figures, Jesus
and Mary, are upside-down, though the
third figure, the priest/artist himself, dis-
guised as Jesus’ penis, is upright, and most
of the writing is rectified. Below is the
image as I intended to run it, righting the
two figures and the map of southern Europe
(Italy is clearly visible as Jesus’ leg).
Correspondence
Finally, for you Latin enthusiasts—and
I should mention that Mr. Vilain was not
the only reader to report on this mistake—
below is the most legible of the various
passages that run both horizontally and ver-
tically on the page:
6
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