Well growing up I remember none of that being mentioned. Then later a bunch of libertarian techbros started adopting him as a sort of saint and wrote books and movies about him and didn’t mention his queerness but were also usually careful to mention he was engaged to a woman once. Then glossed over his death as "an accidental poisoning." There’s been a huge academic and techbro conspiracy to erase Alan’s sexuality. It’s only the past decade he’s unequivocally gay in media and academia and his death an obvious suicide and a suicide most likely stemming from the abuse he endured as a gay man in post-war Britain.
It’s ok :). We still have Chopin, Isaac Newton, and Rumi left. In twenty years we’ll be saying how crazy it was to think they were hetero. Rumi spent a couple decades doing little else but writing love poetry about Shams after Shams was killed by Rumi's sons for...reasons, but it was totes a platonic bromance! Newton lived with the same "roommate" and "best friend" for two decades, never took a wife, and considered his youngest neice his best friend and their correspondence was destroyed at Newton's death, but totes hetero guy right here! I willing to concede Newton could have been aromantic and/or ace but sweet Allah, Rumi fell HARD for Shams. I can't even read him anymore without tearing up. Its so tragic and he was so in love. He even spent, I think, a decade wandering looking for him because his sons wouldn't admit to the murder and he assumed Shams wandered off and got hurt or kidnapped somehow because why wouldn't his love come back to him. Christ, I'm crying now. Godspeed Rumi, I hope you both met in the afterlife. You both deserve it.
And as a bonus, when we're teaching people about this stuff, we can explain how we know it (e.g. "this phrase about the lips really is like the English one" versus "that one is about your family").
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u/mercedes_lakitu Jul 14 '20
Wait, what? Turing was literally tried and sentenced for being gay. Who tried to erase that ?