Mwanga II

Danieri Basammula-Ekkere Mwanga II Mukasa (Mwanga II for short) was born in 1868. His father was Muteesa I, the kabaka (or king, basically) of Buganda from 1856 until 1884. On October 18, 1884 Mwanga II became the 31st kabaka of Buganda (part of present-day Uganda). He was sixteen years old — and his reign was not at an easy time. Muteesa I had staved off the “invasion” of Christianity and Islam by playing members of three factions against each other — Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims. Mwanga II did not have the political finesse to keep that going for long after he came to power, and he was quite certain that these “invading” religions were the greatest threat facing his nation. Mwanga decided a more aggressive tactic was needed. British missionary Alexander Mackay, who quite liked the situation under Muteesa, did not like the changes under Mwanga and unfortunately, he’s the main source for the information I have on Mwanga’s reign — so, y’know, keep in mind that this is largely coming from a heavily biased source that definitely did include some absolutely false claims (like that Mwanga learned homosexuality from Muslims traders from Zanzibar — yeah, that didn’t happen).

Within his first year of ruling, Mwanga had ten Christians executed. Following that he had the archbishop James Hannington as he arrived at the kingdom on October 29, 1885. Like that old saying goes, “If you can’t stall them, have them die in mysterious circumstances near your kingdom’s border and hope no one traces it back to you.” (They did trace it back. Oops.) I should probably point out, for the sake of fairness, Hannington’s route took him through a particularly tumultuous area of Buganda’s borders and Mackay himself tried to warn him against going that way. Didn’t stop Mwanga from getting blamed.

Mwanga II depicted in stain glass at the Monyonyo Martyr’s Shrine, dedicated to the Uganda Martyrs.

To make things worse, Mwanga’s harem (which consisted of both men and women) had been infiltrated by these new religious ideas and they were superceding old traditions. In the old traditions of Buganda, the kabaka was THE authority. You couldn’t tell a kabaka “no” about basically anything. (It’s good to be the king, y’know?) So when Mwanga wanted to sleep with some of the boys in his harem — which was, according to Bugandan tradition, absolutely within his rights — and they told him no because it conflicted with what they were being taught about their new faith (that men had to lie with women), he was infuriated. He also discovered one of those pages teaching Christianity to his “favourite and so far always compliant toy” Muwafi. (I mentioned that a lot of this comes from biased sources, right? So like, take that quote with a grain of salt.). Fearing the Christian missionaries were turning his courtiers into spies, he decided the only appropriate action was to execute every practicing Christian in his court. All told, it’s estimated there were 30 people he executed between January 31, 1885 and January 27, 1887 (including the boys in his harem that refused him). Twenty-two of them were burned alive, and would later become known as the Uganda Martyrs — officially sainted on October 18 of 1964 by Pope Paul VI. One of them, named Kitzito, was only 14 years old making him the youngest saint in history.

In terms of public opinion, the executions backfired on Mwanga on a massive, international scale. They riled up a lot of powerful people — particularly in the British Empire — who decided to back a rebellion to depose Mwanga II and replace him with his older brother Kiweewa. This decision was met with widespread popular support from the British people. The rebellion succeeded in 1888 — although Mwanga escaped — and Kiweewa became kabaka — for forty days. A band of Muslims deposed Kiweewa and put his half-brother Kalema on the throne. Kalema lasted a little bit longer — but Mwanga was nothing if not stubborn. He made a deal with the British to give up some of Buganda’s sovereignty if they’d help him get his throne back. So they did – and he was back on his throne by the end of 1889 and in a formal treaty with the British by December 26, 1890.

In many ways, this worked out well for Buganda — they were given a generous treaty (compared to other treaties in Africa), and the people of Buganda were allowed to administrate over the other areas that the British were including in the “Protectorate of Uganda.” They imposed their language, clothing, and diet on the rest of the protectorate. However, not everything was in their control; for instance, in 1894 the British imposed a ban on same-sex relations between men. I don’t really have any evidence to support this theory, but I think that might’ve been a contributing reason why in 1897, Mwanga decided he didn’t like being a British protectorate and declared war on Britain.

The war lasted from July 6 until July 20. The British soundly beat him, and he he was forced to flee into modern day Tanzania (German East Africa, at the time). Once there, he was arrested. He escaped, raised an army, attempted to take his throne back and was defeated again on January 15, 1898. This time he was exiled to the Seychelles (which, if you suck at geography like me and didn’t know, is 115 islands forming an archipelago in the Indian Ocean). Since he was stuck on an island, he did not go back to Buganda and actually even eventually converted to the Anglican Church before he died on May 8, 1903. In 1910 his remains were sent back to Uganda where they were interred in the Kasubi Tombs, where his father is buried.

So, okay, I hear you. What’s the big deal about Mwanga? Consider this: in Africa, 36 countries — including Uganda — have criminalized homosexuality. All of them established those laws after being colonized by Europeans. And most of them currently justify those laws by saying that homosexuality isn’t part of their culture, that it was brought to them by Europeans. Aside from some really old, kinda kinky rock art, Mwanga II is some of the best proof against that claim. Also, is it just me or could Chadwick Boseman totally play him in a movie?

Willem Arondeus

Willem Arondeus (1894 – 1943)

Willem Arondeus was an artist-turned-author and — most importantly — a member of the Dutch resistance to Nazi occupation. He was born on August 22, 1894 in Naarden, Netherlands. His parents, Hendrik Cornelis Arondeus and Catharina Wilhelmina de Vries, designed costumes for the theater. Despite being the child of two people in the theatre, and being one of six kids, apparently there was nothing remarkable about his entire childhood. I find that a little hard to believe, but there’s literally nothing written about the first seventeen years of his life. Whatever.

At seventeen years old, Arondeus fought with his parents over his homosexuality, left home, and severed all contact with his family. That part of his story is, unfortunately, all too familiar to too many LGBT+ people even to this day. (It would have been a lot worse, had Denmark not decriminalized homosexuality in 1811. Thanks Napoleon!) He began building a career for himself as an illustrator and painter, and was even hired to paint a mural for the Rotterdamn Town Hall in 1923. However, he never had much success as a painter and was living in abject poverty.

“Salome” by Willem Arondeus (1916)

(I’m including a picture of his drawing “Salome” which was completed in 1916. I’m not trying to say this explains, maybe, why he didn’t have a lot of success as a painter but like, y’know, form your own opinions. This piece, and other surviving pieces of his, are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

In 1933, Willem met a man named Jan Tijssen, and the two lived together for the next seven years. In 1935 he decided that visual arts might not be for him, and turned to poetry and writing. This turned out to be a good move. In 1938 he published two novels, and in 1939 he published his most famous and, by all accounts, his best work “The Tragedy of the Dream” which is a biography of the artist Matthijs Maris.

And then the Nazis came, and his real work began. When the Nazis came to the Netherlands, they mostly took their time with their policies. There weren’t any immediate deportations, there were no strict curfews. They were trying a subtle approach to keep the Dutch from resisting. This mostly worked. Many of the Dutch were fooled into thinking the Nazis weren’t as bad as everyone was saying. But the Nazis didn’t hesitate when it came to criminalizing homosexuality — and the open and proud LGBT+ populace of the Netherlands was not having any of that. Like many others, Willem Arondeus joined the Dutch resistance almost immediately. (I hesitate to call him a founding member, because no one else seems to be calling him that, but from what I’m reading, he probably missed being a “founding member” by like a day or two.)

Willem’s primary job during the early days of the resistance was to forge fake identity papers for Dutch Jews. Also in his unit were a number of other openly homosexual people, including cellist and conductor Frieda Belinfante. Willem did more than that, however. He also began writing and publishing an illegal magazine encouraging more Dutch to join the resistance. He attempted to call the artistic community of the Netherlands to act against the Nazi regime, criticizing the Nazi’s cultural committee. (He also published another book that had nothing to do with resisting the Nazis. it was called “Figures and Problems of Monumental Painting in the Netherlands”, and he illustrated it himself.) In 1943, Willem’s publication joined forces with a publication run by other Dutch artists, reaching even more people.

By 1943, the Dutch Resistance had a vast underground network hiding Jews from the Nazis. The Nazis, however, were catching on. They began comparing identity papers to those in the Amsterdam Public Records Office. Willem Arondeus would not stand for this. The Dutch Resistance was mostly known for being a peaceful resistance — but this next action would become a symbol for the whole movement. Willem is credited in several places for having the idea.

He determined the only course of action was to blow up the Public Records Office. Joined by his unit, the attack was carefully planned out and executed on March 27. Thousands of files were destroyed. But the success was short-lived — a traitor within the resistance turned the unit in to the Gestapo just a few days later. That traitor’s identity remains unknown to this day. Willem and his cohorts were arrested. Willem took full responsibility for the attack — but the trial was a sham, and twelve people, including Willem, were held responsible and executed on July 1, 1943. The rest of Willem’s unit was forced to flee the country.

Willem’s final words were communicated by his lawyer. “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

Frieda Belinfante escaped execution. Most of her participation in the resistance was ignored for years — but more galling to her still, Willem’s role in the resistance was erased for decades. Credit for leading the unit was given to a heterosexual man. She insisted “[Arondeus] was the great hero who was most willing to give his life for the cause.”

In 1984, the Dutch government posthumously awarded Willem the Resistance Memorial Cross. On June 19, 1986, the state of Israel recognized Willem as Righteous Among the Nations (an honorific for non-Jews that risked their lives to protect Jews during the Holocaust). Despite this recognition, and his last words, Willem’s sexuality was not recognized until the 1990’s. Frieda Belinfante’s contribution to the resistance was officially recognized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994. She died one year later, at 90 years old.

Backtracking just for a second, if I may, I just want to touch on those last words. Because, if there was *ever* a theme for this whole site — it’s that. We’ve been here forever, and we have always been brave. If there’s a thread that connects the LGBTQ+ community together more than our gender identities or our sexualities, it’s courage. And, yeah, that’s mostly been out of necessity. It takes bravery to stand in front of a world that hates you and say “so what? I’m me.” But even in times and places where we weren’t hated, we still have that fire — like Osch-Tisch? She was an incredible bad ass, and she wasn’t battling bigotry (at the time, anyways).

Let it be known that LGBTQ+ people are not cowards.

(Adapted from a Facebook post.)

Alfred Kinsey

June 23 is a pretty big day for LGBT+ people, apparently. Not only is it my birthday (and isn’t that enough?) and the birthday of Alan Turing, it is also the birthday of Alfred Kinsey. You might be thinking “gosh, that last name sounds super familiar” but more likely you immediately associated the name with the Kinsey Scale. But Kinsey’s contributions to society and to LGBT culture went far beyond a simplified way of explaining fluid sexuality.

Alfred Kinsey was born in 1894 in Hoboken, New Jersey (his first mistake). Kinsey’s family was poor for the majority of his childhood, which meant they could not provide proper medical care for a number of illnesses that Kinsey contracted — including Rickets, which left him with a slight stoop. This would later prevent Kinsey from being drafted into World War I.

Kinsey also had a love of nature and enjoyed camping — he became one of the first Eagle Scouts in the Boy Scouts of America in 1913. In high school, Kinsey showed a keen aptitude for science — particularly biology, botany, and zoology. He cited his high school biology teacher Natalie Roeth as the most important influence on his decision to become a biologist. (A decision which seemed to cause a rift between Kinsey and his seriously overbearing father.)

Kinsey got his doctorate and traveled widely, studying gall wasps and other insects. Of the 18 million insect samples at the American Museum of Natural History, an estimated 5 million are gall wasps collected by Kinsey. He also published “An Introduction to Biology” in 1926, which was widely used in high schools (and I swear was the textbook we used at my high school. I’m kidding. I think.)

Kinsey is most known for his work as a sexologist. He became interested in the topic while discussing the mating habits of gall wasps with a colleague. Early on in his studies, he developed the Kinsey Scale — where a person’s sexual orientation could be rated from 0 (for exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (for exclusively homosexual). Kinsey believed everyone was bisexual ot varying degrees, probably because of his own bisexuality. He did later add a rating of “X” for “no socio-sexual contacts or reactions”. In his youth, Kinsey had routinely physically punished himself for his homoerotic feelings — so this scale was likely not just an effort to normalize for society, but to normalize them for himself.

Kinsey, through his two books (“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, 1948 & “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”, 1953) that are collectively called “The Kinsey Reports” also laid the groundwork for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. He argued against the commonly accepted (by men) belief that women were not sexual beings. He insisted that clitoral orgasms were superior to vaginal orgasms. Both books became bestsellers, and Kinsey attained celebrity status.

Unfortunately, that celebrity status came with a lot of controversy. Kinsey was criticized for his research methods, for his own participation in sexual experiments, and for filming some of these experiments in his attic. Others criticized his survey samples, which were heavily homosexual and even more heavily white. He also caught the attention of U.S. Customs because he traveled around the world and brought back his research material, and Customs confiscated a lot of said material.

Kinsey died on August 26, 1956. He was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor museum honoring LGBT history, in 2012. (He is the third person I’ve covered so far who is honored there, the others being Alan Turing and Christine Jorgensen.)

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)