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"To love oneself is
the beginning of a life-long romance."
An Ideal Husband" -Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde's "official"
homepage is full of information about his fame and
misfortune.
For us, bringing a baby into this world as an openly gay couple
is a very frightening undertaking. However, done correctly, legally, like it or
not, we are protected under the law in California just like heterosexual
families.
We feel that it is important to honor someone from our history
who didn't have the same privileges that we "enjoy". Oscar was not even allowed
to see his children. We can't imagine how his judges could have been so cruel.
Here is the frightening and hideous police report regarding the
conditions of Oscar's internment for the terrible crime of being gay:
On Monday morning, Wilde was examined
by the doctor, and if he is passed as sound and well and fit for first-class
hard labor, he will be compelled to take his first month's exercise on the
treadwheel; six hours daily; making an ascent of 6,000 feet; twenty minutes
continuously and then five minutes' rest...
During the first month, while on the wheel, Wilde will sleep on the plank
bed, a bare board raised a few inches above the floor and supplied with
sheets -- clean sheets are given to each prisoner -- two rugs and a
coverlet, but no mattress. His diet will be:
- Cocoa and bread for breakfast at 7:30.
- Dinner, at noon, one day bacon and beans, another soup, another cold
Australian meat, and another brown suet puddings, with the last three
repeated twice a week, potatoes with every meal. And --
- Tea at 5:30.
After he has finished his spell on the wheel, he will be put to some
industrial employment, not play-writing, although it might be the most
profitable to the prison department, but probably post-bag making,
tailoring, or merely picking of oakum. He will exercise in the open air
daily for an hour, walking with the rest of his ward in Indian file, no
talking allowed.
Thus has ended a brilliant life -- a life that at one time might have become
as great as a Shakespeare or a Bacon, but yet a life ruined by the evil
indulgence in a sphere of immorality. If the moral to be drawn from Wilde's
downfall and fate only deters others from following in the same line, the
law will at least be revenged and the public satisfied.
The Illustrated Police Budget,
London, 1 June 1895
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In Hebrew, there are basically no middle names so when we are in
Israel, no one will really know about the "Wilde" side of Boaz.
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