#young christian martyr

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

Christliche Märtyrin (1864/etching/cropped) - G. Pommer after Delaroche

[leahlisabeth]

Real question:

Put your denomination in the tags if yes!

[atarahderek]

An international short documentary done mostly in animation (with live action clips from the actual event), this video tells the story of the 20 Coptic martyrs and their Ghanan brother who was martyred along with them by ISIS in 2015.

[pmamtraveller]

THE DEAD MINER /1867/ by CHARLES CHRISTIAN NAHL.

The painting illustrates the danger frequently linked with life and work on the frontier. The miner is depicted lying on the ground in a lifeless state, holding a portrait of his sweetheart with a romanticized touch. His faithful dog grieves next to him.

This is a romanticized view of death in the 19th century, especially during the California Gold Rush. This style of painting focuses on the sacrifice of the miner, depicting him as a martyr for progress. It conforms to contemporary values that glorify noble suffering and the tragic beauty of death. This era frequently portrayed death in a peaceful and dignified manner, often idealizing it.

When Nahl made this piece, he was fully involved in depicting the mining culture of California, which had transitioned from the initial gold rush frenzy to a more contemplative era. At this point, the excitement of the gold rush had diminished, and Nahl started portraying the miners' challenges and sacrifices. His time working as a miner and artist in California shaped his artistic concentration on subjects of loss and loyalty.

The painting's examination of death and suffering indirectly connects to tuberculosis, reflecting the 19th-century epidemic. In this era, tuberculosis, also known as "consumption," was idealized in art as a sickness that impacted the young and creative individuals, frequently portrayed in a manner that highlighted grace and beauty in passing.

[sugar-grigri]

Recipe for creating God! In just 9 steps by Barem Bridge

Let's turn things upside down this time. I'll start directly with the conclusion and we'll work our way back.

My conclusion: Barem wants to create a god.

Step 1: create commitment, it's important to go about it the opposite way round, get followers (focus on the young if you want to make a mark on a generation), set up a real infrastructure with even prophets who look like followers but are superior, the great chosen ones!

Step 2: Sow chaos. This is important to make people understand the need for a great savior. Make the icon a sin, and pretending to be a savior a sin too. Don't hesitate to contact the fire demon for help.

Step 3: make sure that whoever is to be your deity is alone, has no one close to him and is very lonely. Worse, becoming himself is his only answer. Don't hesitate to do it in front of a big sacrificial fire. For best results, break what little sane spirit remains in your deity. What god can be sane? That's not what we ask of them!

Step 4: You can take inspiration from other bases you know, take inspiration from the Christian area. Not all men believed in Jesus, and Jesus was tortured. That's a good thing, because it has a double benefit. Firstly, if your deity doesn't close himself off to humans, it'll show his great wisdom, but above all, if he can be resurrected, it makes it easier to create his myth.

Step 5: Next, trust the elements that are simmering in your heart: a little loneliness, betrayal, grief, physical pain. Trust the torment of the story so that your hero's only hope is dashed. Did he believe in sex? Let him be further tormented so he understands that it won't make him happy, but also unhappy. And then you get something interesting, a martyr.

Step 6: You have your martyr, and your preparation allows his suffering to be properly directed. His sexual assault? His grief? It's important that it doesn't make him want to live. A god doesn't live, humans do. But God is simply there. He exists in himself. Never dies, but never lives either. Above all, make sure that the gap between him and mankind widens a little. Let the misunderstanding between him and mortals deepen.

Step 6: You need an antagonist, an opposing force. Focus on one of his loved ones, like Lucifer, the angel who once carried the light, who also symbolizes hope. But make him a traitor, a source of violence, a monster who doesn't feel sadness. Careful, we're talking about a pebble here, a betrayal, but it takes much more to create Le Diable.

Step 7: Keep your god under control, as his torments could destabilize him. You're the one in charge, so you've got the situation under control. Be confident in your abilities. Trust your ingredients.

As fish and sushi symbolize hope, your divinity no longer looks at them. The hand is an enigma for your divinity, a symbol of prayer, of the link with others, of its humanity, but a hand that is also cruel, violent, devastating yet gentle, yet playing on buried desires. Human complexity lies in this hand. It is the barrier that separates your divinity from the rest of the world. This symbol of rapprochement. And distance. Let him still believe in this hand. This possibility of being normal. Still keep your divinity under wraps.

Step 8: But don't forget to feed it. Put the fish aside and take back what the bird brings you. You know, that light bird that's also a weight, symbolizing your relationship with others, especially what they think. Worrying too much about this enchanting bird can lead to tragedy, just as hoping to hear all the songs will make you look like a heretic - you can't be a god. There is only one. Chainsaw Man.

No… All you can do is beg. Pray. Like a mere mortal.

It's vital that your divinity feeds on these unborn thoughts, they're not even birds. They're just eggs. Only God can eat them, as an omniscient being.

And there you have your divinity, a beautiful dish, but what exactly is it for? Several things.

Tasting: You created light, so you created shadow. Or rather, the absence of light. To create this being of darkness, this being must be completely hermetic to this being of light, opposed, closed, above all: it must feel betrayed and abandoned by it. The absence of light is none other than Lucifer, the former bearer of light and God's right-hand man.

And there you have it: for your divinity to have access to Lucifer and oppose him, it has to accept its role as a divinity. Adapt to it. And so, finally, accept your role as savior.

Savior from what? From the apocalypse!

By doing so, you protect humanity and contribute to your ideal.

ET VOILÀÀÀ you have your champion!!!!! God? Chainsaw Man? Noooo, God himself is an ingredient.

Step 10: Wish the God Devil bon appétit

[religious-extremist]

The Hundred Thousand Martyrs of Tbilisi

In 1227 Sultan Jalal al-Din of Khwarazm and his army of Turkmen attacked Georgia. On the first day of the battle the Georgian army valorously warded off the invaders as they were approaching Tbilisi. That night, however, a group of Persians who were living in Tbilisi secretly opened the gates and summoned the enemy army into the city.

According to one manuscript in which this most terrible day in Georgian history was described: “Words are powerless to convey the destruction that the enemy wrought: tearing infants from their mothers’ breasts, they beat their heads against the bridge, watching as their eyes dropped from their skulls.…”

A river of blood flowed through the city. The Turkmen castrated young children, raped women, and stabbed mothers to death over their children’s lifeless bodies. The whole city shuddered at the sound of wailing and lamentation. The river and streets of the city were filled with death.

The sultan ordered that the cupola of Sioni Cathedral be taken down and replaced by his vile throne. And at his command the icons of the Theotokos and our Savior were carried out of Sioni Cathedral and placed at the center of the bridge across the Mtkvari River. The invaders goaded the people to the bridge, ordering them to cross it and spit on the holy icons. Those who betrayed the Christian Faith and mocked the icons were spared their lives, while the Orthodox confessors were beheaded.

One hundred thousand Georgians sacrificed their lives to venerate the holy icons. One hundred thousand severed heads and headless bodies were carried by the bloody current down the Mtkvari River.

O ye thousands of stars, the chosen people guarding the Georgian Church with your golden wings, intercede for us always before the face of God!

[luznanq]

-The young martyr, 1885, by Paul Delaroche.

originally made for a young Christian girl, thrown in the Tiber River by the Romans when she refused to deny her faith.

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Dorothy

Died 311

Feast Day: February 6

Patronage: horticulture; brewers; brides; florists; gardeners; midwives; newlyweds; love

Saint Dorothy lived in Caesarea (Turkey) during the Diocletian persecution of Christians. Legend has it, that she was ordered to sacrifice to the pagan gods and refused. On the way to her execution, a young lawyer, Theophilus, mockingly asked her for “fruits and flowers from the garden” in which she proclaimed was in heaven. A basket of fruit and flowers was delivered to her by an angel which she gave to young Theophilus, who then converted and was also martyred. That’s why she’s the patron saint of florists.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[lostjudgmnt]

according to tradition, Christians all over the world today and tomorrow (december 28 for the west and 29 for the east) will honor the Feast of the Holy Innocents — a day during which we remember the infants and young children from West Bank, Palestine who are believed to have been slaughtered by the oppressive regime that was occupying Palestine at that time, over 2,000 years ago, as the king appointed by the occupation attempted to kill the baby Jesus, who he feared would overthrow him.

now, as i honor the Feast of the Holy Innocents, i think not only of the children martyred then, but also of those who have martyred since and are being martyred now. especially in the last two years, infants and children (as well as their families, relatives, and neighbors) are being slaughtered just the same, killed by air strikes, violence, hunger, dehydration, illness and cold, and the hands of oppression and occupation. just as i pray for the children who died all those years ago, i pray for the children who have died in the past 70 years, the past 10, the past 2.

it is believed that, to escape the violence, Mary took the child Jesus and fled to Egypt for asylum. as i think of this, i remember all the people and families of Palestine trying desperately to flee, to bring their children and families to safety, in just the same way.

if you are Christian and honor the Feast of the Innocents, i ask that you say a special prayer for the people of Palestine today, as they suffer in the same way the Palestinian people — including Mary and Jesus themselves — suffered all those years ago. i ask you to think of them, and if you are able, to help them in whatever way you can; ideally, by supporting them financially, but also by spreading awareness.

even if you are not Christian, i still urge the same. please donate to Palestinian families and children until the occupation ends, but especially in these next couple of days.

gaza funds. palestinian children’s relief fund. gaza soup kitchen.

if anyone has any links to aid families in the West Bank, please add them in reblogs and i will add them to this post.

[chodzacaparodia]

Due to the importance of the Christian faith in Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, certain associations spring to mind and I would like to share an observation.

Namely, I am referring to the connections between Oczy and Saint Lucy of Syracuse, a Christian martyr.

So "Oczy" in Polish means "Eyes". And it was the eyes that were the special attribute of this character. It was the exceptionally good eyesight, thanks to which he could make detailed observations, that characterized Oczy. And the stars turned into eyes when he looked at the sky, to remind him how disgusting earthly life was.

Additionally, when Oczy and Badeni were captured, it was only the threat of deprivation of Oczy's eyes that caused Badeni (who had experienced the pain and damage of hot candle wax poured in his eyes) to confess.

Moreover, his death (by hanging, after numerous tortures!!!) was caused by his belief in heliocentrism, which he had no intention of abandoning.

In turn, Saint Lucy lived at the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries in the Roman Empire, a time when Christians were persecuted and killed.

She took a vow of chastity and when a rejected suitor reported that Lucia was a Christian, she was arrested and tortured, but she did not abandon her faith. By sentence, she was to be locked in a brothel and forced into prostitution. It is said that she gouged out her eyes to disfigure herself.

That is why one of her attributes (apart from the cord or swords) are the eyes.

(Saint Lucy by Domenico Beccafumi, 1521)

And importantly, Saint Lucy is the patron saint of those who need good eyesight, including writers.

And Oczy dreamed of writing a book. And he did it.

Saint Lucy is beheaded at age 23.

Similar death at a young age, in similar circumstances.

I don't think these connections were planned, but they are certainly an interesting coincidence. Especially since an important element of medieval religiosity was a strong cult of saints, and people were downright obsessed with the relics, which were traded and often counterfeited.

[grecoromanyaoi]

rome 2024 masterpost ❤️🇮🇹(+i couldve sworn there was a colloseum emoji but whatevs). we mostly saw stuff we learned abt - we took the medieval european + byzantine art course together, n i took one abt greek n roman art as well. ill try to keep it 1 reblog per day. day 1 was mostly The Worst Flight In History so. day 2, churchravaganza - santa maria maggiore / santa pudenziana / the mausoleum of santa costanza / santa maria in trastevere (w gio ❤️) / temple of portunus

under readmore bc i go on extremely long tangents but hey. blorbo from my degree!

santa maria maggiore (432) - the arc depicts events from jesus's life, like the annunciation. in the top center u can see the empty throne to which he is supposed to return, on which there is a bejewled throne. u can also see depictions of jerusalem and bethlehem (which r named), under each there r 6 sheep, representing the 12 disciples. the walls are decorated w mosaics of events from abraham and joshua's life. the pic i took (n learned abt) is the angels visiting abraham and sarah.

santa pudenziana (5th century) - the apse mosaic depicts jesus preaching to his disciples, and is visually very dependent and based on pagan depictions of a symposium. behind petrus and paulus are the martyred sisters pudentiana and praxedes, who some say are supposed to represent the dual origins of the early christian communities - the christian community of jewish origin, and the one of pagan origin. st pudentiana is apparently the patron saint of the phillipines, and the church is associated w filipinos.

the mausoleum of santa costanza (325-350) - dedicated by constantine to his daughter, constantina. constantina in italian - costanza (yes i was thinking abt george the entire time). the mosaics were made before the decision on the "standard" depiction of jesus in the same building, one as light haired and young and one as older and dark haired (christos twinkos and christos dilfos, as we call them in academia)

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 20

c.275 AD. – St. Sebastian was born in the 3rd century AD. We know the date, but not the year. He is the patron saint of archers because he was bound to a stake and shot with arrows. He is also the patron saint of soldiers. As a beautiful young man he was the favorite of the emperor Diocletian who turned against him for embracing Christianity.

Some tales speculate that the Emperor Diocletian made romantic advances upon Sebastian and was enraged when Sebastian rejected him on Christian grounds. Other stories actually refer to Sebastian as the emperor's lover. Whether or not such accounts are legitimate, the image of St. Sebastian has been linked to homoeroticism.

According to the Church's official Acta Sanctorum, Sebastian, serving under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, came to the rescue of Christian soldiers, Marcellinus and Mark, and thereby confessed his own Christianity. Diocletian insisted that Sebastian be shot to death by his fellow archers; these orders were followed, and Sebastian was left for dead.

These details—based on accounts written centuries after Sebastian's death and therefore largely apocryphal—may have helped form Sebastian's subsequent reputation as a homosexual martyr since his story constitutes a kind of "coming out" tale followed by his survival of an execution that may be read symbolically as a penetration.

In the Renaissance, Sebastian emerged as an extraordinarily popular subject for painters, perhaps rivaled only by Jesus and Mary; he was especially prized by artists who saw in the young saint a figure of Hellenic loveliness. Numerous painters—Tintoretto, Mantegna, Titian, Guido Reni, Giorgione, Perugino, Botticelli, Bazzi ("Il Sodoma")—recast Sebastian as a martyr beatifically receptive to his arrow-ridden fate.

It was primarily the Renaissance depiction of Sebastian that served a later, explicitly homosexual cult of St. Sebastian that took hold with remarkable force beginning in the nineteenth century, with Sebastian as an modern emblem of both a homoerotically charged object of desire and a source of solace for the rejected homosexual.

1900 – British actor Colin Clive (d.1937) is born in Saint-Malo, France to an English colonel, Colin Philip Greig, and his wife, Caroline Margaret Lugard Clive. He attended Stonyhurst College and subsequently Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where an injured knee disqualified him from military service and contributed to his becoming a stage actor. Clive studied acting, and replaced Laurence Olivier in the stage play, Journey’s End, in 1927.

James Whale was the director of Journey's End. The two struck up an intimate relationship, and Clive played the lead in Journey’s End when it moved to the Savoy Theater in London in 1928. Clive was embraced by Whale’s theatrical friends including actress Elsa Lanchester. He followed Whale to New York City and Whale facilitated the casting of Clive in the movie version of the play.

Journey’s End was Clive’s first of 18 feature films. Clive appeared on Broadway in Overture. When the play closed, he went to London and starred with Elsa Lanchester in The Stronger Sex.

Clive is perhaps best known for playing the role of Dr. Henry Frankenstein in the James Whale-directed Frankenstein (1931) and in the Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with his friend Elsa Lanchester.

Though Clive was gay, he married actress Jeanne de Casalis in 1929, but the marriage was one of convenience, and they separated a short time later.

Clive was a member of the Brit ex-patriot actors in Hollywood including Lanchester, Karloff and Charles Laughton, and remained close with Whale.

The actor struggled with his sexual identity and suffered alcoholism and depression from an early age. His drinking became more and more problematic professionally. He often came to work drunk and passed out on the set. He was even fired from a starring role in a film when he suffered a breakdown.

Clive’s final film was in 1937, The Woman I Love. Colin Clive died on June 25, 1937, of tuberculosis complicated by chronic alcoholism. He was 37 years old. Actress Mae Clarke, one of his leading ladies, said, "Colin was the handsomest man I ever saw and also the saddest."

1945 – Gianni Amelio is an Italian film director.

Amelio was born in San Pietro di Magisano, province of Catanzaro, Calabria. His father moved to Argentina soon after his birth. He spent his youth and adolescence with his mother and his grandmother. The absence of a paternal figures will be a constant in Amelio's future works.

During his university studies of philosophy in Messina, Amelio got interested in cinema, writing as film critic for a local magazine. In 1965 he moved to Rome, where he worked as operator and assistant director for figures such as Liliana Cavani and Vittorio De Seta. He also worked for television, directing documentaries and advertisements.

Amelio's first important work is the TV film La città del sole, directed in 1973 for RAI TV and inspired to Tommaso Campanella's work. This was followed by Bertolucci secondo il cinema (1976) a documentary about shooting the movie 1900, and the thriller Effetti speciali. Two years later he directed the mystery La morte al lavoro, which won prizes at Locarno and Hyères festivals. The Little Archimedes (Il piccolo Archimede) of 1979 was also critically acclaimed.

In 1982 he debuted for cinema proper with Blow to the Heart (Colpire al cuore), about Italian terrorism, presented at the Venice Film Festival. In 1987 Amelio released I ragazzi di via Panisperna, about the lives of 1930 Italian physicists Enrico Fermi and Edoardo Amaldi, which won the award for best screenplay at the Bari Film Festival. 1989's Open Doors (Porte aperte), featuring Gian Maria Volonté, confirmed Amelio's status as one of Italy's best film directors and won a nomination as Best Foreign Film at 1991 Academy Awards. The film received also four Felix, two Silver Ribbon, four David di Donatello and three Golden Globes awards.

Also successful was The Stolen Children (Il ladro di bambini) in 1992, which won the Special Prize of Jury at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival plus two Silver Ribbon and 5 David di Donatello. In 1994 Lamerica, about Albanian immigration in Italy, repeated the fate and the success, with 2 Silver Ribbons and 3 Davids. Four years later, The Way We Laughed (Così ridevano) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Amelio gained another Silver Ribbon as best director for The Keys to the House (Le chiavi di casa), inspired to a novel by Giuseppe Pontiggia, of 2004.

Amelio was a member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995. In 2006 he released his eighth feature film, The Missing Star (La stella che non c'è), featuring Sergio Castellitto. From 2009 to 2012 he was director of Torino Film Festival, Turin.

Amelio came out as gay late in life, shortly before the release of his 2014 documentary Happy to be Different.

1974 – Michael Stabile is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker best known for his work in and about the pornography industry. His work has appeared in Playboy, The Daily Beast, Buzzfeed and Salon.com. In 2004, he and Jack Shamama co-created the gay pornographic soap opera Wet Palms for which they won a GayVN Award for Best Screenplay. He has also written several other GayVN-nominated movies including Spokes III, Cross Country, and Master of the House. Two of the films were included in "Top 10 Gay Porn Movies of the Decade" by Gawker Media's Fleshbot with credit given to the writing team of Stabile and Shamama.Since 2003, Stabile has edited Gay Porn Blog and in 2005 became producer of The Tim and Roma Show, a web-based talk show about the gay adult industry. In 2008, Stabile launched gay news site TheSword.com. He has been named "an arbiter of taste for gay porn" by the Village Voice.

Stabile has also been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Gay.com, Time Out, Cybersocket, and the Huffington Post.Stabile is working with Shamama and cinematographer Ben Leon on Seed Money, a documentary about Falcon Studios' founder and GLBT philanthropist Chuck Holmes, currently in production. Their documentary short, Smut Capital of America premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival on April 24, 2011. In late 2011, Stabile began working with Warhol Superstar��Holly Woodlawn on a documentary about her life.

1976 – Mathieu Klein is a French politician serving as Mayor of Nancy since 2020. A member of the Socialist Party since 1992, he is also President of the Departmental Council of Meurthe-et-Moselle. After the 2020 French municipal elections, he became the first socialist Mayor of Nancy since the end of the second World War.

Mathieu Klein was born into a family of teachers in Phalsbourg, Moselle. Alongside his two brothers, he was brought up in Holving, before pursuing his secondary education at Sarreguemines. He moved to Nancy, France in 1993 to study history and sociology. He then continued his university studies in Paris.

Mathieu Klein has been a member of the Socialist Party since 1992 and his gave support in favour of a positive result in the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. He then became a student member of the National Union of Students of France in Nancy, then in Paris, becoming a member of its national bureau in charge of health matters.

In 1994 in Nancy he founded an LGBT association dedicated to the promotion of equality and fighting against homophobia.

In the 2020 French municipal elections in Nancy, Klein headed the Socialist Party, which took the first place in the first round on 15 March 2020, with 37.9% of the vote. Following this result, Klein merged with Europe Ecology – The Greens. In the second round, held on 28 June 2020, Klein prevailed with 54.5% of the vote. He was confirmed as Mayor on 15 July 2020 by 43 votes in the municipal council of Nancy, becoming the first left-wing person to exercise this mandate since the end of the second World War.

Mathieu Klein is homosexual and works in associations which are engaged in the fight against homophobia. He is married to a family doctor and the couple have three children.

1979 – Will Young is an English singer and actor. He catapulted to fame in 2002 after winning the inaugural UK Pop Idol contest. He has continued to work in music, and also as an actor.

Contrary to popular belief, Will did not come from behind to win the contest. After having beaten the widely-accepted frontrunner Gareth Gates in the final show, it emerged that he had in fact gained the most votes in six out of the nine weeks of the live show.

Young's first single was a double A-side featuring Evergreen and Anything Is Possible. In March 2002 this became the fastest-selling debut in UK chart history, selling 403,027 copies on its day of release (1,108,659 copies in its first week). It went on to sell over 1.7 million copies, and in the official list of the all-time best-selling singles in the UK issued later that year it was 11th. On 31 December 2009, Radio 1 confirmed that Anything Is Possible/Evergreen was the biggest selling single of the 2000s decade in the United Kingdom.

Young subsequently revealed that he was gay, in order to pre-empt a tabloid newspaper that was preparing to run a story 'outing' him. He also stated that he had never hidden, and was comfortable with, his sexuality.

Later in the year, Young met comedian David Walliams and the pair became good friends, with Young appearing at the Little Britain live stage show in Manchester, and later recording a podcast with Walliams, in which they chatted about various aspects of Young's career.

Will added acting to his repertoire when he accepted a role in the BBC film Mrs Henderson Presents, starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. The film was released in the UK in November 2005 to excellent reviews — not least for Young's performance as both actor and singer in the film.

1980 – Yusaf Mack is an American professional boxer. He has held regional titles from the USBA (Now the IBF), NABA, UBA, and NABF. Mack has fought several former world champions, including Alejandro Berrio, Glen Johnson and Carl Froch.

Mack made his professional boxing debut at middleweight on November 17, 2000 in Biloxi, Mississippi. In his first 24 fights, Mack compiled a record of 22-0 with two draws. Throughout his early fights Mack moved between the middleweight, super middleweight, and light heavyweight divisions.

Mack is a father of ten children and was engaged to a woman. In 2015, he appeared in a Dawgpoundusa.com production titled Holiday Hump'n along with gay pornographic actors Bamm Bamm and Young Buck under the name Philly. He initially claimed he had been drugged by the film's producers and had no recollection of making the film, but later told WTXF-TV that he was gay and had lied to cover that up.

Yusaf later had a "coming out party" at Rage nightclub in Weho, a longtime landmark on the L.A. gay scene.

2012 – Three Muslim men from Derby, UK, were convicted of inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation after they distributed leaflets calling for gay people to be killed.

In a landmark case, a jury at Derby Crown Court ruled the three had breached hate crime legislation by handing out the leaflets outside the Jama mosque, in Rosehill Street, Derby, in July 2010 in advance of a gay pride parade, as well as putting them through nearby letterboxes.One of the leaflets, entitled "The Death Penalty?," depicted a mannequin hanging by the neck from a noose. "The death sentence is the only way this immoral crime can be erased from corrupting society and act as a deterrent for any other ill person who is remotely inclined in this bent way," the leaflet read, as it discussed various methods of carrying out the death penalty for homosexuals.

Another depicted homosexuals burning in a lake in hell. A third showed the word gay laid out as an acronym to read "God Abhors You."

Today's Gay Wisdom

For The Straight Folks Who Don't Mind Gays But Wish They Weren't So BLATANT

by Pat Parker

You know, some people got a lot of nerve.Sometimes I don't believe the things I see and hear. Have you met the woman who's shocked by two women kissing and in the same breath, tells you she is pregnant? BUT gays, shouldn't be so blatant. Or this straight couple sits next to you in a movie and you can't hear the dialogue because of the sound effects. BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant. And the woman in your office spends an entire lunch hour talking about her new bikini drawers and how much her husband likes them. BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant. Or the "hip" chick in your class rattling like a mile a minute while you're trying to get stoned in the john, about the camping trip she took with her musician boyfriend. BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant. You go in a public bathroom and all over the walls there's John loves Mary, Janice digs Richard, Pepe loves Delores, etc., etc. BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant. Or your go to an amusement park and there's a tunnel of love and pictures of straights painted on the front and grinning couples are coming in and out. BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant. Fact is, blatant heterosexuals are all over the place. Supermarkets, movies, on your job, in church, in books, on television every day day and night, every place - even in gay bars and they want gay men and woman to go and hide in the closet. So to you straight folks I say, "Sure, I'll go if you go too" BUT I'm polite, so, after you.

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

Artnet: Saint Sebastian, The Gay Icon

Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni (left) and El Greco (right).

Despite Saint Sebastian’s popularity in art history, the details of his life are sparingly few. Saint Sebastian is venerated as an early Christian martyr and a saint by the Catholic and Orthodox churches and, according to fifth-century hagiography, during the Diocletian Persecution of Christians Sebastian, a member of the Praetorian Guard, was sentenced to death by the reining pagan Emperor Diocletian for espousing the teachings of Christianity.

He was tied to a tree and soldiers shot him with arrows, but according to Christian lore, Saint Sebastian miraculously survived, having been rescued and healed by Saint Irene of Rome. This scene of affliction and survival would become a popular artistic theme as early as medieval times, only growing more common in 16th- and 17th-century European painting.

Sebastian’s actual martyrdom, however, came after this initial assault. Having recovered, the saint attempted to confront the Diocletian face-to-face about his persecution of Christians. Guards clubbed the saint to death and his body was dumped into a sewer, only to be later recovered by Saint Lucy and buried in a Roman catacomb, where his remains are still today enshrined at the Basilica of St. Sebastian Outside the Walls.

Throughout the centuries, Saint Sebastian’s myth and legacy have shifted with cultural interests. During medieval times, Saint Sebastian was embraced as a patron of divine protection and culturally aligned with the god Apollo, resulting in the saint’s depiction as a beautiful and youthful young man (though often clad in armor, in keeping with his life as a soldier). With the emergence of the Black Death, however, his likeness shifted to one of a grizzled older man, more aligned with his historical age. His popularity as a protective intercessor against disease grew, however, and with it, his return to youthful attractiveness.

By the dawn of the Renaissance, artists were emulating prototypes of masculinity associated with the Greek world, and Saint Sebastian transformed into a figure of ephebic beauty—adolescent, lithe, idealized in form, and often covered only by a loin cloth. These images showed the saint, not in his actual moment of martyrdom, but in a more poetic moment of torture by arrows. Indeed, these Renaissance and Baroque depictions are rooted in the Catholic teachings about the permeability of saints’ bodies and the ecstasy experienced in their communion with the divine. 

In the modern era, the popularization of Saint Sebastian as an icon in the gay community often leads back to Guido Reni’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (c. 1615) arguably the most famous depiction of the saint. Oscar Wilde was known to have adored the work, which is in the collection of the Palazzo Rosso, in Genoa. In fact, Wilde went so far as to adopt the pen name Sebastian while exiled in Paris during the last years of his life.

Yukio Mishima (left) and Sebastien Moura (right) as Saint Sebastian.

Reni’s painting was similarly influential to the famed 20th-century Japanese author Yukio Mishima; in Mishima’s 1949 novel Confessions of a Mask, the book’s adolescent protagonist experiences a homosexual awakening while gazing at the very same painting. The references to the saint didn’t end there—Mishima, who was himself gay, went so far as to pose as Saint Sebastian in a now-infamous photographic portrait, taken not long before the writer’s death by suicide in 1970.

In the visual arts, too, these allusions to the saint have cropped up repeatedly throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In the 1970s, Italian artist Luigi Ontani staged a provocative photograph of Saint Sebastian as a gay icon. In the 1976 film Sebastiane, filmmaker Derek Jarman engaged with the narrative of the saint to explore ties between sexual and spiritual ecstasy, through a specifically homoerotic lens. 

But what about these depictions of Saint Sebastian so resonated with the likes of Wilde and Mishima? Many observers, including Susan Sontag, have noted that Sebastian doesn’t yell out in anguish amid his wounding but endures the torment with an expression caught between pain and pleasure. Sontag called him the “exemplary sufferer.” His head is often flung back or forward rapturously. He conceals the depth of his emotions, experiencing both torments and pleasures privately, a feeling similar to the experience of gay identity for many men in the 20th century (and often to this day).

Others have interpreted the arrows piercing the saint’s body as phallic allusions and disguised references to homosexual sex, while his rope-tied hands can be seen through the lens of sadomasochism. Perhaps most concretely, the story of Saint Sebastian paralleled the experiences and fears of the closeted gay community—when Sebastian’s concealed true (Christian) identity was revealed, he was shunned, tormented, and killed by those in power, a harrowing tale that mirrored the gay experiences of being “outed” throughout modern history.

(Full article)

[whencyclopedia]

Saint Valentine’s Day, or simply Valentine’s Day, is celebrated on the 14th of February, almost internationally but primarily in western societies. It is a commemorative Christian feast for some but a secular occasion for others who see it as a day to celebrate affection in all of its forms but primarily romantic love. The day has been named after one or more martyrs of the early Christian era named Valentine or Valentinus who lived sometime in the 3rd century CE and was killed for defying oppressive laws directed either against Christians or young lovers in the Roman Empire. Valentine’s death became symbolic during and after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, and later on, the character developed a correlation with romantic love throughout Europe, and then the idea spread almost internationally.

[gladiator4hire]

The Toy General

Click for better res. Sketch, ref, and flower/symbolism explanation below cut :)

Sketch and Reference:

Flower/Symbolism explanation:

Marigolds- At the base of both Emperors' feet to symbolize their cruelty Yellow Chrysanthemums- Slighted love. Placed between Geta and Acacius as a nod to both subtext between the characters but also the betrayal Hyacinths- Representative of rashness and sporting/games, placed at the base of both emperors. Yellow to symbolize jealousy and Purple to symbolize an ask of forgiveness, an apology. A nod to Geta's conflicted feelings after the betrayal Jonquil- A yearn for love and desire for affection to be returned, placed between Acacius and Geta Nasturtium- Representative of conquest and victory in battle. Placed beneath Acacius' head and spilling out to give the illusion of his blood on the colosseum floor White Roses- Commonly associated with purity. A tongue in cheek nod to the fact none of these characters are truly innocent. All roses are wilting, most notably Acacius' as he grows tired and the roses at the base of the Emperors' are splashed with blood as a notice to their bloodthirsty ways with Caracalla's being noticeably more stained.

'Halo' of light centering around Acacius is a *very* subtle nod to a cut scene of a younger Acacius telling Lucius he will be the future of Rome, adding to the already canon credibility that he would immediately surrender and sacrifice himself for both Lucius and a hope for a better Rome and her people. Drawing parallel to Christian based/influenced portrayals of saints and martyrs in artwork

Geta's coloring is a reference to the og Gladiator and the outfits Commodus (another volatile and young ruler at the whims of his emotions) wears, often seen drenched in a purple/dark blue.

*Small note: this can be seen as both ship art and not. There's no wrong way to view this bc i meant it everyway it can be taken. At its bare bones in the movie they're just kids playing with their favorite toy until he stops playing along

[xdivinedecay]

✧ Saint Cecilia — patron saint of musicians

November 22nd is the feast day for Saint Cecilia, a Roman martyr from the second century A.D., a time when being Christian earned persecution from the Roman empire. Born into wealth, she devoted her life to modesty and religious practices, including invoking saints and angels. She promised her life to Christ, dedicating herself to Him as his bride. When she was married to a young nobleman named Valerian, she endured a deep spiritual experience during the wedding ceremony. It is said that she "sang a hymn in her heart" to God. Once they were married, she admitted to Valerian that she was a Christian and had taken a vow of chastity for Christ, for which an angel had been dispatched to protect her and the commitment she had made. When Valerian asked her to show him this angel, she told him he must go to the Pope, who was in hiding at the time, to commit himself to the faith of one God, and be baptized. When Valerian did as he was told and returned to his Cecilia, he saw the presence of the angel at his wife's side, bestowing a crown of lilies and roses on her head. Not only did Cecilia manage to convert her husband in her lifetime, but through Valerian her brother-in-law, Tiburtius, converted to Christianity. This was the start of a prolific era for Cecilia, who is said to have converted hundreds of people to Christianity while she was alive, with the aid of her husband and brother-in-law. In fact, it was in doing this and being active in the hidden Christian community at the time that resulted in their martyrdom for their faith.

Executing Cecilia was no small feat either, surviving her first execution sentence and living for days through the second, for which she was said to spend the time preaching for the Christians that came to see her, and sang hymns until she no longer could.

Saint Cecilia is known as the patron saint of music, musicians, body purity, and is said to be originally associated with the organ despite often being depicted with other musical instruments in art.

There is so much more to know about her, some of it brutal and all of it fascinating, including her story after her death. I recommend this page if you want to learn more! (CW: death effigy at the top of the page, depictions of execution and suffering.)

You can honor her today by listening to your favorite music and deepening your connection with the Divine.

my lists of patron saints — Patron Saints for your problems • Patron Saints for World Mental Health Day • Patron Saint for US election aftermath

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