Tea at Trianon: Our LGBT Empire

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Our LGBT Empire

From The American Conservative:

In August 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged that his government would introduce legislation to create civil partnerships for gay couples. The bill was approved by the Ministry of Justice in October 2023. Instituting gay marriage will require a constitutional amendment, which Zelensky has said will have to wait until after the war ends. In the meantime, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in June 2023 that two Ukrainian men seeking a marriage license had been illegally discriminated against and, as a signatory to the European human rights convention, Ukraine must pass a law that grants them equal treatment. In theory, it ought to be possible to be part of the democratic world and not buy in to America’s particular version of non-traditional sexual morals. In practice, apparently, it is not. (Read more.)