Chess and homosexuality

IN 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a law that would mandate castration for gay men and mutilation of nose cartilage for lesbians. But that’s not the scary part. The scary part was that Jefferson was considered a liberal. At the time, the most common penalty was death.

Alfred Kinsey, in his book in 1948 on sexual behavior of the human male shocked the world by announcing that 10 percent of the male population is gay.

"The Manny Pacquiao Blog". Click here for stories and updates on the Filipino boxing champ.

You may consider this high, but a follow-up by Gallup in 2002 estimated that 21 percent of men are gay and 22 percent of women are lesbians.

In the last 10 years, the percentage of people who feel that homosexuality should be considered acceptable has gone up from 38 percent in 1992 to 51 in 2002.

Now, the number is much higher. Same -sex marriage is now legal in some states of the US and in some countries such as Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden and, surprisingly, Spain.

Civil unions and registered partnerships are also allowed in 20 countries. Same-sex marriage is not legal in the Philippines due to the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church.

A sign of the changing times though is the approval of the gay party-list group Ang Ladlad to participate in the elections this year.

There are an estimated 1,328 grandmasters--men and women--at the latest count. If we follow the general percentage, there should be at least 250 homosexuals. Right? Wrong.

In fact, homosexuality is rare among chess players although a bit rampant among women. There are no known gays among male grandmasters today. There maybe some but they have hidden well.

There had been in the past as I will mention later but they are an exception.

I have been around playing chess in a lot of places and I have only known three who were definitely gays. And I know close to 1,000 chess players. Why is this so?

Chess is a game of imitation war and only real men go to battle.

They kill all the men. Only the women are left. This is the story of the ages. Male homosexuals do not fight to get the female and therefore have very little interest to play chess.

That is the way it is in the animal kingdom. Two males of any kind of animals fight. The winners get all the females. Look at cockfighting and horse fights.

That is why homosexuals are banned from the US military.

Chess Pride was a magazine published around 1998 published for the gay community. It only put out three issues. The first issue was about a known gay chess master, Anthony E. Santasiere.

The second issue treated Paul Murphy, who for some reason had a certain “gayness” about him. The third issue treated another professed gay master, Weaver Adams (1901-63) who won the US Open in 1948.

Santasiere (1904-77) is the author of the book “The Romantic King’s Gambit.” The chess opening Santasiere’s Folly (1.Nf3 Nf6 2.b4) is named for him.

Murphy (1837-84), considered by Fischer to be the greatest player of all time apparently had a fetish for women’s shoes, for he liked to arrange them in a semicircle in his room.

French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) identified with Dadaism and Surrealism is considered by many art professionals to be the greatest artist of this century.

Duchamp was allegedly a closet gay though the secret was very well kept.

Duchamp’s obsession with chess so distressed his first wife that she allegedly glued the chess pieces to the board.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) drew everything from war machines to anatomy sketches. Now it seems he may have also been an early illustrator of the chess puzzle and a chess master. How do we know he was gay? When he was 24 years old, Leonardo was arrested, along with several young companions, on a charge of sodomy.

The charge, though, was dropped as there were no witnesses.

(boypestano@chess.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com