Yestrerday I posted a response to claims that Shakespeare was a homosexual. I’ve received a reply from my correspondent that I’m going to share, principally because of her perceptive description of the homosexual lobby as “a new aristocracy that is allowed to offend but cannot be offended”. Brilliant! I would also refer anyone interested in putting this “new aristocracy” into biblical perspective to Kevin O’Brien’s post on “the problem of love”, posted yesterday. It’s a superb, succinct and witty discussion of onanism in its various manifestations. Here’s the text of my correspondent’s e-mail:

Many thanks for your learned comments on this. I’m not familiar with this Sonnet but thought it a bit strange that he would have written something so overtly homosexual, and given that he used coded language to express his Catholic sympathies, thought it might have something to do with that. On a political note, it has always struck me that the fear of homosexuality was a lot to do with the perception that it was an elitist thing, something that powerful kings or emperors sometimes forced on male subjects they happened to fancy. As you say, only in recent years has it been reinvented as some sort of egalitarian thing – but more to do, I suspect, with the population controllers’ interest in its non-reproductive aspects. Now it is almost a new aristocracy that is allowed to offend but cannot be offended!