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WaitingCynicism
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Post LGBT in Middle Earth?
on: August 07, 2018 07:11
Hey all,

Apologies if this is too controversial a topic or political for the forum, but I was wondering how an LGBT person or couple would be seen in ME? Is it a sin?
Gandolorin
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on: August 07, 2018 08:56
Hi WaitingCynicism, you might want to check discussions in the Roleplaying sub-forums. When I was a newbie here in late 2013 and early 2014, I surfed through practically all threads to get acquainted with the site, and I remember some controversial discussions with moderators there (though they may have taken place quite a while before I joined in November 2013).

Now looking at M-e as JRRT's world, I would guess that he would have been unsympathetic to LGBT issues. He was after all quite a conservative Catholic, and unhappy with quite a few of the innovations of the Second Vatical Council (1962-1965). Besides perhaps displaying the special fervor of a convert (though he was only 8 when his mother Mabel converted in 1900), he appears (by his own statements in letters etc.) to have connected his Catholic belief very much with his mother, who died young (at 34) in 1904 of then-incurable diabetes, when he was only 12. He himself called his mother a martyr to her (and his) belief.

And from what I have gleande from reading several books about JRRT (Joseph Pearce's 1998 "Tolkien: Man and Myth" concentrates specifically on how JRRT's religious beliefs influenced his writing), JRRT and in agreement with him at least C.S. Lewis were disgusted with what ony might call the dandyism of a part of the Oxford student body in the 1920s and 1930s, which led even some not really homosexual (Oxford did not become truly coeducational until a while after WW II, I believe) students to affect habits in that direction. As perhaps a sort of silent protest against such affectations, JRRT and possibly more so C.S. Lewis may have gone out their way in their dress in the direction of a conservative shabbiness.

So never mind about the way LGBT issues are discussed in at least a part of the "western" world, the consensus here about Middle-earth would probably be "didn't happen". Unlikely as that would be for any period of the "Real World", it would be "true" for M-e.

P.S. you have chosen a longish username here. CoE is very like the Shire in shortening such names to nicknames and the like. Now for me as a German (and probably others) WC is definitely not an option. Would WaCy do? Or Wait? or ...?
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WaitingCynicism
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on: August 07, 2018 11:45
Anything works really and thanks!
Hanasian
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on: August 11, 2018 05:06
I just shortened it to 'Cynic' in a PM.
Eighth King of Arthedain - It was in battle that I come into this Kingship, and it will be in Battle when I leave it. There is no peace for the Realm of Arnor. Read the last stand of Arthedain in the Darkest of Days.
PotbellyHairyfoot
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on: October 12, 2018 02:06
Tolkien had his own issues and aims, and when he wrote, LBGT issues were taboo and would never even be considered. His world would naturally be populated by nothing but heteros as that was what was expected.
His world, which paralleled the world he lived in, didn't even have gender equality as though a women could be a ruling queen she couldn't serve in the military.
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