Male Couple on the Titanic

injest · Apr 14, 2012

http://retreat.smfforfree.com/index.php/topic,4152.msg45788.html#msg45788

When the Titanic sank, Maj. Archibald Butt, a military adviser to President William Howard Taft and former aide-de-camp to his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, was among the heroes of the hour. Amid the disaster on the night of April 14-15, 1912, Butt fulfilled all the archetypes of manly courage, escorting women from their cabins to lifeboats, standing back to let them live and facing death with selflessness. One of the women he helped to save he had known her when she gave music lessons to the Roosevelt children in the White House later testified that after he helped her into the lifeboat, he tucked a blanket around her with careful nonchalance, as if she was going for a breezy ride in an open car.

Taft wept when it was confirmed that Butt was lost in the freezing Atlantic Ocean. Much of Washington grieved. In the press rooms of the White House and the War, State and Navy buildings, as one reporter wrote at the time, the name of Maj. Archie Butt, once synonymous of laughter and jest, now symbolic of heroism, was repeated while eyes blurred and voices became queerly strained. Ever since 1912, writers have depicted Butt as an archetypal Southerner and military officer. They have not noticed, or have shrunk from mentioning, that his was also love story, a story involving another man, Frank Millet.

Butt was born in Augusta, Ga., in 1865, shortly after the Confederate surrender in the Civil War, and he graduated from the University of the South in Tennessee. He was a Washington correspondent for Southern newspapers, fought overseas against the Spanish in Cuba and against rebels in the Philippines, and looked impressive in his spurs, plumed hat and ceremonial dress.

In his career as a presidential adviser, Butt proved indispensable to both Roosevelt and Taft. He liked to be useful, popular and amusing. He had a swelling sense of accomplishment when his White House arrangements, introductions and discreet advice went off perfectly, as they usually did. He misplayed shots in order to cheer up the golf-mad Taft when he was disheartened, laughed at his boss dull legal jokes, ate the heavy meals that the obese Taft liked (broiled chicken, hominy and melon for breakfast; fish chowder, mustard pickles, baked beans and brown bread for lunch), salved the dignity of visiting politicos who did not know how to eat artichokes or cucumbers, and mollified Taft when brats yelled Hello, Fatty at him.

Yet all the while, Butt shared a house in an old-fashioned district of Washington, D.C., with Millet, his devoted partner. Born in Mattapoisett, Mass., in 1846, Millet served as a drummer boy and surgical assistant with Union troops in the Civil War. After a shining career at Harvard, he became an international war correspondent before settling into a peaceable life as a painter. His friend Henry James, the novelist, wrote of Millets magnificent manly self irradiating beautiful gallantry.
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sometimes it really feels like we have taken a step back instead of forward...as my friend points out, here was a gay couple living together openly, doing their thing and no one seemed to care at all.

Johnny-C · Apr 14, 2012

injest said: ↑

http://retreat.smfforfree.com/index.php/topic,4152.msg45788.html#msg45788

sometimes it really feels like we have taken a step back instead of forward...as my friend points out, here was a gay couple living together openly, doing their thing and no one seemed to care at all.
Click to expand...

Amazing Stuff!!

Anders Hoveland · Apr 16, 2012

So Butt had a butt-buddy?

Osiris Faction · Apr 18, 2012

Times change. There have been numerous views on male/male relationships through the centuries. Times change, views change, sometimes for the better sometimes not.

Ancient Japan upheld homosexuality as honorable and a pure relationship between warriors.

Like I said, things change.

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Male Couple on the Titanic

injest New Member

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Male Couple on the Titanic

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