Walt Whitman's Homosexual life and Poetry
             "Give me now libidinous joys only!
             Give to me the drench of my passions! Give me life coarse and rank!
             To-day, I go consort with nature's darlings- to-night too,
             I am for those who believe in loose delights- I share the
             I dance with the dancers, and drink with the drinkers,
             The echoes ring with our indecent calls,
             I take for my love some prostitute- I pick out some low
             He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate- he shall be one
             condemned by others for deeds done;
             I will play a part no longer- Why should I exile myself from my
             -Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
             Walt Whitman- homosexual before there was such term, and gay when the word was merely underground slang.
             Walt Whitman shattered the world of tennis and tea, the stuffy drawing rooms of decorous morality. For celebrating reality, a reality that included sex, he was branded as an obscene writer throughout his lifetime. His poetry was banned several times from the United States, and was accused to be about "...that horrible sin not to be named among Christians." His most famous volume of poetry, Leaves of Grass, reflects the way in which America has systematically mutilated its details, and Walt Whitman's personal life suffered much at the hands of the American taboo against sex and homosexual love.
             Some say that Whitman is America's greatest embarrassment, because if what he says about democracy is true, that gay liberation is inevitable, then the American ideal of universal equality is inherently homosexual, and homosexual love is the physiological basis of democracy.
             Whitman's first love affair took place in 1855, a little after he stopped journalism, and began writing poetry. But it was not until 1860, when he produced his Calamus cluster of poems about his second male lov
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