I went to a WorldCon in Chicago many years ago. During the costume contest and display, one character was a Klingon from the Mirror Universe.
So, if Federation people from our universe were tough and fascist, what would Klingons be like in the Mirror?
Out onto the stage skipped a Klingon from the Imperial Floral Ship Dimples. It was a standard Klingon outfit but made of silk and satin, and colored pink and purple.
“Honour”: Klingon slang for “semen”.
“Klingons! It is your duty to adorn the Empire!”
Interesting to note that the huge stigma in the Dax episode was not that it was a same-sex relationship, but that it was a previous-host relationship, which is verboten.
The hang up people have about homosexuality comes from the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim religions. Not all gays act feminine and in our own world history, you had eras when being gay was perfectly acceptable. To such an extent that even straight people would have had gay experiences. Think of the Greeks and Alexander the Great.
I can imagine that it could be something similar with the Klingons. Months if not years on a ship with a male to female ratio leaning heavily towards the male. If it’s the norm like it was for the Greeks, it wouldn’t be a big deal, and there wouldn’t necessarily mean that they would have to act feminine, especially when you consider how unfeminine, (compared to humans) Klingon females were.
So, in my opinion, yes it was likely normal, but not in the human sense. The Klingons would have had more of the B in LGBT.
Well, Alexander’s relationship with Hephaestion was unusual, because they were both the same age. The only socially acceptable same-sex relationship in classical Greece was between an adult man (the erastes) and a boy past puberty but too young to grow a beard (the eromenos). (Greek pederasty was an educational institution – the elder lover was expected to be the younger’s role-model and mentor. And there was a strict no-penetration rule, much honored in the breach I have no doubt.) Homosexuality between adults was considered, not immoral, but ridiculous. Of course, no one was going to tell Alexander that!
I see what you did there…
Well, there’s the rub. This is Star Trek we’re talking about; 95% of the time, the aliens are just humans with bad skin conditions. So, it’s really not inappropriate to assume that they think more-or-less like humans, and speculate accordingly.
This whole thread makes the baby Kahless cry.
Wait. Worf’s son was gay?
Well, he sure did Wesley it up a bit.
The only Klingons I can think of that might be gay are the Duras sisters. It’s very tenuous, but they did refuse to marry, ostensibly to avoid dishonoring their family by taking on a husband of lower status.
They definitely come across as a type of feminist, as they want to be warriors in the same right as men, and willingly control their male heirs in order to keep power.
That would seem logical…
For more of this (not Star Trek but SF) see Robert Silverberg’s wonderful “The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV.” “‘Show me in the Torah where it says an alien cannot be Jewish!’”
Gagh are best eaten live. That’s not even in accordance with the laws of Noah.
Also, see Harlan Ellison’s story, “I’m Looking for Kadak”, for a hilarious story about Jewish aliens.
This adds a whole new meaning to “Looking for par’mach in all the wrong places…”
I always can’t help but feel that Star Trek’s Bajorans were meant to be the ‘space Jews’…