I would relegate this to the who cares files except that it may shed light upon the fact that Christopher Hitchens is obsessed with sex, see Too Sexy for My Theology? On the New Atheist Obsession with Sex. He is particularly obsessed with any hint of sexual morality (except when he is yelling at priests that they are pedophiles).
Which two ministers of Margaret Thatcher’s government had gay relations with the writer Christopher Hitchens while at Oxford? Since Hitchens’s extraordinary claim emerged this week, the louche figure, now 60, who has been married twice, has fended off all requests for further information.
After all – even for a clever polemicist who takes his work very seriously – such a tantalising, if frivolous kiss-and-tell is bound to sell extra copies of his memoir Hitch-22 when it is published in the summer…
although he has always enjoyed a reputation as a womaniser, at Oxford Hitchens was known to be bisexual.
According to one contemporary: ‘He had a reputation for being AC/DC and, although a Trot [a Trotskyite], he was fancied by quite a few gay Tories and moved in those circles.’…
Hitchens was very conscious of the fact that he was attractive to both men and women. As one close figure recalls: ‘He flirted with both, but with men he could be rather teasing. It wasn’t very nice.’…
In his book, Hitchens…dismisses the homosexual episodes as a ‘mildly enjoyable relapse’ into something that began when he was at school. Of his time at Oxford, he writes: ‘Every now and then, even though I was by then fixed on the pursuit of young women, a mild and mildly enjoyable relapse would occur…Milligan’s [Oxford Union president, Stephen Milligan] death…introduced a wider public to the dangers of self-bondage and auto-erotic asphyxiation…
there was always sex – ‘lots of sex’, says a contemporary – facilitated by the young Hitchens’s languorous charms with which he was able to attract desirable women…
Says the friend: ‘After being introduced [to John Sparrow], I heard Christopher ask: “Warden, are you as other men?” John was rather taken aback by this sly dig at his sexuality. It was clear he was just playing a rather cruel and unedifying game.’ Robert Jackson…considers the anecdote about Hitchens and Sparrow ‘to be ‘typical of Christopher’s rather flirtatious, pert style’….
Jackson…says of Hitchens: ‘He was clearly bisexual at that time and was very keen on Martin Amis, but I believe only slept with his sister. He was very charming.
‘I always thought that Hitchens was someone who, like a lot of people when they are handsome in youth, spent a lot of time looking in the mirror and admiring himself. That is the vein through which he drew nourishment through his life.’…’Christopher was an attractive, sexy youth and he made what he could of it in a rather exploitative way…’…David Heathcoat-Amory…[is said to be] convinced Hitchens made the claims up to attract attention to his book.’…
friends from Oxford days also remember Hitchens’s affection for another man – his flatmate James Fenton, the author and later Professor of Poetry at Oxford. ‘I thought he was in love with Fenton, who was openly gay,’ recalls a close contemporary…
Hitchens, an atheist, married his first wife, Greek Cypriot Eleni Meleagrou, by whom he has two children, in a Greek Orthodox church and his second, American Carol Blue, in a New York synagogue. Which brings us back to why Hitchens would throw into his memoirs the titbit that he had slept with two former ministers.
Yes, it may have been to publicise the book. But one old friend believes there is another explanation. ‘It was more than likely a pre-emptive move. Christopher knew if he didn’t mention it, someone else would.’1
Now, if others also take the who cares approach, particularly atheists, I will remind you to keep that approach in mind when, God forbid, a Christian or “Christian” is exposed as having committed some sexual indiscretion.