64 - Gays in the Military: Fry and Laurie

“A Bit of Fry and Laurie”, 16 March 1990
Written by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie

Friedrich von Stoltz: Hugh Laurie
Major Donaldson: Stephen Fry

Curiously, the idea that homosexuals could constitute security risks because they might go around falling in love with their enemies doesn’t seem to have really occurred in all of the material about gay spies during the cold war. Blackmailable, certainly, but seducible, no. Although that E.M. Forster line about ”if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country” got bandied a lot by assorted poovy Cambridge-educated traitors. And for “friend” read…well we’re all adults here. Of course, the ancient Greeks had their own ideas about how to accommodate love and loyalty: starting with two men to a cot.
The overly exuberant and thunderstruck reaction on Fry’s part here would, from the account he gives in his autobiography, seem to be the way he does go around falling in love.