Laud Humphreys' emissary to St. Louis.(friendship with a gay politician)(Critical Essay)(Biography) From: The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide | Date: July 1, 2005| Author: Hartley, Wes | COPYRIGHT 2005 Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

JEAN COCTEAU proclaimed friendship to be his only politics. "I would rather be celebrated for constancy of the heart than for any doctrine of the mind," he remarked in his essay "On Friendship." Cocteau considered friendship to be an art and equated it with the "fellow feeling" of Walt Whitman. "It continually corrects itself, sets itself aright, and avoids the wars of love. Friendship maintains its balance so that we can maintain ours in it."

For gay men of a certain g...