Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Gay spies wanted

Stumbled across an interesting story in Time about the British secret service's new quest for out gay people to serve as spies this morning. I had no idea! Apparently the old reason for not wanting 'mos to serve their country (they were bad security risks because they led double lives and therefore could not be trusted) has been flipped on its ear (because they lead double lives, they have developed an excellent skillset for spying).

Nor had I ever heard anything about this before:

Until gay sex was decriminalized in 1967, Britain's gay community protected itself against potential prosecution by conducting conversations in a special argot, Polari, a mixture of Italian, Romany and London slang.

What's Polari for "You learn something new everyday?"

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