Hadrian's Lover (38 page)

As all my viewers are aware,
Salve!
is the voice of Hadrian—that of the government and of the people. When the tune of those voices changes, so must its mouthpiece. I am not retiring as the host of
Salve!
but I have been forced to face some very ugly truths about much of what I have been saying to you over the years. I still believe, as I am sure do many of you, that Hadrian is the future hope for humanity, but that future cannot be forged by the blood of our youth. I do not refer to those who die defending our wall. The threat of the outside world remains as prevalent as ever. I refer, rather, to those who have suffered and died at the hands of Gideon Weller—six young men over the past twenty years. Are those numbers too small for Hadrian to take notice? No. Every single boy’s death is a slap in the face of our good country Hadrian. The charges laid against Gideon Weller based on the evidence that surfaced in the wake of Frank Hunter’s murder trial and the reeducation camp’s ex-warden’s subsequent sentence of exile has shattered citizens’ faith in Hadrian’s reeducation system. As Judge Julia Reznikoff said in her final address at Weller’s trial: “Gideon Weller is a man who became judge, jury, and executioner of these young men. He determined them to be pure heterosexuals with no hope of reformation and acted believing their end justified. Unfortunately,” Judge Reznikoff added, “as we condemn this man, we must also condemn ourselves, for his warped attitude was born of our country’s prevailing prejudice.” As Mother Stuttgart succinctly reminded us when she spoke at her great-grandson’s trial: “Humanity’s greatest flaw is in our lack of balance.” We swing from one extreme to another, and today, I say Hadrian has taken the pendulum of man’s folly from one form of abuse into another. Gideon Weller acted based on our country’s lack of balance—our country’s prevailing prejudice against heterosexuals. The six youth Gideon Weller
raped all committed suicide. That these young men all chose death as their only escape proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have allowed our hopes for the future to act as a steamroller over the fringes of our youth. These six young men were our children. Our fear of the outside world, our warped perception of heterosexuals—especially viewing heterosexual men as aggressive, violent, and abusive—has twisted the way we view some of our youth.

Todd Middleton proved how we do not truly understand our heterosexual youth. His potential, his gifts, much like those of his father, whom we learned during Frank Hunter’s trial was also a
strai
—I’m sorry, heterosexual, are lost to our society. As we know, Will Middleton is revered in Hadrian for his genetically altering the soya bean, an ingenious genetic alteration which helped Hadrian enter into the self-sustaining age we now appreciate. An act brought into existence by a straight man—a het’ro. Had we known of his sexual preference when he was still in high school, our country would have been denied all of his talents. Just as we are now denied all the potential talents his son, Todd Middleton, had. Todd Middleton had hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps. His dream was to alter the DNA of rice so we could grow that life-saving crop in our northern climate. Because rice is the last remaining crop Hadrian imports, Todd’s dream would have offered us complete anonymity and self-reliance. We will never know if he, like his father, could have been successful.

Why is it we only ever stop to think about our actions when the one who dies, or the person who speaks out, is deemed a member of our elite? Stop and think, we have, finally. Recently elected President Stiles vows to look into the state of reeducation camps and has appointed Jason Warith to work in conjunction with the Minister of Education. As you know, Jason Warith was the man who helped expose Gideon Weller’s abusive methods of reeducation. Mr. Warith states that his first act as assistant to the Minister of Education is to ban the use of corporal punishment. Only one paddle will remain—Gideon Weller’s—a paddle stained with the blood of his victims. This instrument of torture used against our children for far too many years will now hang in the Government Hall as a bloody reminder of his ruthless rule forged by our fear of the outside world and unreasonable prejudice against heterosexuals.

And although positive changes are being made, needless to say, many are out there who actually approve of Gideon Weller’s methods. Hadrian’s
transition back to a state of tolerance and understanding will not be easy, but suffice to say, the spark that lights the way for that transition is burning brightly, and women and men like Faial Raboud and Jason Warith are more than willing to carry that torch in the hopes of creating a better future for our children.

Vale!