Marc-André Raffalovich

• Illustration — John Gray and Marc-André Raffalovich with a friend Raffalovich was born into a wealthy Jewish family, which moved from Odessa to the French capital, Paris, in 1863. His brother, Arthur, became a noted Parisian financier and economist. André went up to study in Oxford in 1882 before settling down in London and opening a salon in the 1890s. Oscar Wilde attended, calling the event a saloon rather than a salon. This is where Raffalovich met the love and companion of his life, John Gray. In 1890, his sister Sophie married the Irish nationalist politician William O'Brien (1852–1928).

In 1896, under the influence of John Gray, Raffalovich embraced Catholicism and joined the tertiary order of the Dominicans as Brother Sebastian in honour of Saint Sebastian. At the same time Gray was ordained a priest. In 1905, Gray was appointed to the parish of St Patrick in the working class Cowgate area of Edinburgh. Raffalovich followed and settled down nearby, purchasing No. 9, Whitehouse Terrace. He contributed greatly to the cost of St Peter's Church in Morningside, Edinburgh, of which Gray was appointed the first parish priest. In Whitehouse Terrace, Raffalovich established a successful salon. His guests included Henry James, Lady Margaret Sackville, Compton Mackenzie, Max Beerbohm and Herbert Read.

There is a close link between Raffalovich's views on homosexuality and his Catholic beliefs. In contrast to then-current theories of sexual inversion, according to which a man was a homosexual because he had a female soul in a male body and a woman was lesbian because she had a male soul in a female body, and which thus essentially reproduced heterosexuality, Raffalovich's view of "unisexuality" held that it consisted of attraction to the same sex, closer to the modern conception of homosexuality. He wrote of gay men, "As men, they love men; but they affirm that were they women they would love women." He made the distinction between the born and the chosen inverts. He believed the former worth considering while the latter he thought to be mired in vice and perversion. Raffalovich drew, however, a difference with heterosexuality based on the idea of vice and virtue. He regarded a heterosexual's destiny as marriage and starting a family, whereas a homosexual's duty, he believed, was to overcome and transcend his desires with artistic pursuits and spiritual – even mystical – friendships. These views led him to clash with Magnus Hirschfeld and the members of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, with Raffalovich accusing them of being propagandists for moral dissolution and of wanting to destroy whole generations. He even supported Germany's Paragraph 175 as a way to prevent total moral chaos. Raffalovich's failure to reconcile his homosexuality and the Roman Catholic religion he accepted as true pushed him further into his criticism of the early gay liberation movement; in 1910, he finally stopped commenting altogether on the subject which had occupied such a place in his life. Instead, he focused on his Edinburgh salon and his support of young artists. He died in 1934, the same year as his now platonic friend, John Gray.