Historical LGBTQI+ Figures

When I was a teenager and savaged by depression, having grown up in a notoriously bigoted and homophobic Mormon community and on the verge of being kicked out of my own family for being gay (and then attempting suicide), my Dad once said to me during an argument, “nobody admirable in history was gay.” As a teenager I had very little life experience nor education from which I could refute his cruel and obviously dishonest claim, and though I even knew of a few contemporary gay icons like Elton John and Ellen Degeneres, the heat of shame, embarrassment, and loneliness I felt at the hands of my own father precluded any retort, such were my emotions and thoughts in a desperate spiral to convince my own father I was worth loving.

It is important to know that during such confrontations, “debates,” and conflict with bigoted and narcissistic persons there is a more insidious underworking occurring that victims of such abuse are not aware of, and probably not even that of the perpetrator since this is a unique human behavior which is mostly practiced on instinct and learned from their own experiences of childhood abuse (I discuss this in my new book, The Perfect Child, and how to overcome the pain of past trauma and abuse, self-defeating behavior, and learn real confidence and self esteem). When people who are hateful, bigoted, homophobic, misogynistic, misandrist, racist, or other type of narcissistic and anti-socially impaired engage in argument their goal is never to reach consensus or to debate. Their entire underlying motivation, instinctually, is to gain control over their environment and the people in it, and the words they use are not for communication, but to exert power. Because of this, engaging in argument at all with someone who is like this gives them victory from the very outset, because they are able to ignite your emotions and vested interest to engage with them in the first place, the very point of their involvement, while the other party (us) is duped into taking their words at their value and led into the trap of duplicitous intent. By setting the theme, tone, topics, and duration of the engagement they are made to feel important by the very intensity of the engagement, and the narcissistic party has already achieved their purpose, control of you, and by sustaining the argument on their terms we fall unwittingly victim to their agenda, never realizing we lost the very moment it started. Unbeknownst to me, when my father berated me about my sexual orientation and discussed it in terms of his own agenda (using dismissive and marginalizing terms such as so-called ‘homosexual tendencies’) and denied obvious notable and amazing historical figures who were LGBTQI+ he won the conflict because I became more despondent, depressed, and suicidal, which was his goal from the outset, not actually to argue whether or not anyone in the history of humanity had ever been gay. To have been armed with the information of specific examples to refute his agenda would also not have saved me, because he didn’t care one fucking bit if he was right or not. It was simply a manipulation device to give him the kind of power over his child he felt he should have, the point never being truth or consideration, but control.

Heterosexual humans may errantly be motivated to deny the existence of LGBTQI+ history to preserve their own emotional connection to the past and its historical figures, for instance believing that if pirates John Swann and his lover Captain Robert Culliford were not just close friends it exposes straight men to the presupposition that they too might be buggering each other when building close relationships, and as such withdraw from platonic intimacy and thus deny themselves the strong emotional bonds they need to feel accepted and loved. It is instead the denial of gay history in the first place which creates this environment hostile for the emotions of straight men and women by condemning male intimacy which sets the very expectation and limitations for their own relationships. If instead nobody has a problem accepting that gay pirates existed and were cool, then straight men in turn have no problem establishing and keeping their own close friends and male relations too.

For my own emotional and spiritual wellbeing I have been greatly comforted over the intervening years learning how not-alone I actually am. My generation unfortunately grew up without very many homosexual role models because of the HIV crisis and the apathy and persecution surrounding it at the hands of people like Mormons and Evangelical Christians. But homosexuality and non-binary genders are a phenomenon which has existed in humanity even before we were human, as it does in many other animal species because it is a function of biology and not culture, and as such gays, lesbians, those who are transgender, and other differing sexual and gender identities have existed throughout the entirety of human history and beyond, and as such there are also many notable and excellent (and some depraved) examples of those who were LGBTQI+ whom I have come to learn about in my life which have given me pride and inclusion knowing that they were not unlike myself (by the way, if you are reading this and you are not LGBTQI+, you do not need to get the acronym right. Some people might get mad if you don’t, but it’s just a shorthand for referring to everyone who is differently gendered).

“How completely you have taken possession of my body," Gandhi wrote in a letter to Kallenbach. "This is slavery with a vengeance.”

Part of the problem with identifying LGBTQI+ people of the past is that most historians, researchers, writers, politicians, and common people are heterosexual, and since we have also endured at least two-thousand years of institutional and theocratic homophobia many examples are either readily dismissed or hotly contested even when evidence is ample, and nearly every possible LGBTQI+ candidate is pathologically claimed to “not have acted on their desires” as if that totally makes you not gay (come on guys—they can’t all have been straight). For instance, Walt Whitman, one of the most talented writers in history and an obvious and overt homosexual whose works celebrated men and penis and earned him the scorn of prudish contemporaries of his day is very frequently said to not have been gay for a lack evidence of actual sex acts with men, as if there should be a paper trail of everyone’s sexual encounters, never mind that gays and lesbians often risked actual death or at least public scorn and professional ruin if they should be known, and often ample evidence is simply marginalized or casually dismissed. Sometimes this is done out of an abundance of caution, as if the default of a lack of affirmative proof is hetero- rather than homosexual, you know, just to be safe. The father of modern science, Sir Isaac Newton, was gay but was also a self-hating Christianist who lived during one of the most vicious and merciless periods for the persecution of homosexuals, who never married and got into bitchy gay drama with the male objects of his affection that would by comparison make James Charles look boring, but which is then excused by biased and bigoted historians as simply “close male friendships.” Mahatma Ghandi was also gay, and there are actual photographs and letters of him and the man who would have been his husband, had the institutions which have persecuted and oppressed us not existed. Many bigoted and prejudiced historians claim supposed LGBTQI+ people as having been celibate, as if sexual acts are what define someone who is LGBTQI+ and implying that sexuality is a choice. Worse, many of these historical figures are also routinely described as bisexual, pejudicially diluting the meaning of what it means to be either gay or bisexual for the purposes of satisfying their own and others’ homophobia. Just because a man has slept with a woman does not make him bisexual, you slow fucking morons. Many gay men try to be straight, especially in cultures which persecute those who are homosexual, and characterizing these figures as bisexual as if it is confirmed does sincere harm to everyone who is LGBTQI+ because the purpose is not to identify their sexuality but to marginalize it. Indeed the severity of vitriol by those who are heterosexual and/or cis-gender or closeted homosexuals (a substantial portion of our opponents are simply closeted gay men and women who desire not to be) which occurs when we attempt to identify others like us betrays the very bigotry and prejudice from which such mischaracterizations and marginalization originate, disregarding and trivializing the social pressures and threats to personal safety which motivated the lives of these individuals, and like my father are not at all interested in finding truth but in controlling the narrative. I do have an interest in controlling the narrative but my purpose is for self-preservation and the elimination of depression, self-hatred, and prejudice while that of the majority is to preserve authority, exclusion, and institution using that same prejudice and promoting fear, isolation, bigotry, and persecution in the process.

I will tell you a Joke about Jewel and Mary
It is neither a Joke nor a Story
For Rubin and Charles has married two girls
But Billy has married a boy
The girlies he had tried on every Side
But none could he get to agree
All was in vain he went home again
And since that is married to Natty
So Billy and Natty agreed very well
And mama’s well pleased at the match
The egg it is laid but Natty’s afraid
The Shell is So Soft that it never will hatch
But Betsy she said you Cursed bald head
My Suitor you never Can be
Beside your low crotch proclaims you a botch
And that never Can answer for me

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1829

Probably the most famous LGBTQI+ American, which deniers have to bend so far over backwards to explain away all his many homosexual behaviors they could fellatiate themselves from behind, was Abraham Lincoln who was, in all likelihood, an actual bisexual but more likely gay, who once wrote a poem about two men marrying which, in support of the history of censorship biased in favor of heteronormativity, was actually expunged from later editions of the very first Lincoln biography. Commentary on the nature of President Lincoln’s romantic life occurred very long before there were even hints of the modern LGBTQI+ rights movement, in the early 1900s, spoken in coded tones for the cultural bigotries and biases of the times but is often ignored by critics who instead focus on contemporary exploration of his sexuality. President Lincoln openly talked about sharing a bed with Joshua Fry Speed, as well as many intimate letters and correspondence in which they clearly communicate their affections for one another which exceed typical heteronormative affection for the time. The bed-sharing is excused by biased historians as evidence that sharing a bed with other men, even when you are a successful attorney and can afford your own, was a norm from the time, which it absolutely was not, which also ignores the fact that, while President, Lincoln often slept with Captain David Derickson of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry, who was Lincoln's bodyguard and companion. The absence of strict censorship was in reality not evidence of close intimacy of heterosexuals but a rare period of time when America was spared the kind of fevered homophobia that would later be reignited at the advent of cinema by the Baptists, as documented in the amazing film, The Celluloid Closet, which you should absolutely see if you have not. One of Lincoln’s boyfriends even describes Lincoln’s thighs, “as perfect as a human being's could be,” thighs being a common euphemism to indicate sexual congress since directly talking about fucking or someone’s cock or ass was frowned upon. Historians also equate Lincoln’s severe despondency at Mary Todd rejecting his first marriage proposal as evidence of his heterosexuality, never mind that gay men are also very often and especially suicidal when they try but cannot live up to the heteronormative expectations pressured upon them. Even President James Buchannan was a flaming, racist queen so gay that it was actually and frequently alluded to in political circles, and still historians have a hard time acknowledging fire when there is so much smoke it partly precipitated the actual American Civil War (Lincoln was Buchannan’s successor).

Considering the bias nature of historical record, error would tend to suppress accounts of those who are LGBTQI+, not embellish, so correcting that error means acknowledging fire when there is smoke, and there are other countless examples of us being summarily and arbitrarily dismissed from the historical record even when there is plain evidence, such as Queen Anne of Great Britain telling her lover, Sarah “I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of the world without you,” which is one of the most romantic and unequivocally homosexual things I’ve ever heard (The Favorite is an excellent fictionalization of this relationship you should also see). Captain Bartholomew Roberts, the most successful pirate in history who was known as Black Bart, who mostly harassed slave ships and slave traders, had a pirate code which forbade women on his ships, and was the inspiration for Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride, was said to have “developed an intensely emotional relationship with his young surgeon, George Wilson,” and the pair lived together for many years including a period of temporary retirement. Piracy was governed also by a practice called matelotage which was an official ceremony of civil union complete with the exchange of rings which historians too hastily dismiss as a merely platonic arrangement to preserve belongings and wealth, ignoring the fact that piracy was also an escape for gay men from inhumanely punitive laws of cultures from which these pirates escaped and then subsequently plundered, making it more likely, not less, that relationships in seafaring piracy were quite often romantic in nature. And while not one person exactly, the Sacred Band of Thebes is one of the oldest and most irrefutable documentations of gay men of history (not to mention the entire pantheon of homosexuality in ancient Greek religious life). It was an elite fighting force from Thebes which defeated Sparta, and was composed only of male lovers. It was supposed that if men went into battle with their beloved they would fight more fiercely than any other, which proved true for a little while, and provides a lot of material for both pride and fantasy.

Remembering that narcissists and opponents of equality engage in bigoted, gas-lighting confrontation for the actual act of confrontation and not for the pursuit of consensus or debate and that counter-evidence would serve no purpose but to play directly into their sadism, I have compiled a list of notable historical figures who are part of the LGBTQI+ community for the purpose of providing inclusivity and inspiration to those of us who might feel otherwise alone. If you know of any others I should add to this list please comment below to make me aware of them (they should be universally famous, not just famous in the LGBTQI+ community). In addition to historical figures, there are large collections of antique photographs of gay men and women which I love to peruse, especially since they were so well-styled back then.

NOTABLE HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO WERE LGBTQI+

1) Alan Turing, the father of computers

2) Oscar Wilde, indomitable author

3) Roman Emperor Hadrian, was a freaking Roman Emperor

4) Sir Isaac Newton, discovered gravity

5) Walt Whitman, famous American poet

6) Leonardo DaVinci, that DaVinci

7) Michelangelo Simoni, that Michelangelo

8) Pyotr Tchaikovsky, famous classical composer (wrote the freaking Nutcracker)

9) Virginia Woolf, famous writer

10) Florence Nightingale, invented modern nursing

11) Marcel Proust, famous writer

12) Freddy Mercury, lead singer of Queen

13) Billie Holiday, famous Jazz singer

14) Rock Hudson, renowned actor and heartthrob

15) Bayard Rustin, civil rights icon and friend to Martin Luther King Jr.

16) Tennessee Williams, renowned playwright

17) Marlon Brando, famous actor

18) James Dean, famous actor

19) E.M. Forster, renowned writer

20) Sir Francis Bacon, Elizabethan philosopher

21) Francis Bacon, renowned artist

22) George Washington Carver, renowned agriculturalist and “inventor of peanut butter”

23) Sally Ride, first American woman in space

24) Emily Dickinson, renowned author and poet

25) Abraham Lincoln, American President and founder of the Republican Party

26) Mahatma Ghandi, Father of India

27) Harvey Milk, father of the gay rights movement

28) Queen Anne, Queen of Great Britain

29) Captain Bartholomew Roberts, (AKA Black Bart), best pirate ever

30-299) Sacred Band of Thebes, badass Theban warriors who defeated Sparta

I wrote Fuck Portion Control to help other gay men and others who are LGBTQI+ with our collective physical and mental health challenges, because while the information in it applies to all human beings, those of us who grew up different often suffer increased burdens of shame and body dysmorphia which often can lead to harmful behaviors like excessive dieting and exercise, substance abuse, and relationship stress which makes us much more susceptible to severe health problems. If you want to learn how to be truly healthy and happy, get a copy of it. Or, you can read my articles How To Cure Depression, Transgender Health and Happiness, Why Transgender Men are Men and Trans Women are Women, or Why the Letter I Should Always Be Included in LGBTQI+, and if you have problems with substance abuse, which often results from the trauma of the kinds of childhoods we had, it can be easily treated, go read my program on Alcoholism and Addiction.