Today was “Coming Out Day” at my university, and there were little pink triangles posted all over the lobby of my dorm listing famous homosexuals. Some were obvious (BOY GEORGE? Couldn’t see that one coming…), but two caught my eye: Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar. I haven’t been exactly keeping up with my gay history books, have NEVER heard anything saying that Churchill was homosexual. As for Caesar, I’ve never heard this either, even though it was common in Roman times to boff young boys. Since no one in the Roman world defined themselves as gay if they did so, should Caesar be termed so?
… Oh, and I’d like some proof for the Caesar thing - I know he had a son with Cleopatra, and I think a daughter when he was a young man. Doesn’t sound very gay to me.
This is all dredged up from the back of my memory, but IIRC Churchill had a one-off homosexual experience at boarding school which he was fairly open about, and which is fairly well-documented in the “official” biography by Martin Gilbert (Churchill’s references to it, not the incident itself).
I believe that homosexual experimentation is fairly commonplace at English boarding schools, and most people who have an experience of this kind would not consider themselves gay or even bisexual as a result.
Liberace, on the other hand, successfully sued a British newspaper for libel after it suggested he was gay, so I hope he wasn’t included in your lobby.
Well, I wouldn’t call Caesar “gay” so much as I would call him “willing to boink anything that moved”. I believe it was the elder Curio who called him “every man’s woman and every woman’s man”.
The Romans were not so shocked at the evidence and rumors of Caesar’s bisexuality as they were at the reports (no more than that) that he had taken the passive position (which, to a Roman optimate, was horrifying).
As to whether “homosexual” was a label that anyone of that society would have accepted, I refer you to Dr. Jeanne Reames-Zimmerman’s Hephaestion page. It is, true, about Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, rather than Caesar and all of his contemporaries, and about a period nearly three centuries earlier, but it may shed some light on this question.
I found a list of Queers in History. Winston Churchill is not on the list, but his distant ancestor Sarah Churchill is. All such lists should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, Rock Hudson is on this list, and he couldn’t have been gay, could he? (My aunt refuses to this day to believe he was; he had all those love scenes with Doris Day, you know.)
Sarah Churchill and Queen Anne probably were lovers, I think.
I do believe that George, Duke of Kent was bisexual. However, he was not George V’s BROTHER. He was George V’s SON. His BROTHER was George IV.
Louis Mountbatten? Since WHEN? What the FUCK? He was in love all his life with his cousin, Grand Duchess Maria of Russia and after she was murdered by the Bolsheviks, he kept her picture on the mantle in his room until the day he died.
(sigh That is SO romantic!)
John Lennon?
What about Tchaikovsky? He was homosexual, from what I understand.
Kaiser Wilhelm II-could be. But then, he was sort of a dick anyways, and a strange, eccentric creature. And I doubt his wife would’ve stood for him cheating on her-she was extremely religious and heads would have ROLLED if she had caught him cheating.
Marie Antoinette? Well, I’ll be damned!
Tsar Alexander I was GAY? I didn’t know that!
ANNE FRANK? Good lord, she was only 13 when she talked about masturbation and feeling a friend’s breasts…you know how young girls are?
Danny Kaye?
Richard Burton?
Janis Joplin?
Amelia Earhart?
Eleanor Roosevelt (could’ve been…)
(Now, is it just me, or are some of these women who are supposedly gay listed maybe because they weren’t your typical girly girls? Stereotype, much?)
Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay or bi, it’s just that some of these choices, well, where’s the evidence?
It’s also just my way of saying, “Wow, I didn’t know that!”
Danny Kaye and Sir Lawrence Olivier were lovers for a time.
John Lennon is pure crap. Supposedly he and Brian Epstein had a fling shortly before Epstein’s death. No evidence, both parties dead, you get the idea.
Mountbatten and E. Roosevelt are the only other ones you list I’ve heard anything about. I can neither confirm nor deny.
Those lists are notoriously unreliable and should be taken with, if anything, a bucket of salt.
It’s hard to say that historical figures were “gay”, because the modern concept of gay identity hasn’t been around very long. What I mean is that… well, a guy can boink other guys until the cows come home (moo…), but… that doesn’t make him gay. It wasn’t an identity, per se, back then.
You put a question mark after Janis Joplin – I believe her bisexuality was well known during her own lifetime.
As for many of the others, these lists often include people who are known (or sometimes simply suspected) of having had at least one homosexual encounter in their lives. It is usually impossible to tell whether or not such people were actually gay or bisexual; the question may not even be relevant depending on how big a role culture and society plays in sexual identity and orientation.
Well, I put a question mark because I didn’t know.
Hmmm…learn something new everyday.
Lawrence Olivier, heard that. Personally, Danny could’ve done better. The way Olivier left Vivian Leigh-on her birthday and when she was having a breakdown…tsk tsk tsk.
Danny Kaye-is he still alive? I still watch White Christmas every year!
“The best things…happen while you’re dancing…”
Guinastasia, I might have known you’d find SOME way to mention the Romanovs in my thread. Reminds me of my glory days back in high school (doing every report on Rasputin or Grand Duchess Anastasia), etc. I still like to read about that (hence the nickname), just not as obsessively as I did back then.
Desdemona, this may surprise you, but I too know men that have fathered children and then decided they were gay. The point is, usually they stick with their new “identity”, and Caesar fathered his son with Cleopatra about 20 or so years after his daughter was born and he, presumably, decided he was gay. Did he change his “identity” AGAIN, just for her? Still doesn’t sound gay to me. Sounds like he was “willing to boink anything that moved” (great line Akatsukami!), but that doesn’t make you gay.
I love his movies–my mom raised me on 'em when I was little. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty still cracks me up. Kicks the hell out of modern “classic” comedies like Something About Mary or Scary Movie. :rolleyes:
Akash
(My aunt refuses to this day to believe he was; he had all those love scenes with Doris Day, you know.)
