Who is the first public person, world figure or American to come out of the closet and declare he or she is gay?
And in what year ?
Tou mean in all of history? World figure covers a lot of territory.
yes
Are these three really mutually exclusive?
The definition of “out” is a little slippery too. There hasn’t always been a closet. Homosexuality was a fairly open practice in much of the ancient world.
For a publicly “out” celebrity in the contemorary sense, maybe Truman Capote?
Sappho?
Or Oscar Wilde.
I’m looking for a well known American or non American whichever comes first.
I don’t t think “gay” (as we define the modern concept) existed until relatively recently. Before that you were a “sodomite” or something else fairly pejorative.
Why bother distinguishing between them?
I’ll try Plato.
Didn’t Plato later condemn homosexuality as unnatural later on in their lives?
Actually, your answer of Sappho predates Plato anyway. I think you may be the winner.
Plato and Xenophon certainly both described the, umm, master/pupil intimate relationship in a fashion that was not wholly unapproving. I don’t have the books handy to dig up passages though.
If you’d accept a 19th century Irishman, then Oscar Wilde is your man.
And what could the prize possibly be?
The OP wonders about closets. I think Wilde may well be the chap, at least in the western world.
Per this article. When Socrates was executed for corrupting the youth of Athens were they referring purely o his teachings, or also to his homosexuality?
Yes, in the modern sense of “out of the closet,” I can’t think of anyone before Wilde. There were some writers like Whitman and Melville but I don’t know how “out” they were at the time.
Does Wilde actually count? Wilde was “out” as bisexual because he was pretty much forced out, with the ill-advised libel case against the Marquis of Queensberry and the gross indecency trial.
What does the OP actually mean by coming out of the closet? I don’t think some of the subjects from years ago actually used the term ‘to come out of the closet’, but basically did come out, in some form or another. If it is made public at one point in their life they were gay/homosexual/lesbian, does that not count as coming out?
I meant voluntarily.