Its actually kind of scary when I agree with rjung twice in a week. 
-XT
The evidence for Nietzsche’s homosexuality is far weaker than that for Da Vinci. I did my thesis on Nietzsche, and speaking personally I’d kind of get a kick out of it if he were gay, but I don’t feel I could honestly make such a claim. Unlike Da Vinci, Nietzsche is known to have been romantically involved with women. This never worked out well for him, but I couldn’t say whether this was because he was gay or because he was just bad with women. There doesn’t seem to be any particular man in Nietzsche’s life who was “someone special” in a romantic sense, and right up to the end he seems to have had a big crush on Cosima Wagner.
This isn’t to say Nietzsche couldn’t have been gay. Joachim Köhler makes a decent argument that he was in Zarathustra’s Secret, but it’s far from conclusive. And in the particular case of Nietzsche, too many people have already tried to “explain” his work by inventing weird theories about the man himself.
My feelings on this would be if a particular work or body of work was inspired by a same-sex relationship it has every amount of relevance to education as were it inspired by opposite-sex relationships (ala many of Shakespeare’s sonnets). I think Walt Whitman is fair game, regardless of his sexuality, because some of his poems were quite obviously inspired by men he was in some sort of close relationship with. Ditto Byron, whose scandalous affairs with both men and women are a matter of (IIRC) public record. And, of course, could you really give a decent biography of Oscar Wilde without mentioning the end of his career?
Which is, if you’ll note, the exact position I took.
I think we’ll all agree that in the study of history, it’s imperative that the truth be the end goal. Unfortunately, the truth is elusive. One historical event can be described in an awful lot of ways by different witnesses or participants, and the further we get from it, the less chance there is that we’re actually understanding it as it happened.
Do we stop studying history because we never know for certain what actually transpired? No, we keep sifting through clues, looking for evidence, and we come up with new theories that fit the evidence that we have. And even if we have an incomplete picture, the research we’ve done may lay the foundation for further discoveries.
In other words, no, we don’t know for certain whether Leonardo was gay. But it’s an interesting question, and one that scholars and laymen will ponder for as long as there’s no new evidence either way. All we can hope for is that conclusions aren’t drawn on the basis of agendas, and instead are based on evidence.
You are learning, young padwan. 
Apparently people that knew him or people that knew people who knew him also debated or thought that he was homosexual. Gian Paolo Lomazzo (1536-1584) did not personally know Leonardo, but he knew many of Leonardo’s younger students. He wrote a treatise where Leonardo declares that he made love to Salai many times.
And I don’t want to start a hijack, but I do believe that many people at that time did understand the concept of homosexuality. After all, you have Il Sodoma (1477-1549), a painter who had such a love for those as the same sex as himself that he called himself ‘the sodomite.’ So it is entirely possible that Leonardo da Vinci thought of himself as a ‘homosexual’ by modern definitions. I don’t think that we will ever know the truth one way or another though.
To be fair, this is not the intent. Someone usually asks this when a thread about a celebrity’s sexuality comes up. The guy is just asking a question. I think few people would judge da Vinci differently if it was proved he was gay.
I agree. There is nothing wrong with being curious, even about topics people want to be PC about. We could say “who cares” about so very many questions. What is the etymology of “Crazy like a fox?”
“Who cares? It won’t really change how often I use it. It won’t change how I think of the phraze.”
Verifying facts isn’t wrong, nor does it imply a judgement.
Well I disagree. “Rampant speculation” is far too strong. As I said I think the weight of the evidence is that he had a homosexual orientation for the reasons I cited and others (like **ava{/B] cites).
Where speculation (rampant or other) is needed is to explain away the evidence as so:
Well lots of lifelong bachelors have relationships with young men, proclaim their love repeatedly for the handsome young male companion, have no known sexual relationships with women, are arrested for Homosexual acts, are thought by some contemporaries to be gay, note that they are “disgusted” by women’s sex organs … and are not in fact gay.
As I said, I submit the weight of the evidence we do have points logically to a homosexual orientation of some sort - I don’t care in any way - but it is the question at hand.
We will agree to disagree, then, jjimmy, because until solid evidence comes to light—a confession by Leonardo, perhaps, written in his own handwriting—then we’re still speculating. Rampantly speculating—you have provided no cites. I did say there was evidence that Leonardo may have been gay—but declaring his sexuality as proven fact is not particularly scientific.
Remember, there are people alive today who are being constantly shifted from one side to the other of the Is He Or Isn’t He column and despite the fact that they are living celebrities we don’t know for certain. People with an axe to grind will compile large lists of “evidence” such as yours and make their assumptions. And sometimes they’re wrong—and sometimes they’re right and the celebrity doesn’t admit it—and sometimes they’re right and the celebrity does admit it. McCarthy had better evidence.
In other words, I’m not saying Leonardo is and I’m not saying his isn’t. I don’t care one way or another; it won’t affect my view of the man or his contributions to the world. There’s simply a limit to how much you can know about a man that has been dead for four centuries. So convince me.
To easily rebut your specific allegations about Leonardo:
“Lifelong bachelor” is not the same as “confirmed homosexual.” If it is proven that he had sexual relations with many men, the other evidence is probably not necessary (ie, Leonardo was gay, bi, or at least curious). Or are you simply assuming that because he was friends with them, he was sexual partners with them? I have had relationships with plenty of gay men, and slept with none of them. Did I love any of them? In a way, yes. What did Leonardo declare about his love and how did he say it? Did he say it in Italian? What word did he use and are you translating it right?
I love many people that I haven’t slept with, but I couldn’t prove this because I don’t record my sexual encounters and (I presume) neither do my partners. Would records of any of my sexual encounters last for four hundred years? I doubt it. So instead of saying he has no known sexual encounters with women, shit, you could say he has no recorded sexual encounters with women—and I already asked about recorded encounters with men (that is, if you have evidence, bring it).
What Leonardo’s contemporaries think about his sexuality isn’t evidence—and any conclusions you derive from that is speculation based on speculation. Don’t call that rampant? 'Cos I do.
Of course, you only provided your interpretation of facts as you saw them. Your allegations were full of sematic leanings. Now if you have links, cites, or proofs, show us. That’s the topic of the thread, after all, and this is Great Debates.
Look I’m saying there is complete unshakeable proof. I’m saying the ** weight of the evidence ** suggest he had a homosexual orientation.
You say I’m not convinced. That’s cool.
But I provided evidence. You did not. You provided (I would say) (rampant) speculative answers “That make sense to Fish” to the evidence e.g. Yeah maybe that thing that walks like a duck, and talks like a duck is actually a dog disguised as a duck. Again cool. This GD – but to pretend that no evidence has been provided, is just silly.
I provided a link where an art historian translated the text. She says
“Today, Leonardo’s homosexuality is generally taken for granted.”
Any competent biography will deal with the subject. Here are three, you can see folks who got them are upset that he was gay is mentioned (not saying you are upset)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000006QI0/002-0720996-4857627?v=glance
Now I must say: The weight of evidence has led the majority of scholarly opinion to believe that Leonardo was probably a homosexual. What do you have to offer to show (besides your personal opinion -“takes”) that the evidence doesn’t convince you?
I submitt there is nothing to show anything but a homsexual orientation – no girlfriends, no sexual relationshp with a woman… zip, nada. What say you?
When I suggested earlier that there was little or no evidence supporting his heterosexuality, I was not merely being cute, but making an accurate statement of the evidence.
I’m a lady
and also marley, they were asserting they were gay, it looked just like your average game of softball to me… not saying that it couldn’t have been lesbians, or that some of them weren’t… but the context of the game, in black and white, in public, suggested that this was just footage they stole of an early women’s softball game.
She even adlibs the word “lesbians” over women in Eleanor Roosevelt’s (?) opening speech at the first national women’s meeting.
Um, your original link was lacking any actual proof. As far as I can see it contains one relevant paragraph in a page otherwise devoted to da Vinci’s artistic technique:
That’s your evidence? Sorry, but taking something for granted isn’t exactly the same as proving it. Suspicious coincidences aren’t exactly like proof. Which is why I say “maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.”
I’m afraid I’m not here to prove anything about his sexuality. I’m only pointing out that conclusive proof of the sexual orientation of a four-hundred-years-dead man is probably not possible. I didn’t disagree with you that the weight of the evidence was suggestive; I’m just observing that it isn’t conclusive. Some of the anecdotes told about Leonardo, I pointed out, could be told about me—and be wrong. Even the paragraph you cited contains weasel words: “taken for granted,” “seems to have taken an interest” (bolding mine).
We agree there is not concrete proof. We might even agree that it’s improbable that concrete proof will turn up after all this time. (I don’t even know if da Vinci knew the word ‘homosexual.’ Was it even invented yet?) I would submit that a treatise written by someone who knew da Vinci, writing that da Vinci claimed he had made love to a man, is about as convincing as a People magazine exposé today on the sexual orientation of… oh, Tom Cruise or Richard Gere. I also suggest that being arrested for homosexuality is telling—just as telling as being acquitted for it. Richard Jewell, anyone? I’m not saying Leonardo was anything.
When something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it still might be a goose. The honest thing to say, in my opinion, is “we don’t know for sure, but he may have been.” As nearly as I can tell, we both say this. I even credit you in my first post with saying that you, in addition to Futile Gesture, say it is open to interpretation. I don’t understand why you object to my interpretation because I really think we’re both saying the same thing:
So why are you arguing? I really don’t understand. I have already said in multiple posts that it’s possible and the evidence is curious but we don’t know for certain. Are you taking a different position?
Why am I arguing? Why because when you said this about my post it was not true
Nor did I care for the tone of this
Nor could I let this (totally unnecessary) shot go unanswered
Then you followed a paragraph which paraphrases Da Vincvi, his contemporaries and scholars with a wave of the hand & personal opinions, disagreeing with scholarly opinion and offering nothing but your own takes
Then launched another broadside, for someone who is going against every scholarly biography of Da Vinci that I know of – who has provided improbable explanations to what we do know, with this request for more cites --so I provided them
You next response was a GD – not a answer worthy of the Pit as your first – but it still told us what Fish thinks about all this scholarly mumbo-jumbo – great – We can agree to disagree, but don’t say I offered nothing but my own opinion, no cites etc. That was not the case.
Cato Caelin is immortal.
Strangely, people rarely hold claims that historic figures were heterosexual to the same exacting standard. Instead, their heterosexuality is often taken for granted even when there is little or no evidence to support it – even when there is evidence against it! Perhaps you can understand how this might make some people feel that their history was being unfairly ignored or even intentionally hidden.
I like your point about recognizing the group to which someone undeniably belonged. And I’d say that your last line here could be modified to – report the known facts, the implications they lead to, and let the reader judge for himself. (This feeling may have a bit to do with the approximately 70 “were David and Jonathan gay?” threads I’ve encountered in the past few months on one board or another.)
Actually, his friend and contemporary, the soldier and historian Xenophon, wrote rather extensively about him. That is what is used as the historical criterion in trying to separate Socrates-the-man from Socrates-Plato’s-sock-puppet. And there’s some evidence of a very close relationship with Alcibiades – but, as is known historically, Alcibiades screwed everybody, one way or another.