Gay Icons

[W!nston]

Gay Icon (Wikipedia)

A gay icon is a public figure (historical or present) who is embraced by many within lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. Dykon, a portmanteau of the words "dyke" and "icon", has recently entered common lexicon to describe figures particularly iconic to lesbian people.

Some of the main qualities of a gay icon often include glamour, flamboyance, strength through adversity, and androgyny in presentation. Such icons can be of any sexual orientation or gender; if LGBT, they can be out or not. Although most gay icons have given their support to LGBT social movements, some have expressed opposition, advocating against a perceived "homosexual agenda".

Historical icons are typically elevated to such status because their sexual orientation remains a topic of debate among historians. Modern gay icons, who are predominantly female entertainers, commonly garner a large following within LGBT communities over the course of their careers. The majority of gay icons fall into one of two categories: they are either tragic, sometimes martyred figures, or prominent pop culture idols.


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There are many Gay Icons past and present. I thought a thread about them was a good idea.

Here I will post my favorites. I hope others will add their examples of Gay Icons.

Oscar Wilde

Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, and the cirstances of his imprisonment and early death. In the latter half of the 20th century he became a gay icon.[1]

Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.

At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis, which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.

 

[W!nston]

Walt Whitman

Ed Folsom / Walt Whitman Archives

Walt Whitman + Peter Doyle by Eshto on deviantART

Walter "Walt" Whitman (/ˈwɪtmən/; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and—in addition to publishing his poetry—was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.

Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions. However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actual sexual experiences with men.

Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races, though his attitude in life reflected many of the racial prejudices common to nineteenth-century America and his opposition to slavery was not necessarily based on belief in the equality of races per se. At one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.

 

[W!nston]

Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolph Nureyev, Russian exile ballet star, well-endowed with talent (and otherwise as Richard Avedon's famous photo shows)

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (Bashkir: Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев, Tatar: Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев, Russian: Рудо́льф Хаме́тович Нуре́ев) (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) was a Soviet-born dancer of ballet and modern dance, one of the most celebrated of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.

Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him

Nureyev was bisexual/homosexual, as he did have several heterosexual relationships as a younger man. Nureyev met Erik Bruhn, the celebrated Danish dancer, after Nureyev defected to the West in 1961. Nureyev was a great admirer of Bruhn, having seen filmed performances of the Dane on tour in the Soviet Union with the American Ballet Theatre, although stylistically the two dancers were very different. Bruhn and Nureyev became a couple and the two remained together off and on, with a very volatile relationship for 25 years, until Bruhn's death in 1986.

 

[W!nston]

Charles Nelson Reilly

Charles Nelson Reilly: The wacky comedian with a gift for double entendres.

Charles Nelson Reilly (January 13, 1931 – May 25, 2007) was an American actor, comedian, director, and drama teacher known for his comedic roles in stages, films, children's television, and cartoons, and as a game show panelist.

Reilly did not publicly affirm his homosexuality until his one-man show, Save It for the Stage. However, much like fellow game-show regular Paul Lynde of the same era, Reilly played up a campy on-screen persona. In many episodes of Match Game, he would lampoon himself by briefly affecting a deep voice and the nickname "Chuck," and self-consciously describing how "butch" he was. He mentioned in a 2002 interview with Entertainment Tonight that he felt no need to note this and that he never purposely hid being gay from anyone. Patrick Hughes III, a set decorator and dresser, was Reilly's domestic partner; the two met backstage while Reilly appeared on the game show Battlestars. They lived in Beverly Hills.

Despite sporting what appeared to be a full head of hair for most of the prime of his career, Reilly was in fact bald, wearing a toupée throughout most of his appearances in the 1970s and 1980s. During the taping of Match Game 74 his toupee became the joke of the filming when Reilly had to go to NYC to have his toupee adjusted. During the taping of several episodes Reilly is seen wearing different hats because his toupée is back in NY waiting for him to be fitted. This was the start of the long-running jokes on Match Game about his hair. He abandoned the toupée in the late 1990s and appeared bald in public for the rest of his life. He dramatized the experience in his stage show, The Life of Reilly.

 

[W!nston]

Harvey Milk

San Francisco's Castro district and the area's icon and patron saint, Harvey Milk, commonly known as “the Mayor of Castro Street”,

Milk with long-time partner and campaign partner, Scott Smith. The two co-ran Castro Camera.

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.

Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, part of the broader social changes the city was experiencing.

Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Milk's election was made possible by and was a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community.[note 1] In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us." Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

 

[W!nston]

Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry by the Gherkin, a defining symbol of the City of London Photo: Sprout Pictures

The Fry Chronicles

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist.

After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from two schools and spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he secured a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English literature. While at university, Fry became involved with the Cambridge Footlights, where he met his long-time collaborator Hugh Laurie. As half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.

Fry's acting roles include a Golden Globe Award–nominated lead performance in the film Wilde, Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, the title character in the television series Kingdom, a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the crime series Bones, and as Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V for Vendetta. He has also written and presented several doentary series, including the Emmy Award–winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, which saw him explore his mental illness. He is also the long-time host of the BBC television quiz show QI.

Besides working in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines and written four novels and two volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles. He also appears frequently on BBC Radio 4, starring in the comedy series Absolute Power, being a frequent guest on panel games such as Just a Minute, and acting as chairman for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where he was one of a trio of hosts who succeeded the late Humphrey Lyttelton. Fry is also known for his voice-overs, reading all seven of the Harry Potter novels for the UK audiobook recordings, and narrating the LittleBigPlanet and Birds of Steel series of video games, as well as an animated series of explanations of the laws of cricket.

Fry struggled to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and by his own account did not engage in sexual activity for 16 years from 1979 until 1995.

When asked when he first acknowledged his sexuality, Fry quipped: "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm going up one of those'". Fry was in a 15-year relationship with Daniel Cohen, which ended in 2010.

 

[W!nston]

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984), known as Truman Capote /ˈtruːmən kəˈpoʊtiː/, was an American author, screenwriter and playwright, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced of Capote novels, stories, and plays.

Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother, and multiple migrations. He had discovered his calling as a writer by the age of 11, and for the rest of his childhood he honed his writing ability. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, "Miriam" (1945), attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, and resulted in a contract to write the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood, a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home. Capote spent four years writing the book aided by his lifelong friend Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).

A milestone in popular culture, In Cold Blood was the peak of Capote's literary career; it was to be his final fully published book. In the 1970s, he maintained his celebrity status by appearing on television talk shows.

Capote was openly homosexual. One of his first serious lovers was Smith College literature professor Newton Arvin, who won the National Book Award for his Herman Melville biography in 1951 and to whom Capote dedicated Other Voices, Other Rooms.[31][32] However, Capote spent the majority of his life until his death partnered to Jack Dunphy, a fellow writer. In his book, "Dear Genius ..." A Memoir of My Life with Truman Capote, Dunphy attempts both to explain the Capote he knew and loved within their relationship and the very success-driven and, eventually, drug and alcohol addicted person who existed outside of their relationship.[33] It provides perhaps the most in-depth and intimate look at Capote's life, outside of his own works. Although Capote and Dunphy's relationship lasted the majority of Capote's life, it seems that they both lived, at times, different lives. Their sometimes separate living quarters allowed autonomy within the relationship and, as Dunphy admitted, "spared [him] the anguish of watching Capote drink and take drugs."

Capote was well known for his distinctive, high-pitched voice and odd vocal mannerisms, his offbeat manner of dress, and his fabrications. He often claimed to know intimately people whom he had in fact never met, such as Greta Garbo. He professed to have had numerous liaisons with men thought to be heterosexual, including, he claimed, Errol Flynn. He traveled in an eclectic array of social circles, hobnobbing with authors, critics, business tycoons, philanthropists, Hollywood and theatrical celebrities, royalty, and members of high society, both in the U.S. and abroad. Part of his public persona was a longstanding rivalry with writer Gore Vidal. Their rivalry prompted Tennessee Williams to complain: "You would think they were running neck-and-neck for some fabulous gold prize." Apart from his favorite authors (Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, and Marcel Proust), Capote had faint praise for other writers. However, one who did get his favorable endorsement was journalist Lacey Fosburgh, author of Closing Time: The True Story of the Goodbar Murder (1977). He also claimed an admiration for Andy Warhol's The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B & Back Again.

Although Capote seemed never really to embrace the Gay Rights Movement, his own openness about homosexuality and his encouragement for openness in others makes him an important player in the realm of Gay Rights nonetheless. In his piece "Capote and the Trillings: Homophobia and Literary Culture at Midcentury," Jeff Solomon details an encounter between Capote and Lionel and Diana Trilling — two New York intellectuals and literary critics — in which Capote questioned the motives of Lionel, who had recently published a book on E.M. Forster but had ignored the author's homosexuality. Solomon argues:

when Capote confronts the Trillings on the train, he attacks their identity as literary and social critics committed to literature as a tool for social justice, capable of questioning both their own and their society's preconceptions, and sensitive to prejudice by virtue of their heritage and, in Diana's case, by her gender.

By producing works on homosexuality before and after the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement and by openly living as a gay man, Capote became an important representative of the gay community and a leading gay figure throughout the 20th century.

Capote photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948

This much-discussed 1947 Harold Halma photo on the back of Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) was a key factor in Capote's rise to fame during the 1940s.

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make." Photo of Truman Capote, 1948, by Carl Van Vechten.

Truman Capote and Jack Dunphy in Rome 1949.

 

[gorgik9]

Nice thread Sniffit!
I promise I'll contribute some comments on your posts and some posts of my own, but I think that'll be for tomorrow!

 

[W!nston]

Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara; Gujarati: Pharōkh Balsārā*; 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a British singer-songwriter and producer, best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Queen. As a performer, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and powerful vocals over a four-octave range. As a songwriter, he composed many hits for Queen, including "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Killer Queen," "Somebody to Love," "Don't Stop Me Now," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," and "We Are the Champions." In addition to his work with Queen, he led a solo career, and also occasionally served as a producer and guest musician (piano or vocals) for other artists. He died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS on 24 November 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease.

Mercury was a Parsi born in Sultanate of Zanzibar and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens. Posthumously, in 1992 he was awarded the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at Wembley Stadium, London. As a member of Queen, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004, and the band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002. Also in 2002, Mercury was placed at number 58 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

He has been voted one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music. In 2005, a poll organised by Blender and MTV2 saw Mercury voted the greatest male singer of all time. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. In 2009, a Classic Rock poll saw him voted the greatest rock singer of all time. AllMusic has characterised Mercury as "one of rock's greatest all-time entertainers," who possessed "one of the greatest voices in all of music."

While some commentators claimed Mercury hid his sexual orientation from the public, others claimed he was "openly gay." In December 1974, when asked directly, "So how about being bent?" by the New Musical Express, Mercury replied, "You're a crafty cow. Let's put it this way; there were times when I was young and green. It's a thing schoolboys go through. I've had my share of schoolboy pranks. I'm not going to elaborate further." Homosexual acts between adult males over the age of 21 were decriminalised in the United Kingdom in 1967, only seven years earlier. In the 1980s, he would often distance himself from his partner, Jim Hutton, during public events. In October 1986, The Sun claimed Mercury had "confessed to a string of one-night gay sex affairs."

During his career, Mercury's flamboyant stage performances sometimes led journalists to allude to his sexuality. Dave Dickson, reviewing Queen's performance at Wembley Arena in 1984 for Kerrang!, noted Mercury's "camp" addresses to the audience and even described him as a "posing, pouting, posturing tart." In 1992, John Marshall of Gay Times expressed the following opinion: "[Mercury] was a 'scene-queen,' not afraid to publicly express his gayness, but unwilling to analyse or justify his 'lifestyle' ... It was as if Freddie Mercury was saying to the world, 'I am what I am. So what?' And that in itself for some was a statement." In an article for AfterElton, Robert Urban stated: "Mercury did not ally himself to 'political outness,' or to GLBT causes."

 

[W!nston]

Boy George

Boy George (born George Alan O'Dowd; 14 June 1961) is a British singer-songwriter, who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

During the 1980s, Boy George was the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award winning pop band Culture Club where he became known for his soulful voice and androgynous appearance. He also founded and was lead singer of Jesus Loves You during the period 1989–1992. Being involved in many activities (among them songwriting, DJing, writing books, designing clothes and photography), he has released fewer music recordings in the last decade.

When George was with Culture Club, much was made of his androgynous appearance, and there was speculation about his sexuality. Although he never flatly denied that he was gay, when asked in interviews about his sexual orientation, George gave various answers. He gave a famous, oft-quoted response to an interviewer that he preferred "a nice cup of tea" to sex.

In Take It Like a Man, George stated that he had secret relationships with punk rock singer Kirk Brandon and Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. He stated many of the songs he wrote for Culture Club were about his relationship with Moss.

In 2006, in an episodic doentary directed by Simon George titled The Madness of Boy George, George declared on camera he was "militantly gay". In a 2008 doentary Living with Boy George, he talks about his first realisation he was gay, and when he first told his parents. He discloses that he understands why men fall in love with one another as well as with women.

 

[W!nston]

Liberace

Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), mononymously known as Liberace, was an American pianist and entertainer.

A child prodigy and the first generation son of working class immigrants, Liberace's career spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world with established residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the sobriquet "Mr. Showmanship". Liberace was recognized during his career with two Emmy Awards, six gold albums and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Throughout his career, Liberace publicly denied his homosexual orientation and successfully sued both The Daily Mirror newspaper and Confidential, who reported some of his gay relationships, winning damages and legal fees. Towards the end of his life, his former chauffeur and lover, Scott Thorson, unsuccessfully sued him for palimony, slander and conversion of property. Liberace also released a coffee table book on his life and performed 21 sold out shows at Radio City Music Hall which set box office records a few months before his death in Palm Springs, California on February 4, 1987. Liberace's death remains controversial as there had been rumors prior to his death that he had contracted HIV, which his management, publicist, friends, and even Liberace himself had vehemently denied. Against the wishes of his estate, the Riverside County coroner ordered an official autopsy and determined that Liberace had died of an AIDS-related illness, making him the second major celebrity after Rock Hudson to officially sucb to the illness during the early days of media frenzy surrounding the disease.

Liberace's fame in the United States was matched for a time in the United Kingdom. In 1956, an article in the Daily Mirror by columnist Cassandra (William Connor) described Liberace as "…the summit of sex—the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want… a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love", a description which strongly implied he was homosexual without actually saying so explicitly.

Liberace sent a telegram that read: "What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank." (This phrase was already in use by the 1940s.) He sued the newspaper for libel, testifying in a London court that he was not a homosexual and had never taken part in homosexual acts. He won the suit, partly on the basis of Connor's use of the derogatory expression "fruit-flavoured". The case partly hinged on whether Connor knew 'fruit' was American slang implying that an individual is a homosexual. The £8,000 damages he received from the Daily Mirror led Liberace to repeat the catchphrase to reporters: "I cried all the way to the bank!" Liberace's popularization of the phrase inspired the title of Crying All the Way to the Bank, a detailed report of the trial based on transcripts, court reports and interviews, by the former Daily Mirror journalist Revel Barker.

 

[Shelter]

Hi Sniffit - this is really a very great collection of pics and life careers of famous gay persons. But as Dargelos said some of them really are famous but I didn't want to emulate them. My favourite man in your collection will be forever Harvey Milk. A man with so much courage in these homophobic old days. And he paid with his life for his creed - so he is really a truthful icon. Let me say I adore him!!!

 

[W!nston]

James Buchanan

President James Buchanan (1857-1861)

James Buchanan, Jr. (/bjuːˈkænən/; April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) was the 15th President of the United States (1857–1861), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War. He is, to date, the only president from Pennsylvania and the only president to remain a lifelong bachelor.

William Rufus King

Vice President William Rufus King (March 24, 1853 - April 18, 1853)

William Rufus DeVane King (April 7, 1786 – April 18, 1853) was an American politician and diplomat. He was the 13th Vice President of the United States for six weeks in 1853 before his death. Earlier he had been elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina and a Senator from Alabama. He also served as Minister to France during the reign of King Louis Phillippe.

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James Buchanan: America’s first gay president?

By Timothy Cwiek National Gay History Project

More than 150 years before America elected its first black president, Barack Obama, it most likely had its first gay president, James Buchanan (1791-1868).
Buchanan, a Democrat from Lancaster County, Pa., was the 15th president of the United States, and a lifelong bachelor. He served as president from 1857-61, tumultuous years leading up to the Civil War.
Historian James W. Loewen has done extensive research into Buchanan’s personal life, and he’s convinced Buchanan was gay.
Loewen is the author of the acclaimed book “Lies Across America,” which examines how historical sites inaccurately portray figures and events in America’s past.
“I’m sure that Buchanan was gay,” Loewen said. “There is clear evidence that he was gay. And since I haven’t seen any evidence that he was heterosexual, I don’t believe he was bisexual.”
According to Loewen, Buchanan shared a residence with William Rufus King, a Democratic senator from Alabama, for several years in Washington, D.C.
Loewen said contemporary records indicate the two men were inseparable, and wags would refer to them as “the Siamese twins.”
Loewen also said Buchanan was “fairly open” about his relationship with King, causing some colleagues to view the men as a couple.
For example, Aaron Brown, a prominent Democrat, writing to Mrs. James K. Polk, referred to King as Buchanan’s “better half,” “his wife” and “Aunt Fancy … rigged out in her best clothes.”
In 1844, when King was appointed minister to France, he wrote Buchanan, “I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation.”
Loewen also said a letter Buchanan wrote to a friend after King went to France shows the depth of his feeling for King.
“I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me,” Buchanan wrote. “I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”
Loewen said their relationship — though interrupted due to foreign-service obligations — ended only with King’s death in 1853.
In the late 1990s, Loewen visited Wheatland, the mansion in Lancaster, Pa., where Buchanan spent his later years.
Loewen said he asked a staffer at Wheatland if Buchanan was gay, and the reply was: “He most definitely was not.”
Loewen said the staffer pointed to a portrait of Ann Coleman, the daughter of a wealthy iron maker, whom Buchanan was engaged to briefly 1819 — shortly before she committed suicide.
However, Loewen scoffed at the staffer’s suggestion that the brief engagement to Coleman proved Buchanan was heterosexual.
Loewen said Buchanan showed little interest in Coleman, appeared more interested in her fortune, and possibly contributed to her suicide due to his emotional detachment.
Patrick Clarke, the director of Wheatland, said the staff now takes a neutral stance on Buchanan’s sexual or affectional preference.
“There’s no solid proof that Buchanan was heterosexual, nor is there solid proof that he was homosexual,” Clarke said. “If we ever come up with a smoking gun that proves it one way or the other, I would definitely encourage our staff to share it with the public.”But, he said Ann Coleman’s portrait no longer is displayed at Wheatland.
The tours focus mainly on the mansion’s décor and activities that took place there during the later years of Buchanan’s life, he added.
Wheatland also has about 45 volunteer tour guides, and to Clarke’s knowledge, none of the guides is openly gay.
“The volunteer guides who we train to share the history of James Buchanan’s life and times are directed to take a neutral stance regarding [his] sexual preference,” Clarke said.
But Clarke said he wouldn’t object if a volunteer offered a personal opinion that Buchanan was gay, if asked by a visitor.
“When you have 50 minutes to take people through a nine-room house, there’s only so much you can discuss,” Clarke said. “But if the question is raised, the guide may express a personal opinion.”
Loewen said many historians rate Buchanan as one of the worst U.S. presidents. Buchanan was part of the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic Party, and corruption plagued his administration.
But Loewen said those flaws shouldn’t discourage members of the LGBT community from acknowledging Buchanan’s status as a gay man.
“Lots of gay people have been exemplary,” he said. “Let’s look at Walt Whitman. For my money, he’s the best poet in the history of the country. But we also have to acknowledge the failures. If we only admit that really great people are gay, what kind of history is that? And how is that believable? It’s ridiculous. We have to tell it like it was.”
As a heterosexual male, Loewen added, he has no hidden agenda in outing Buchanan.
“I’m not gay,” Loewen said. “I don’t run around trying to find gay folks or black folks underneath every rock. But I’m not going to ignore clear evidence.”

William Rufus King...

While King may have been asexual or celibate, there are strong indicators that suggest he was gay. The argument has been put forward by Shelley Ross, biographer Jean Baker, James W. Loewen, and Robert P. Watson.

The source of this argument is King's close and intimate relationship with James Buchanan. The two men lived together in a Washington boardinghouse for 10 years from 1834 until King's departure for France in 1844. King referred to the relationship as a "communion", and the two often attended social functions together. Contemporaries also noted the closeness. Andrew Jackson called them "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy" (the former being a 19th-century euphemism for an effeminate man), while Aaron V. Brown referred to King as Buchanan's "better half". One author has described Buchanan and King as "siamese twins".

Buchanan adopted King's mannerisms and romanticized view of southern culture. Both had strong political ambitions and in 1844 they planned to run together for president and vice president. They spent time apart while King was in France, and their letters remain cryptic, avoiding revealing any personal feelings at all. In May 1844, Buchanan wrote to Cornelia Roosevelt, "I am now 'solitary and alone,' having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone, and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."

After King died in 1853 Buchanan described him as "among the best, the purest and most consistent public men I have known." While some of their correspondence was destroyed by family members, the length and intimacy of surviving letters illustrate "the affection of a special friendship".

 

[dargelos]

I have cried gallons of tears over this song. The singer is Jimmy Sommerville, gay icon. The song is Jimmy's direct response to the Aids related death, in 1987, at a mere 26, of his dearly loved friend Mark Ashton, lesbian and gay rights campaigner of the hard left. Mark appears, played by actor Ben Schnetzer, in the new feature film Pride, a film I insist that you must see.



Many gay entertainers have been evasive about their sexuality, even when it is common knowledge. Jimmy was the absolute opposite. In your face and down your throat, he could not have been a better demonstration of how to be out and proud. He came to fame in the early eighties with the band Bronski Beat. They were aiming to reproduce the dancefloor sound of Giorgio Moroder, think Donna Summer, I Feel Love. But without the same expertise or equipment they instead ended up with a cold hard sound that just happened to make a miraculous blend with Jimmy's choirboy voice. That sound had big pop success with Smalltown Boy and Why? If you can think of a pair of records that could send as powerful message about life as a gay boy I can't.
After that band split there was The Communards. This is a lovely anecdote; I was reading the memoirs of a veteran roadie who had worked with all the rock bands, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ted Nugent, Def Leppard, and so on. When it came to aftershow excess he thought he'd seen it all, until he worked on a tour with Jimmy's crew, these boys rewrote the book on party animalism. Good for them, they deserve it. Smashing open the closet door has never sounded so good.

 

[gorgik9]

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) & Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

FIERCE!!!!!!

In early september 1871, a 16 year old schoolboy from the small northern French town Charleville (just south of the Belgian border) wrote a letter to the poet Paul Verlaine (ten years his elder) in Paris, including five poems and a request to meet and talk to him. The boy wrote another letter a couple of days later with another three poems of his own.

Yet another few days later, Verlaine wrote back, and in that letter he wrote: "- Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you."

Late september, the young schoolboy took the train from Charleville to Paris, where Verlaine and his literary friends got so much more than they ever had expected : The boy was extremely rude and had a language peppered with swearwords and curses; he smoke not only tobacco but also hashisch and drank lots of absinth; soon he became Verlaines lover and fucked his sorry ass relentlessly. Verlaine was married, so for all practical purposes, his marriage was cracked by this fierce schoolboy, who stabbed Verlaine in the hand with a knife, and put some sulphuric acid in a wineglass of one of the literary friends.

In short, this schoolboy was downright dangerous and he had come to revolutionize French and European poetry. Which he did.

The schoolboy's name was Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud. Usually we call him Arthur Rimbaud. Or just Rimbaud.

I think it's the best thing to show you some of the poetical collaborations between Rimbaud and Verlaine, a couple which Graham Robb in his magnificent biography of Rimbaud baptizes "the Adam and Eve of modern homosexuality". So here I'll give you "Le sonnet du trou du cul." (Sonnet on the arsehole)! Verlaine wrote the octet (the first eight lines), while Rimbaud wrote the sextet (the last six lines).

Sonnet on the arsehole.

Dark and wrinkled like a violet carnation,
Humbly crouched amid the moss, it breathes,
Still moist with love that descends the gentle slope
Of white buttocks to its embroidered edge.

Filaments like tears of milk have wept
Under the savage wind that drives them off
Through little clots of russet earth
To disappear where inclination led them.

Oft did my dream suck at its vent;
My soul, envious of physical coitus, made it
Its musky dripstone and its nest of sobs.

'Tis the swooning conch, the fondling flute,
The tube from which the heavenly praline drops,
A female Canaan cocooned in muggy air.

 

[Shelter]

Whow - thank you for your work! This is really a place to learn more.. Thank you

 

[W!nston]

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (1966)

Andy Warhol (/ˈwɔrhɒl/; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.

Warhol's art encompassed many forms of media, including hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. He was also a pioneer in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1984, two years before his death. He founded Interview Magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He managed and produced the Velvet Underground, a rock band which had a strong influence on the evolution of punk rock music. He is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement. His studio, The Factory, was a famous gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and doentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)". A 2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market". Warhol's works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

Sexuality

Warhol was gay. When interviewed in 1980, he indicated that he was still a virgin—biographer Bob Colacello who was present at the interview felt it was probably true and that what little sex he had was probably "a mixture of voyeurism and masturbation—to use his [Andy's] word abstract". Warhol's assertion of virginity would seem to be contradicted by an incident recounted by one biographer, his hospital treatment in 1960 for condylomata, a sexually transmitted disease. The fact that Warhol's homosexuality influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (e.g., Popism: The Warhol 1960s). Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like Blow Job, My Hustler and Lonesome Cowboys) draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. As has been addressed by a range of scholars, many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters.

The first works that Warhol submitted to a fine art gallery, homoerotic drawings of male nudes, were rejected for being too openly gay. In Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change ... Other people could change their attitudes but not me". In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period—the late 1950s and early 1960s—as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Um, no" and "Um, yes", and often allowing others to speak for him)—and even the evolution of his pop style—can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.

Andy Warhol "Haircut" (1959)

 

[haiducii]

soon he became Verlaines lover and fucked his sorry ass relentlessly

What happened after they fell in love is the subject of a movie ''Total Eclipse'' from 1995,
in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays Rimbaud.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks haiducii for reminding me and everybody else about Agnieszka Hollands 1995 movie!

 

[gb2000ie]

Alan Turning - Grandfather of Computer Science, and War Hero

There's not many Mathematician war heros, but Turing was one of them - during WW2 he worked at Bletchly Park as a code breaker. At the time he was described as a mathematician, but today we'd call him a computer scientists.

Everyone who studies theoretical computer science has to study Turning's work - it is literally fundamental to the discipline. What you don't learn about in Computer Science class is that Turing was gay. I was a great admirer of his work long before I found out the tragic other side to his life.

Having played a substantial part in the Allied victory, Turning was not treated like a hero, he was seen as a liability, because, as a gay man, he was seen as a blackmail risk. He was prosecuted for his homosexuality, and chemically castrated. The chemicals messed with his body and his head, he started to grow breasts, and became very depressed. Some members of his family still question it, but it seems almost certain he committed suicide by eating an Apple laced with poison.

Just a few years ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown formally pardoned Turing and officially apologised for his treatment.

For more see: http://refhide.com/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing