Bentham's radicalism leads him to interpret the story of David and Jonathan as a homosexual romance akin to that of Aristogiton and Harmodius or Nisus and Euryalus, and more daringly, to argue that the bond between Jesus and John "the beloved disciple" was of the same sort.

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Bentham did publish a book entitled Not Paul but Jesus in 1823 under a pseudonym; however, though this work challenged Paul's claim to set himself up as a spokesman for Jesus and Christianity, it did not incorporate that part of Bentham's notes that touched on the dangerous topic of homosexuality.

A noteworthy feature of Bentham's writings on homosexuality is his effort to find a vocabulary that did not itself automatically incorporate pejorative or condemnatory judgments. In this enterprise, he preceded by more than fifty years the German, French, and Italian sexologists of the late nineteenth century who first developed a scientific nomenclature for sexual behavior free from traditional theological and legal connotations.

Bentham was keenly aware of the harm that could be done by negative language: "It is by the power of names, of signs originally arbitrary and insignificant, that the course of imagination has in great measure been guided." He has of course no word that is exactly equivalent to the modern term homosexual. He often employs "," sometimes in its original sense of a lover of boys, but often also to mean an adult male who is sexually involved with another man, as in modern French usage; in this latter sense, it approximates closely to "homosexual."

In his early notes, and in his "Essay on Paederasty" of 1785, Bentham occasionally uses stereotyped contemporary expressions--for instance, referring to homosexuality as "this perverted taste." Later, he consciously repudiates such loaded terms and invents ingenious alternatives to signify same-sex desire and behavior; these include such expressions as "the improlific appetite" and (in reference to Greek tradition) "the Attic mode."

Perhaps no other book has been more influential--for better or worse--in determining the construction of gay and lesbian identity in the modern world, as well as social attitudes toward homosexuality, than the Bible.

Governments, publishers, editors, and even gay writers themselves have censored gay content in literature from the Renaissance to the present.

From its beginning, the nineteenth century in England had a purposeful homosexual literature of considerable bulk, both male and female, though it was fettered by oppression.

Throughout the Restoration and eighteenth century, sodomitical characters were both presented and pilloried in literature.

The United Kingdom has a rich and vibrant legacy of queer cultural expression despite a long history of severe legal sanctions against male-male sexual acts and other manifestations of sexual and gender deviance.

In glbtq history, Alcibiades is especially noted for his (failed) "seduction" of Socrates in Plato's Symposium, his transgression of gender roles, his sexual "versatility," his violent and unpatriotic eros, and his appropriation as a gay icon in later literature.

One of the most fascinating men of all times, Alexander the Great was not only a great soldier and conqueror, he was also renowned for his love of Hephaestion.

Extremely wealthy and connected to the aristocracy, British author and connoisseur William Beckford was ostracized by English society for the last sixty years of his life because of his homosexuality.

The bisexual Lord Byron treated many of his homosexual love affairs in his poetry, encoding them by the use of classical references or by purporting that they were affairs with women.

One of the most powerful men of the ancient world, Julius Caesar was frequently reminded, sometimes derisively, of his youthful sexual affair with the king of Bithynia.

The Roman poet Catullus incorporated homoerotic themes in his verse, both reflecting the passionate character of same-sex friendships and describing several of his own homosexual adventures.

Henry Havelock Ellis--British psychologist and writer--was one of the first modern thinkers to challenge Victorian taboos against the frank and objective discussion of sex.

In his highly accomplished and influential poetry, Horace reflects the easy bisexuality of the Roman upper class in the first century B. C.

Verses from two epistles of the Apostle Paul shaped the attitudes of Christianity toward male and female homosexuality.

Among Greek writers on homosexual themes, Plato is preeminent not only as a major philosopher but also as the greatest master of Greek prose.

No ancient is more instructive about pederasty than the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch.

Athenian lovers Harmodius and Aristogeiton were remembered in ancient Greece as the great tyrannicides and celebrated as lovers, patriots, and martyrs.

John Addington Symonds was the most daring innovator in the history of nineteenth-century British homosexual writing and consciousness.

Virgil wrote approvingly of male love in many works, and his second eclogue became the most famous poem on that subject in Latin literature.