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The stories of public scandals involving glbtq people often illuminate the cultural and historical milieus in which they occurred as much as the biographies of the subjects of the scandals. |
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 Maud Allan (1873-1956) was an English dancer famous for her stunning performances in the title role of The Vision of Salome. During World War I, a Member of Parliament published an article entitled "The Cult of the Clitoris" that attacked her as a pervert whose corruption of English morals abetted the German war effort. Allan fought back with a sensational, but ultimately unsuccessful libel suit. |
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 John Atherton
(1598-1640), Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, was hanged for sodomy in
Ireland under a law he helped institute. In Stuart England, Atherton's case
became the subject of sermons and moral tracts that warned listeners and
readers about the dangers of buggery. |
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 William Beckford
(1760-1844), one of England's wealthiest men, was ostracized by
English society after his uncle published allegations of homosexual
improprieties in morning newspapers in 1784. |
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Anthony Blunt
(1907-1983) enjoyed close connections with England's royal family and a
prestigious career as an art historian until his participation in
a communist spy ring during the 1950s was revealed by Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. |
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 George Gordon,
Lord Byron (1728-1824) was such a popular English poet and personality
that his contemporaries coined "Byronomania" to describe the public's
fascination with him. Byron's celebrity, however, was not enough to
protect him when rumors of his homosexual inclinations became
widespread. The scandal compelled him to leave England and
never return. |
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 Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.E), Emperor of Rome, never denied his youthful sexual relationship with Nicomedes, King of Bythinia. His detractors frequently referred to him as the "queen" of Rome or a woman to undermine his authority. |
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 Roger Casement
(1864-1916) was an Irish patriot who earned a knighthood before he
joined the rebel movement fighting for the independence of Ireland. He
was stripped of his knighthood and executed for treason by the British
in 1916. The British used evidence of his homosexuality discovered in
his diaries to further discredit him. |
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 Benvenuto Cellini
(1500-1571), one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, was
convicted of homosexual sodomy in Florence in 1557. He escaped a prison
sentence, but spent four years under house arrest. |
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 Whittaker Chambers
(1901-1961), a one-time communist, accused former U.S. State Department
official Alger Hiss of being a communist before the House Un-American
Activities Committee in 1948. The aura of homosexuality that surrounded
this case helped perpetuate the public perception that homosexuality
and treason were linked, an idea that was a hallmark of
McCarthyism. |
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Margaret Clap
(fl. 1720s), also known as "Mother Clap," operated one of the more
popular molly houses
in London. After it was raided in 1726, she was pilloried and
imprisoned. |
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 The Cleveland
Street Scandal of 1889, involving members of the English nobility
and allegations of a government cover-up, fueled the perception of
homosexuality as an aristocratic vice that corrupted working-class
youths. |
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 Henry Cowell
(1897-1965) was an important musical innovator who sought to create an
ultramodern style that synthesized Western, Asian, and African music.
His career was severely damaged when he was convicted and imprisoned
for having sex with a seventeen-year-old male. |
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Jérôme Duquesnoy
(1602-1654) was one of the most renowned sculptors of the seventeenth
century, but for decades after his death he was best known for his
execution for sodomy. |
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 Philipp zu Eulenburg
(1857-1921) was a political advisor and favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm II
of Germany. Eulenburg's involvement with a circle of homosexual men led
to public scandal and his estrangement from the Kaiser. |
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 Barney Frank
(b. 1940), an openly gay Democratic congressman from Massachusetts,
was first elected
in 1980. He was beset by scandal in 1989 when the
Washington Times revealed that his male housekeeper was a convicted
felon and operated a prostitution ring while working for the
congressman. Frank survived the scandal and continues to represent the
Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts. |
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 King Gustav V of
Sweden (1858-1950) was the last Swedish king to exert direct
power over his government. After his death, Swedes were shocked to
learn that Gustav was bisexual and that the royal family paid an
enormous sum to one of his male lovers in a cover-up. |
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Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) lived her lesbianism openly and proudly. She is best known for The Well of Loneliness (1928), arguably the most important lesbian novel ever written. Hall's effectiveness in engaging the reader's sympathy alarmed conservative moralists who sued the book's publisher for obscenity in a sensational trial. |
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 Pope Joan
was said to have lived in the ninth century. She was thought to have
been a woman who lived as a man in order to rise in the church
hierarchy to eventually become Pope John VIII. The story captured the
imaginations of Europeans for hundreds of years. |
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 Pope Julius III
(1487-1555) appointed Innocenzo, his fifteen-year-old male lover, to
church office and eventually named him cardinal creating one of the
most notorious homosexual scandals in the history of the
papacy. |
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 Friedrich Alfred Krupp
(1854-1902), heir to the German armament company, was accused of
betraying his birthright by pursuing homosexual pleasures in the south
of Italy. After the scandal became public, Krupp died under
circumstances that remain mysterious. |
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 Nathan F. Leopold (1904-1971) and Richard A. Loeb (1905-1936) gained notoriety for the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy in 1924. Their story has since become a staple of popular culture, inspiring numerous books, films, and plays including the films Rope (1948), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and Swoon (1992), directed by Tom Kalin, as well as Murder by Numbers (2002), which starred Sandra Bullock. |
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 Jean-Baptiste
Lully (1632-1687), a composer who served as Master of the
King's Music under Louis XIV of France, had an immense impact on opera
throughout Europe. After an affair with a male "music page" was
exposed, Lully was expelled from the court. |
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 George Michael
(b. 1963) is a popular singer/songwriter who began his musical career
in 1980 as half of the pop duo Wham! Michael's sexual orientation
remained elusively undefined until his 1998 arrest for "lewd behavior"
in a restroom in Beverly Hills, California made headlines. |
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Joe Orton (1933-1967), an
openly gay British playwright, may have been the twentieth century's
greatest writer of farce. His shocking death--the result of hammer
blows inflicted by his lover in a murder-suicide--occurred as Orton
was about to achieve worldwide fame. |
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 Johnnie Ray
(1927-1990), a teen heartthrob in the 1950s, was dubbed the "Prince of
Wails" because of his emotional on-stage musical style. His career was
severely damaged by arrests for solicitation and gossip about his
sexuality. |
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 Alfred Redl
(1864-1913) was an Austro-Hungarian Army Chief of Counterintelligence
who was blackmailed into spying for Russia in the years before World
War I. Many historians believe that tens of thousands of
Austro-Hungarian soldiers died as a result of Redl's sales of
information to the Russians. |
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 Ernst Röhm
(1887-1934), both an avid supporter of Hitler and the national
socialist movement in Germany and a homosexual, was assassinated in
1934, when the German leader "cleansed" the party of homosexuals. |
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Clay Shaw (1913-1974)
is known as the only person ever tried for the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy. Because of his vulnerability as a
homosexual, Shaw was falsely accused and tried by New Orleans district
attorney Jim Garrison to further the latter's political ambitions. |
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 Simeon Solomon
(1840-1905) was an artist associated with the English Aesthetic
Movement who was remarkable for choosing to live openly as a homosexual
at a time when it was dangerous to do so. After arrests in England and
France, friends shunned him and he was reduced to poverty. |
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 Gerry
Studds (1937-2006) was the first member of the United States
Congress to come out publicly. First elected in 1973, Studds
faced controversy when a former page revealed that he had had a sexual
relationship with
the congressman ten years earlier. Though he was censured by the House,
Studds was re-elected and continued to serve until 1997. |
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Brandon Teena (1972-1993) was brutally murdered on December 31, 1993 on account of his gender non-conformity. His life and death spurred transgender activism and inspired the film Boys Don't Cry (1998) for which Hilary Swank, as Brandon, won an Academy Award as Best Actress. |
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 William "Big Bill"
Tilden (1893-1953) was one of the greatest tennis players of
all time. His spectacular success on the courts was followed by an
equally spectacular fall when his homosexuality and penchant for
teenaged boys became known. |
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 The Vere Street Coterie
was a group of men associated with a male brothel in London. Their convictions for homosexual
offenses in 1810 led to the most brutal public punishment of homosexuals in British history. |
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 Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900) was one of Britain's most accomplished and visible writers
at the end of the nineteenth century. His spectacular public trial
and subsequent imprisonment for "gross indecency" have established him
as an iconic gay martyr. |
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