Historical Figures
Editor, photographer, and activist, Adolf Brand was the leader of a faction of the early German homosexual emancipation movement whose cultural views were expressed in Der Eigene (The Self-Owner), the first homosexual literary and artistic journal.
A distinguished physician and founder of the National Gay Task Force, Dr. Howard Brown helped change the image of gay men and lesbians in the United States.
Burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church, Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno has been seen as a martyr to religious intolerance; only recently has he also been recognized as a queer hero.
Former beauty queen, popular singer, and orange juice pitchwoman, Anita Bryant became the poster-girl for homophobia in the late 1970s; her name continues to be a byword for bigotry.
James Buchanan, the only "bachelor president" of the United States, had a long intimate relationship with William R. King, the only unmarried vice-president.
American activist and academic Charlotte Bunch is a key player in the movement for international human rights for women.
Although evidence of his own homosexual leanings is inconclusive, in his lifetime Sir Richard Burton was regarded with suspicion because of his knowledge and understanding of same-sex sexual activity.
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 highest-ranking official in the United States military to acknowledge her homosexuality while in the service, Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer served a number of years in the Washington State National Guard as an open lesbian.
Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who helped found the environmental movement with her 1962 book Silent Spring, had an 11-year romantic relationship with a married woman.
Best known for his research on peanuts, agronomist and educator George Washington Carver become a cultural icon as the "Wizard of Tuskegee," but at the cost of hiding his homosexuality.
Irish patriot Roger Casement was executed by the British, who also used his diaries to expose him as a homosexual.
An aura of homosexuality permeated the case in which former communist Whittaker Chambers accused former U. S. State Department official Alger Hiss of spying for the Soviet Union and helped perpetuate the connection in the public mind between homosexuality and treason.
Activist Cheryl Chase has led efforts to educate both medical professionals and parents of intersexed children so that unnecessary surgeries may be avoided and intersexed people may have happier and healthier lives.
Enigmatic monarch and enthusiastic patron of the arts, Christina of Sweden shocked Europeans by her aversion to marriage, her "mannish" ways, and her love for women, as well as by the abdication of her throne at the age of twenty-seven.
Margaret Clap, 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.
A homosexual from a liberal background, Roy Cohn can be seen as a deeply twisted, complicit victim of the anti-liberal, homophobic ideology of his era that he thoroughly internalized.
Writer, archivist, and theorist, Massimo Consoli was the founder of the Italian gay movement and its leading activist.
Political activist Midge Costanza has a long and distinguished record as a champion of gay and women's rights.
An important figure in the European occult movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Aleister Crowley was publicly reviled in his time, but he was recently cited by the BBC as one of England's most influential citizens.
Radical feminist philosopher, theologian, and linguist, Mary Daly is an outspoken lesbian-feminist separatist who has provoked outrage by challenging established ideas and institutions that she considers destructive to women's power and creativity.
Although the homosexuality of French politician and Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë has not been an issue in his campaigns for public service, he was targeted for assassination by a man who hates homosexuals.
Michael Dillon, the first person known to have transitioned both hormonally and surgically from female to male, was a man of singular determination who articulated his life as an evolving struggle toward corporeal, intellectual, and spiritual integrity.
Historian, biographer, essayist, playwright, and academic, Martin Bauml Duberman is an astute commentator on gender and race issues and a pioneer in glbtq studies.
Controversial radical feminist and anti-pornography crusader Andrea Dworkin wrote and spoke extensively on the cultural subjugation of women.
Edward II, an early fourteenth-century king of England, formed intense relationships with his favorites, which ultimately cost him his throne and his life.
One of Canada's first gay activists, Jim Egan began demanding respect and equal rights in the late 1940s; in his later years he mounted a challenge to Canada's law on spousal retirement benefits.
The brief reign of the third-century Roman Emperor Elagabalus was legendary for its sexual excesses and he became emblematic of the debauched, sexually perverse ruler.
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.
Ruth Ellis became an icon of the glbtq community in Detroit, where she lived for most of her life, and an inspiration to many others.
Steve Endean, one of the most important glbtq activists of the post-Stonewall era, stirred controversy within and outside gay politics in his conviction that "mainstreaming" the movement was the way for glbtq Americans to achieve equality.
The most famous transvestite of the eighteenth century, French diplomat Chevalier Éon de Beaumont lived the first half of his life as a man and the second as a woman.
An early female-to-male transsexual, Reed Erickson is best known for his philanthropy, which greatly benefited glbtq causes in the 1960s and 1970s.
A favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm II, to whom he gave political advice, Philipp zu Eulenburg was involved with a circle of homosexual men, and his life ended in scandal.
The fifteenth-century Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino introduced the phrase "platonic love," by which he meant a relationship that included both the physical and the spiritual.
Openly gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2003, was in the political spotlight for only a few months, yet he managed to change the modern Netherlands.
Openly gay U. S. congressman Barney Frank has been a leader not only in the cause of gay and lesbian rights but also on issues including fair housing, consumer rights, banking, and immigration.
The homosexuality of Frederick the Great of Prussia was an open secret during his reign, yet some historians have attempted to deny it or to diminish its significance.
Although she did not explicitly identify herself as a lesbian, Anna Freud, youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud and herself a psychoanalyst, was decidedly not heterosexual in any typical sense.
The founder of psychoanalysis and the discoverer of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud initiated a fundamental transformation in the self-understanding of Western men and women, including especially the role of sexuality.
Founder of the Gill Foundation, computer entrepreneur and philanthropist Tim Gill has used his wealth to benefit the glbtq community.
Candace Gingrich, the half-sister of former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, serves as a spokesperson and Senior Youth Outreach Manager for the Human Rights Campaign.
A pioneer in the American gay rights movement, Barbara Gittings worked tirelessly within the American Library Association to make material with glbtq content more accessible to the reading public.
An energetic political organizer, fiery radical, and a passionate free spirit, anarchist Emma Goldman outspokenly defended the rights of homosexuals.
Since coming out publicly in 1991, after a homophobic issue of a student publication at Harvard University led to tension on campus, the Reverend Peter Gomes has lent his eloquent voice to the cause of equality for glbtq people.
Publisher David Goodstein transformed The Advocate into the leading American gay newsmagazine.
French leftist Daniel Guérin came out publicly as a homosexual in his late sixties and for the remainder of his life worked to fuse gay liberation and left-wing politics.
Gustav III, King of Sweden, was an enlightened despot who encouraged a remarkable flowering of art and culture.
The last Swedish monarch to exert direct power over his nation's government, King Gustav V was a memorable personality, a successful king, and a bisexual.
The love of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian for the beautiful youth Antinous was exceptional not because the lovers were male, but because of its intensity.
Erotica and Pornography
Poetry: Gay Male
García Lorca, Federico
Wilde, Oscar
Hughes, Langston
Baldwin, James Arthur
Aestheticism