Historical Figures
John Boswell was one of the late twentieth century's most influential historians of homosexuality and author of one of the first book-length histories on the subject.
In 1977 Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest and prolific author, became the first prominent openly gay clergyman in a mainstream Christian denomination in the United States.
Activist and author Keith Boykin has committed his life to advancing the rights of the African-American and glbtq communities and to enhancing communication between them.
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.
U. S. Representative David Cicilline, who made history as the first openly gay mayor of a state capital, has a long record of public service.
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 had 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.
Hughes, Langston
Beat Generation
Comedy of Manners
Sedaris, David
Novel: Lesbian
Baudelaire, Charles