A list of famous gay and bisexual men through history.
Alexander the Great 356 BC – 323BC
Military leader who led Macedonians to unprecedented success.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Polymath, artists, scientist and one of greatest minds in human history.
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Foremost sculptor and artist
Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
American poet. Wrote Leaves of Grass
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Russian composer of symphonies, operas, ballets and choral music
– Irish writer and poet
Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) – Computer scientist and code breaker. Turing had one of the greatest minds of the Twentieth Century. He helped crack the German Enigma code and became a leading developer in the emerging world of computer science.
Marcel Proust
Author
E.M. Forster
Author
John Maynard Keynes
Economist
Siegfried Sassoon
War poet
Noel Coward
actor
Christopher Isherwood
Author and diarist
Lawrence Olivier
Actor
W.H.Auden
Author
Actor
Brian Epstein
Manager of the Beatles
Artists
Rudolf Nureyev
Russian ballet dancer
Freddie Mercury
Musician
Elton John
Musician
Sir Ian McKellen
Actor
Stephen Fry
Comic, writer and social activist.
People who promoted gay rights
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher. Bentham is credited with being the founding father of Utilitarianism.He also wrote an early defence of gay rights. Offences Against One’s Self, argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexual sex. The essay criticised society for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham considered a largely private matter. The essay remained unpublished during his life though.
Harry Hay
Founder of US gay rights movement
Peter Tatchell
Political activist. Founded British gay rights movement – Outrage!
Ian McKellen
Actor and spokesperson for Stonewall (UK)
Stephen Donaldson (1946-996)
Hernan Ponce (born 1982), current President of LACCD Gay Rights Movement,
Harvey Milk (19301978), openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco, California who was
Related pages
People who fought for human/civil rights
Courageous people