In honor of pride month ending, I'd like to remind everyone that queer people have always existed and will always exist.
Achilles and Patroclus - the only serious debate concerning their relationship is who was the top and who the bottom. It's only denial that led people to believe they were only friends.
Alexander the Great - Had a a few male lovers and idolized Achilles. Was likely gay and some speculate he was bisexual but gay is much more likely
Sappho - It was very hard to make it seem like her poetry was about straight relationships, with translators and historians going so far as to say that all her poetry was written from the male perspective, and that she was actually married to a man (A man who had the funniest fake name ever; I may be wrong but I think it basically translated to Dick Allcocks from Man Island)
Hyacinthus - A man that both Apollo and Zephyr fought over, until their jealousy got the better of them.
Emperor Ai of Han - Had a male lover and when he awoke with his lover sleeping on his sleeve, he cut it off as to not wake him "a romance of the cut sleeve"
Tu'er Shen - A god of homosexual love of Chinese origin, worshipped in Taiwan.
Hijra - A third gender or transgender people originating in South Asia
Louisa "Lou" May Alcott - Trangender man, Lou Alcott believed that he should have been born a boy and often expressed immense disappointment in not having been. He said that he had been "born with a boy's nature" and had more interest in them than girls. He has even said that he was "by some freak of nature, a man's soul put into a woman's body."
Emily Dickinson - Raging lesbian. Many historians apparently tried and failed to cover up the true nature of Dickinson's relationship with her sister in law Susan, to whom many of her poems are addressed.
Walt Whitman - Attributed as one of the best poets in American history, was very likely to have been gay or at least bisexual.
Bram Stoker - Had a bad case of deeply repressed homosexuality, and wrote to him once with a letter that another tumblr user once referred to as what was essentially his grindr profile mailed to Whitman.
George Sand - Born a woman but presented masculine, and George's close friends often fluidly changed how they referred to their friend. George was praised for their androgyny and was respected for it with them being more popular than contemporary Victor Hugo and Balzac. George had several affairs with men after their marriage but also seemed to have affection for their closer friend Marie Dorval, but their relationship is ambiguous. Dorval's lover referred to George as "That damned Lesbian" and wanted Marie to stay away from them.
Virginia Woolf - Notable and accomplished writer, helped pioneer stream of consciousness, and was a Lesbian although some speculate she just had a preference for women and actually was attracted to men. She did marry a man and supposedly loved him but many seem to question their sex life. There have also been speculations that Woolf was autistic.
Oscar Wilde - Definitely a bit of a pedo, having mostly relationship with young men, but his most famous relationship was with Lord Alfred Douglas before he was jailed for Sodomy, in which they used pieces from his book The Picture of Dorian Gray as evidence from the prosecution.
Alan Turing - Created the first computer which he named Christopher after a crush or love of his. He saved millions of lives and made the single biggest contribution to the allied efforts. When his homosexuality was discovered he was chemically castrated and driven to suicide.
Josephine Baker - Actress, singer, dancer, spy, etc. She was born in the US but immigrated to France where she became a full citizen and actually spied for the French resistance during WWII. She was definitely bisexual, having many affairs with men and women notably, Frida Kahlo, and adopted a whole bunch of kids. She actually raised each of her kids in different religions which Im still torn about but mainly conclude that it is funny.
Marsha P. Johnson - Identified as a woman and a drag queen although the latter may have been because of the lack of acceptance for Trans people.
Now folks that's all I feel like recording today, but I encourage doing your own research because lgbtq people have always been here and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.
"There weren't any gay people when I was a kid"
There were they just didnt want to get raped or killed like many on this list were or were in danger of.
