Gay Geniuses

Tchaikovsky

Joe Orton

Muriel.

Da Vinci

Turing

Michelangelo

Bernstein.

Sondheim.

Abraham Lincoln.

Samuel Barber

Calvin Klein

Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc is trans now

Wittgenstein

Proust

Auden

Whitman

Andrew Sullivan

Definitely agree with Whitman.

Shakespeare (well, he was bi rather than gay)

There's a number who had relationships with women but also were clearly attracted to (or had sex with) men besides Shakespeare, including Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville, and Thomas Mann.

E. M. Forster

Lytton Strachey

Willa Cather

I think Stallone made a bunch of movies about Rimbaud.

Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Eakins

Beethoven, Handel, Saint -Saens, Britten, Chopin, Schubert, Poulenc,

Me.

Way to go R22!

John Nash, Andy Warhol, John Singer Sargent.

Caravaggio.

Patricia Highsmith

John Waters

Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky was Bi, and Mussorgsky was certainly gay... In your face Putin!

Some of us claim Einstein. If not true, he was undeniably a renagade gay-rights supporter.

^ Before the spelling trolls arrive, renegade.

Great thread OP

Plato, Socrates, & Aristotle

Carter Page

Lord Byron, Cristopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, Donatello

Benevenuto Cellini & Michelangelo

Issac Newton was likely a very repressed homosexual; however, because of his deeply introverted personality and (early years) church teachings, was a lifetime practicing asexual. A lot of disagreement on this one.

"Turing"

This. a thousand times over. Alan Turing saved the world, the world's response: they hounded him to death for being a gay man.

Warhol was a very shrewd entrepreneur, I wouldn't call someone who was obsessed with Bianca Jagger a genius. I love Water's films, but, his crush on the Manson family makes me sick.

Saki.

Leonardo da Vinci. Henry James. Sappho. Virginia Woolf. Probably Botticelli, painter of the world's most beautiful humans.

Copland and Vadimir Horowitz

Don't forget the life of the sex worker is one of learning and improving skills. They should not be left off this list.

Alexander the Great!

Gore Vidal

The Right Honourable PM Benjamin Disraeli, though closeted.

Norman Mailer

David Hockney

Hedy Lamarr.

Halston, Pierre Cardin, Chrisrian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy, Hardy Amies, Balmain, Jasper Conran, Perry Ellis, Tom Ford, Prince Egon von Furstenberg, and Diane von Furstenberg

Jasper Johns

Robert Rauschenberg

[quote] Prince Egon von Furstenberg, and Diane von Furstenberg

True geniuses!

Brian Esptein

Peter Thiel

Yukio Mishima (author) , Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gaugin.

My ancestors were tenants of the von Furstenburgs. Geniuses the Fursties were not.

R45: Norman Mailer was not gay as far as I'm aware, and I had some connection to him. He was at one time homophobic and a lot of other nasty things.

He was a genius. So if you know him to be gay (in addition to being a shock to me), he would belong on the list.

Tove Jansson

Danny Pintauro

Beethoven, really? I thought he was a womanizer...

[quote]Beethoven, Handel, Saint -Saens, Britten, Chopin, Schubert, Poulenc

Britten and Poulenc obviously, and Schubert probably. But Handel and Saint-Saens seem mostly speculation, and Beethoven and Chopin outright wrong.

I was suspect too R59, but numerous leading gay sources can be found on the internet. I personally am in serious doubt of Gaugin, as he was indeed a man not unlike Graham Greene or Michner who went to seed in every foreign land! R55 I can honestly share with you Norman Mailer may nothave been a true homosexual in reality, but possibly bi or "try-sexual". He used to live on the same block as my gay uncle in Brooklyn Hts. and despite not publicly being aligned with us, hit on my uncle more than once while drunk. I have no reason to doubt his word, especially after hearing similar stories about him from people in his milieu.

Judah Touro, Augustus Woodward, William Marsh Rice, Sid Richardson, John McDonogh, Judah P. Benjamin, George Eastman, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Oris and Mantis von Sweringen....

Beethoven

Here’s a controversial one: Oda Nobunaga.

Vicious warlord idiot-savant & irresponsible bougie arriviste who sullied Japanese culture with his ostentatious tastes, treated those in his employ like dogs (unless named Ranmaru) and had hundreds needlessly killed on account of his childish temper? Or a tactical genius & pragmatic peacemaker who smashed apart stifling social codes, and in doing so opened the island to the world ensuring its survival into the 17th C.?

He was almost certainly in a gay relationship with Ranmaru, his favored page & twink (just 16 years old to his 40).

James Whale.

George Cukor.

Edmund Goulding.

Leonard Bernstein, though I'm not sure he qualifies as 'genius'

Sam Houston

Pedro Almodovar

John Waters

Sam Houston's speech in Galveston after Texas seceded:

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South."

Merchant and Ivory

James Baldwin

Kevin Spacey

R60 / r45, thanks for sharing those Brooklyn Heights remembrances. I take you and your uncle and your word.

My connection to Mailer was later in his life.

Because his name bears repeating: Alan Turing.

R3 I agree re: Plato and Socrates, but zero evidence about Aristotle.

What evidence is there about Beethoven?

Torquato Tasso.

He may not be a genius-genius, but when you have two of your plays ranked as among the best ever written, then your are some kind of genius- Tennessee Williams.

Federico Garcia Lorca

DL fave Lindsay Lohan

If military geniuses count, then Frederick the Great and his brother Henry.

Lorca’s a good one R78

Sena Cody

Corbin Fisher

How curious that OP started with Rimbaud but no one has mentioned his lover Verlaine. Verlaine left his wife and child for Rimbaud. He later was arrested for shooting Rimbaud. A very Mary moment, n'est-ce pas?

Norman Mailer lived in Ptown during the four years that I did. I only saw him once, and that was in a restaurant with Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett. He had a really hot son who I often saw on the street or in the straight clubs. My point being, I doubt Mailer was anything but an opportunistic Gay.

“Shakespeare was. Tchaikovsky was. Not sure about Proust....”

Proust was gay. He was obviously in love with Robert de St. Loup.

Shakespeares seems to have been bi. *heads explode*

Shakespeare was not bi any more than Lincoln. They made up stories about them later to de-gay them.

Yeah well, Shakespeare married and had three kids. Whereas Proust...

[quote]How curious that OP started with Rimbaud but no one has mentioned his lover Verlaine. Verlaine left his wife and child for Rimbaud. He later was arrested for shooting Rimbaud. A very Mary moment, n'est-ce pas?

He was the Maryiest, but I didn't mention him cause, well...

What about the lesbians?

Of course we must start with Sappho.

Joe Meek

r91 YES!

Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is almost impossible to overestimate the genius of Alan Turing. As someone who actually works in the same area of research as he did, his abstract, mathematical concept of a computer from almost 80 (!) years ago is still the best one we have and every practical computer we've ever constructed in real life cannot do anything that Turing didn't predict in his theory. Everything we have in theoretical computer science is based on his vision, so to speak.

Joe Orton

Tennessee Williams

Gertrude Stein

Tim Cook is likely a genius, although I couldn't find his IQ after a quick Google search.

Bryan Singer is a genius. He makes Hitchcock looked like an overrated hack!

Albee

Turing’s contribution to the war effort was exceedingly important, but it has also been overstated in the swell of well-meaning desire to reclaim his memory as a gay figure. The contributions of others at Bletchly - heterosexuals - were just as critical, some actually more so.

Jean Genet

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Roland Barthes

Michel Foucault

Truman Capote Halston Angelo Donghia

One of Proust's loves was the composer Reynaldo Hahn.

Somerset Maugham

Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, Francis Bacon (the painter), Diaghilev, Warhol, Gide, Henry James, Proust, Somerset Maugham, Osbert Sitwell, Nijinsky, Nureyev, Edward Carpenter.

Norman Douglas. (A pervert, and maybe not a genius, but extremely intelligent.)

T. E. Lawrence (probably not gay, but definitely queer)

TE Lawrence was definitely gay

r100 Agreed. And the work of the Polish codebreakers that was vital to the success of Bletchley is also forgotten or undervalued. As r94 says, Turing's true genius rests on his pioneering work in computer science.

I don't see anyone listing Tennessee Williams. Also Boyd McDonald.

Saki is a surprise.

"TE Lawrence was definitely gay"

But no genius...

"Halston, Pierre Cardin, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy, Hardy Amies, Balmain, Jasper Conran, Perry Ellis, Tom Ford, Prince Egon von Furstenberg, and Diane von Furstenberg."

What about ME?!?!?!?!

[quote] I don't see anyone listing Tennessee Williams.

He's been listed twice before in this thread. What I do in the Chrome browser is type Ctrl F when I am in a thread, and that brings up the search box. It takes me to every instance of the word that has already been used in a thread.

But Tennessee was a talented guy, so he deserves all the mentions.

Paul Lynde

Charles Nelson Reilly

Liberace - pictured below with a..."friend"...

^ entertaining queens, yes. But geniuses?!?

Can't believe Cole Porter hasn't been cited, but to be fair I've only just thought of him myself.

Luchino Visconti also merits a mention.

The Evening Punctuationist

Muriel!

Turing has a test named after him that will be referenced so many times over the coming decades that he ranks at the top (ha) of the list.

He will eventually be the most famous gay man in the world.

I don’t know how many people currently know about the Turing Test, but that number will never decline.

As a side note, this will make Benedict Cumberbatch perpetually famous as well.

Sir John Gielgud

DL fave Nolan Gould

Sharon Stone

Steve Martin

Ashton Kutcher

Shakira

And the smartest celebrity alive...

James Woods-seriously

Humor is lost on R113...

Michelangelo

Francis Bacon

Re: the Bard: any real scholar will tell you that in reality, only a few things are definitely, provably known about him: when and where he was born, when he died, whom he married, and how many children he had. Oh, and his increasingly solid financial standing by the time he died.

Absolutely everything else is completely without merit and is mostly projection - including, for many, whether he even wrote the stuff.

No one knows who his close friends were, with whom he had relationships outside of his marriage of either sex, what he felt, what he thought, whether he performed in his own plays, nothing, nada, zero, zilch that has any basis in anything but conjecture allied to wishful thinking - including, at the top of the list, the Mary Sidney Was Shakespeare contingent.

For all that's been written about him, he remains a remarkably mysterious figure of in Western literature.

R119, I don't believe Jodie Foster's IQ is as low as 132. (PS Everyone who speaks French fluently can understand Italian and Spanish. They're closely related languages. German is not at all related and if she can understand that without studying it, it could only be because she's spent a lot of time there.)

I sure don't believe most of the others are as high as stated.

I agree with the thrust of your argument, R122, but I believe it IS known Shakespeare performed in some of his own plays, notaby as the Ghost in Hamlet.

The chance that he didn't write the plays is remote, particularly in light of Ben Jonson's eulogy for him in verse ("He was not of an age, but for all time" etc). Ben Jonson knew him personally and attended the plays in their original runs. Shakespeare also puns on his own name a [bold]lot[/bold] in the Sonnets, where the general gist is, "You should love me because I'll immortalise you: I'm that good."

But pretty much everything else, besides what you list, is speculation.

Chopin

Christopher Marlowe

The Marquis de Sade.

Harry Partch, unorthodox American composer who had a relationship with Ramon Navarro before he became a star