Hadrian the gay emperor - Independent Online Edition > This Britain

Just a thought but perhaps now that we've returned women to the seats of power across the globe and the west is gradually becoming blind to gender and race in terms of leadership, maybe sexuality is the next division that will be overcome.

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good luck with that----humans always have to have a 'minority' to kvetch about---if its not gender, its color, if not color, 'religion', if not 'religion', class---other sore points? nationality, sexuality, body size---there seems to be no happiness unless someone else bears the brunt of responsibility for societal ills...

Hadrian ruled in the second century. It will, sadly, take longer for people to not see sexuality as an issue. Right about when Christianity takes over the Empire's religion, we see an upshot in anti-homosexual people.

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Antinoös (Hadrian's 19-year-old gay lover) was a hottie

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Agreed. :D

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Both Britain and Canada have already had rather notable 'bachelor' Prime Ministers - and we all know about 50-60 year old well-educated 'bachelors'...

Btw, it is categorically incorrect to speak of ANYONE prior to the 20th century with the description of "gay".

The term has no meaning prior to 20th century and is absurd when applied to a 2nd century figure.

Hadrian was no more "gay" than Alexander the Great was.

I thought Hadrian was trisexual. He tried anything that moved.

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Just because a concept was first thought up in its modern form after a certain point does not mean that it cannot be applied to some extent to past figures. There were exclusively homosexual men back in the day, and it's perhaps better that nobody noticed this as being different or strange, but if a man only had sex with other men and we know this for a fact, it's pretty safe to call him gay. By your logic, we couldn't call Liberace gay because he never came out.

Then again, I think this is a semantics issue. When I'm reading this thread, I'm thinking "gay" in a purely behavioral context--he had sex with other guys. That's it. None of the cultural stuff, rainbow flags, the Castro, etc.

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My mom used to make the "trisexual" joke all the time, though not about Emperor Hadrian.

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