GAY LEADERS FROM WORLD HISTORY
Recently, while chatting to my eighty-nine-year-old mother, she triggered me by stating that there were no gay people when she was young. She used the word ‘queers’, and I knew that was a carry-over from when that was a derogatory term. We get on very well, but her views are still stuck in a very narrow-minded past.
That got me thinking: were there ever any openly gay leaders in human history? Of course, we all know of Alexander the Great, but were there any others? How did the people of their time relate to them?
Young people growing up today have something I never did – openly gay public figures. Make no mistake, we still have a very long way to go, but we are getting there.
In many ancient cultures, gay people were looked up to and took on roles as leaders, shamans and healers. Some native American tribes even recognised same-sex relationships, and there were forms of marriage unique to their cultures. We can learn from them.
So, to answer my mum’s (albeit unintentional) homophobia, the answer is YES. We have always been around. Always. The society
