Why Gay for Today?

Writing Gay for Today can sometimes be a thankless task.

For starters, I have no idea whether anybody even reads it most days. Some days, I can`t find a single famous gay celebrity to feature. Some people who are rumoured to be gay I choose not to feature as I can`t find any corroborating evidence.

The idea was to celebrate and illustrate the incredible variety, contribution and existence of gay men throughout our culture and recent history.

Some of the people featured are highly significant figures to the gay community for their creativity or activism.

Some are highly significant figures in their fields - art, music, science, literature, whatever - who happened to be gay. Sometimes their homosexuality is irrelevant, often it has a part to play in creating that sense of difference or 'otherness' that marks out the genius, the maverick, the innovator. Sometimes, the friendships created by shared homosexuality have created or been significant in whole movements - dance , poetry, writing, art and music all have examples of this.

Some people have just been homosexual and for whatever reasons, never acknowledged or were able to acknowledge the fact in their life or work. Sometimes it`s not relevant and sometimes the walls of the closet have just been too thick. Being a known homosexual has for centuries had the power to destroy people's lives after all. And sometimes it still does.

If you are gay, know your culture.

If you are not, know that your world would not be the same without us.

The only guidelines I use are as follows:

1 I prefer to only feature gay or bisexual men. Someone else can write the extraordinary history of lesbians.
2 I prefer to feature people from 'recent' history - mainly 19th century to the present day.
3 I only feature people if I can find some corroboration that they were, in fact, gay or bisexual.

If I ever get it wrong, I apologise, but remember that in my eyes, the accusation of homosexuality is never a criticism or a slur.