Historical Homos

Once upon a time—aka the 90s, when I bravely decided to be born—gay marriage was the only thing we queers could talk about. But why? Why were we so hell-bent on getting married? And how did the fight for marriage equality impact real people on the ground?In this episode, Bash is joined by writer and memoirist Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told, to explore the long, messy, and horny history of gay marriage in America—from deportation threats in the 1950s to a rainbow-lit White House under Obama.Along the way, we ask:💍 Who decides what a marriage is? Who gets to say who/what you are?🏳️‍🌈 What happens when a bi(coastal) relationship collides with the full force of the U.S. immigration system?🐴 Is a man marrying a man the same as a man marrying a horse? (The question, historically, was asked.)Also featuring:– Clive Boutilier, the Canadian gay man deported for being a “psychopath” (1950s medical slang for "gay")– A 1996 government letter from the Department of Justice that literally said to two gays: “A legal marriage cannot exist between two faggots.”– Bill Clinton wriggling out from under the S&M grip of DOMA– And one very filthy reading from our beloved guest...Not to mention this very real quote:🗣️ “Ordinarily a homo is psycho, but many are not.” — actual Supreme Court justice, 1967You can follow Historical Homos on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and you should ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ if you care about gay people at all.Episode CreditsWritten and hosted by Bash. Guest: Jeremy Atherton LinEdited by Alex Toskas. Produced by Dani Henion.

Imagine a world where you're Russian, gay, and happy about it.No this is not propaganda from the ultra-secret "Pinko" department of the Kremlin (they def have one of those).This is the very real story of the magnificent Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the world's greatest composers and a big old homosexual.He wrote the 1812 Overture, The Nutcracker, and the world’s gayest violin concerto (because it's "exuberant"). He also did Swan Lake, by the way, so perhaps most importantly, we wouldn't have Natalie Portman calling herself a WHORE on a mirror in red lipstick without him.This week, Bash is joined by Princeton professor of music history Simon Morrison — author of Tchaikovsky’s Empire — to explore what it meant to be gay (and fabulous) in 19th-century Russia. Together, they dismantle the myth of the tortured, closeted genius and paint a much queerer, more joyful picture of Tchaikovsky’s life.💅 Topics include:Why Tchaikovsky thrived as a gay man (in certain elite Russian circles, of course)His disastrous lavender marriage to Antonina MilyukovaThe kinky rumors, the tragic myths, and the straight up gay lies about his deathHis read on Wagner (who made him yawn) and the dish on the famous Violin Concerto, dedicated to his hottie violinist crush, Iosif KotekAlong the way, we ask the hard questions: Where were the best gay bars in St. Petersburg? Is Eugene Onegin queer-coded? And why does being gay make us better artists?Stick around at the end for a special conversation with Oliver Zeffman, founder of Classical Pride, about this year’s line-up of queer classical music events in London and LA.You can follow Historical Homos on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and you should ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ if you care about gay people at all.Written and hosted by Bash. Guest: Professor Simon Morrison. Edited by Alex Toskas. Produced by Dani Henion.

What's so gay about food? (Besides the fact that you use your mouth for it.)The answer, OF COURSE, lies in 18th century France.In fact, food's sexy origins go even further back, all the way to the ancients: from Eve's naughty apple to Ancient Roman oysters (they made their orgasms more intense!).But it was the invention of the restaurant in 18th century Paris that made food sexy, dangerous, and ultimately, gay.By the 20th century, figures like Oscar Wilde and the Bloomsbury Set had made sure it was officially queer to eat out. Their associations of food with aesthetics and art ran counter to Anglo-American fears of public pleasure.Eventually, it became more normal for people other than the French to talk about food, and even to try making their daily fare at home more edible. Thus began the modern association of caring about good food with homosexuality.We end this episode discussing the lasting impact of those associations on our modern relationship with food.Join us for this open buffet on food's queer history, featuring Professor Rachel Cleves, author of Lustful Appetites: A History of Good Food and Wicked Sex.Together we uncover:The origins of the restaurant (aka Whore Dinner)18th century Viagra brothVirginia Woolf's gay best friend who made English food more French (thank GOD)The Lavender Scare's impact on American foodHow capitalism made food less gay for straight menYou can follow Historical Homos on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and you should ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ if you care about gay people at all.Written and hosted by Bash. Guest speaker: Rachel Cleves. Edited by Alex Toskas. Produced by Dani Henion.

Why do bottoms always die in Greek mythology?If you're a fan of Greek myth, you know the gods love to act like humans: they love, they fuck, they fight...they throw dinner parties.But they also love to kill us. When gods show up on Earth, it typically means someone's about to get pregnant or dead, real quick. (Or both.)And the pattern holds for the gay Greek myths. (With admittedly fewer pregnancies carried to term.)Zeus and Apollo never seem able to keep their mortal boyfriends alive, while demigods like Herakles and Achilles also find it tricky to maintain their lovers' pulses.Why is this? What's going on psychologically, historically, narratively, and yes, erotically, when the ancients were sang of so much LITERAL twink death in their myths?Join Bash and Liv Albert, renowned Greek myth expert and host of the Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! podcast this week as they discuss:Herakles and Hylas being afraid of women (and the bottomless depths of ancient Greek misogyny)Apollo, the god of being a total DICK all the time, and Hyacinth, a beautiful youth slain in a totally avoidable "frisbee tragedy"Achilles and Patroclus, the famed comrades-at-arms, who die for one another in most toxic fashionYou can follow Historical Homos for more on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠, and you should ⁠⁠⁠⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠ too, if you care about gay people at all.Written and hosted by Bash. Guest host: Liv Albert. Edited by Alex Toskas. Produced by Dani Henion.

The year is 1395. The city: London. The crime: an "unmentionable, ignominious vice" commonly known as sodomy.And the perp? A rascally, resourceful enigma named John Rykener, who enters the court records "calling herself Eleanor," wearing women's clothes, and defying gravity / everything we know about medieval gender.But John/Eleanor Rykener – or Jeleanor, as they shall henceforth be known to scholars – doesn't map easily onto our modern categories of "trans," "queer," or "sex worker."Jeleanor lived and presented as both a man and a woman, depending on when it suited them. That made them highly creative with their gender, especially when it came to their day job, but does it mean they were "trans"?They learned the cons that kept them surviving and thriving from a local madam. But in medieval London, to be a prostitute was to be a woman. The court is clear that Jeleanor was AMAB and that their crime was sodomy, not prostitution. So can we say they were seen as a sex worker in their own time?And finally, they took to bed men and women from all walks of medieval life, for money and for fun. Does that make them queer or "bisexual"? Can we trust this court record to tell us about Jeleanor's experience of sexual desire? Did the court care more about the gender of Jeleanor's conquests, or their ties to the Church?Join Bash and the brilliantly clever medievalist, Dr. Mireille Pardon, as we unpick and unpack the surviving legal record that details Jeleanor's deliciously saucy life.Along the way we'll learn about:Streetside sodomy in the Little Ice AgeCommon cons to make sure your medieval john paysThe wages for a sex worker in the 1390sWhy the cops REALLY cared about busting trans sex workers 600+ years agoYou can follow Historical Homos for more on our ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠, and you should ⁠⁠⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠⁠ too, if you care about gay people at all.Credits: "Running up that hill Cover in Early Middle English BARDCORE/MEDIEVAL version. Original by Kate Bush." Accessed June 2025 on YouTube. Owned by @the_miracle_aligner.

What comes after the collapse of capitalism? Mass famine? Global war? Environmental destruction? Oh wait, all of that's already happening!It seems like, as a species, we're at a bit of a breaking point. Which means revolution is afoot, and we have to wonder: what the hell happens when it gets here? For most of us, though, it's not easy to project what life looks like after the next economic revolution.It's even more complex to wonder what happens to queer life: do we keep all our labels – "gay" "cis" "queer" – without a capitalist framework? Can we still go on vacation with our chosen families? Will there be any good gay bars?!In this bonus episode, we team up with sociologist and author, Eman Abdelhadi, to imagine the radical, queer, and–get this–genuinely optimistic future that The Much-Awaited Revolution could offer us.Drawing from her speculative oral history novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052–2072, we explore what a world organized around care, kinship, and collective survival might look like.Books mentioned:Everything for Everyone – Iman Abdelhadi & E.M. O'BrienFamily Abolition – M.E. O'BrienEnemy Feminisms – Sophie LewisThe Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le GuinAgainst the Grain – James C. ScottThe Invisible Doctrine – George Monbiot & Peter HutchisonYou can follow Historical Homos for more on our ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠, and you should ⁠⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠ too, if you care about gay people at all.

What if it's actually your butthole that will lead the revolution? This week, we're getting penetratingly political with writer and podcaster Josh Rivers (⁠Busy Being Black⁠), as we explore the radical legacy of Mario Mieli's ⁠Towards a Gay Communism⁠.Here's the thing: Capitalism doesn't just steal your time and money—it also reinforces the gender binary, nuclear families, and heterosexual urges (which are totally normal to have!).It turns out Capitalism is extremely tied up in our sex lives, because our sex lives have economic value. And for that reason, The Big C is terrified of anything that rocks our sexy boats. According to Mieli, eros – ancient Greek for romantic-sexual desire – is a liberating force, which has the power to free us from the constrained categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual." These "mutilations," as he calls them, only developed to reinforce the gender and sexual "norms" Capitalism needs to survive, the very same ones that keep us reproducing and addicted to respectability.In this time of Globapocalypse, we're all looking for answers as to (a) what has led us here and (b) how we can move forward. It could be that part of the answer is in our pants, so join us this week as we discuss:Eros as substructure: how sex and desire determine with our society's economic logicThe radical nature of anal sex (especially The Gay Version)The capitalist scam of the "nuclear" familyHomo-normativity and the gay betrayal of queer radical MarxistsWe also talk The Italian Job (what I call cruising in Rome), "educastration," "psychonazis," and the emotional dilemma of getting Obama’s inauguration date tattooed on one's arm (the solution is to get more tattoos of people doing sex on each other apparently).Fabulous Books To Read:Towards a Gay Communism – Mario MieliOne-Dimensional Queer – Roderick FergusonThe Prophetic Imagination – Walter BrueggemannPleasure Activism – adrienne maree brownYou can follow Historical Homos for more on our ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠, and you should ⁠sign up to our newsletter⁠ too, if you care about gay people at all.

We're back my little Hormones! Join Bash and his heavy flow of genius guests this season for another no-fucks-given romp through humanity's Big Gay Past. (We all have one!) Come for the history, stay for the laughs, and if you're lucky, leave with a boner. Please note: Erectile Gift With Purchase (EGWP) not guaranteed. First cum, first served.We'll be penetrating your tight little earholes – with consent – on May 29, 2025. Hit that follow/subscribe button, so you don't miss a thing.Love you...bye!

Happy Hole-idays, my little Hormones! For our last episode of the year, we welcome Coco, the Time Traveling Slut, into your tight little earholes to answer some eternally pressing questions: Where do sluts come from? Have gay men always been promiscuous? Have lesbians not? Who were the greatest skanks in history? And why can't women f*ck in peace, for once, generally speaking, like ever? From the original Biblical temptress, (St)Eve, to Julius Caesar, Charles II, and Marie Antoinette, we take you on tour of history's scuzziest slores (slut whores), enriched with Coco's insider scoops – which, even for village bicycles like us, will shock and appall. (Oh! Suddenly I'm dripping.) Along the way, you'll get all the gossip about Ancient Greco-Roman Sluts; a little known Middle Eastern Startup that disrupted sex 2,000 years ago: it's called Christianity; ancient Indian and Islamic sex positivity, and much, much more. (No wait I am actually fully wet now.) You can get more good stuff from Coco on her ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠, and make sure to ⁠⁠book one of her tours⁠⁠ in London or Paris if you're there in early 2025! Now, time to get lubed up and ready to ride, cuz this is one venereal Christmas special you can't afford to ignore! – If you like what you hear, please leave us a five star rating on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠⁠⁠, or your favorite platform. Want to join our cult? ⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠ to keep abreast and a-testicle of all Historical Homos announcements. For more very gay jokes in very good taste, follow Historical Homos on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok.⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Episode Credits Written and hosted by Bash Edited by Alex Toskas Guest host: Max Norman (aka Coco)

“Being transgender is the least important thing about me. I’m a person. I’m just a person” – Conner, 18, college student from Ohio Ever wondered what it’s like to be a trans kid in America today? (Hint: it f*cking sucks.) Groups on the right and their politicians use trans kids as pawns in the political game of vote and media attention.  And they love to act like trans kids are an anomaly of modern woke leftists. But actually trans youth have been around for centuries in America. And when you hear what their stories are, you start to understand they’re just regular kids, like any others. My guest this week, Nico Lang, spent nearly a year of his life living with eight trans and nonbinary kids around the 50 states. The result is a wonderfully empathetic and revealing book, titled American Teenager: How Trans Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy In a Turbulent Era. You can purchase it on Allstora, where LGBTQ+ and marginalized authors are fairly compensated for their work. – If you like what you hear in this episode, please leave us a five star rating on ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠, or your favorite platform. Want to join our cult? ⁠⁠Sign up to our newsletter⁠⁠ to keep abreast and a-testicle of all Historical Homos announcements. For more offensively historical content, follow Historical Homos on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠TikTok.⁠⁠ – Episode Credits Written and hosted by Bash Edited by Alex Toskas and Bash Guest host: Nico Lang