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, 1967
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.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Jeremy Atherton Lin
Edited 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 Milyukova
The kinky rumors, the tragic myths, and the straight up gay lies about his death
His read on Wagner (who made him yawn) and the dish on the famous Violin Concerto, dedicated to his hottie violinist crush, Iosif Kotek
Along 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:
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 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:
You 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:
You 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:
You 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 logic
The radical nature of anal sex (especially The Gay Version)
The capitalist scam of the "nuclear" family
Homo-normativity and the gay betrayal of queer radical Marxists
We 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 Mieli
One-Dimensional Queer – Roderick Ferguson
The Prophetic Imagination – Walter Brueggemann
You 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:
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
“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
Quit playing with your Lincoln log and listen up, because President Abraham Lincoln is here, he's queer, and we all better get used to it!
Lincoln is commonly called the greatest president in American history: but what if he was also frequently in love with men?
What if he slept with them in bed for years of his life?
What if he had moved to Fire Island, fallen in love with Bowen Yang, and roamed the beaches like a giant gay giraffe?
Shaun Peterson is the director, writer, and producer of a provocative new documentary on Lincoln's queer side that asks (most of) these urgent questions.
Lover of Men: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln serves viewers a Boston TEA Party of Honest Abe's "lavender" leanings – and reveals its 150-year-long cover-up.
It's 90 minutes of must-see queer history TV, and you can stream it today on Apple TV, Prime Video, and Vimeo.
–
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 d!ck jokes in very poor taste, follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok.
–
Episode Credits
"I live life in the margins of society. And the rules of normal society don't apply in the margins."
Welcome to the saucy, scandalous slag-paradise that is Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980)!
Tamara was a Polish-born aristocrat, bisexual painter, and Art Deco diva who took Paris by storm in the 1920s after escaping the Russian Revolution.
She was known for her hunger, a deep yearning to become a great artist and gobble up anything and everyone who stood in her path. (Including her husband! Move out the way, b*tch.)
As a sapphic siren of the Jazz Age, she was also part of Paris' lesbian underground, which featured clubs and bars that catered to butch and femme tastes alike. That is, before the populist Fascists came in and ruined everything (sound familiar, America?).
A self-made woman who subjugated everything to her art, Tamara cared as much about poontang and diamonds as she did her reputation. She was a PR genius, but despite that, we barely talk about her today.
Join me and Stephen Brower – comedian, writer, and recent cast member of LEMPICKA on Broadway – to discuss the dazzling life of this Art Deco dynamo. (Diamonds sold separately.)
—
If you want more from Historical Homos, you can join our cult on our website.
And follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify.
Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Stephen Brower.
Wait, why are mermaids so gay?
It turns out everyone’s favorite sea-gals have been floating around for millennia, from ancient Syrian mer-goddesses to medieval water witches, all the way up to Princess Ariel.
But how did these dangerous divas of the deep become the sympathetic heroines we love and cherish today?
What is it about mermaids that makes them such magnets for LGBTQ+ symbolism?
Join me and Sacha Coward, author of Queer As Folklore, as we unpack the myth, the magic, and the mer-MAN of it all in this 3,000 year history of queer people chasing tail.
—
If you want more from Historical Homos, you can join our cult on our website.
And follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify.
Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Sacha Coward.
How do you start a renaissance?
The one woman who knows - Beyoncé - was unavailable to answer my questions.
So instead, we've gone back to 1920s Harlem this week, to figure out the good gay truth.
It turns out the Harlem Renaissance was a lot more queer than we learned in school.
And half of its greatest luminaries, who represented a major step forward in Black queer history, have been largely forgotten today.
Three of them are the focus of this week's episode: Alain LeRoy Locke, Gladys Bentley, and Claude McKay.
They are just a fraction of the queer Black people who started, fueled, and memorialized the cultural flowering we now call the Harlem Renaissance.
Join me and my guest as we delve into their lives and figure out what each has to teach us about this fascinating period.
When you're done here, grab a copy of my guest's new book on the subject, which is beautifully illustrated and just came out: Flamboyants (2024).
If you want more from Historical Homos, you can join our cult at our website.
And follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify.
Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Bash. Guest host: George M. Johnson.
“I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.”
(The Man with Night Sweats, Thom Gunn, 1992)
Never heard of Thom Gunn? Me neither!
That's because straight people want to destroy us.
Thom was one of the great poets of the 20th century, up there with Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes.
But he's scarcely remembered in the 21st century, because he was:
Join us as we explore Thom's leather-harnessed and LSD-fueled life as a poet of sexual revolution, formal precision, and gay liberation.
In particular, Thom deserves to be remembered for the memorializing poetry he wrote about the AIDS epidemic and his many friends who lost their lives to the disease.
My guest this week is Michael Nott, who has recently published a magnificent biography, Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life.
Grab yourself a copy after the episode, and make sure to let us know what you think about Thom's poetry!
If you want more from Historical Homos, you can join our cult at www.historicalhomos.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify. Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Michael Nott.
"'Cosmus is a great big cinaedus. He keeps his legs apart and sucks d!ck.' ... I believe that's almost a direct paraphrase."
– Professor Tom Sapsford, quoting Ancient Roman graffiti about my biological ancestors
Kinaidos (or cinaedus in Latin) was the Ancient Greek word for a depraved, unmanly man who liked to get railed. (LIKE MEEEEE.)
Since then, the kinaidos has been used and abused by scholars of classical antiquity for centuries. (LIKE MEEEEE.)
Some say he never existed and is more akin to the Victorian idea of vampires than any modern-day frociaggine.
But my guest on the podcast this week says different, and he literally wrote the book on the subject, so...let's ask him, shall we?
Join me and Professor Tom Sapsford (Boston College) as we trace the history of the kinaidoi, from their first mention in Plato to the peak of their cultural and sexual powers in the 3rd century CE.
Kinaidoi were not "f*gs just like us," to be sure. But they were a well-known sexual and gendered Other in the classical world.
They highlight the pitfalls of telling normative tales whenever we try to understand ancient sexualities of any kind.
Check out Professor Sapsford's book here for more on this fascinating subject!
––––
If you want more Historical Homos, you can join our cult at www.historicalhomos.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify.
Do it.
Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Tom Sapsford.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
– Dylan Adler, Japanese-Jewish comedian to the stars!
Join us this week on a rip-roaring ride through Japan's hole-tighteningly gay history.
From Buddhist pederasts to sissy samurais and beyond, we explore the kimonos, the scroll paintings, and yes, the hemorrhoidal humor that sustained Japanese homosexuality for over 1,000 years.
My guest and I will also – because everyone keeps asking! – give you a full run-down on how to get laid in medieval Japan. From picking the right lube to just finding somewhere to bathe, it's like talking to two Cosmo Kyoto editors who should have perished centuries ago!
(Except we didn't! And we have the poreless, perky asses to prove it.)
If you want more Historical Homos, you can join our cult at www.historicalhomos.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify.
Do it.
Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Dylan Adler.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I've been talking about gay men for FAR too many episodes recently, so please enjoy this summer repeat of one of my favorite episodes ever from Season 1, with my former co-host Donal Brophy.
Virginia Woolf is the more famous author today, but back in the 1920s and 30s, it was her lover and socialite-best-friend (God I need one of those), Vita Sackville-West, who was the celebrity.
Virginia and Vita fell in love quickly, and throughout their long friendship – THEY WERE ROOMMATES – they wrote intense, glowing letters to one another.
Virginia also kept a regular diary, recording for posterity her first, second, and many subsequent impressions of Vita and her glittering aristocratic life.
You'll be surprised to hear how bitchy, funny, and catty these letters and diaries can be – brilliant and incisive, too, but neither writer is ever afraid to knock the other down a peg.
Enjoy, and we'll be back next week with our scheduled programming!
If you want more Historical Homos, you can join our cult at www.historicalhomos.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify. Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Guest host: Donal Brophy.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Is it toxic for a Roman emperor to steal a child from his home, give him all the riches of the world, groom him, and then maybe ask him to kill himself so that he can live?
That is what we seek to uncover.
The Emperor Hadrian (AD 76 - 138) was one of the not-too-f*cked-up emperors. He liked soldiering but not war, astrology, being gay, hunting, and doing architecture. Trust me, there were a lot worse before him.
But how are we to understand the notorious tale of his beloved Antinous, whom he whisked away from home at the age of 12 to become Premier Boytoy in his imperial retinue?
When Antinous died, Hadrian "wept like a woman." He also started a religion and founded a city in his honor, which means we have hundreds of Antinouses that survive today in marble and stone, from Spain to Syria and beyond.
Join me and my hilarious guest Neil D'Astolfo as we separate the fact from the fiction, and overlay a healthy veneer of frocciagine to the whole thing (not that it needed much seasoning!).
If you want more Historical Homos, you can join our cult at www.historicalhomos.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify. Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Neil D'Astolfo.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We're back, baby! Join us as we navigate the wine-dark and wine-soaked symposia of Ancient Greece, to discover what exactly was so gay about these all-male drinking parties. (Hint: a lot.)
We cover ancient party planning, gay glassware, reclining etiquette, drunken flirting, and all the subtle arts of homosexual entertaining you need to host a horny soirée 2,500 years ago.
My guest Cosima Carnegie is a champion of the Classics in life and on social media – follow her at @cosisodyssey for more hilarious Ancient Greek and mythological content.
Visuals mentioned in this episode:
If you want more Historical Homos, you can join our cult at www.historicalhomos.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Like what you hear? Please leave us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify. Do it. Yeahhhhhh just like that.
Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Guest host: Cosima Carnegie.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
