The Seven Heavenly Gay Virtues : Being Diligent

Last year I ended my mini-series on the Seven Deadly Gay Sins with the 6th sin of Vanity. I was too lazy to go into the final sin of Sloth! This year I’m making up for it by being Diligent and completing all Seven Heavenly Gay Virtues. But in doing so a problem arises. Where do I put the 7th virtue of Diligence on my Rainbow Virtue flag? Sloth was associated with the colour light blue in Medieval times and there isn’t a light blue stripe on the flag. So I’ve had to solve the problem by adding one. Below is the full Rainbow Heavenly Virtue flag.

Writing about lgbt heritage involves quite a lot of diligence in research. Sometimes there is enough evidence or source material to form an opinion with very little debate. Often I have spent many months researching one particular subject before I write an article because evidence and source material are not authoritative enough and I need to dig deeper to confirm or deny an opinion. An illustration of this is my list of lgbt Olympians and Paralympians. Several names have been on my “pending” list for over a year because I don’t have confirmation of the sexuality of the athlete.

Similarly, my genealogical research needs a lot of careful and diligent research. Just because someone’s ancestry is given online doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Several times in my “Out of Their Trees” series I’ve done enough research to disprove a specific line of descent. The best example of this is my debunking of the alleged royal ancestry of James Knight Ord III (given here) whom the perpetually unreliable Daily Mail “revealed” earlier this year. At the other end of the scale, last year my research uncovered for the first time that gay Olympic diver Tom Daley has royal blood (I was also the first to establish royal ancestries for Paralympian Oscar Pistorius and singing superstar siblings Richard and Karen Carpenter).

Over the past hundred years there has been many lgbt historians who have revealed many significant aspects of the world’s heritage. When I looked through my lgbt databases and indexes I realised there was many more lgbt historians than I thought, not only historians of lgbt history but lgbt historians of just about any subject you can imagine. From the history of the gay rights movement to military history, and from the history of the US railroads to my own research into lgbt Olympians, all aspects in the history or humanity are covered.

To list them all would take up too much space so I’ll just list a few which shows the diversity of research. Not listed are genealogist and archaeologists. I’ll leave them both for future articles. Included in the list below are everything from professors to school history teachers. Using the Seven Sins and Virtues as my inspiration I’ve listed 7x7 historians (if you add myself you get 50 in total).

 

LGBT HISTORIAN	SPECIALIST RESEARCH
Peter Ackroyd (b.1949)	biography
Ajumu X (b.1963)	black lgbt community
Peter Avery (1923-2008)	Ancient Persia
Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003)	architecture
Jay Bell (1948-2003)	lgbt Mormons
Scott Bessent (b.1962)	economics
Anthony Blunt (1907-1983)	art
John Boswell (1947-1994)	homosexuality and the medieval Church
Beth Brant (b.1941)	Native American women
Michael Camille (1958-2002)	Medieval art
Bob Cant (b.1945)	Scottish lgbt history
Charles Clegg (1916-1979)	US railroads
Rose Collis (b.1959)	female biography
Luke Cottrill (b.1955)	history teacher
Claude Courove (b.1943)	lgbt language and slang
Alain Daniélou (1907-1994)	music; India
Stephen Paul Davies	film industry and movies
Emma Donoghue (b.1969)	literature
Didier Eribon (b.1953)	French philosophy
Lillian Faderman (b. 1940)	female same-sex relationships
Jeremy Farrell (1947-2008)	costume
John Golding (1929-2012)	Cubism
James Naylor Green (b.1951)	Latin America
Boze Hadleigh (b.1954)	entertainment biography
C. Jacob Hale	transgender community
Gerald Heard (1889-1971)	science
Dorine Hermann (b.1959)	Dutch royalty
Bret Hinsch (b.1962)	Ancient China
Keith Howes (b.1947)	lgbt involvement in broadcasting
Wim Ibo (1918-2000)	cabaret
Paul Jackson	military
Michel Jacq-Hergoualch (1943-2015)	South-east Asia and French colonialism
Geoffrey Kaiser (b.1945)	The Society of Friends (Quakers)
Jonathan Ned Katz (b.1938)	founder of Out History
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy (b.1939)	ethnohistory
Saleem Kidwai (b.1951)	Medieval period
Yolanda Chávez Leyva	Chicana (Latin-American women)
Aldo Mieli (1879-1950)	science
Edward, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu (1926-2015)	cars and motoring
George Lachmann Mosse (1918-1999)	theology; masculinity
Rictor Norton (b.1945)	lgbt community
Martin Pénet (b.1968)	French music
Otto Rahn (1904-1939)	the Holy Grail and the Cathars
Chuck Renslow (b.1928)	co-founder, Leather Archives and Museum
Nils Johan Ringdal (1952-2008)	Norwegian culture and Nazi occupation
Sue Sanders (b.1947)	co-founder, UK LGBT History Month
Norman Scarfe (1923-2014)	D-Day landings
David Starkey (b.1945)	English Tudor history
Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768)	art