History is messy. If you're looking for a single name, a specific date, or a "patient zero" for homosexuality, you're going to be disappointed. People have been falling in love with and having sex with members of the same gender since, well, forever. But the question of who was the first gay person is actually a bit of a trick question because the word "gay" is a relatively new invention.
If you went back to Ancient Greece and asked someone if they were gay, they’d look at you like you had two heads. Not because they didn't have same-sex relationships—they definitely did—but because they didn't see it as an identity. It was just something people did. It’s like asking who the first person was to enjoy the color blue.
The Trouble With Applying Modern Labels to the Past
We love categories. We love to put things in neat little boxes so we can understand them. But for most of human history, sexual orientation wasn't a box. It was a behavior.
The term "homosexual" didn't even exist until 1869. It was coined by an Austro-Hungarian journalist named Karl-Maria Kertbeny. Before that, you won't find the word in any medical journals or history books. So, when we ask who was the first gay person, we are basically trying to project our 21st-century understanding of identity onto people who lived by totally different rules.
Think about Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum.
These two men lived in Ancient Egypt around 2400 BCE. They were royal manicurists. When their tomb was discovered in 1964, archaeologists found them depicted in a way that was usually reserved for married couples. They are nose-to-nose. They are embracing. Some historians, like Greg Reeder, argue they might be the earliest recorded same-sex couple in history. Others argue they were brothers, perhaps twins. We can't ask them. We only have the art they left behind, and that art suggests a level of intimacy that challenges the "standard" family narrative.
Looking for the "First" in the Records
If we can't find a "first" person, we can find the first people who were punished or celebrated for these acts.
In the Middle Ages, the focus was on the "act" of sodomy. It was viewed as a religious or legal transgression, not a personality trait. You weren't a "gay man"; you were a man who had committed a specific sin. This distinction sounds small, but it's massive. It meant that even if you were caught, people didn't necessarily think you were fundamentally different from everyone else. You just had a "disordered" urge.
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Then came the Enlightenment. Things started to shift.
Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs: The First to Speak Out
If we are looking for the first person to publicly claim a same-sex identity in a way we’d recognize today, Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs is a massive figure. In the 1860s, he started writing books about "Urnings."
Ulrichs believed that some people were born with a "female soul in a male body" (or vice versa). He was a lawyer in Germany, and he actually stood up in front of the Congress of German Jurists in 1867 to plead for the decriminalization of same-sex acts. He was basically the first "out" activist. He didn't use the word gay, but he was describing the same lived experience. He was incredibly brave. He lost his job. He was exiled. But he gave a name to something that had been nameless for centuries.
The SAPPHO Paradox
We can't talk about this without mentioning Sappho.
She lived on the island of Lesbos in the 6th century BCE. Her poetry is some of the most beautiful writing ever produced about desire between women. It’s where we get the words "lesbian" and "sapphic." But was she the "first" lesbian?
She wrote about her love for women, but she also likely had a husband and children. In her time, loving women didn't mean you couldn't also live a traditional life. It wasn't "either/or." It was "and." This is why historians get so prickly about labels. If you call Sappho the first gay person, you’re ignoring the fact that she wouldn't have known what that meant.
Why the 19th Century Changed Everything
Everything changed when doctors got involved.
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In the late 1800s, sexology became a thing. Doctors like Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis started "studying" what they called "sexual inversion." They moved same-sex attraction out of the realm of "sin" and into the realm of "sickness."
While calling it a sickness was obviously terrible, it unintentionally created the modern "gay" identity. If doctors said you were a specific type of person with a specific condition, then people with that condition started to find each other. They realized they weren't alone. They started to build a community.
This is the era where the answer to who was the first gay person starts to look like a community rather than an individual. You have the Bloomsbury Group in London, the underground balls in Harlem, and the secret "Molly houses" in 18th-century England.
The Public Records and the "Firsts"
- First person to use the word "Gay" in a modern sense? It's hard to pin down. In the late 19th century, "gay" was slang for a woman of "easy virtue" or a flamboyant man. By the 1920s and 30s, it was being used as code within the community.
- First same-sex marriage? Depending on how you define it, you could look at the "Ladies of Llangollen" in the late 1700s. Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby ran away together and lived as a couple in Wales for 50 years. Everyone knew. They were local celebrities.
- First American gay rights organization? The Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay in 1950.
The Danger of Searching for One Name
When we try to find the "first" gay person, we often accidentally erase people who didn't fit Western definitions.
Many Indigenous cultures across the globe have had "Two-Spirit" people or third-gender roles for millennia. The Zuni "Lhamana" or the Bugis people of Indonesia recognize five different genders. These people were often revered, not persecuted. If we only look for the first gay person in European history, we miss the fact that many cultures solved this "puzzle" thousands of years ago without the drama of the Victorian era.
Honestly, the search for the "first" is often about validation. We want to know we've always been here. And the answer is: we have.
We see it in the Sacred Band of Thebes—an elite Greek fighting force made up entirely of 150 pairs of male lovers. They believed men would fight harder if their lover was watching. They were right; they were undefeated for decades.
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We see it in the letters of King James I to his "favorite," George Villiers. James wrote, "I desire only to live in the world for your sake."
We see it in the "Boston Marriages" of the late 19th century, where independent women lived together in lifelong partnerships.
Nuance Matters
It’s tempting to just point at a historical figure and say, "Them! They were the first!"
But history isn't a museum where everything is labeled correctly. It's a dark room where we’re feeling around with a flashlight. We find a letter here, a tomb painting there, a court record of a trial.
If you're asking who was the first gay person because you want to feel connected to history, look at the 1867 speech by Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs. That was the moment someone stood up and said, "This is who I am, and I deserve rights." That is the birth of the identity.
But if you’re looking for the birth of the feeling, you have to look back to the very beginning of the human story. There was no first. There has only ever been us.
Actionable Insights for History Lovers
If you want to dive deeper into this without getting bogged down in "academic-speak," here is how to actually research queer history:
- Look for "Primary Sources": Don't just read what a historian says. Look at the actual letters. Read the poems of Sappho or the letters of Eleanor Butler. You can often feel the "truth" in their own words more than in a textbook.
- Follow the Slang: If you’re searching digital archives, don't just search for "gay." Search for "invert," "uranian," "friend of Dorothy," or "confirmed bachelor." That’s where the real stories are hidden.
- Check out the Digital Transgender Archive: It’s one of the best resources for seeing how gender and orientation have crossed paths throughout history.
- Visit Local Archives: Many cities have LGBTQ+ historical societies. San Francisco, London, and Berlin have incredible physical archives that show the "firsts" of local movements.
- Stop Applying Modern Logic: Accept that a person in 1400 might have loved someone of the same sex without ever feeling the need to come out or join a parade. Their silence wasn't always shame; sometimes it was just a lack of a label.
The history of being gay isn't a straight line (pun intended). It's a map of people finding ways to love each other in every corner of the world, under a thousand different names, long before the first modern "gay" person ever realized they were part of a global family.