Was King James I The First Openly Gay Monarch?

King James I, who commissioned The King James Bible & to whom it was dedicated, loved men & had sex with them. I wonder if Pat Robertson thinks about that when quoting Leviticus? The title page of The King James Bible boasted that it was "newly translated out of the original tongues", but the work was actually a revision of The Bishop's Bible of 1568, which was a revision of The Great Bible of 1539, which was itself based on 3 previous English translations from the early 1500s. So, the men who produced the King James Bible not only inherited some of the errors made by previous English translators, but invented some of their own.

Without King James, the most widely touted Bible in Christian history would never have been produced. When I was in Presbyterian Sunday School, I wish the teacher had thought to mention that the quoted scripture reading from a Gay Bible.

When Mary Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate, her 1 year old son James became the King of Scotland. At 14, he fell in love with 38 year old- Esme Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox. Accounts from the time claim that he was “in such love with him as in the open sight of the people often times he will clasp him about the neck with his arms & kiss him." The disapproving Scottish nobles first made Lennox choose between James & his Catholicism. He chose James. Lennox's life was threatened & he fled to France.

When Elizabeth I died in 1603, James became King of England, his exploits with men were well known & Londoners snidely said, “Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen”. James fell in love in 1607, when he attended a jousting tournament & eyed 17 year old Robert Carr being thrown from his horse & breaking his leg. James made Carr a gentleman of the bedchamber. He gave Carr many gifts, among them the divorce decree for the married woman he loved. For a wedding gift he gave Carr the title- 1st Earl of Somerset. Carr preferred his wife to James, even when it was revealed she had poisoned his best friend Sir Thomas Overbury, who had been against their marriage. To save her, Carr threatened to reveal his sexual relationship with James at the trial. Carr didn't, but his wife confessed her crime & they were both sentenced to die. James held them in the tower for 7 years, & then pardoned them. He later gave them an estate in the country.

James had now fallen in love with hunky George Villiers, whom he later made 1st Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham became good friends with James’s wife Anne; she addressed him in affectionate letters begging him to be "always true" to her husband. Buckingham wrote in a letter to James: "Sir, all the way hither I entertained myself, your unworthy servant, with this dispute, whether you loved me now... better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master & his dog.”

James in some letters addressed him as his spouse stating: "I desire only to live in this world for your sake... I had rather live banished in any part of the Earth with you than live a sorrowful widow's life without you... God bless you, my sweet child & wife, & grant that ye may ever be a comfort to your dear dad & husband".

King James was unashamed of love for Buckingham & told critics: “I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man & confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, & more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf & not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, & therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, & I have George.” Buckingham was at his side when James died in 1625.

If he had lived, King James I would be celebrating his 446 birthday today- June 19th.

The King James Version of the Bible is my preferred version of the book, with its powerful & poetic language in the manner of times of Shakespeare.