How many folks know that King James (who commissioned the King James Bible and to whom it was dedicated) loved men and had sex with them? At the age of thirteen James fell madly in love with his male cousin Esmé Stuart whom he made Duke of Lennox. James deferred to Esmé to the consternation of his ministers. In 1582 James was kidnapped and forced to issue a proclamation against his lover and send him back to France.
>Later, James fell in love with a poor young Scotsman named Robert Carr. “The king leans on his [Carrʼs] arm, pinches his cheeks, smooths his ruffled garment, and when he looks upon Carr, directs his speech to others.”
—Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, in a letter, 1611
>Carr eventually ended the relationship after which the king expressed his dissatisfaction in a letter to Carr, “I leave out of this reckoning your long creeping back and withdrawing yourself from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary…Remember that (since I am king) all your being, except your breathing and soul, is from me.” (See The Letters of King James I & VI, ed., G. P. V. Akrigg, Univ. of Calif. Press, 1984. Also see Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland, David M. Bergeron, Univ. of Missouri Press, 1991)
—Skip Church
>King Jamesʼ favorite male lovers were the Earl of Somerset and the Duke of Buckingham.
—Ben Edward Akerly, The X-rated Bible
>Jamesʼs sexual orientation was so widely known that Sir Walter Raleigh joked about it in public saying “King Elizabeth” had been succeeded by “Queen James.”
—Catherine D. Bowen, The Lion and the Throne
>“James, aged thirteen, was completely starstruck by these new arrivals. After being brought up by dour Presbyterians and a rough-hewn bunch of nobles, he suddenly appeared from the schoolroom to find a group of charming, well-traveled, well-educated and attractive men. He was fascinated by them, welcoming his release from the Reformist nobilityʼs stranglehold. The attraction of these personable and worldly courtiers was a breath of fresh air, and they quickly played on his sensibilities. These new ‘favorites’ were the key to free him from the shackles of the Kirk and his schoolroom. Within a month of Esméʼs arrival, James had agreed to leave Stirling and to take his place at Holyrood, where Esmé reorganized the Court and his household on the French model.
>There was more to Jamesʼs relationship with these favorites than kicking against his religious upbringing. Their charisma provided a sensual stimulus for him that he was not to enjoy with his interfering and insensitive wife, Anne of Denmark, when they married in 1589. They provided the glamour that he lacked, and there can be little doubt that his homosexuality stemmed from his early attraction to the androgynous Esmé. Well experienced in Court circles in France, Esmé took advantage of the sexual overtures of this vulnerable adolescent, twenty-four years his junior. James would openly clasp him in his arms to kiss him, shocking the Reformist clergy, who saw that Esmé ‘went about to draw the King to carnal lust’, while James showered him with offices and presents. By March 1580, the English ambassador, Bowes, was telling Elizabeth that Esmé was ‘called to be one of the secret counsel, and carryeth the sway in court’. By September ‘few or none will openly withstand anything that he would have forward’.
—Esmé Stuart, 1st Duke Of Lennox
>King James 1 was a known homosexual who murdered his young lovers and victimized countless heretics and women. His cruelty was justified by his “divine right” of kings.
—Otto J. Scott, James the First
What's the ultimatum here on this topic?