Was Freddie Mercury Gay?

Contents:

• WAS FREDDIE MERCURY GAY?

WAS FREDDIE MERCURY GAY?

Now regard as a gay in, Farrokh Bulsara, more wily known as Freddie Mercury mostly kept his sexualy and relatnships secret. Maybe that's why when you look at the ndid photos of the famo sger and his last boyiend Jim Hutton, you n't help but feel a sense of timacy that reveals the real bety of the gay uple's Queen volist began seeg hairdrser Jim Hutton the mid-1980s, but the start of their relatnship was rocky.

Freddie Mercury and Mary At were engaged before the Queen star me out as gay, however the two remaed very close for the rt of their days, wh Freddie wrg the famo song 'Love of My Life' about Mary. Freddie Mercury and Mary At were so close, that at one stage Freddie asked her to marry him, and he also left her half of his £75ln tate, cludg the £25ln Geian mansn unual and life-long love between the pair was played out on screen the Osr-wng film Bohemian Rhapsody and spe beg openly gay, Freddie Mercury said he'd love Mary "Until I draw my last breath. I thk you are gay’.

At one pot he claimed to be bisexual, but he may have been a gay man who got volved wh members of the oppose sex bee he was tryg to survive — and build a reer — a very homophobic world.

Mercury hid his sexualy om his fayFor most of Mercury's life, the wir world didn't accept gays and bisexuals. LGBT people were barely reprented the media, and the msage society had to offer was that not beg heterosexual was homophobia rampant, many gay men felt prsured to hi their sexualy, cludg om their fai. Mercury's Parsee parents practiced Zoroastrianism, a relign that saw beg gay as a type of mon worship.

The two lived together for several years and even got engaged before Mercury told At he was bisexual (her rponse was that she thought he was gay). " Ci like New York and Munich had gay scen where Mercury, who'd lled his sex drive "enormo" and who'd sung about beg "a sex mache ready to reload, " found one-night stands and UP FOR THE NEWSLETTERBeg a rock star allowed Mercury to ph genr boundariMercury was the one who suggted namg the band Queen, which at the time was a rogatory term for a gay man. Among his sartorial choic were leotards, angel-wg cloaks, tight shorts, and leather or PVC attire that evoked a biker image then popular gay a star allowed Mercury to ph some boundari, but he still lived at a time when honty about his attractn to men uld have limed his reer, and the reers of his bandmat.

Mercury didn't label his sexualy even after his AIDS diagnosisThe exact circumstanc of how Mercury was fected wh HIV are unknown, but the vis was spreadg through New York Cy's gay muny the late 1970s and early '80s. )As the 1980s progrsed, was obv many gay men were gettg sick and there was talk about a "gay ncer"; Mercury himself knew people wh the disease.

Even after velopg AIDS, he nied reports about his illns and beg gay. He was more upont wh his bandmat, but never told his fay why he was reason for Mercury's silence was worry about how his public image and legacy would change wh this revelatn, which at the time would have been enough to nfirm him as gay. (Image cred: Alamy)As a new box-set of Mercury’s solo work is released, Nick Leve nsirs the Queen legend’s myster inty – and his plex relatnship wh both his race and 1984, two years after the Gay Men’s Health Crisis anisatn was formed New York to bat Aids, Freddie Mercury sred his first solo h wh Love Kills.

In his lifetime, Brish newspaper The Sun brand the sger a “bisexual rock star”, and recent years the media has equently referred to him as gay.

” On another ocsn, he answered a siar qutn by sayg playfully: “I’m as gay as a daffodil, my ar! “I thk if Freddie were livg now the way he lived his own lifetime, we’d probably ll him ‘queer’ rather than ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’, ” says Ryan Butcher, edor of LGBT webse PkNews. His bandmate Brian May said 2008: “I know that all through his life Fred didn’t thk that whether he was gay or not was important.

” Aston also pots out that we readily embrace Judy Garland as a queer in “even though she didn’t make statements about anythg to do wh homophobia and LGBT acceptance” was so outrageoly mp, was almost like a double bluff – Mart AstonBy 1986, when Mercury and Queen gave their most inic performance at Live Aid, there were some openly gay performers the mastream; the UK’s biggt-sellg sgle that year was Don’t Leave Me This Way by the Communards, whose ontman Jimmy Somerville was proudly gay and highly engaged wh the LGBT-rights movement. Sger Gee Michael remaed the closet, and Culture Club’s Boy Gee had navigated his first flh of fame a few years earlier by tong down his homosexualy. Ryan Butcher go further, scribg Mercury as “almost a vert agent for the LGBT muny, droppg the ltle seeds of queer culture to the heterosexual mdset” the ‘80s, Mercury was known for his tight whe vts and motache – his take on the Castro Clone look that origated San Francis’s queer Castro district and beme popular the gay unrground, but which was ls faiar to mastream mic fans.