Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual. He wrote extensively about sex and sexuality, politics, and religion.
He was also a novelist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), offended many people at the time for openly talking about a male homosexual relationship. His 1968 release, Myra Breckinridge was the first novel to talk about a sex-change operation.
In the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995), Vidal talked about the fact that when he was the script doctor for the 1959 Ben-Hur he had discussed the homosexual subtext of the film with other actors, the director, and producer. Together they decided to keep it secret from Charlton Heston, because they were worried he would refuse to play along.
Vidal said repeatedly that he believed that everyone is bisexual. He was also very open about the fact that he's had relationships with men and women.
His friend, Scotty Bowers, author of Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars (2013), has been very open about the fact that Vidal certainly had many sexual relationships with men.
Jason Epstein, Vidal's editor said,
He wasn't unhappy about being gay. He was unhappy about being wrongly classified, pigeonholed. I think his main interest was men, but of course he slept with women — why wouldn't he? He'd sleep with anything. He was horny. For him, sex was like having lunch. He was certainly quick about it. He didn't linger.[1]
In 2010 Vidal began to suffer from Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, a neurological disorder. On July 31, 2012, Vidal died of pneumonia at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 86. He was buried next to his long-time partner, Howard Austen in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C.