San Francisco in the 1960s was a colourful place. Counterculture movements were gaining momentum and the city was home to many unique characters, including Gavin Arthur, a bisexual sexologist and Irish Republican.

Arthur was born in Colorado Springs in 1901, the grandson of Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States. As a young man, he enrolled in Columbia College, New York, and as a member of the Philolexian Society, got his first taste of the literary scene.

After graduating, Arthur split his time between New York, France and Ireland and joined the Irish Republican movement. Arthur’s involvement in the movement saw him take an anti-treaty position and volunteer in Kerry during the Irish Civil War.

In addition to his involvement in the Irish Republican Movement, Arthur also dove headfirst into Ireland’s literary scene and began publishing poetry while living in Dublin, establishing connections with socialist and feminist circles along the way.

In the 1930s, Arthur relocated to California, where he founded an art and literature commune and published Dune Forum, a short-lived magazine.

His literary ambitions continued after Dune Forum folded, and in 1934, he joined the Utopian Society of America and edited Labor Defender, a communist magazine alongside Langston Hughes.

In 1940, Arthur worked briefly for the California Democratic Party and also served in the US Army and the Merchant Navy. Around this time, he also attempted to write his family’s history, although the project was unfinished.

Flash forward to the 1950s and 60s, and Arthur pursued two other passions: astrology and sexology. In his work, The Circle of Sex, Arthur theorised that sexuality exists as a wheel. He posited that there were 12 sexual orientations, six for men and six for women.

During this time, Arthur was involved in the Gay Rights movement in San Francisco and hosted the Human-Be-In, a mass counter-cultural event that preluded the Summer of Love.

Throughout his life, Arthur was married to women three times, and, as he stated in The Circle of Sex, he had relations with Edward Carpenter, an early LGBTQ+ rights advocate.

Gavin Arthur died in 1972, but his legacy as an astrologer, a sexologist and a bisexual Irish Republican lives on.