I am personally cautious of using the term 'gay' retro-historically because it's a definition very much defined by the sociopolitics of our times, and I'd welcome the input from someone versed in the sexual sociopolitical outlook of his time.
Similarly I think all the terms for the varieties of gender orientation rather indicate the prevalence of increasingly narrow and closely-defined categorisation that obscures the more fluid and organic reality.
I'm not saying James was not homosexual, and while the man-woman thing was the biblical norm, he was a member of the English Aristocracy, and good grief, that outmoded institution the British Public School has been formative in the practice of buggering boys — both literally and figuratively — for centuries! James I? I have heard a strongly-endorsed rumour that the practice continues in the current royal family, and in our media-saturated age, one might ask why you've never heard this before either ... and the whole system is structured to be elitist, misogynistic, blah, blah, blah.
... and did anyone ever order pardons for sodomy? Or tell judges to lighten their sentencing? I'm not sure James was in any way different?
(In the 17th century, I recall a sociologist saying, there were more 'gay' brothels in Mayfair, a small area of the West End of London, than there are operating in London as a whole today.)
Look at the trial of Oscar Wilde. It was not so much about what he did, but that he did it flagrantly. before then, a regular feature in the Illustrated London News was on British army uniforms, and there would be a full page illustration of officers (obviously) in the dress of their regiments, often walking arm-in-arm and if not gay, then certainly looking very camp. It was as a direct result of the OW scandal that this stopped overnight, and that any show of affection between men became seen as 'bad form' and socially unacceptable. The trial probably did much to set the tone of the gender debate as it stands today.
