Was T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) gay or bi?

Source of Photo: jared77

Some have said so based on their knowledge of him. It certainly seems likely when we read the lustful passage below taken from his his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, in which he describes the sexuality of his guerrilla fighters in Arabia deployed  against the Ottoman Turks during World War I:

“The men were young and sturdy; and hot flesh and blood unconsciously claimed a right in them and tormented their bellies with strange longings. Our privations and dangers fanned this virile heat, in a climate as racking as can be conceived. We had no shut places to be alone in, no thick clothes to hide our nature. Man in all things lived candidly with man….  Our youths began indifferently to slake one another’s few needs in their own clean bodies—a  cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort….”

* The full text of his book:  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100111.txt