nowadays people think “Ben-Hur” is a transexual character
The early screenwriter was the unreconstructed old queen, Gore Vidal, who (by his own account) wanted to be replaced on the picture, after having pointed out that it wasn’t ‘a tale of the Christ’, but a tale about a Jewish boy. He tried to gay it up (limited to an allusion to a childhood proposition by Messalla); later, I think he was also involved in gaying up “Spartacus”.