The discovery of the statue of Antinous, Delphi, Greece, 1894
Antinous was the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. When Antinous was killed, Hadrian was so distraught that he spread artwork of the boy throughout the empire, deified him and created a cult to his worship, and even named at least one town after him.
There were also rumors that Antinous was the dominant partner, while Hadrian was submissive. In Rome, homosexual relationships were not frowned upon in and of themselves. However, Romans were very concerned with masculinity in general, so if you engaged in a homosexual relationship, you had better be the dominant partner. So the fact that there were rumors that Hadrian–the leader of the free world at the time–was the submissive partner was scandalous. Made worse when he commissioned statutes of and deified his dominant partner.