Was Lester Young gay

The best answer to this question is to say that this question has never been answered in such a way as to remove all doubt.

Lester had effeminate mannerisms and addressed his male and female friends as "lady", but this cannot be taken as 100% proof that he was exclusively attracted to people of his own gender, which must surely be the criterion by which being gay is defined.

There are, for example, well documented cases of people who are cross-dressers, yet exclusively heterosexual. So, mannerisms and choices of clothing do not always lead to the conclusions to which uninformed people might be willing to jump.

One thing they say about Lester is, however, undeniably true:

Lester Young was the president of the Tenor Saxophone.