Now this question has been bothering me for years and today I found time to ask. I can't help but find it strange that there were institutions back in history [mainly middle ages] where only same sex 'believers' could join. The normal explanation would obviously be that they are not having sex at all and hence stay pure and don't need the other gender around them for temptation.
This explanation leaves me unfulfilled though. Something just isn't right because a) humans will always crave sex [bar a very small minority], especially men and b) there must have been gay people out there who could [because of religion ironically] not 'come out' in those days. Yet they still had the love for their own.
So what do you do? That is where monasteries and nunneries come in. It is the perfect solution for homosexuals. They would have kept their dignity, would have been away from the heterosexual world where they were in danger plus they could be with each other.
Are there are any clues that this may have been a possibility such as writings or pictures or even anecdotes?
BTW this is not an "What if" question, this is a legitimate thought/ question I have based on logic and I would like to see what evidence there may be. Even the smallest ones would be interesting. If however there is none whatsoever, I'd like to ask if it is possible that homosexuals may have joined on purpose to be safe/with others or out of self-shame?
I think your question has two underlying assumptions that make it deeply problematic. While there may be some evidence of homosexual activity in monasteries or nunneries, and I'll leave that to someone else to answer, that won't change the problem of your question.
Problem 1: the category of 'gay'. As most historians of the Ancient World will tell you, in the classical period people didn't carve up the sexual identity and activity landscape in this way. People didn't identify as 'gay' or 'straight'. Now, some of that landscape changed with the move into the Middle Ages in Europe thanks to the influence of Christianity, in that you see a shift away from defining acts in terms of active/passive, but the notion of 'gay' as a sexual persuasion/identity/innate feature is not one you get until the 20th century. Were there 'gay' people in the Middle Ages? I think the answer is "not in the terms that 21st century people understand it and want to understand it."
Problem 2: I think you are underselling the deeply pervasive differences in historical mindset and religion. Religion functions very differently in modern western contexts than in Medieval Europe. The bulk of society and the majority of people had their whole view of reality permeated by Christianity. This is one of the reasons it's difficult to deal with all the "Were there atheists in the Middle Ages?" questions. Atheism in a modern sense is, for most people then, not an intellectual option they could arrive at.
What I'm getting at with point 2 is that I think you are selling the religious impulse short. Despite sexual natures, there is no reason to a priori assume that many monks and nuns were not indeed devout in their piety and devoted to a chaste life. That would have involved a struggle with their sexual desires, a struggle that has become difficult to understand or even accept as possible in post-modernity's view of reality.
I'll leave to some Medieval experts the question of evidence of homosexual activity within religious communities, but I think the logic of your question is deeply driven by some contemporary presuppositions.