A question that came to me after reading the following Twitter thread, where the "girls" are clearly the workers, and there's a male client: https://twitter.com/PeteBlanchard/status/1565347943682838532?t=yVx_asadQ_aAxO6yAXIW3g&s=19
All of which made me wonder if brothels have ever existed for, say, gay males, and how they would differ from the (presumably) more popular/normal brothels for heterosexual men.
Absolutely. We have plenty of references to male prostitution in historical records. A lot of these records are from court cases and arrests for sodomy. 15th century Florence had a special force policing male prostitution, for example.^(1) Brothels for gay men even had a name in 18 and 19thth century England: molly houses. While molly houses were not solely used as brothels and may, in fact, have started as simple meeting places, we have evidence that by the 19th century, they were sexual acts taking place in these houses. These acts may not always have been for pay and plenty of sex just for pleasure was likely taking place at these houses. Molly houses were part of an extensive subculture.^(2) Outside of molly houses, cruising was also quite common in eighteenth century England. Poor men (along with poor women, but you asked for gay men) would loiter in public spaces and offer to do a small errand in exchange for a meal or a drink. This often led to pursuading these men to have sex. Public parks and fields were also often used as cruising grounds, without even the excuse of running errands. This was known by the authorities too and we have a lot of arrest records, as well as records of guardsmen going to these fields and then blackmailing those they propositioned.^(3) Of course, different terms than gay were used at this time. Gay men in 17th and 18th century England were called mollies, as were female prositutes. Gay and queer were used at this time, but did not refer to men who love men. Gay instead meant something like lively or happy and queer meant strange or unconventional. If you want to know more, Rictor Morton has written a lot on homosexuality in England and he has a lot of work available on his website rictornorton.co.uk.
^(1)Robert Beachy, "The German Invention of Homosexuality," The Journal of Modern History 82, 4 (December 2010).
^(2) East End Women's Museum, "Miss Muff's molly house in Whitechapel," https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/miss-muffs-molly-house-in-whitechapel.
^(3) Rictor Norton, "Homosexuality," in the Georgian Underworld by Rictor Norton, 2012, http://rictornorton.co.uk/gu16.htm.