Definition of "gayness"

And truly, at a short butt, which some men doth use, the peacock feather doth seldom keep up the shaft either right or level, it is so rough and heavy ; so that many men, which have taken them up for gayness, hath laid them down again for profit:

1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus; The School of Shooting, in Two Books, London: John Russell Smith, published 1866, page 124

Let me ſpeak prowdly: Tell the Conſtable, ⁠/ We are but Warriors for the working-day: / Our Gayneſſe and our Gilt are all beſmyrcht / With raynie Marching in the painefull field.

1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene iii], page 87, column 1

You cannot blame their gayness, their queerness, their homosexuality on sudden wealth.

1940 January-June, Allen Bernstein, Millions of Queers (Our Homo America), [Unpublished MS of the United States National Library of Medicine], page 51

Tell Al Sublette I met a great new pianist called Cecil Taylor, [he] plays like [Oscar] Peterson gone Classical, fast runs but Brubeck-Stravinsky-Prokofieff chords, a Juilliard classicist—He, like [James] Baldwin, [is] colored, [and] I think gay,—Baldwin is gay. I don’t dig all this gayness.

1954 October 26, Jack Kerouac, “Jack Kerouac [Richmond Hill, New York] to Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] Oct. 26, ’54”, in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters, Penguin, published 2010, page 247

I doubt very much that their "gay­ness" had any deep sexual roots. I think it was simply an exotic form of juvenile delinquency.

1959 May, David McReynolds, “McReynolds Reply to [Seymour] Krim”, in Mattachine Review, volume V, number 5, Los Angeles: Mattachine Society, page 9

Those of us who have been in heterosexual marriages too often have blamed our gayness on the breakup of the marriage.

1970, Carl Wittman, The Gay Manifesto, New York: The Red Butterfly, page 4, column 1

Were there gay people in the ancient world, or is gayness a uniquely modern category?

1999, John Corvino, Same Sex, page 185

Their goal was to compel open legal recognition of their beliefs about sex and gayness as being the law in the United States.

2015, E. Reltso, Our Sex Saturated Society