aging lesbian

DECEMBER 1

World AIDS Day

December 1 is World AIDS Day, designated on December 1st every year since 1988. It is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection and mourning those who have died of the disease.

1642

The General Court of Connecticut adopted a list of 12 capital crimes, including “man lying with man.” The law was based on the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Liberties of 1641 law which was based on the Old Testament proscription in Leviticus.

1715, UK

An Oxford University student notes in his diary that sodomy is very common there. “It is dangerous sending a young man who is beautiful to Oxford.”

1881

Washington makes sodomy a crime in the U.S.

1897, Germany

Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) petitions the Reichstag to abolish Paragraph 175, the first salvo in a lifelong campaign for repeal. He was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. Historian Dustin Goltz characterized this group as having carried out “the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights”.

1901, Mexico

El Universal, a Mexican newspaper, reports that police raided a party attended by single women. The article implied that the women were lesbians.

1927

A California appellate court upholds the sodomy conviction of a man after a private investigator hid under his bed to catch him in consensual sexual relations with his partner.

1952

New York Daily News front page: “Ex-GI becomes Blonde Beauty,” an article about Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989), the first American recipient of sex-reassignment surgery.

1974

Gay activists Bernie Toal, Tom Morganti and Daniel Thaxton in Boston chose the purple rhinoceros as a symbol of the gay movement after conducting a media campaign. They selected this animal because, although it is sometimes misunderstood, it is docile and intelligent, but when a rhinoceros is angered, it fights ferociously. Lavender was used because it was a widely recognized gay pride color; the heart was added to represent love and the “common humanity of all people. The entire campaign was intended to bring gay issues further into public view. The rhino started being displayed in subways in Boston, but since the creators didn’t qualify for a public service advertising rate, the campaign soon became too expensive for the activists to handle. The ads disappeared, and the rhino never caught on anywhere else.

1974

The Greek letter lambda was officially declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland. The lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970.

1975

Feminist writer Jill Johnston (May 17, 1929 – September 18, 2010) wrote an essay “Are Lesbians Gay?” in which she explained why she believed it was absurd for lesbians to align themselves with the gay movement. Johnston was an American feminist author and cultural critic who wrote Lesbian Nation in 1973 and was a longtime writer for the Village Voice. She was also a leader of the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s. In 1993, in Denmark, she married Ingrid Nyeboe. The couple married again, in Connecticut, in 2009

1976

In Florida, Willard Allen was released from a mental hospital 26 years after he was ordered by a judge to be held there for having sex with another man. His doctors had been recommending his release for almost 20 years.

1980

Anita Bryant is interviewed by Ladies Home Journal and notes that she no longer feels as “militant” as she once did about gay rights.

1982

The U.S. House of Representatives votes to provide $2.6 million in funding to the Centers for Disease Control to fight AIDS.

1985

Cosmopolitan writes about AIDS noting, “If ever there was a homosexual plague, this disease is it.”

1985

Janelle Monáe Robinson (born December 1, 1985) is an American singer/songwriter, rapper, actress, and record producer. Monáe is signed to Atlantic Records as well as to her own imprint, the Wondaland Arts Society. Monáe has received eight Grammy Award nominations. Monáe won an MTV Video Music Award and the ASCAP Vanguard Award in 2010. Monáe was also honored with the Billboard Women in Music Rising Star Award in 2015 and the Trailblazer of the Year Award in 2018. In 2012, Monáe became a CoverGirl spokesperson. Boston City Council named October 16, 2013 “Janelle Monáe Day” in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, in recognition of her artistry and social leadership. Monáe has said she identifies with both bisexuality and pansexuality. On January 10, 2020, she tweeted the hashtag #IAmNonbinary.

1987, France

Author James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) dies. He was an American writer and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955) explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. Baldwin’s novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration not only of African Americans, but also of gay and bisexual men, while depicting some internalized obstacles to such individuals’ quests for acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin’s second novel Giovanni’s Room, written in 1956, well before the gay liberation movement. In 1949 Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger (September 20, 1932 – August 21, 2010), aged 17, though Happersberger’s marriage three years later left Baldwin distraught. Happersberger died on August 21, 2010, in Switzerland.

1988

World AIDS Day, sponsored by the World Health Organization, on December 1st every year is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection, and remembering those who have died of the disease. The United States was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, first noticed by doctors in young gay men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. Since then, 1.2 million people live with HIV, more than half of which are unaware of their infection. HIV is a silent disease when first acquired, and this period of latency varies. The progression from HIV infection to AIDS varies from 5 to 12 years. In the past, most individuals succumbed to the disease in 1 to 2 years after diagnosis. However, since the introduction of potent anti-retroviral drug therapy and better prophylaxis against opportunistic infections, death rates have significantly declined. Government and health officials, non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world observe World AIDS Day with education on AIDS prevention and control.

1989

African American dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) dies of complications from AIDS. He was a choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African American participation in 20th-century concert dance. In 2014, President Barack Obama selected Ailey to be a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1997

Keith Boykin (born August 28, 1965) of the National Black Lesbian Gay Leadership Forum participated in a meeting with President Bill Clinton to encourage greater inclusion of African American gays and lesbians in the President’s Initiative on Race.

1999

Lavender Country was an American country music band formed in 1972, whose self-titled 1973 album is the first known gay-themed album in country music history. Based in Seattle, the band consisted of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Haggerty, keyboardist Michael Carr, singer and fiddler Eve Morris and guitarist Robert Hammerstrom (the only heterosexual member).

2009, Europe

The Treaty of Lisbon and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union are amended to include sexual orientation protection

 

DECEMBER 2

1899

American Samoa is obtained by the United States. It had no law against sodomy, making it the only “free” jurisdiction in the United States.

1909

The Montana Supreme Court upholds the right of the state to prosecute attempts to commit sodomy under the general Attempts statute.

1946

Fashion designer Gianni Versace (2 December 1946 – 15 July 1997) is born. He was an Italian fashion designer and founder of Versace, an international fashion house that produces accessories, fragrances, make-up, home furnishings, and clothes. He also designed costumes for theatre and films. As a friend of Eric Clapton, Diana, Princess of Wales, Naomi Campbell, Duran Duran, Kate Moss, Madonna, Elton John, Cher, Sting, Tupac, The Notorious B.I.G., and many other celebrities, he was one of the first designers to link fashion to the music world. He and his partner Antonio D’Amico were regulars on the international party scene. On July 15, 1997, Versace was shot and killed outside his Miami Beach mansion Casa Casuarina at the age of 50.

1954

Daniel Butler (born December 2, 1954) is an American actor and playwright known for his role as Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe on the TV series Frasier (1993-2004), Art in Roseanne (1991-1992), and for the voice of Mr. Simmons on the Nickelodeon tv show Hey Arnold (1997-2002), and later reprised the role in Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie (2017), and films roles in Enemy of the State (1998), and Sniper 2 (2001). Butler lives in Vermont and is married to producer Richard Waterhouse. He came out to his family when he was in his early 20s. He wrote a one-man show, The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me which opened in Los Angeles in 1994 and also played in San Francisco and off-Broadway in New York. It was Butler’s public coming out. The play had ten characters “just processing what gay means.” He was nominated for the 1995 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show.

1963

Earl Kade, a prisoner at the Ohio Penitentiary is killed by another prisoner because he had solicited him. The grand jury refuses to indict the killer for murder, stating that the willful killing of a non-violent person from behind bars was justifiable if the person had solicited.

1964

In New York, four gay men and lesbians picketed a lecture by a psychoanalyst espousing the model of homosexuality as a mental illness. The demonstrators were given ten minutes to make a rebuttal.

1994

Transgender Terrie Ladwig, born in the Philippines, is killed. Her murder remains unsolved. She was married to Steven Ladwig.

1997

Republican David Cantania became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Washington D.C. city council.

1998

In India, over 200 right-wing activists, called Shiv Sainiks, stormed two theaters and forced managers to suspend the screening of Toronto director Deepa Mehta’s internationally acclaimed film Fire, the first Indian film to focus on a lesbian relationship.

2013

The first official day that LGBTQ couples in Hawaii (both residents as well as tourists) may marry in the Aloha State.

 

DECEMBER 3

1892

The Michigan Supreme Court rules that “emission” is required to complete an act of sodomy.

1946

Allan Berubi (December 3, 1946 – December 11, 2007) was an American historian, activist, independent scholar, self-described “community-based” researcher and college drop-out and award-winning author best known for his research and writing about homosexual members of the American Armed Forces during World War II. He also wrote essays about the intersection of class and race in gay culture, and about growing up in a poor, working-class family, his French-Canadian roots, and about his experience of anti-AIDS activism. Among Berubi’s published works was the 1990 book Coming Out Under Fire which examined the stories of gay men and women in the U.S. military between 1941 and 1945. The book used interviews with gay veterans, government documents, and other sources to discuss the social and political issues that faced over 9,000 servicemen and women during World War II. The book earned Berubi the Lambda Literary Award for outstanding Gay Men’s Nonfiction book of 1990 and was later adapted as a film in 1994 narrated by Salome Jens and Max Cole with a screenplay by Berubi and the film’s director Arthur Dong. The film received a Peabody Award for excellence in documentary media in 1995. Berubi received a MacArthur Fellowship (often called the “genius grant”) from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1996. He received a Rockefeller grant from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in 1994 to research a book on the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. He was working on this book at the time of his death.

1953, UK

Alarmed by the rise in prosecutions for male-male sex (including several much publicized cases involving prominent Britons), two MPs first raise the issue of sex law reform in the House of Com-mons.

1968

Rev. Troy Perry (born July 27, 1940), founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, officiated at his first same-sex holy union, in Los Angeles. He is the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Christian denomination with a special affirming ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968. Perry lives in Los Angeles with his husband, Phillip Ray DeBlieck whom he married under Canadian law at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. They sued the State of California upon their return home after their Toronto wedding for recognition of their marriage and won. The state appealed and the ruling was over-turned by the State Supreme Court after five years in their favor.

1973

An Illinois appellate court upholds a public indecency conviction of a man for sex with another man in bushes where they could not be seen by others.

1973

As a result of the case Society for Individual Rights v. Hampton, proceedings were held to determine under what circumstances sexual orientation may be considered in determining whether a person is suitable for employment in the U.S. Government.

1977

The episode of Maude entitled “The Gay Bar” airs on this day. Uptight neighbor Arthur has launched a crusade to close a nearby gay bar, so Maude convinces him he should visit it.

1990, UK

OutRage, a London direct-action group, staged a march from Coleherne pub to Earl’s Court Police Station to protest police harassment of gays in Earl’s Court.

1991, UK

OutRage held a zap of the Church of England in response to a press release condemning homosexuality.

1996

Hawaii’s Judge Chang rules that the state does not have a legal right to deprive same-sex couples of the right to marry, making Hawaii the first state to recognize that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to the same privileges as heterosexual married couples.

2012

Thai airlines recruits transgender flight attendants, called ladyboys, aiming at a unique identity to set itself apart fromcompetitors as it sets out for the skies.

 

DECEMBER 4

1947

Yolanda Retter (December 4, 1947 – August 18, 2007) was an American lesbian librarian, archivist, scholar, and activist in Los Angeles. Retter attended Pitzer College in Claremont, California and graduated in 1970 with a degree in sociology. In the 1980s she completed masters degrees in library science (1983) and social work (1987) from UCLA and in 1996 she received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Before becoming a librarian and archivist, Retter held a variety of jobs, some as a volunteer. She worked in prison and parole programs, as a director of a rape hot-line, and original publisher of the Los Angeles Women’s Yellow Pages. She then became the founding archivist of the Lesbian Legacy Collection at the ONE Archives and volunteered at the June Ma-zer Lesbian Archives. From 2003 to the time of her death, Retter served as the head librarian and archivist of the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA. She died after a short battle with cancer, surrounded by women she chose including her partner of thirteen years Leslie Golden Stampler.

1976, Canada

In Vancouver, Canadian University Press approves a national boycott of CBC for refusing to air public service announcement for a Halifax gay group.

1981

James Webber is the first known victim of serial killer David Bullock. Most of Bullock’s victims were men he brought home for sex.

1998

A vigil is held for Rita Hester (30 November 1963 – 28 November 1998), an African American transgender woman who was slain in Allston, Massachusetts on November 28th. The vigil from her death goes on to become the Transgender Day of Remembrance. In response to her murder, an outpouring of grief and anger led to a candlelight vigil held the following Friday (December 4) in which about 250 people participated. The community struggle to see Rita’s life and identity covered respectfully by local papers, including the Boston Herald and Bay Windows as chronicled by Nancy Nangeroni. Her death also inspired the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and the Transgender Day of Remembrance which Gwendolyn Ann Smith founded in 1999.

2013, Luxembourg

Openly gay Xavier Bettel (born 3 March 1973) is sworn in as Luxembourg’s Prime Minister. He is a Luxembourgish politician and lawyer, serving as the 24th Prime Minister of Luxembourg since 4 December 2013 after succeeding Jean-Claude Juncker. He has previously served as Mayor of Luxembourg City, member of the Chamber of Deputies and member of the Luxembourg City communal council. Bettel is a member of the Democratic Party. Bettel is Luxembourg’s first openly gay Prime Minister and, worldwide, the third openly gay head of government following Iceland’s Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (born 4 October 1942) (2009–2013) and Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo (born 18 July 1951) (2011–2014). As of 2017, he is one of three openly gay world leaders in office, the others being Leo Varadkar (born 18 January 1979), the Taoiseach of Ireland; and Ana Brnabić (born 28 September 1975), the Prime Minister of Serbia. Bettel has been in a partnership with Gauthier Destenay since March 2010. They married on 15 May 2015; same-sex marriage law reforms had come into effect on 1 January 2015, after passing in June 2014.

2020

Martin Jenkins was sworn in as the first openly gay Justice of the California Supreme Court on this day. Martin Joseph Jenkins (born November 12, 1953) is an American attorney and jurist serving as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California. He was previously a Justice of the California Court of Appeal for the First District, located in San Francisco, and a former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

 

DECEMBER 5

1640, Ireland

John Atherton (1598-5 December 1640) is hanged for sodomy. He is the second man to be hanged for the “vice of buggery” in Ireland. He was the Anglican Bishop of Waterford and Lismore in the Church of Ireland. He and John Childe (his steward and tithe proctor) were both tried and executed for buggery in 1640.

1642

A Massachusetts Bay servant is sentenced to be whipped for “unseemly practices” with another woman in the first documented example of legal prosecution in North America for same-sex relations between women.

1932

African American rock artist Little Richard (December 5, 1932-May 9, 2020) is born. Richard Wayne Penniman, known as Little Richard, is an American musician, singer, actor, comedian and songwriter. An influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades, Little Richard’s most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his dynamic music and charismatic showmanship laid the foundation for rock and roll. In 1995, Little Richard told Penthouse that he always knew he was gay, saying “I’ve been gay all my life.” He said in 1984 that he played just with girls as a child and was subjected to homophobic jokes and ridicule because of his manner of walk and talk. His father brutally punished him whenever he caught his son wearing his mother’s makeup and clothing. The singer claimed to have been sexually involved with both sexes as a teenager. Because of his effeminate mannerisms, his father kicked him out of their family home at 15. In 1985, on The South Bank Show, Penniman explained, “my daddy put me out of the house. He said he wanted seven boys, and I had spoiled it because I was gay.” In October 2017, he denounced homosexuality in an interview with Three Angels Broadcasting Network, calling homosexual and transgender identity “unnatural affection” that goes against “the way God wants you to live.” He died in 2020 from bone cancer.

1979

A TV critic reviewed the play Bent, saying that the play about two homosexuals who died in a concentration camp had “nothing at all to do with the real tragedy of the holocaust,” and called the play’s message insignificant. Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives. The title of the play refers to the slang word “bent” used in some European countries to refer to homosexuals. The play starred Ian McKellen in its original 1979 West End production, and Richard Gere in its original 1980 Broadway production. In 1989, Sean Mathias directed a revival of the play, performed as a one-night benefit for Stonewall, featuring Ian McKellen, Richard E Grant, Ian Charleson, and Ralph Fiennes.

1984

Berkeley, California becomes the first city in the United States to extend spousal benefits to “domestic partners” of city employees.

1998

The bisexual pride flag, created by Michael Page, is unveiled.  He wanted to give the bisexual community its own symbol comparable to the gay pride flag of the larger LGBT community. His aim was to increase the visibility of bisexuals both among society as a whole and within the LGBT comminity. The first bisexual pride flag was unveiled at the BiCafe’s first anniversary party on December 5, 1998 after Page was inspired by his work with BiNet USA.

2005

A New Jersey court rules that school districts have the same responsibility to stop harassment of students that employers have to prevent harassment of employees, ending, at least in NJ, a tougher standard of proof for student complainants than for adults in the workplace.

 

DECEMBER 6

1993

The Massachusetts State Senate approves a bill to protect lesbian and gay public school students from discrimination.

1994

Delegates of the American Medical Association declare their opposition to medical treatments administered to “cure” lesbians or gay men, urging “nonjudgmental recognition of sexual orientation.”

1995

President Bill Clinton hosts the first White House Conference on AIDS, 14 years after the epidemic began. President Clinton’s active support for HIV and AIDS programs reversed the neglect by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. By the end of 1995, more than 500,000 people in the U.S. had been diagnosed with AIDS. Partly as a result of a vigorous federal research effort that began after Reagan and Bush left office, the number of new AIDS/HIV infections and deaths every year declined dramatically.

1998

The Sacramento Bee reports that for the past four years California Social Services director Eloise Anderson had refused an order from Gov. Pete Wilson to withdraw a directive she issued which allowed gay and lesbian couples to adopt children by saying that a stable home with good financial and emotional support is important for an adoptive child, regardless of the marital status of the parents. During her time in California, the Los Angeles Times referred to Anderson as “The Queen of Responsibility” and “an outspoken champion of welfare reform.”

1998

The Los Angeles Times published an editorial by Robert Scheer on conservative Michael Huffington’s (born September 3, 1947) recent decision to come out of the closet, saying it should come as no surprise that Republicans, even conservative members of the party, are gay. Huffington is an American politician, LGBT activist, and film producer. He was a member of the Republican Party and a congressman for one term, 1993–1995, from California. Huffington was married to Arianna Huffington, the Greek-born co-founder of The Huffington Post, from 1986 to 1997.

2001, Israel

The film Trembling Before G-d, an American made documentary about lesbian and gay Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith, is released in Israel. The film premiered at Sundance earlier in the year. It was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski (Sept. 16, 1970), an American who wanted to compare Orthodox Jewish attitudes to homosexuality with his own upbringing as a gay Conservative Jew. Dubowski is also the producer of Parvez Sharma’s documentary A Jihad for Love (2007) which documents the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims. The U.S.-based OUT Magazine named Sharma, one of the OUT 100 twice for 2008 and 2015, “one of the 100 gay men and women who have helped shape our culture during the year.” In 2016 a year after Larry Kramer, Sharma won the Monette Horowitz award given to individuals and organizations for their significant contributions toward eradicating homophobia.

2011, Belgium

King Albert II names Elio Di Rupo (born 18 July 1951) Prime Minister of Belgium and, subsequently, the second openly gay male head of government. He served from December 6, 2011 to October 11, 2014. From France, he was Belgium’s first Prime Minister of non-Belgian descent.

 

DECEMBER 7

1682

The Province of Pennsylvania, under a strong Quaker influence, repeals the capital sodomy law of 1676. The new law makes a first offence punishable by whipping, loss of 1/3 of one’s property, and six months hard labor. A second offence is punishable by life imprisonment. The revision makes the province one of only two where a man could not be put to death for sodomy at the time. In West New Jersey, also a Quaker colony, no sodomy law is in effect.

1873

Author Willa Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is born. She was an American writer who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia(1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather wrote a number of short stories, including Tommy, the Unsentimental, about a Nebraskan girl with a boy’s name, who looks like a boy and saves her father’s bank business. Janis P. Stout calls this story one of several Cather works that “demonstrate the speciousness of rigid gender roles and give favorable treatment to characters who undermine conventions. As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, Cather sometimes used the masculine nickname “William” and wore masculine clothing. Throughout Cather’s adult life, her most significant friendships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose Toronto home she stayed for prolonged visits; the opera singer Olive Fremstad; the pianist Yaltah Menuhin; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life.

1775

Franciscan Chaplain Father Pedro Font describes two-spirit people among the Yuma in his diary entry: “Among the women I saw some men dressed like women with whom they go about regularly. The commander called them amaricados because the Yuma call effeminate men Americas.”

1946, Amsterdam

Said to be the oldest surviving organization for LGBT rights, Netherlands’ Center for Culture and Leisure (COC) was established in Amsterdam in 1946. The goals of the COC were twofold: to con-tribute to social emancipation, and to offer culture and recreation for gay men and lesbians. The social emancipation focused on getting article 248-bis in the Wetboek van Strafrecht, the main code for Dutch criminal law, revoked. Originally named the Shakespeare club, the founders were gay men who were active with Levensrecht (Right to Live), a magazine founded a few months before the German invasion in 1940, and re-appeared after the war. The Shakespeare club was renamed in 1949 to Cultuuren Ontspanningscentrum (C.O.C.). From its beginning in 1946 until 1962, the chair was Bob Angelo, a pseudonym of Niek Engelschman (November 12, 1913 – October 27, 1988).

1989, Turkey

Journalist Ibrehim Eren (born 1964) is imprisoned for protesting police harassment of gays. He was held for four months. In Sep-tember, 2017, he was appointed the 17th director general of public broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television (TRT).

1993

In Texas, Williamson County commissioners reversed a decision to deny Apple Computer tax breaks for a new facility in the county because of its policy of extending benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners. Several of the commissioners, however, continued to express condemnation of “the gay lifestyle.”

1997

Speaking before a Georgetown University audience of about 300, three Jesuits presented their different perspectives on how the church should regard and spiritually counsel gay men and lesbians. Cardinal James A Hickey objected to the debate because he felt that the conservative view on the wrongness of homosexuality would not get a fair hearing.

1999

The school board in Orange, California votes 7-0 to reject an application from students at El Modena High School to form a gay/straight alliance.

2015, Venezuela

Transgender woman Tamara Adrian (born 20 February 1954) is elected to the National Assembly. Prior to her election to the Venezuelan legislature, Adrián worked as a lawyer and LGBT activist, including serving on the board of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the organizing committee of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. She was forced to register her candidacy under her male birth name, as Venezuelan law does not currently permit a transgender person to legally change their name.

 

DECEMBER 8

1626, Sweden

Christina, Queen of Sweden (8 December] 1626 – 19 April 1689) is born in Stockholm. Because she is so hairy and has a deep voice, she is mistaken for a boy from birth. As it turns out, from a young age, Christina wanted to be a boy. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. At the age of six, Christina succeeded her father on the throne upon his death at the Battle of Lützen but began ruling when she reached the age of 18. Her closest female friend was Ebba Sparre with whom she shared “a longtime intimate companion-ship.” When Christina left Sweden, she continued to write passionate letters to Sparre, in which she told her that she would always love her.

1937

Charley Shively (Dec. 8, 1937 – Oct. 6, 2017) was a pioneering gay liberation activist on the scale, if not with the name recognition, of Harvey Milk. He was a journalist, a poet, and a founding editor of one of the most important gay newspapers in the 1970s. As the founder of Fag Rag, a magazine that unapologetically reversed the stigma of homosexuality, Shively wrote about how gay men imposed heterosexual standards onto their relationships and sex lives. Fag Rag was a Boston based gay newspaper, published from 1971 until the early 1980s. Boston’s gay writers including Larry Martin, Charley Shively and John Mitzel formed the Fag Rag Collective and started the publication. In its early years the subscription list was between 400 and 500 with an additional 4,500 copies sold on newsstands and bookstores or given away. During its run, Fag Rag published interviews with and writing by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, John Wieners, Allen Young, Gerard Malanga, John Rechy, Ned Rorem, and Gore Vidal.

1981

The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus becomes the first openly gay musical group to play at Carnegie Hall with their Christmas concert.

1982

The University of South Carolina Gay Student Association sues USC for official recognition by filing a complaint for civil rights violation in the US District Court. A federal judge rules in favor of the GSA and they are granted official recognition.

1987, UK

Conservative Member of Parliament David Wilshire introduced Clause 28 as an amendment to the Local Government Bill which made it illegal for local authorities to “promote homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality.”

1996, UK

In England, South Yorkshire Police placed a full-page ad in Gay Times as part of a recruitment campaign.

2004, New Zealand

The New Zealand Parliament approves civil unions with a vote of 65-55. Full marriage equality passed in 2013.

 

DECEMBER 9

1975

A six-inch headline on page one of the Minneapolis Star reads “State Sen. Allen Spear Declares He’s Homosexual.” Spear (June 24, 1937-October 11, 2008) said he was inspired to come out by the election of Elaine Nobel (born January 22, 1944), a lesbian, to the Massachusetts legislature. Spear was an American politician and educator from Minnesota who served almost thirty years in the Minnesota Senate including nearly a decade as President of the Senate.

1975

Reporter Lynn Rosellini of the Washington Star begins a series of articles about homosexuality in sports which said “some of the biggest names in football are homosexual or bisexual.” Washington Redskins linebacker Dave Kopay (born June 28, 1942) agrees to come out in the series.

1978

Metro Toronto police raid the Barracks steam bath and charge twenty-three men as found-ins, five as keepers of a common bawdy house. It becomes the first raid in Toronto to generate substantial resistance.

1985

The New York City Department of Health closes the New St. Marks Baths. The New St. Marks Baths was a gay bathhouse at 6 St. Marks Place in the East Village of Manhattan from 1979 to 1985. It claimed to be the largest gay bath house in the world. The Saint Marks Baths opened in the location in 1913. Through the 1950s it operated as a Turkish bath catering to immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. In the 1950s it began to have a homosexual clientele at night. In the 1960s it became exclusively gay. On December 9, 1985 the city began the process of closing the baths.

1997

A federal appeals court in San Francisco refused to reinstate Air Force officer Lt. Col. Kenneth L. Jackson who was discharged for homosexuality in 1989. He was 11 months short of his 20-year pension. He argued that the evidence against him should not have been turned over to the military by police who were searching his home because his roommate was under suspicion in a case. The case was Kenneth L. Jackson, Jr., Plaintiff-appellant, v. United States Department of the Air Force, Sheila E.widnall, Secretary of the Air Force, Williamperry, Secretary of Defense, Defendants-appellees, 132 F.3d 39 (9th Cir. 1997)

1998

Republican Mecklenburg Country Superior Court Judge Ray Warren (born 1957) acknowledges that he’s gay in a press conference. He becomes the first Republican elected official in North Carolina who is openly gay. He is now a Democrat.

2005

Brokeback Mountain is released to limited audiences in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The film, a neo-American western romantic drama directed by Ang Lee, focuses on a love story be-tween two men that stretches over decades, and survives in a time and place in which the two men’s feelings for each other were utterly taboo. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and goes on to win several Golden Globe Awards and Academy Awards.

2013, Brazil

Luma Nogueira de Andrade, the first transgender individual to receive a doctorate degree in Brazil, is inducted as a professor at the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony, becoming the first transgender university professor in Brazil.

2014, Gambia

The government sponsors an anti-gay march that went from the National Assembly to the State House. Gambia president Alhaji Yahya Jammeh attended.

 

DECEMBER 10

1725, UK

Margaret Clap was indicted for keeping a disorderly house—a Molly House—in which she procured and encouraged persons to commit sodomy. Her house in the City of London had been under surveillance since 10 December 1725. Clap may be characterized as the first “fag hag” to be documented in British history. She seems to have run her molly house more for pleasure than for profit. It was one of the most popular molly houses in London. Her house was probably a private residence rather than a public inn or tavern. Margaret Clap was found guilty as charged and was sentenced to stand in the pillory in Smithfield market, to pay a fine of 20 marks, and to two years’ imprisonment. During her punishment, she fell off the pillory once and fainted several times. It is not known what became of her, if indeed she survived prison.

1792

The Commonwealth of Virginia criminalizes buggery, including female same -sex intercourse, with the death penalty.

1909

Hermes Pan (December 10, 1909-September 19, 1990) was an American dancer and choreographer, principally remembered as Fred Astaire‘s choreographic collaborator on the famous 1930s movie musicals starring Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It was well known in the movie industry that Pan was gay. This information did not become public and the identity of most of his partners is not known.

1924

The Society for Human Rights was founded by Henry Gerber  (June 29, 1892 – December 31, 1972) in Chicago. It was among the earliest organizations for gays in the United States and would end less than a year later after police harassment resulted in Gerber being fired, financially crippling the organization. Henry Gerber, a German-born immigrant, receives a charter from the state of Illinois for a nonprofit corporation named the Society for Human Rights. Though the organization was intended to be an American equivalent of contemporary German LGBTQ emancipation groups, Gerber is arrested for creating an “immoral” organization and the society falls apart. Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the United States. Inspired by the work of Germany’s Magnus Hirschfeld  (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights (SHR) in 1924, the nation’s first known homosexual organization, and Friendship and Freedom, the first known American homosexual publication. SHR was short-lived, as police arrested several of its members shortly after it incorporated. Although embittered by his experiences, Gerber maintained contacts within the fledgling homophile movement of the 1950s and continued to agitate for the rights of homosexuals. Gerber has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to the LGBT movement and was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992

1931, Sweden

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935), leader in the women’s suffrage and world peace movements, is presented with the Nobel Peace Prize. She is known as the “mother” of social work, and was a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women’s suffrage and world peace. In 1889 she co-founded Hull House, and in 1920 she was a co-founder for the ACLU. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Her partner was Mary Rozet Smith (1868-1934), a Chicago-born US philanthropist who was one of the trustees and benefactors of Hull House.

1948

The United Nations adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among its key architects was former first lady and human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962). Roosevelt had lifelong emotional support for her human rights work from her husband, Franklin, as well as from her beloved companion, Lorena A. Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968). Besides Roosevelt of the United States, the other major players in drafting this amazing declaration were René Cassin (France), Charles Malik (Lebanon), Peng Chun Chang (China), Hernan Santa Cruz (Chile), Alexandre Bogomolov/Alexei Pavlov, (Soviet Union), Lord Dukeston/Geoffrey Wilson (United Kingdom) William Hodgson (Australia), and John Humphrey (Canada).

1973

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to gay Australian novelist Patrick White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990). He is the first openly gay writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century.

1981

R.N. Bobbi Campbell (January 28, 1952 – August 15, 1984) becomes the first person with AIDS to go public in a San Francisco newspaper. He was the 16th person in San Francisco to be diag-nosed with Kaposi Sarcoma and would become known as the K.S. Poster Boy.

1989

In New York City, 5,000 protest the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to Safe Sex education and the promotion of condom use.

1990, Ireland

The Irish Prime Minister announces plans to legalize same-sex acts between consenting adults.

1996

Valentina Sampaio (born December 10, 1996) was hired by Victoria’s Secret as their first openly transgender model in August 2019. Valentina Sampaio is a Brazilian model and actress. She also became the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue’s first openly transgender model in 2020.

1997

Florida’s Constitution Review Committee votes 6-2 to reject a proposal that sexual orientation be added to the classes of those granted protection under the state’s constitution.

1998, South Africa

The Treatment Action Campaign, or TAC, is founded by Zackie Achmat (born 21 March 1962) for the purpose of getting anti-retroviral access to HIV+ South Africans. Zackie is a South African activist and film director. He is a co-founder the Treatment Action Campaign and known worldwide for his activism on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. He currently serves as Board member and Co-director of Ndifuna Ukwazi (Dare to Know), an organization which aims to build and support social justice organizations and leaders, and is the chairperson of Equal Education.

2008

Christina Kahrl (born 1963), an open trans woman, is the first LGBT person to be admitted into the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Association determines who is indicted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Kahrl is an activist on civil rights issues for the transgender community in her hometown of Chicago and a member of the Equality Illinois board of directors. The story of her coming out as a transgender sportswriter in 2003 was part of a GLAAD award-nominated segment entitled Transitions on HBO’s Real Sports that aired in 2010.

 

DECEMBER 11

1909, Sweden

Selma Lagerlof (20 November 1858 – 16 March 1940) is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1992 her love letters to Sophie Elkan (3 January 1853–5 April 1921) are published which reveal a romantic relationship between the two women from 1894 until Elkan’s death in 1921. A Swedish writer of Jewish origin, Elkan became her friend and companion and their letters suggest Lagerlöf fell deeply in love with her. Over many years, Elkan and Lagerlöf critiqued each other’s work. Lagerlöf wrote of Elkan’s strong influence on her work, often disagreeing sharply with the direction Lagerlöf wanted to take in her books. Selma’s letters to Sophie were published in 1993, titled Du lär mig att bli fri.

1945

John Preston (December 11, 1945 – April 28, 1994) is born. He was an author of gay erotica and an editor of gay nonfiction anthologies. In addition, Preston wrote men’s adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the Alex Kane adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included Sweet Dreams, Golden Years, and Deadly Lies, combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth. Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive. He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994 at age 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.

1980, Canada

In Ottawa, representatives of the Canadian Association of Lesbians and Gay Men (CALGM) appear before the Joint Senate/House Committee on the Constitution to argue for inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the entrenched Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

1982

San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein vetoes a domestic partnership bill.

1986

Austin, Texas passes an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against people with AIDS.

1990

In Newark, New Jersey an inmate with AIDS files suit against the Department of Corrections, saying they moved him out of a private cell and assigned him to labor which could endanger his health. He claimed the action was taken because he spoke to a reporter about AIDS in New Jersey prisons.

1998

At a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Denver, a resolution was passed rejecting reparative therapy. It stated that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation can cause depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. A similar resolution was passed by the American Psychological Association in August, 1997. Dr. Nada Stotland, head of the association’s public affairs committee, told the Denver Post that the very existence of reparative therapy spreads the idea that homosexuality is a disease or is evil and has a dehumanizing effect resulting in an increase in discrimination, harassment, and violence against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

1998

The mother of Tyra Hunter (1970 – August 7, 1995) is awarded $2.9 million in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Washington D.C. Hunter, a pre-operative transsexual, died of injuries sustained in a car accident in 1995. Emergency medical technicians at the scene were abusive and withheld treatment, and a doctor at D.C. General Hospital failed to follow nationally accepted standards of care.

1998

A Suffolk Superior Court judge struck down Boston’s health plan for same-sex partners of city workers.

2020

Bisexual Christy Hostege is sworn in as mayor of Palm Springs, CA

 

DECEMBER 12

1969

Police enter the Continental Baths and arrest three patrons and three employees, charging the patrons with lewd and lascivious acts and the employees with criminal mischief. The raid is the first of several on the Continental for the following weeks. The Continental Baths was a gay bathhouse in the basement of The Ansonia Hotel in New York City which was opened in 1968 by Steve Ostrow. It was advertised as reminiscent of “the glory of ancient Rome”. The documentary film Continental by Malcolm Ingram covers the height of the club’s popularity through the early 1970s.

1970

A struggling young pianist and songwriter takes a day job performing at New York’s Continental Baths. His name is Barry Manilow (born June 17, 1943). He is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, musician and producer with a career that has spanned more than 50 years. His hit recordings include Mandy, Can’t Smile Without You and Copacabana (At the Copa).

1989

Over 5,000 attend the “Stop the Church” protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. The 100 activists who laid down in the aisles were arrested. They were protesting Cardinal John O’Connor’s influence on government policies relating to HIV and sexuality.

1990

The Indiana state civil rights commission rules that the civil rights of Kenneth Westhoven (1954-1990) had been violated when his employer, after discovering he was HIV positive, reduced his health benefits cap from $1 million/lifetime to $50,000/lifetime.

1993

The brutal murder of trans man Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) becomes a cause celebre and the subject of an influential 1999 feature film, Boys Don’t Cry, where the role of Teena is played by Hilary Swank. Brandon was an American transgender man who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska.  Teena’s murder, along with that of Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998), led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.

1995

A Roseanne episode portrays a same-sex wedding when character Leon marries his boyfriend Scott. ABC moves the episode from its 8:00 time slot to 9:30 because of the adult humor.

1997

The Kentucky state Court of Appeals rules that gay men and lesbians are entitled to protection under the state’s domestic violence laws.

2002, Argentina

Buenos Aires approves civil unions.

2016

Harold Jerome Herman died on this day at the Washington Hospital Center, Washington D.C. after a brief illness. Harold received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957 and taught there until joining the faculty at the University of Maryland teaching the Arthurian Legend, a course that he designed. Much of his published scholarship was in this field. Harold established the Chi Tau Chapter of Signa Tau Delta English Honor Society and introduced an internship program which provided supervised work experience for English majors in organizations such as law firms, state and federal government departments, and newspapers. In addition to academic work, he and his partner African American Harold F. Mays, Jr. operated Two Harolds Antiques in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia for 12 years. After retiring as Professor Emeritus from the University of Maryland in 1994, he compiled the Fritchey Family in America, 1856-2010, a two-volume genealogy, now in the Huntingdon County Historical Society. Harold was survived by his partner of 50 years, Harold, who died at the age of 81.

 

DECEMBER 13

1934

Richard A. Isay (December 13, 1934 – June 28, 2012) was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author and gay activist. He was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Isay is considered a pioneer who changed the way that psychoanalysts view homosexuality. On August 13, 2011, Isay married Gordon Harrell, his partner of 32 years. He died ten months later.

1973

Washington, D.C.’s Title 34 makes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation illegal.

1993

Ryan Otto Cassata (born December 13, 1993) is an American musician, public speaker, writer, filmmaker, and actor. Cassata speaks at high schools and universities on gender dysphoria, being transgender, bullying and his personal transition from female to male, including a double mastectomy surgery in January 2012, when he was 18 years old. He has made appearances on the Larry King Live Show and the Tyra Banks Show to talk about being transgender. He has performed at LGBT music festivals and has gone on tours across the United States of America. Cassata has performed at popular music venues such as Whisky a Go Go, The Saint, The Bitter End, SideWalk Cafe, Turf Club (venue) and Bowery Poetry Club. Cassata won a date on Warped Tour 2013 through the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands online competition and performed on the Acoustic Basement Stage on June 21, 2013. Cassata also won a date on Warped Tour 2015 through the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands and performed on the Ernie Ball Stage on June 20, 2015.

1999

Vice President Al Gore announces that he was opposed to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and, if elected, would propose legislation to end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military.

1999

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen orders a full review of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The policy had recently been criticized for creating a hostile environment.

2002, Belgium

The Belgium Senate approves same-sex marriage, making Belgium the second country to do so.

 

DECEMBER 14

1576, Italy

Poet Torquato Tasso (11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595) admits his love for Orazio Ariosto. Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem Gerusalemme Liberate (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581) in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade during the Siege of Jerusalem. He suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by Pope Clement VIII. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.

1918

After two years of wearing men’s clothing, Mary Bertha Schmidt, known as Mister Schmidt, is taken to court in St. Louis, Missouri on cross-dressing charges. The judge thought Mister Schmidt, who was dapperly dressed, looked “very nice” and declines to fine Schmidt. Mister Schmidt then marries cousin Mary Ana Assade. A Los Angeles Herald article from 1918 quoted Schmidt as saying, “I always hated men, as did Mary also, so we both decided to get married. The ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace and we bought a nice little home in South St. Louis. We were living together very happily until the police interfered.”

1946

Bruce Wayne Campbell (aka Jobriath) (December 14, 1946  – August 4, 1983) is born. He was the first openly gay rock musician to be signed to a major record label, and one of the first internationally famous musicians to die of AIDS.

1971

A demonstration sponsored by the Gay Activists Alliance took place at Suffolk County Police headquarters in New York. Two men and one woman were arrested. It was held to protest the arrest of two members of GAA on charges of sodomy.

1980

La Cage aux Folles ends its nineteen-month run at New York City’s 68th Street Playhouse. La Cage is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman. Based on the 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret, it focuses on a gay couple: Georges, the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin, his romantic partner and star attraction, and the farcical adventures that ensue when Georges’s son Jean-Michel brings home his fiancée‘s ultra-conservative parents to meet them. La cage aux folles literally means “the cage of mad women”. However, folles is also a slang term for effeminate homosexuals (queens). The original 1983 Broadway production received nine nominations for Tony Awards and won six, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. Albin’s Act I finale number, I Am What I Am, was recorded by Gloria Gaynor and proved to be one of her biggest hits. It was also recorded by other artists, including Shirley Bassey, Tony Bennett, Pia Zadora, and John Barrowman. It also became a rallying cry of the Gay Pride movement.

1988

The film adaptation of Harvey Fierstein’s (born June 6, 1954) Torch Song Trilogy opens in the United States. Torch Song Trilogy is a collection of three plays by Harvey Fierstein rendered in three acts: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! The story centers on Arnold Beckoff, a Jewish homosexual, drag queen, and torch singer who lives in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The four-hour play begins with a soliloquy in which he explains his cynical disillusionment with love. Fierstein adapted his play for a feature film, released in 1988. It was directed by Paul Bogart and starred Fierstein (Arnold), Anne Bancroft (Ma Beckoff), Matthew Broderick (Alan), Brian Kerwin (Ed), and Eddie Castrodad (David).

1990

The ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging that Hawaii corrections officers violated an inmate’s civil rights by testing him for HIV without consent.

1990

At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the board of governors voted unanimously to remove the Lesbian Bisexual Gay Alliance’s two ex- officio positions. Officials said it had nothing to do with discrimination, that the board wanted to remove all ex-officio positions and replace them with elected officials. However, no other ex-officio positions were eliminated.

1990

In New York, Alfred University faculty approved a resolution urging officials to ban ROTC because of the military’s anti-gay policies.

1993

In Denver, Colorado, Judge Jeffrey Bayless ruled Amendment 2 unconstitutional. The amendment to the Colorado state constitution sought to eliminate all gay rights laws in the state and prevent any more from being passed. It would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to recognize homosexuals as a protected class.

2006

Actress Kate Fleming (October 6, 1965 – December 14, 2006) is trapped in a flooded basement room in her Seattle home. Her partner of ten years, Charlene Strong (born May 6, 1963), follows the ambulance to the hospital and is prevented by hospital staff from being at Kate’s side for a number of torturous minutes until Kate’s biological family can be reached on the east coast. Charlene is with Kate, finally, when she dies. Afterward, a funeral director refuses to shake Charlene’s hand or allow her to make arrangements even with the full support of Kate’s mother. Charlene will testify and help pass a Washington State domestic partner law. Had it been in force that December, Charlene would have allowed to be by Kate’s side and would have protected Kate’s right to let Charlene speak for her at the funeral home. For My Wife is a feature documentary chronicling Charlene’s journey into activism following Kate’s death. Strong works closely with Equal Rights Washington, and has endowed a fellowship at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C.

2006

The New Jersey Legislature enacts a bill to establish civil unions in that state. The measure passes 56–19 in the Assembly, and 23–12 in the Senate.

 

DECEMBER 15

1922

James and Louise Hathaway were approached by Boston police regarding a possible attempted car theft. What followed was the unmasking of James’s true identity: James was actually Ethel Kimball of Allston, Mass.

1928

Having been published in Paris the previous July, Radclyffe Hall’s (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) The Well of Loneliness, the first major novel in English with an explicitly lesbian theme, is published in the U.S. Americans buy more than 20,000 copies of the book within the next month, making it a bestseller. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author. She is best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. Hall’s partner was Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge (8 March 1887-24 September 1963) who was a British sculptor and translator.

1950

A U.S. Senate committee makes public its report on The Employ-ment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts. Asserting that homosexuals are a security risk not simply because they are liable to blackmail but also because homosexuality inevitably perverts “moral fibre,” the report recommends stringent measures be taken to root all lesbians and gay men out of government. The federal government had covertly investigated employees’ sexual orientation at the beginning of the Cold War. The report states since homosexuality is a mental illness, homosexuals “constitute security risks” to the nation because “those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons.”

1959

Mattachine officer Don Lucas (1926 – Sept. 24, 2003) writes Boston Mattachine founder Prescott Townsend (June 24, 1894 – May 23, 1973) asking him to not begin a campaign for Massachusetts sodomy law reform. Reflecting the cautious conservatism of the current homophile movement, Lucas believes the risk of a backlash is too great.

1967

Laura M. Ricketts (born December 15, 1967) is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ricketts is also a board member of Lambda Legal and the Housing Opportunities for Women organization. Ricketts’ ownership stake in the Cubs is uniquely noteworthy because it makes her the first openly gay owner of a major-league sports franchise.

1973

The governing board of the American Psychiatric Association unanimously votes to change the classification of homosexuality and removes it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This followed three years of pressure from gay liberation movement. The board bases this decision on its finding that most lesbians and gay men are clearly satisfied with their sexual orientation and show no signs of mental illness. The APA declares that “by itself, homosexuality does not meet the criteria for being a psychiatric disorder.”

1973

Christopher R. Barron (born December 15, 1973) is an American political activist best known as the cofounder of GOProud, a political organization representing gay conservatives. He is the president of CapSouth Consulting, a political consulting firm, and previously the organizer of LGBT for Trump and the national political director for Log Cabin Republicans where he directed the organization’s federal lobbying efforts and media relations. Barron lives in Washington, D.C. with his husband Shawn R. Gardner to whom he has been legally married since 2010. He has stated that he served in the Air Force Reserve. Barron has written numerous opinion pieces for The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, Roll Call, The Hill, Politico, TheBlaze, The Daily Caller, and United Liberty. He has appeared on numerous national and local television channels, including MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, CNN Headline News, ABC News Now, and Fox News, including being a frequent guest on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld.

1977, Canada

The National Assembly, in quiet late-night session, amends the Quebec Charter of Human Rights to include sexual orientation. It becomes first province and largest political jurisdiction in North America to provide legal protection for homosexuals.

1980

Kortney Ryan Ziegler (born December 15, 1980) is an American filmmaker, visual artist, blogger, writer, and scholar based in Oakland, California. His artistic and academic work focuses on queer/transgender issues, body image, racialized sexualities, gender, performance and Black queer theory. Ziegler is also the first person to receive the Ph.D. of African American studies from Northwestern University in 2011.

1988, Netherlands

The Free University of Amsterdam convenes the International Scientific Conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies. The highlight of the session is a heated debate inspired by the Constructionism vs. Essentialism controversy, entitled Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality?

 

DECEMBER 16

342, Italy

The Theodosian Code, a compilation of Roman Law authorized by Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II, passes. It reads: When a man marries and is about to offer himself to men in womanly fashion, what does he wish, when sex has lost all of its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found?…Those infamous persons who are now or hereafter may be guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.

1830, Brazil

On this day, the new Penal Code of the Brazilian Empire did not repeat the title XIII of the fifth book of the Ordenações Philipinas which made sodomy a crime. In 1833, an anonymous English-language writer wrote a poetic defense of Captain Nicholas Nicholls, who had been sentenced to death in London for sodomy: Whence spring these inclinations, rank and strong? And harming no one, wherefore call them wrong? Three years later in Switzerland, Heinrich Hoessli (6 August 1784–24 December 1864) published the first volume of Eros: Die Männerliebe der Griechen (Eros: The Male Love of the Greeks), another defense of same-sex love.

1899

Noel Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973), writer and composer, is born. He was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.” Coward was homosexual but, following the convention of his times, this was never publicly mentioned. Coward’s most important relationship, which began in the mid-1940s and lasted until his death, was with the South African stage and film actor Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005).

1901

Margaret Mead  (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978), anthropologist, is born. Mead was a respected and often controversial academic who popularized the insights of anthropology in modern American and Western culture. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual mores within a context of traditional Western religious life. Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual’s sexual orientation may evolve throughout life. Mead also had an exceptionally close relationship with Ruth Benedict, one of her instructors. In her memoir about her parents, With a Daughter’s Eye, Mary Catherine Bateson implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual. Mead spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead’s daughter clearly express a romantic rela-tionship. On January 19, 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead.

1978

A protest march is held in Toronto over the raid of a bathhouse. It is the first major demonstration over a bathhouse rain in Toronto and attracts about 400 people.

1997, New Zealand

The New Zealand court of appeals rules unanimously against giving same-sex couples the right to marry under the Marriage Act of 1955.

1983

Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not To Be, a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch classic, becomes the first mainstream Hollywood film to not just acknowledge Nazi persecution of homosexuals but makes it a key plot element.

 

DECEMBER 17

1760

Deborah Sampson Gannett (December 17, 1760 – April 29, 1827), who fought in the American Revolution disguised as the soldier Robert Shurtlieff, is born. She was a Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. She is one of a small number of women with a documented record of military combat experience in that war. She served 17 months in the army under the name “Robert Shirtliff” (also spelled Shirtliffe or Shurtleff), was wounded in 1782, and was honorably discharged at West Point, New York in 1783. During World War II the Liberty Ship S.S. Deborah Gannett (2620) was named in her honor. As of 2001, the town flag of Plympton incorporates Sampson as the Official Heroine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 26, 2016, Meryl Streep named Sampson in a list of women who had made history.

1943

Eva Kotchever, known also as Eve Adams or Eve Addams, born as Chawa Zloczower (June 16, 1891-17 December 1943, Auschwitz) was a Polish-Jewish émigré librarian and writer, most known for running from 1925 to 1926 a popular, openly lesbian after-theater club in Greenwich Village called Eve’s Hangout. It closed when Eva was convicted of obscenity and disorderly conduct, which resulted in her deportation. Chawa Zloczower was born in 1891 in Poland. Having emigrated to the United States during the 1920s, she ran with her partner, Swedish painter Ruth Norlander, a business named The Gray Cottage in Chicago, at 10 E Chestnut St. She was a friend of anarchist writer Emma Goldman. In 1925, she opened Eve’s Hangout, also known as Eve Addams’ Tearoom in Greenwich Village. On the outside, she hung a sign that read: “Men are admitted, but not welcome.” She was convicted by New York City’s Vice Squad of obscenity for her collection of short stories Lesbian Love(written under the name Evelyn Adams) and for dis-orderly conduct after undercover police detective Margaret Leonard entered Eve’s Hangout and was shown the book. Leonard said Kotchever made overt sexual advances to her. After a year in jail, where she probably met Mae West, at Jefferson Market Prison, she was deported to Europe. In 1943, she was arrested in Nice with her girlfriend Hella Olstein. The two women were imprisoned in the Drancy internment camp near Paris. Deported to Auschwitz, the two women were murdered by the Nazis on December 17, 1943.

1963

The New York Times runs a frontpage story titled “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern.” It told of a series of police raids on gay bars and arrests.

1970

Nine leaders of the women’s liberation movement, including Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller, hold a press conference in New York City to express their “solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society.”

1974

Sarah Paulson (born December 17, 1974) is an American actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Prime-time Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Born in Tampa, Florida, Paulson was raised there and later in New York City following her parents’ divorce. She began her acting career after high school in New York stage productions before starring in the short-lived television series American Gothic (1995–1996) and Jack & Jill (1999–2001). She later appeared in comedy films such as What Women Want (2000) and Down with Love (2003), and drama films such as Path to War (2002) and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005). From 2006 to 2007, she starred as Harriet Hayes in the NBC comedy-drama series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip for which she received her first Golden Globe Award nomination. In 2008, Paulson starred as Ellen Dolan in the superhero noir film The Spirit. Paulson has appeared on Broadway in the plays The Glass Menagerie in 2005 and Collected Stories in 2010. She also starred in a number of independent films and had a leading role on the ABC comedy series Cupid in 2009. She later starred in the independent drama film Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) and received Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for her portrayal of Nicolle Wallace in the HBO film Game Change (2012). She was featured as Mary Epps in the 2013 historical drama film 12 Years a Slave, as Abby Gerhard in the 2015 romantic drama film Carol, and as Toni Bradlee in the 2017 political drama film The Post, all of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Paulson’s other films include Serenity (2005), New Year’s Eve (2011), Mud (2012), Blue Jay (2016), Ocean’s 8 (2018), Bird Box (2018), and Glass (2019). Paulson was in a relationship with actress Cherry Jones from 2004 to 2009. Addressing her sexuality in a 2013 interview with Broadway.com, Paulson said “it’s a fluid situation for me.” Before her relationship with Jones, she had dated only men, including then-fiancé playwright Tracy Letts. She would later comment: “If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that.” Since early 2015, Paulson has been in a relationship with actress Holland Taylor (born January 14, 1943). Paulson lives in Los Angeles. She was ranked one of the best dressed women in 2018 by fashion website Net-a-Porter.

1979

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Judge Irving Hill rules that the marriage of Australian Anthony Sullivan and U.S. citizen Richard Adams, under a license issued by Boulder County, Colorado in 1975, is not valid for purposes of Sullivan’s immigration.

1982

The film Tootsie premieres. It is an American comedy in which a talented but volatile actor whose reputation for being difficult forces him to adopt a new identity as a woman in order to land a job.

1987

Morton Downey Jr. is arraigned on charges of attacking a gay guest on his television show.

1990, UK

The OutRage Christmas Celebration for London’s extended Queer family is held in Covent Garden.

1990

Connecticut State Rep. Joseph Grabarz (D) (born 1957) comes out. He becomes Connecticut’s first openly gay state legislator. At the time he was the lover of actor, playwright and voice actor Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954).

1990

Three same-sex couple request marriage licenses in Honolulu. The clerk initially agrees but a supervisor does not allow the request.

1991

Karen Thompson is named Sharon Kowalski’s (born 1956) legal guardian after an eight-year fight. In re Guardianship of Kowalski, 478 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991) is a Minnesota Court of Appeals case that established a lesbian‘s partner as her legal guardian after she became incapacitated following an automobile accident. Because the case was contested by Kowalski’s parents and family and initially resulted in the partner being excluded for several years from visiting Kowalski, the gay community celebrated the final resolution in favor of the partner as a victory for gay rights. The Minnesota Court of Appeals rule in Thompson’s favor on December 17, 1991. Thompson attorney commented: “This seems to be the first guardianship case in the nation in which an appeals court recognized a homosexual partner’s rights as tantamount to those of a spouse.” The two women continue to live together, along with another woman, Patty Bresser, in what Thompson calls her “family of affinity,” and they all continue to speak out about LGBT and disability rights. Their story has been documented in the film Lifetime Commitment: A Portrait of Karen Thompson.

1992

Patricia Ireland (born October 19, 1945), president of the National Organization for Women, comes out as bisexual. She served as president of the National Organization for Women from 1991 to 2001 and published an autobiography, What Women Want, in 1996. Immediately following Ireland’s appointment to president of NOW, questions arose about her sexual orientation. On December 17, 1991 she gave an interview with The Advocate in which she stated that she was bisexual and had a female companion while remaining married to her second husband.

1997, UK

British Secretary of State Chris Smith writes a letter of apology to the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association for having wreaths removed immediately following a ceremony of remembrance.

1997

Under an agreement with New Jersey state child welfare officials, same-sex couples in the state are granted the right to jointly adopt children.

2007, Hungary

The Parliament gives the same rights to registered partners as to spouses with some exceptions: adoption, IVF access, surrogacy, and taking a surname.

 

DECEMBER 18

1654, Sweden –

Queen Christina (18 December 1626 – 19 April 1689) is born. She was hairy and had a deep vice, ‘walked like a man, sat and rode like a man, and could eat and swear like the roughest soldiers.’ She sometimes identified herself as Count Dohna after her abdication, and has been claimed variously as lesbian, transgender, and intersex by historians in search of an angle.

1879

Stagecoach driver Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst (1812 – Dec. 18, 1879) dies. The medical examiner discovers Charley is female. Parkhurst, who registered to vote in 1868, may have been the first female-assigned transgender citizen to vote in California. Known as “One-eyed Charley,” he wore a black patch over his left eye, lost when attempting to shoe a horse. His lips were stained from constant tobacco chewing and as the years wore on, he talked less and less, earning him another nickname, Silent Charley. When Parkhurst did speak, he didn’t hesitate to sling around swear words in a gruff voice. The only part of his appearance that was out of place was his clean-shaven face, an odd choice for a man in those days. His grave is at the Pioneer Cemetery at 44 Main Street in Watsonville, California.

1900

Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs (1900 – 18 December 1993) was a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed and her eccentric lifestyle. Carstairs lived a colorful life. She usually dressed as a man, had tattooed arms, and loved machines, adventure and speed. Openly lesbian, she had numerous affairs with women, including Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly Wilde (July 11, 1895 – April 10, 1941) and a fellow ambulance driver from Dublin with whom she had lived in Paris as well as a string of actresses, most notably Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), Tallulah Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) and Marlene Dietrich (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992). During World War I, Carstairs served in France with the American Red Cross, driving ambulances. After the war, she served with the Royal Army Service Corps in France, re-burying the war-dead, and in Dublin with the Women’s Legion Mechanical Transport Section which acted as transport for British officers during the Irish War of Independence. In 1920, with three former colleagues from the Women’s Legion Mechanical Transport Section, she started the ‘X Garage,’ a car-hire and chauffeuring service that featured a women-only staff of drivers and mechanics. Carstairs (and her friends and lovers) lived in a flat above the garage which was situated near Cromwell Gardens in London’s fashionable South Kensington district. Carstairs invested $40,000 purchasing the island of Whale Cay in the Bahamas and constructed a Great House for herself and her guests as well as a lighthouse, school, church, and cannery. She later bought the additional islands of Bird Cay, Cat Cay, Devil’s Cay, half of Hoffman’s Cay and a tract of land on Andros. Carstairs died in Naples, Florida, in 1993 at the age of 93.

1902

Dr. William S. Barker of St Louis presents a paper to the Medical Society of City Hospital Alumni about two men he identified as “W” and “B,” saying W showed an unnatural fondness for B and the two were inseparable.

1953

Dr. Harry Benjamin conducts a symposium on transsexuals for the New York Academy of Medicine. Benjamin was a German-American endocrinologist and sexologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism. Benjamin was married to Gretchen for 60 years. In 1979 the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was formed, using Benjamin’s name by permission. The group consists of therapists and psychologists who devised a set of Standards of Care (SOC) for the treatment of gender identity disorder, largely based on Benjamin’s cases, and studies.  It later changed its name to The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), but still reveres its links to Harry Benjamin.

1961, Canada

Brian Orser (born 18 December 1961) is born. He is a Canadian former competitive and professional figure skater. He was the 1984 and 1988 Olympic silver medalist, 1987 World champion and eight-time (1981–88) Canadian national champion. At the 1988 Winter Olympics, the rivalry between Orser and American figure skater Brian Boitano (born October 22, 1963), who were the two favorites to win the gold medal, captured media attention and was described as the “Battle of the Brians.” Orser is openly gay. He was forced to reveal his sexuality in November 1998, when he lost a legal battle to prevent public disclosure when an ex-partner sued him for palimony. Orser initially feared the revelation of being gay would ruin his career, but he has since embraced support from other skaters and the public. Since 2008, he has been in a relationship with Rajesh Tiwari, a director of The Brian Orser foundation.

1974

The first International Gay Rights Conference began. It would lead to the formation of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) in 1978. The ILGA is an international organization bringing together more than 750 LGBTI groups from around the world. It continues to be active in campaigning for LGBT rights and intersex human rights on the international human rights and civil rights scene, and regularly petitions the United Nations and governments. ILGA is represented in 110+ countries across the world. ILGA is accredited by the United Nations and has been granted NGO Ecosoc consultative status.

1978, Canada

A Toronto police sergeant calls three school boards in the area and informs them six teachers in their employ were arrested in the Barracks steam bath raid. The officer is given only internal department reprimand.

1979

ABC News Close-Up features a documentary on homosexuals. Fifteen affiliates refused to air it and the network was not able to find a single commercial sponsor. It covered topics such as promiscuity and implied that gays could not form stable relationships.

1980

With the state of New York and especially New York City being such a mecca of progressive ideals, it’s hard to believe that it was not until December 18, 1980 that New York became the twenty-fourth state in the nation to legalize homosexuality. The Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, struck down the New York’s consensual sodomy law in a 5-2 decision. The court ruled that the law violated Constitutional rights to privacy and equal protection, noting that the law banned anal and oral sex only when those acts were performed by unmarried couples. Married couples were exempt under the law.

1982, Canada

The Quebec parliament overwhelmingly approves a measure, and becomes the first North American legislative body to authorize Domestic Partnership benefits for same-sex couples. It gives domestic partners of gays and lesbians legal protection and access to economic benefits previously restricted to straights, authorizing “Domestic Partnership” benefits for gay and lesbian couples

1984

The Times of Harvey Milk wins the New York Critics’ Award for Best Documentary of the Year. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein (born April 6, 1955), produced by Richard Schmiechen (July 10, 1947 – April 7, 1993), and narrated by Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954), with an original score by Mark Isham. In 2012, this film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

1990

Dr. Stanley Biber (May 4, 1923 – January 16, 2006) of Trinidad, Colorado is elected to the city council. Dr. Biber performs approximately 60% of the world’s sex change operations. He was an American physician who was a pioneer in sex reassignment surgery, performing thousands of procedures during his long career. Dr. Marci Bowers (born January 18, 1958), a gynecologist and transsexual woman herself, took over his SRS practice. Bowers also offers restorative procedures for victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), whom she does not charge for surgery. Bowers married eleven years prior to her surgery and remains married to her female spouse.

1997

Navy Secretary John Dalton denies that the U.S. Navy violates the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy by participating in witch hunts.

1998

The Maryland Supreme Court rules a parent’s access to his or her children cannot be restricted solely based on sexual orientation.

2006, Qatar

Asian Games strips runner Santhi Soundarajan (born April 1981) of her silver medal because she is intersex. The Indian Olympic Association then banned her from sports. She is an Indian track and field athlete and winner of 12 international medals for India and nearly 50 medals for her home state of Tamil Nadu. Santhi is the first Tamil woman to win a medal at the Asian Games. She competes in middle distance track events. She was stripped of a silver medal won at the 2006 Asian Games after failing a sex verification test which disputed her eligibility to participate in the women’s competition.

2009, Austria

The Bundesrat approve same-sex marriages which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

2020

The Real Housewives of Orange County star Braunwyn Windham-Burke (born November 25, 1977) came out as a lesbian in a GLAAD interview and revealed she is currently dating a woman.

 

DECEMBER 19

1922

Sholem Asch’s drama The God of Vengeance opens at the Provincetown Playhouse. The drama, translated from Yiddish and per-formed in English for the first time, includes the first lesbian scenes—and Broadway’s first lesbian kiss—on the American stage. It opened on Broadway in 1924. The theatre owner and 12 cast members found guilty of obscenity (later overturned). The play premiered in Yiddish theatre in 1907.

1980, Canada

In Ottawa, Justice Minister Jean Chrétien announces proposals to revise the Criminal Code to reduce age of consent to 18 years and make other changes in legislation related to sexual offences.

1999

Mikaela Mullaney Straus (born December 19, 1999), known by her stage name King Princess, is an American singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and producer from Brooklyn, New York. She is signed to Mark Ronson’s label Zelig Records, an imprint of Columbia Records. In February 2018, King Princess released her debut single 1950. The song was a commercial success, charting in multiple territories. The song was later certified platinum by the RIAA. 1950 was followed by King Princess’s second single Talia which was certified gold in Australia by the ARIA. King Princess released her debut studio album, Cheap Queen on October 25, 2019. Straus is gay and genderqueer. From early 2018 to late 2018, Straus dated actress Amandla Stenberg. Since early 2019, Straus has been dating Quinn Whitney Wilson, the creative director of musician Lizzo. Regarding her gender identity, KingPrincess has said in an interview with W Magazine, “I like being a woman sometimes. I would say 49 per-cent of the time I love my titties. But I’m not fully a woman. I’m somebody who falls center on the gender spectrum, and it changes day to day. It’s just not in me to decide.” As of late 2020, King Princess uses she/her pronouns.

2008

Diego Sanchez (born 1957), transgender activist and prominent AIDS leader, is the first appointed Washington Congressional staff member, becoming a legislative assistant to Rep. Barney Frank. Frank is the first out gay member of the U.S. Congress.

 

DECEMBER 20

1955

Frank Kameny (May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011) is fired from his job as an astronomer in the U.S. Army’s Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality. A few days later he is blacklisted from seeking federal employment. These events spur Kameny into being a gay rights activist. He has been referred to as “one of the most significant figures” in the American gay rights movement. In 1961 Kameny and Jack Nichols (March 16, 1938 – May 2, 2005), fellow co-founder of the Washington, D.C., branch of the Mattachine Society, launched some of the earliest public pro-tests by gays and lesbians with a picket line at the White House on April 17, 1965. In 1963, Kameny and Mattachine launched a campaign to overturn D.C. sodomy laws; he personally drafted a bill that finally passed in 1993. He also worked to remove the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association‘s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay candidate for the United States Congress when he ran in the District of Columbia’s first election for a non-voting Congressional delegate. Frank Kameny was found dead in his Washington home on October 11, 2011 (National Coming Out Day). His death was due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In front of his headstone lays a marker inscribed with the slogan “Gay is Good.” Kameny coined that slogan, and in a 2009 AP interview said, “If I am remembered for anything I hope it will be that.”

1973

For the second time in two years, the New York City Council rejects a proposed gay rights ordinance for the city.

1990, UK

OutRage! establishes the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights to address legal attacks against the GLBT community. OutRage! was a British LGBT rights group lasting for 21 years, 1990 until 2011. It described itself as “a broad based group of queers committed to radical, non-violent direct action and civil disobedience” and was formed to advocate that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have the same rights as heterosexual people, to end homophobia and anti-LGBT violence and to affirm the right of queer people to their “sexual freedom, choice and self-determination”.

1999

In Baker v. Vermont, the Vermont Supreme Court orders the state legislature to devise a law to give same-sex couples identical rights to married couples. Baker v. Vermont, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999, was the lawsuit decided by Vermont Supreme Court on December 20, 1999. It was one of the first judicial affirmations of the right of same-sex couples to treatment equivalent to that afforded different-sex couples. The decision held that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage denied rights granted by the Vermont Constitution. The court ordered the Vermont legislature to either allow same-sex marriages or implement an alternative legal mechanism according similar rights to same-sex couples.

2013

U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby strikes down Utah’s gay marriage ban; more than 1,000 same-sex couples marry over the next two weeks. With Utah appealing, the Supreme Court on Jan. 6 stops further marriages from taking place.

2017, Germany

Wolfgang Leopold Lauinger (1918 – December 20, 2017) dies at the age of 99. He was a German gay activist. Other German gay acivists paid their respects to Lauinger who was imprisoned both by the Nazis and by the postwar West German government. “We bow before a wonderful person, who fought to the end for the rehabilitation of persecuted gay people and the compensation for all consequences of imprisonment and conviction as a result of Paragraph §175,” the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation tweeted. Lauinger is best known for his campaign against Paragraph 175, the German law that outlawed male homosexuality. Passed in 1871, the Nazis in 1935 tightened up enforcement of Paragraph 175 by conducting more arrests and increasing the maximum jail sentence for male homosexuality to five years. Around 50,000 people were convicted between 1933 and 1945 under the law, and it sent between 5000 and 10,000 gay men to the concentration camps.

 

DECEMBER 21

1888

California Gov. Robert Waterman commutes the sentence of Lucilius Miller who had been convicted of sodomy in 1884. He had been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

1917, Russia

The Bolsheviks repeal the entire criminal code in favor of “revolu-tionary justice.” Among the laws nullified are those relating to sex acts between men. Seventeen years later Article 121 would re-criminalize it, carrying a sentence up to five years “deprivation of freedom.”

1969

Jim W. Owles (1947-1993) and Marty Robinson (1943-1992) leave Gay Liberation Front in New York City to form a group exclusively dedicated to the pursuit of gay rights. The new organization is called Gay Activists Alliance. They believed GLF was too focused on causes unrelated to gay liberation. Both men died of AIDS related illnesses.

1973

A United States federal judge issues a bulletin stating that the federal civil service may not terminate an employee based on sexual orientation alone.

1981

Time and Newsweek run their first major stories about AIDS.

1988

The Chicago City Council votes 28-17 to approve a bill banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

1990

An MTV poll reports that 92% of America’s teenagers say it would make no difference to them if their favorite rock star came out as gay or lesbian.

1993

President Bill Clinton issues Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell which is a directive prohibiting the U.S. Military from barring applicants from service based on their sexual orientation. “Applicants… shall not be asked or required to reveal whether they are homosexual,” However, the policy forbids applicants from engaging in homosexual acts or making a statement that he or she is homosexual.

2004, Canada

Newfoundland and Labrador become the eighth Canadian provinces to legalize same-sex marriage after a Supreme Court judge approves marriage licenses for two lesbian couples.

2005, UK

Singer Elton John (born 25 March 1947) and David Furnish (born 25 October 1962) enter into a civil partnership at Windsor Guildhall. They were legally married on December 21, 2014.

2006

New Jersey governor Jon Corzine signs the bill establishing civil unions in the state. The first civil union licenses become available on February 20, 2007.

2007, Nepal

Nepal Supreme Court orders the end of anti-LGBTQ laws and creates new laws that safeguard LGBTQ people.

2008

Diego Sanchez (born 1957) is the first openly transgender Washington Congressional staff member, appointed as legislative assistant to Rep. Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940), the first openly gay member of the U.S. Congress. Sanchez had been the first transgender person named to a Democratic National Committee earlier in 2008. Transgender Susan Kimberly (born 1941) had worked for Minnesota Rep. Norm Coleman at his home office (not in Washington) previously.

2009, Mexico

The Legislative Assembly legalizes same-sex marriage and adoptions.

 

DECEMBER 22

1934

Wallace Henry Thurman (1902–Dec. 22, 1934), a Black editor, critic, novelist, and playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance, dies, in New York City. Thurman wrote a play, Harlem, which debuted on Broadway in 1929 to mixed reviews. The same year his first novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929) was published. The novel is now recognized as a groundbreaking work of fiction because of its focus on intra-racial prejudice and colorism within the Black community where lighter skin has historically been favored. Thurman married Louise Thompson on August 22, 1928. The marriage lasted only six months. Thompson said that Wallace was a homosexual and refused to admit it. Thurman died at the age of 32 from tuberculosis which was likely exacerbated by his long fight with alcoholism.

1939

Bisexual blues singer Ma Rainey (September 1882 or April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) dies of heart disease at age 53. Billed as the “Mother of the Blues,” she was one of the earliest African American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. Some of Rainey’s lyrics contain references to lesbianism or bisexuality, such as the 1928 song Prove It on Me.

1964

Dr. Harry Benjamin testifies at a meeting of the New York Health Department to urge that transsexuals should be allowed to have new birth certificates issued reflecting their gender preference. His recommendations were rejected.

1970

The San Francisco Free Press prints Carl Wittman’s (February 23, 1943 – January 22, 1986) Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto (1970). Reprinted and distributed all across the country in the next year, it quickly becomes the bible of Gay Liberation. Wittman was a member of the national council of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later an activist for LGBT rights. He co-authored An Interracial Movement of the Poor? (1963) with Tom Hayden. Wittman declined hospital treatment for AIDS and died by suicide at home in North Carolina.

1986

The Gay/Lesbian Forum airs on public access television in Charlotte, N.C. Closet Busters produced the program.

1999

The Dayton, Ohio city commission rejected a proposal to protect gays and lesbians in housing and employment.

2010

President Obama signs the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

 

DECEMBER 23

1868

Mary Rozet Smith (Dec. 23, 1868-1934) is born. She was a Chicago-born U.S. philanthropist who was one of the trustees and benefactors of Hull House. She was the companion of activist Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) for over thirty years. Smith provided the financing for the Hull House Music School and donated the school’s organ as a memorial to her mother. She was active in several social betterment societies in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century.

1888

Christa Winsloe (23 December 1888 – 10 June 1944) is born. Winsloe was a 20th-century German-Hungarian novelist, playwright and sculptor. Her book Das Mädchen Manuela (The Child Manuela) was reviewed in the New York Times. It was a translation from a German book about a lesbian relationship in a school for girls. The reviewer referred to it as “a social document that is moving and eloquent.” Das Mädchen Manuela is a short novel based on Winsloe’s experiences at Kaiserin-Augusta. The 1931 film version remains an international cult classic. Winsloe was involved in a relationship with newspaper reporter Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893 – 30 January 1961), probably before World War II when Thompson was reporting from Berlin. Winsloe moved to France in the late 1930s, fleeing the Nazis. During World War II, she joined the French Resistance. Contrary to what is often stated, she was not executed by the Nazis. Instead, on June 10, 1944, Winsloe and her French partner, Simone Gentet (died 1944), were shot and killed by four Frenchmen in a forest near the country town of Cluny. The men said that they had thought the women were Nazi spies. They were later acquitted of murder.

1959

The California Supreme Court upholds the right of LGBT people to congregate in Vallerga v. Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The Court rules that a 1955 statute allowing the Dept. of ABC to revoke the liquor license of any establishment that was a “resort…for sexual perverts.”

1970

The film Little Big Man is released. It features a character named Little Horse, played by Robert Little Star, who is biologically male but wears female clothing and identifies as a woman. Little Horse is a “hee-man-eh” which, in the Cheyenne tribe, is the tribe is the word for what anthropologists call a “berdache.”

1993

Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks premieres. The film is an American drama and one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner, directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Andrew Beckett in the film, while the song Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Nyswaner was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay but lost to Jane Campion for The Piano.

1994

In a much publicized adoption case in Seattle, Ross and Luis Lopton win permanent custody of their four year-old foster son Gailen. The child’s birth mother had challenged the men’s right to adopt him.

1998

The Centers for Disease Control releases a report on why some people at risk for HIV infection don’t get tested. Reasons included privacy and fear of positive test results.

1999

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon announced that a memoran-dum had been issued calling for immediate action against cases of anti-gay harassment in the military.

 

DECEMBER 24

1305, France

Grand Master Jacques de Molay (1243 – 18 March 1314) and over 500 Knights Templar recant their confessions of homosexual ac-tivities to which they had admitted under torture. King Phillip IV burned 54 of them soon after the false confessions. Philip had Mo-lay burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre Dame de Paris in March 1314. The sudden end of both the centuries-old order of Templars and the dramatic execution of its last leader turned de Molay into a legendary figure.

1573, France

French diplomat and law professor Hubert Languet (1518 – 30 September 1581) wrote to poet Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586), “My affection for you has entered my heart far more deeply than I have ever felt for anyone else, and it has so wholly taken possession there that it tries to rule alone.”

1920

Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) is born. She was a butch lesbian whose purported scuffle with police was one of the defining moments of the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action. She was born in New Orleans to an African American mother and a white father. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer who graced the stages of the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker, the “guardian of lesbians in the Village.” Her partner, a dancer named Diana, lived with her for about 25 years until Diana died in the 1970s. According to friend Lisa Cannistraci, DeLarverie carried a photograph of Diana with her at all times. DeLarverie continued working as a bouncer until age 85.

1924

The state of Illinois issues a charter to a non-profit organization called Society for Human Rights, the first U.S.-based gay human rights group. The Society is quickly shut down, however, after a member’s wife complains to the police and its founder, Henry Gerber (June 29, 1892 – December 31, 1972) is arrested for “obscenity.” Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the United States. Inspired by the work of Germany’s Magnus Hirschfeld and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights (SHR) in 1924, the nation’s first known homosexual organization, and Friendship and Freedom, the first known American homosexual publication. SHR was short-lived, as police arrested several of its members shortly after it incorporated. Although embittered by his experiences, Gerber maintained contacts within the fledgling homophile movement of the 1950s and continued to agitate for the rights of homosexuals. Gerber has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to the LGBT movement.

1946

Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) was an American bisexual rights activist, sex-positive feminist, polyamorist and BDSM practitioner. Howard was an important figure in the modern LGBT rights movement. A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for over three decades, Howard was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front and for several years chair of the Gay Activists Alliance’s Speakers Bureau in the post-Stonewall era. She is known as the “Mother of Pride” for her work in coordinating a rally and then the Christopher Street Liberation Day March to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Howard also originated the idea of a week-long series of events around Pride Day which became the genesis of the annual LGBT Pride celebrations that are now held around the world every June. Additionally, Howard along with fellow LGBT activists Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996) and L. Craig Schoonmaker (born 1944) are credited with popularizing the word “Pride” to describe these festivities. A fixture in New York City’s LGBT Community, Howard was active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights which helped guide New York City’s Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986 as well as ACT UP and Queer Nation. In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help coordinate services to the region’s growing Bisexual community. She was also an active member of the early bisexual political activist group BiPAC, a Regional Organizer for BiNet USA, a co-facilitator of the Bisexual S/M Discussion Group and a founder of the nation’s first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals. On a national level, Howard’s activism included work on both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation where she was female co-chair of the leather contingent and Stonewall 25 in 1994. Howard died of colon cancer on June 28, 2005. Bisexual activist Tom Limoncelli (born December 2, 1968) later stated, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.'”

1990

Lesbian actress Pat Childers Bond (February 27, 1925 – December 24, 1990) dies of lung cancer at age 65. She was an American actress who starred on stage and on television as well as in motion pictures. She was openly lesbian and was often the first gay woman people saw on stage. Her career spanned some for-ty years. She joined the Women’s Army Corps in 1945. Having accepted her homosexuality by this point, she was interested in meeting other lesbians. She acted as a nurse for soldiers returning from the South Pacific and also served in occupied Japan. In 1947, in Tokyo, 500 women were dishonorably discharged from the army on the charge of homosexuality. During this period, many lesbians testified against each other in trial but Bond married a gay GI soldier to avoid prosecution. Her marriage to Paul Bond in San Francisco afforded Bond an honorable discharge from the army on July 3, 1947. She later said she regretted leaving her lover in the Corps but did so to protect her. In 1990, Pat was honored by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in recognition of her army tenure at the end of World War II. Her personal papers and photo albums were donated to the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society. In 1992, The Pat Bond Memorial Old Dyke Award was founded in her honor. The award recognizes Bay Area lesbians over 60 who have made outstanding contributions to the world.

2000, Canada

Rev Brent Hawkes reads the Bannes of Marriage for a gay and a lesbian couple at MCC Toronto. Bannes are an ancient Christian tradition which do not require a marriage license. Weddings in January 2001 are not registered by the Province of Ontario and the case goes to court.

2012, Serbia

The Serbian Parliament approves changes to the Penal Code to in-clude sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes when it comes to hate crimes.

2013, UK

Alan Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), considered the father of computer science, was a code-breaker who helped shorten WWII. Since he was gay, on this day, the British government offered him the choice of prison or chemical castration after he was convicted of gross indecency. He selected hormonal castration via estrogen. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning. In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official apology, and the Queen issued Turing a royal pardon on this day in 2013.

 

DECEMBER 25

1886

Sarah Bigelow, 18, and Lizzie Hart, 19, die by suicide in Massachusetts. Lizzie was apparently so bereft due to her mother’s death that she wanted to die. On her deathbed, Sarah said she loved Lizzie so much that she “would not let her die without me.”

1908, UK

Quentin Crisp (25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999)  is born. Named Denis Charles Pratt, Crisp becomes a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant, detailing his life in homophobic British Society. When the book was adapted for television, Crisp began a new career as a performer and lecturer. From a conventional suburban background, Crisp enjoyed wearing make-up and painting his nails, and worked as a rent-boy in his teens. He then spent thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art colleges. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted increasing public curiosity and he was soon sought after for his highly individual views on social manners and the cultivating of style. His one-man stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America and he also appeared in films and on TV. In 1995 he was among the many people interviewed for The Celluloid Closet, an historical documentary addressing how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality. In his third volume of memoirs Resident Alien published in the same year, Crisp stated that he was close to the end of his life, though he continued to make public appearances and in June of that year he was one of the guest entertainers at the second Pride Scotland festival in Glasgow.

1950

Time magazine runs its first article on homosexuality, saying that homosexuals should not work in government jobs because they are a security risk.

1989, Germany

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) conducts Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin’s Schauspielhaus as part of the country’s celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had conducted the same piece in West Berlin the previous day. Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist who was bisexual. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the U.S. to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.

 

DECEMBER 26

1931

The film Mata Hari is released. It’s the first film Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) does after becoming Mercedes de Acosta’s (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) lover. De Costa designs one of the outfits that Garbo wears in the film.

1933

Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) stars as the Queen of Sweden who defies gender-norm expectations. Garbo’s partner, Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) proposed the film’s concept. Garbo’s Cuban Lover, a 2001 stage play by actress-writer Odalys Nanin, celebrates Latin lesbians including Greta Garbo’s dashing lover de Acosta.

1973

Charles William “Billy” Haines (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973) was an American actor and interior designer. Haines was discovered by a talent scout and signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1922. His career gained momentum when he was lent to Columbia Pictures where he received favorable reviews for his role in The Midnight Express. Haines returned to MGM and was cast in the 1926 film Brown of Harvard. The role solidified his screen persona as a wisecracking, arrogant leading man. By the end of the 1920s, Haines had appeared in a string of successful films and was a popular box-office draw. Haines’ acting career was cut short by the studios in the 1930s due to his refusal to deny his homosexuality. He quit acting in 1935 and started a successful interior design business with his life partner Jimmie Shields. His work was widely patronized by friends in Hollywood. Haines died of lung cancer in December 1973 at the age of 73. William Haines’ house was the scene of many gatherings for the industry’s homosexuals. The close-knit group reputedly included Haines and his partner Jimmie Shields (January 2, 1900 – December 26, 1973), writer Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965), director James Vincent (July 19, 1882 – July 12, 1957), screenwriter Rowland Leigh (1902 – 1963), costume designers Orry-Kelly (31 December 1897 – 27 February 1964) and Robert Le Maire, and actors John Darrow (17 July 1907 – 24 February 1980), Anderson Lawler (May 5, 1902 – April 6, 1959), Grady Sutton (April 5, 1906 – September 17, 1995), Robert Seiter and Tom Douglas.

1975

Mary Jo Risher announces that she planned to appeal a Dallas jury’s decision to remove her son from her custody because she is a lesbian. Her appeal would fail.

1977

Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant was named one of the Twenty-Five Most Intriguing People of 1977 in People magazine.

1997

Lesbian Regan Wolf of Lancaster, South Carolina was knocked unconscious by three men who brutally beat her, strung her up from her front porch, and painted “Jesus weren’t born for you, faggot.” Despite giving police the identity of the three men, the sheriff’s office took no action. She was attacked more severely six months later.

 

DECEMBER 27

1708, UK

In England, Rev. Bray, the leader of the Societies for Reformation of Manners, preached a sermon in which he referred to sodomy as “an evil force invading our land.”

1882

Harry Allen or Harry Livingston (December 27, 1882- December 27, 1922) was an American transgender man from the Pacific Northwest who was the subject of ongoing sensationalist local and national newspaper coverage from 1900 until his death in 1922. As Nell Pickerell, he was a young man in his early 20s who lived by his wits. He could fight, and looked great in a suit, tie and derby. He smoked, drank and ran with a rough crowd. He was reputedly close to the city’s gang leaders and very familiar with the insides of a jail cell, having spent time there for theft, vagrancy, selling liquor to the Indians, resisting arrest and other offenses. He was jugged once in Portland for violating the Mann Act by allegedly transporting a woman over a state line for immoral purposes. The woman was his partner, a Seattle prostitute who “posed” as his wife. Harry was a person recognized by most of society as a woman, but who identified completely as a man.

1888

Wilhelm Murnau (Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888 – March 11, 1931) was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by the Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served in the Imperial German Army, initially as an infantry company commander on the Eastern Front. Murnau later transferred to the German Army’s Flying Corps as an observer/gunner,  and survived several crashes without any severe injuries. One of Murnau’s acclaimed works is the film Nosferatu (1922), an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although not a commercial success, owing to copyright issues with Stoker’s estate, the film is considered a masterpiece of German Expressionist cinema. He later directed the film The Last Laugh (1924) as well as a 1926 interpretation of Goethe’s Faust. He emigrated to Hollywood in 1926 where he joined the Fox Studio and made three films: Sunrise (1927), 4 Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930). Sunrise has been regarded by critics and film directors as among the best films ever made. Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to make the film Tabu (1931) with documentary film pioneer Robert J. Flaherty. Flaherty left after artistic disputes with Murnau who had to finish the movie on his own. A week before the opening of Tabu, Murnau died in a Santa Barbara hospital from injuries he sustained in an automobile accident that occurred along the Pacific Coast Highway near Rincon Beach, southeast of Santa Barbara. Of the 21 films Murnau directed, eight are considered to be completely lost. One reel of his feature Marizza, genannt die Schmuggler-Madonna survives. This leaves only 12 films surviving in their entirety. Murnau was gay though sources conflict on whether he was closeted or open about his sexuality.

1901

Actress Marlene Dietrich (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) is born. She was a German actress and singer who held both German and American citizenship. Throughout her unusually long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she maintained popularity by continually reinventing herself. She was bisexual and quietly enjoyed the thriving gay scene of the time and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. She had an affair with Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) who became Greta Garbo’s lover. Greta Garbo has been commonly regarded as Dietrich’s greatest film rival but there is also a rumor of an affair between them.

1919

Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932), was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has been hailed by playwrights, poets, and literary critics alike (including Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Bloom), as being one of the most influential poets of his generation. On this day, Crane comes out as homosexual in a letter to the critic Gorham Munson. His lover was Emil Opffer, a Danish merchant mariner. As a boy, he had a sexual relationship with a man.  He associated his sexuality with his vocation as a poet. The prominent queer theorist Tim Dean (born 1966) argues, for instance, that the obscurity of Crane’s style owes itself partially to the necessities of being a semi-public homosexual—not quite closeted, but also, as legally and culturally necessary, not open.

1933

The New York Times reviewed Queen Christina, a film starring Greta Garbo about Christina of Sweden (8 December, 1626 – 19 April 1689) who cross-dressed and is believed to have been bisexual.

1943

 Martha Shelley  (born December 27, 1943) is an American lesbian activist, feminist, writer, and poet. She was in Greenwich Village the night of the Stonewall riots with women who were starting a Daughters of Bilitis chapter in Boston. Recognizing the significance of the event and being politically aware, she proposed a protest march. As a result DOB and Mattachine sponsored a demonstration. According to an article in the program for the first San Francisco pride march, she was one of the first four members of the Gay Liberation Front, the others being Michael Brown, Jerry Hoose and Jim Owles. Certainly she was one of the twenty or so women and men who formed the Gay Liberation Front immediately after Stonewall and was outspoken in many of their confrontations. She wrote for their magazine Come Out!. In 1970 she was instrumental in the Lavender Menace zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women. She produced the radio show Lesbian Nation on New York’s WBAI radio station and contributed pieces from Notes of a Radical Lesbian and Terror to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from The Women’s Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan. After moving to Oakland, California in October 1974, she was involved with the Women’s Press Collective where she worked with Judy Grahn to produce Crossing the DMZ, In Other Words, Lesbians Speak Out and other books. Her poetry has appeared in Ms.magazine, Sunbury, The Bright Medusa, We Become New and other periodicals. Shelley appeared in the 2010 documentary Stonewall Uprising, an episode of the American Experience series. One of the first members of the Gay Liberation Front, Shelley is one of the best-known lesbian activists in America. The name “Shelley” was an alias taken to avoid being identified in FBI surveillance of the Daughters of Bilitis.

1958

Lisa Sue Kove (born Dec. 27, 1958) is an American civil servant and disabled retired combat veteran, a San Diego, California corporate executive, and a civil rights activist. She’s the Executive Director of the Department of Defense Federal Glove, and chairwoman of EXUSMED, Inc., a healthcare corporation based in San Diego. In 1998 Kove filed one of the first child support suits in the nation for children born to same-sex couples. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that Kove’s former lesbian partner must pay support for the five children Kove bore during their relationship.

1973

Singer/actor Wilson Cruz (December 27, 1973) is born. Cruz grew up in a Puerto Rican family in New York. He is an American actor known for playing Rickie Vasquez on My So-Called Life, Angel in the Broadway production of Rent and the recurring character Junito on Noah’s Arc. As an openly gay man of Puerto Rican ancestry, he has served as an advocate for gay youth, especially gay youth of color. Wilson is featured on The CBS All Access’ new Star Trek: Discovery series as a gay character in the first openly gay relationship.

1980, The Netherlands

The first international lesbian conference, called the International Lesbian Information Secretariat, is held in Amsterdam with women from 17 countries in attendance. It takes place over six days at a youth hostel. The ILIS’s purpose was to foster international lesbian organizing. It was started in 1980 within ILGA which is an international organization bringing together more than 750 LGBTI groups from around the world. The following year, at a separate lesbian conference arranged prior to the ILGA Turin conference, lesbian organizations decided that ILIS should be a separate organization. ILIS arranged several international conferences. The activities seem to have gradually stopped in the late 1990s.

1988

Joe Beam (December 30, 1954– December 27, 1988) dies. He was the editor of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. He was an African American gay rights activist and author who worked to foster greater acceptance of gay life in the Black community by relating the gay experience with the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Beam was working on a sequel to In the Life at the time of his death of HIV-related disease in 1988. This work was completed by Dorothy Beam and the gay poet Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957 – November 4, 1995), and published under the title Brother to Brother in 1991. Both books were featured in a television documentary Tongues Untied in 1991.

1990

San Antonio’s AIDS Foundation files a complaint with the state consumer affairs board against four funeral homes in the area which charged $75 extra to prepare the bodies of people who died of AIDS complications.

1995

Michael Callen (April 11, 1955 – December 27, 1993), who was a significant architect of the response to the AIDS crisis in the United States, dies. Singer, songwriter, AIDS activist and author, Michael is recognized as a co-inventor of safe(r) sex and a co-founder of the People with AIDS self-empowerment movement. He was a founding member of the gay male a cappella singing group The Flirtations. Callen died of AIDS-related complications in Los Angeles at the age of 38.

 

DECEMBER 28

1931

Lili Ilse Elvenes (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931) is born. She was a Danish painter, better known today by the pseudonym ‘Lili Elbe,’ who becomes the second transgender woman to benefit from Gohrbandt’s vaginoplasty technique in 1931. Her castration and penectomy had been performed by Dr. Ludwig Levy-Lenz (1889-1966) the previous year. These preliminaries have sometimes caused confusion over the date of Lili’s ‘sex change’ which—like all other gender transitions—is not so much a single event as a process extended in time. After successfully transitioning in 1930, she changed her legal name to Lili Ilse Elvenes and stopped painting altogether. The name “Lili” was suggested by a friend, actress Anna Larssen. Later in her life, Lili chose the surname Elbe, inspired by the Elbe River in Dresden. She died from complications involving a uterus transplant. Her autobiography Man into Woman was published posthumously in 1933. In 2000, David Ebershoff wrote The Danish Girl, a fictionalized account of Elbe’s life. In 2015, it was made into a film also called The Danish Girl, produced by Gail Mutrux and Neil LaBute and starring Eddie Redmayne as Elbe.

1969

The Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front’s Don Jackson outlines a plan for a “gay colony,” to be called Stonewall Nation, in California’s Alpine County whose current population was 450. They would recall the county government and elect an all-gay slate. Although his proposal attracts widespread media attention and support from activists including Jim Kepner (1923 – 15 November 1997) and Don Kilhefner (born March 3, 1938), few gay men and lesbians are willing to make the move. After a brief flurry of national attention, GLF announces that the plan is off.

1986

Terry Dolan (1950 – December 28, 1986), an anti-gay family values advocate, was discovered to have been gay after his death from complications of AIDS at age 36. While he was persistently critical of gay rights, he was revealed to have been a closeted homosexual who frequented gay bars in Washington, D.C.

1988

A district court judge ruled that Karen Thompson must be allowed to visit her lover, Sharon Kowalski, a quadriplegic. He also ruled that Kowalski’s father would remain her guardian. Kowalski had been seriously injured in an accident, and her father refused to al-low Thompson to visit her. Karen fought and won the right to be Sharon’s legal guardian. In re Guardianship of Kowalski, 478 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991) is the Minnesota Court of Appeals case that established a lesbian’s partner as her legal guardian after Sharon Kowalski became incapacitated following an automobile accident. Because the case was contested by Kowalski’s parents and family and initially resulted in the partner being excluded for several years from visiting Kowalski, the gay community celebrated the final resolution in favor of the partner as a victory for gay rights.

1990

The Greensboro, North Carolina council repeals a municipal ordinance forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation. The council had passed the ordinance only three months earlier.

1994, India

About 70 men from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka attend the first regional conference for gay rights in South Asia, a five-day event organized in New Delhi by activist Ashok Row Kawi (born 1 June 1947). Ashok Row Kavi is an Indian journalist and one of India’s most prominent LGBT rights activists. In 1990, he founded Bombay Dost, India’s first gay magazine. He was a representative at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam and served as chairman of the Second International Congress on AIDS. At the present, he is founder-chairperson of the Humsafar Trust, an LGBT rights and health services NGO which also agitates for the legal emancipation of homosexuality in India. Row Kavi has been listed among India’s Seven Most Influential Gay & Lesbian individuals by Pink Pages magazine. In September 2017 India Times listed Kavi as one of the eleven Human Rights Activists Whose Life Mission is to Provide Others with a Dignified Life.

1998, The Vatican

Pope John Paul II speaks out against the acceptance of non-traditional families, saying it disfigures the traditional family struc-ture.

2005, Nigeria

The Church of Nigeria issues a press release warning people about Davis Mac-lyalla (born 1972) “who claims to be a member of the Anglican Church.” (Actually, he was not only a member but he worked for the Church for years.) Earlier in the year, Mac-lyalla had been arrested and tortured by the police. In 2008, he was given refuge asylum in the UK and received the Bishop Desmond Tutu Award for Human Rights and Social Justice. He established the Nigerian wing of the British Changing Attitude organization, which presses for internal reform of the Anglican Communion for further inclusion of Anglican sexual minorities.

 

DECEMBER 29

1898, UK

Elfie Gidlow (29 December 1898 – 8 June 1986) was a British-born Canadian-American poet, freelance journalist, and philosopher. In 1918 she published Les Mouches Fantastiques with journalist Roswell George Mills. It was the first known LGB periodical in Canadian and North American history. Five issues of the magazine were published; it was discontinued in 1920. She is best known for writing On a Grey Thread (1923), possibly the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America. In the 1950s, Gidlow helped found Druid Heights, a bohemian community in Marin County, California. She was the author of thirteen books and appeared as herself in the documentary film Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives(1977). Completed just before her death, her autobiography, Elsa, I Come with My Songs (1986), recounts her life story. Towards the last years of her life, Gidlow experienced several strokes. She chose not to seek medical care in a hospital and died at home in Druid Heights at the age of 87. Gidlow’s estate donated her extensive personal papers to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco in 1991. One is in the archives of the University of South Florida. The University of Iowa library has an original of all five issues, and the Quebec Gay Archives has a reprint of the final issue.

1971

Wakefield Poole’s (born 1936) trend-setting Boys in the Sand premieres, prompting Variety to remark, “There are no more closets.” Shot on Fire Island, Poole’s slickly produced film marks a dramatic departure from the low-budget pornography previously available. Boys in the Sand had its theatrical debut on December 29, 1971 at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York City. It was the first gay porn film to include credits, to achieve crossover success, to be reviewed by Variety, and one of the earliest porn films, after 1969’s Blue Movie by Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) to gain mainstream credibility, preceding 1972’s Deep Throat by nearly a year. It was promoted with an advertising campaign un-precedented for a pornographic feature and was an immediate critical and commercial success. The film’s title is a parodic reference to the Mart Crowley (August 21, 1935-March 7, 2020) play and film The Boys in the Band.

1972

As a result of the dismissal of a gay man from his job with the Seattle Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an action was filed seeking to change the Civil Service Rules which allowed the dismissal of homosexuals from Federal employment on the basis of sexual orientation alone. A year later a federal judge nullified the policy.

1990

Richard Dunne (1944 – December 29, 1990), director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis from 1985-1989, dies of complications from AIDS at age 46. During his time as director the annual budget in-creased from $800,000 to $11 million and the staff increased from 17 to 120.

1995

John Gilbert, general manager of KOAA-TV in Colorado Springs, pulls tv shows Jenny Jones and Carnie because their shows included homosexuals.

1999

Senator John McCain meets with Arizona state legislator Steve May (born c. 1972), a gay Republican who was in the process of being discharged from the Army reserves. McCain said he stands by the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy but would look into his case to be sure he was being treated fairly.

2012

Same-sex marriage takes effect in Maine with a voter approval of 53%-47%. Maryland and Washington State are the other states to win marriage equality by popular vote.

 

DECEMBER 30

1944

The New York Times reviews the play Trio from the novel by Dorot Baker, about a relationship between a female college teacher and a young woman. Trio was originally scheduled to open on November 8, 1944 at the Cort Theater; however theater owner Lee Shubert refused to rent it based on the play’s themes of an older woman’s feelings for a girl. Elmer Rice, lease-holder of the Belasco Theatre, allowed the production to open there, where it was still a subject of controversy. It was finally ordered to close by New York License Commissioner Paul Moss who refused to renew the Belasco’s license if Trio remained open; it closed on February 24, 1945.

1965

The New York Post runs an article about illegal tactics used by police to harass gays.

1977, Canada

Toronto police take action against The Body Politic, the country’s leading gay and lesbian newspaper, seizing materials and charging the publication with “using the mails to distribute immoral, indecent, and scurrilous material.” It would be six years before they were acquitted.

1998

New Ways Ministries, a Catholic group, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for an end to anti-gay violence.

2008

The ACLU sues the state of Arkansas, arguing that the state’s ban on same-sex adoptions is unconstitutional.

 

DECEMBER 31

1901

Beauford Delaney (December 30, 1901 – March 26, 1979) is born. He was a gay African American modernist painter. He is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950s. Beauford’s younger brother, Joseph, was also a noted painter. In Greenwich Village, Delaney became part of a gay bohemian circle of mainly white friends but he was furtive and rarely comfortable with his sexuality. The pressures of being “Black and gay in a racist and homophobic society” was difficult enough, but Delaney’s own Christian upbringing and “disapproval” of homosexuality, the presence of a family member (his artist brother Joseph) in the New York art scene and the “macho abstract expressionists emerging in lower Manhattan’s art scene” added to this pressure. So he “remained rather isolated as an artist even as he worked in a center of major artistic ferment… A deeply introverted and private person, Delaney formed no lasting romantic relationships.

1964

The Council on Religion and the Homosexual holds a costume party in San Francisco to raise money for the new organization. When the ministers informed the San Francisco Police Department of the event, the SFPD attempted to force the rented hall’s owners to cancel it. At the event itself, some of the ministers and ticket takers were arrested, creating a brief riot. Police attempt to intimidate some 600 guests by photographing each guest as they arrive. Three lawyers and Nancy May, a straight volunteer, are arrested. Though charges were dropped, the Council published a brief detailing how police oppressed and abused homosexuals.

1966, Canada

In Vancouver, the Association for Social Knowledge, Canada’s earliest homophile organization, opens the first community center to serve the homosexual community in Canada.

1967

During a raid on The Black Cat bar in San Francisco, a gay man was beaten so severely by police that his spleen was ruptured. The police department filed assault charges against the victim but he was acquitted.

1969

Drag queen acting troupe The Cockettes premiers their act in San Francisco. They are one of the first gender-bending performing groups. The group was founded by Hibiscus – George Edgerly Harris II (September 6, 1949 – May 6, 1982) – in the fall of 1969. The troupe was formed out of a group of hippie artists, men and women, who were living in Kaliflower, one of the many communes in Haight-Ashbury, a neighborhood of San Francisco. Hibiscus came to live with them because of their preference for dressing outrageously and proposed the idea of putting their lifestyle on the stage. Hibiscus died of Kaposi’s sarcoma due to complications from AIDS on May 6, 1982 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. He was a very early AIDS casualty: at the time of his death the new illness was still referred to as GRID.

1971

Life magazine publishes an 11-page spread called Homosexuals in Revolt which discusses the post-Stonewall movement in a generally positive light for the first time.

1988, Guinea

Article 325 is added to Guinea’s penal code to make same-sex sexual activity illegal.

1990

Ian McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is knighted by the Queen of England. He is the first openly gay man to be knighted. An English actor, he is the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BIF Award, two Saturn Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, and two Critics’ Choice Awards. He has also received two Oscar nominations, four BAFTA nominations and five Emmy Award nominations. While McKellen had made his sexual orientation known to fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public, in a program on BBC Radio. McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom and also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, Oxford Pride, GAY-GLOS, The Lesbian & Gay Foundation, and FFLAG where he appears in their video Par-ents Talking.

1993

Transman Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) is murdered by the same young men who raped him a week earlier after discovering he’d been born female. His story is captured in the film Boys Don’t Cry. The headstone on his grave is in-scribed with his birth name and uses female descriptors. Teena’s murder, along with that of Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998), led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.

2014

Musab Mohammed Masmari sets fire to the Seattle gay nightclub Neighbours in a stairwell. The fire was extinguished quickly. Masmari reportedly said homosexual people “should be exterminated” after expressing a “distaste” for members of the LGBT community to a friend.

2014, Russia

The Russian large gay club called Central Station was forced to close after countless attacks of sprays of bullets and being gassed. It later reopened with the use of bulletproof glass and a longer walk from the metro station.

August 1

1819

American author and novelist Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) is born in New York City. He was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best-known works include Typee(1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby Dick (1851). His novella Billy Budd, left unfinished at his death, was published in 1924. Despite his marriage and children, recently scholars have begun to examine the homosexual undertones of Melville’s work and question the sexuality of the author.

1863

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) wrote to Lewis K. Brown, “Your letters and your love for me are very precious to me, and I give you the like in return.” Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition be-tween transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

1936, Algeria

Fashion icon Yves Saint-Laurent (1 August 1936 – 1 June 2008) is born in Oran, Algeria. After working under Christian Dior, Laurent assumed control of Dior’s house of fashion in 1957 upon Dior’s death. While his homosexuality was widely known in the fashion world, it was not until 1991 that Laurent spoke publicly about it.

1939

Frances V. Rummell (a.k.a Diana Frederics) (1907-1969) published an autobiography called Diana: A Strange Autobiography. It was the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in which two women end up happy together. Rummell was an educator and a teacher of French at Stephens College. This autobiography was published with a note saying, “The publishers wish it expressly understood that this is a true story, the first of its kind ever offered to the general reading public.”

1961

Sixteen men attend the first meeting of the Mattachine Society in Washington D.C. at the Haywood-Adams Hotel. The FBI learned of the meeting and began tracking the group.

1966

Three years before Stonewall, gay and transgender customers rioted at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco in response to continued police harassment. It was one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. It also marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco. The 1960s was a critical time period for sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities—social movements which honed in on civil rights and sexual liberation came into fruition, and even churches such as the Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, began reaching out to the transgender community. Still, many police officers resisted this change and continued to abuse and ostracize transgender people. This simultaneous rise in support for transgender rights on one side, and the unwillingness to accept these new ideas on the other, created the strain that would fuel the riot at Compton’s Cafeteria in the summer of 1966 in which a transgender woman resisted arrest by throwing coffee at a police officer. Drag queens poured into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags.

1976

UCLA releases a study that finds that lesbian mothers’ sexual orientations do not influence the sexual orientations of their children.

1981, Canada

Vancouver Mayor Mike Harcourt, fulfilling an election promise, proclaims Gay Unity Week.

1983

The U.S. House of Representatives holds hearings on the government’s response to AIDS. They conclude that the Reagan administration has been negligent and that funding has been inadequate.

1988

New York governor Mario Cuomo blasts the Republican-controlled state senate during a news conference for excluding sexual orientation from a hate-crimes bill. “Gays make a stronger case than anybody in terms of need for this legislation, based on episodes – ugly, cruel, violent, dangerous episodes.”

1988

The Library Board of Trustees votes to allow the book Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden to remain on the shelves of the Rockingham County, N.C. libraries. The book is about a lesbian relationship between two seven-teen-year-olds.

1991, UK

The first issue of Queer Reality, a magazine produced by the UK organization OutRage, is published.

1992

UCLA researchers Dr. Laura Allen and Dr. Robert Gorski publish their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the anterior commissure, a group of nerve cells in the brain, is larger in gay men than in women or heterosexual men.

1995, Zimbabwe

After refusing to allow the Gay and Lesbian Association of Zimbabwe to exhibit at a human rights book fair, President Robert Mugabe opens the fair with an attack on lesbians and gay men, saying they are alien to African traditions and that he doesn’t believe “they have any rights at all.”

1996

Representative Jim Kolbe (born June 28, 1942) of Arizona becomes the fourth congressman and second Republican to come out after an e-mail campaign launched by San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis and others who protest his support of the Defense of Marriage Act. He divorces his wife in 1992. In 2013, he marries his partner Hector Alfonso. In 2013, Kolbe was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

2001, Germany

Angelika and Gudrun Pannier, dressed in black tuxedos and white bow ties, exchanged rings and sealed Germany’s first legal homosexual union with a kiss. The new Partnership Law allows inheritance and health insurance rights but does not give gay partnerships the same tax privileges as heterosexual marriages.

2005

The California Supreme Court rules that country clubs must offer gay members who register as domestic partners the same discounts given to married ones, a decision that could apply to other businesses such as insurance companies and mortgage lenders.

2006

The American Academy of Pediatrics journal publishes “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders,” recommending new approaches, emphasizing caution with using surgeries. Intersex people are individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies” Such variations may involve genital ambiguity and combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female.

2008

Carla Barbano and Joy Spring, of Middletown, NY, were among the first out-of-staters married in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A state study estimated that more than 30,000 out-of-state gay couples, most from New York, wed in Massachusetts over the next three years, boosting the state’s economy by $111 million.

2009, Israel

A masked gunman kills two and injures 15 at the gay youth center in Tel Aviv. The next day 20,000 people hold a spontaneous rally against homophobia in Tel Aviv. President Shimon Peres was one of the speakers. The killer was indicted in 2013.

2011

The Suquamish tribe of Washington legalizes same-sex marriage following a unanimous vote by the Suquamish Tribal Council. At least one member of a same-sex couple has to be an enrolled member of the tribe to be able to marry in the jurisdiction. The Suquamish are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American people, located in present-day Washington in the United States. They are a southern Coast Salish people. Today, most Suquamish people are enrolled in the federally recognized Suquamish Tribe, a signatory to the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. Chief Seattle, the famous leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Tribes for which the City of Seattle is named, signed the Point Elliot Treaty on behalf of both Tribes. The Suquamish Tribe owns the Port Madison Indian Reservation.

August 2

1924

Gay African American author James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) is born in Harlem. He was a best-selling author and a respected voice in both the Civil Rights movement and, as an openly gay man, the movement for gay rights as well. Baldwin challenged both the racial (Fire Next Time, 1963) and sexual (Giovanni’s Room, 1956) stereotypes of his day. He argued against mandatory heterosexuality in society. By the time of his death, Baldwin had written over twenty books including essays, fiction, drama, and poetry.

1983

Conservative Republican ex-Congressman Robert Bauman (born April 4, 1937) comes out and urges the American Bar Association to support gay rights legislation. Three years earlier he had been arrested for soliciting a 16-year-old male prostitute and lost his bid for re-election as a result. He wrote an autobiography, The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative which was published in 1986.

1984

Barbara Deming (July 23, 1917 – August 2, 1984) dies on this day. She was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change. At sixteen, she had fallen in love with a woman her mother’s age, thereafter she was openly lesbian. She was the romantic partner of writer and artist Mary Meigs (April 27, 1917 – November 15, 2002) from 1954 to 1972. Their relationship eventually floundered, partially due to Meigs’s timid attitude and Deming’s unrelenting political activism. In 1976, Deming moved to Florida with her partner artist Jane Verlaine. Verlaine painted, did figure drawings and illustrated several books written by Deming. Verlaine was a tireless advocate for abused women. Deming openly believed that it was often those whom we loved that oppressed us, and that it was necessary to re-invent non-violent struggle every day. It is said that she created a body of non-violent theory, based on action and personal experience, that centered on the potential of non-violent struggle in its application to the women’s movement. In 1975, Deming founded The Money for Women Fund to support the work of feminist artists. Deming helped administer the Fund with support from Mary Meigs. After Deming’s death in 1984, the organization was renamed as The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Today the foundation is the “oldest ongoing feminist granting agency” which “gives encouragement and grants to in-dividual feminists in the arts (writers, and visual artists).”

1986

Attorney Roy Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986), one of history’s best known gay Jews who was both homophobic and anti-Semitic, dies of complications from AIDS in Bethesda, Maryland. He had assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy during the House UnAmerican Activities hearings. Earlier in 1986, Cohn had been disbarred by the State of New York for unethical and unprofessional conduct. At one point, Barbara Walters served as his beard. He was also known for being a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor at the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and later for representing Donald Trump during his early business career.

1987

Arizona governor Evan Meecham announces during a radio call-in show that students at Arizona State University do not have the right to organize a gay and lesbian student organization. He said the existence of such organizations is a cause of homosexuality.

1988

The Madison, Wisconsin Common Council approves a bill to provide sick time and bereavement benefits to city employees who designate a family partner, and rejects a proposal forbidding discrimination against non-traditional families in public accommodations.

1988

The Ft. Collins, Colorado City Council votes to allow voters to decide if sexual orientation should be added to the city’s anti-discrimination code. It fails. It was opposed by hate-monger Rev. Pete Peters who advocated capital punishment for homosexuals.

1988

Ronald Balin ( 1935-August 2, 1988) dies of complications from AIDS at age 53. He had been the founder of the Washington D.C. chapter of The Mattachine Society and was among the first group to picket in front of the White House in 1965.

1995

U.S. President Bill Clinton signs Executive Order 12968 which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation as it establishes uniform policies for allowing government employees access to classified information. It was the first time a U.S. president signed an executive order that contained the words “sexual orientation.”

1999

The Gill Foundation announces that activist Donna Red Wing (1951 – April 16, 2018), who had been a field director for The Human Rights Campaign and a senior consultant for The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, would be joining its staff as director of the OutGiving Project. In the early 1990s Red Wing headed up Oregon’s Lesbian Community Project where she led efforts to defeat the state’s Measure 9, a ballot initiative that would have amended the Oregon constitution to ban gay-inclusive civil rights laws. Red Wing was executive director of One Iowa from 2012 to 2016 after having worked for numerous national organizations. She had served as national field director at both GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, and policy director at the Gill Foundation. She was co-chair of the Obama for America 2008 LGBT Leadership Council and Howard Dean’s outreach liaison to the LGBT community when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. It was during the Dean campaign that the Christian Coalition called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” a description she reportedly wore with pride. Red Wing was “fearless, passionate and no-nonsense,” and “a true activist by heart.” She was a “force for civil rights and human rights in all areas.” Red Wing, a native of Massachusetts, is survived by her wife and partner for more than 30 years, Sumitra.

2001

The Minuteman Council, comprised of 330 Scout troops and 18,000 Boy Scouts in Greater Boston, one of largest Boy Scout councils in Massachusetts, agrees to allow gay scoutmasters under a new “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy despite the national organization’s ban on homosexuals.

 

August 3

1916, UK

Sir Roger Casement (September 1, 1864 – August 3, 1916) was hanged for treason, specifically for a German/Irish plot during World War I to bring an uprising to Dublin. The evidence against him had been so weak that there were pleas from all over the world asking for clemency, including from U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. To stop the demands, the British government released entries from Casement’s diary showing that he was a homosexual. As a result, calls for a reprieve came to an abrupt halt, and he was executed. In 1965 Casement’s remains were returned to Dublin and afforded a state funeral; they were then re-interred in Dublin.

1954

The body of William T. Simpson, 27, an Eastern Airlines flight attendant, was found in North Miami, Florida. Four days later two suspects were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. They told police they shot him in self-defense after he made a pass at them. This caused a homophobic panic that led to police harassment of gay men and lesbians in the city for the following month. The murderers were eventually convicted of a lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

1973, Canada

The first issue of Gay Tide is published by GATE in Vancouver.

1982

Twenty-eight-year-old gay Atlantan Michael Hardwick (born 1954) is arrested on sodomy charges after police show up, enter his home, and find him in bed performing fellatio on a male companion. The police were trying to serve a warrant for a minor traffic violation. The case set up the federal sodomy laws (Bowers v. Hardwick) which was repealed in 2003.

1982

Nyla Rose (born August 3, 1982) is an American actress and professional wrestler signed to All Elite Wrestling, where she held the AEW Women’s World Championship. She also starred in the 2016 Canadian television series The Switch. Rose became the first openly transgender wrestler in history to sign with a major American promotion, in 2019. She is also the first trans wrestler to win a title in a major American promotion when she won the AEW Women’s World Championship the following year.

1988

After ignoring the first six years of the AIDS epidemic, and with a recommendation of a 13-member President’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic, President Ronald Reagan reluctantly bans discrimination in the workplace. Vice President George Bush fully endorses the commission’s recommendations.

2003

The Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies further paved the way for the Rev. V. Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947) to become the church’s first openly gay elected bishop, approving him on a 2-1 vote. Robinson was elected bishop coadjutor in 2003 and succeeded as diocesan bishop in March 2004. Before becoming bishop, he served as Canon to the Ordinary to the VIII Bishop of New Hampshire.

2007

A ruling striking down as unconstitutional Oklahoma’s refusal to recognize adoptions by same-sex couples was upheld by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

2011, France

Rudolf Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) dies at the age of 98. He was the last known homosexual holocaust survivor, having spent nearly three years in Buchenwald concentration camp where he was branded with the distinct pink triangle that the Nazis used to mark gay men. After the liberation of Buchenwald, Brazda settled in Alsace, northeastern France, in May, 1945, and lived there for the rest of his life. Although other gay men who survived the Holocaust are still alive, they were not known to the Nazis as homosexuals and were not deported as pink triangle internees. At least two gay men who were interned as Jews, for instance, have spoken publicly of their experiences.

2017

David J. Glawe (born January 13, 1970) was confirmed on August 3, 2017, by the U. S. Senate and sworn in by President Trump. He became the highest ranking out gay official in United States history as the Under Secretary for Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security. He reported directly to both the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence. On June 28, 2017, during his televised Senate confirmation hearing, he introduced his husband and two children. On June 1, 2020, David Glawe became the president and CEO of the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

 

August 4

1826

Thomas A. McKenny writes a letter describing the men-women of the Chippeway tribe. “…so completely do they succeed, and even to the voice, as to make it impossible to distinguish them from the women.”

1875, Denmark

Danish singer, actor, storyteller and playwright Hans Christian Andersen (April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) dies at age 70. Andersen authored, among many other works, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Princess and the Pea. Many believe that rather than being heterosexual or homosexual, Andersen had romantic feelings for both genders but probably remained celibate his whole life.

1921, UK

The British House of Commons votes 148 to 53 to penalize lesbians in the same way as male homosexuals. The bill is sent to the House of Lords where it is rejected.

1982, France

In France, the age of consent for same-sex acts is lowered from 21 to 15, the same as for heterosexual acts.

1983

The 8th Annual National Reno Gay Rodeo opens despite threats that snipers would shoot at spectators, and claims by the Pro-Family Christian Coalition that the event was an orgy riddled with disease and that gays are un-American. 20,000 people attended the opening ceremonies.

1987

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes unanimously to expand the use of involuntary detention for people with AIDS who knowingly expose others to infection. The vote was in response to a man who gave blood knowing he was infected with HIV.

1987

Governor Mario Cuomo of New York announces a program establishing anonymous confidential HIV testing as an effort to get an idea of the prevalence of HIV infection in New York.

1988

A sold-out gospel show organized by Dionne Warwick and Rev. Carl Bean draws 6,500 people and raises $150,000 for the Los Angeles Minority AIDS Project. Performers included Al Jarreau and Patti LaBelle.

1993

Gay Rights National Lobby (GRNL) executive director Steven Endean (August 6, 1948 – August 4, 1993) dies of AIDS related illnesses. GRNL and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) were among the earliest organizations to engage in lobbying legislators for lesbian and gay rights. Steve Endean is credited with establishing the Human Rights Campaign Fund (now the Human Rights Campaign) in 1980 and served as its first Executive Director. In 1971, Endean founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (later Gay Rights Legislative Committee), and became the first gay and lesbian rights lobbyist in Minnesota a year later. In the 1970s, he served as co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force.

1995

U.S. President Bill Clinton signs an executive order forbidding the federal government from denying security clearances on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation. Administration spokespersons advise reporters, however, that individuals ought still be denied clearance if they are in the closet and fear exposure to family or friends.

2007

Accountant Keith Durbin became Tennessee’s first out gay elected official by winning a seat on the Nashville City Council.

2007, Italy

Rome marks the opening of its first “Gay Street” with flags, banners and pro-tests amid a row over a male couple who claimed they were detained by police for kissing near the Colosseum. Campaigners welcomed a 325-yard zone in the center of the city, filled with shops and bars, as an area where gays can “feel at ease,” after days of heated debate in predominantly Roman Catholic Italy over the kissing incident.

2010, Mexico

Mexico’s Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in an 8-2 vote

2010

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker (born 1944) served as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 1989 to 2011. Walker presided over the original trial in Hollingsworth v. Perry, where he found California’s Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional because it violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and is unconstitutional. On September 29, 2010, Walker announced he would retire and return to private practice. He retired at the end of February 2011. On April 6, 2011, Walker told reporters that he is gay and has been in a relationship with a male doctor for about ten years. He was the first known gay person to serve as a United States federal judge, though he did not publicly confirm his sexual orientation until after retiring from the federal bench.

2010

California’s Proposition 8 is declared unconstitutional in federal district court.

2019

After a performance of The Prom at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, Broadway’s first-known onstage wedding occurred on that stage; it was between two women. After a performance of the show on Saturday, Armelle Kay Harper, a script coordinator on the show, and Jody Kay Smith (an actor and singer who recently worked with The Prom‘s musical director) said their “I dos.” The ceremony, for which audience members were invited to stay to witness and become a part of history, was officiated by The Prom’s co-book writer Bob Martin.

 

August 6

390, Italy

Valentinian, Arcadius, and Theodosius wrote to the Roman city vicar that they cannot tolerate Rome “being stained any longer by the contamination of male effeminacy…” They call for death by fire.

1637

The Plymouth, Massachusetts court finds John Allexander and Thomas Roberts guilty of “often spending their seed one upon the other” though they are not charged with sodomy. Both were severely whipped, and Alexander was branded on the shoulder and banished from the colony. Although the colony had made sodomy punishable by death the previous year, it required penetration that was not proven in this case. On August 6, 1673 Plymouth Colony convicted two men of “Lewd Behavior and Unclean Carriage.” John Allexander [was] found to have been “formerly notoriously guilty that way,” alluring others.  He was sentenced by the Court to be severely whipped, and burnt in the shoulder with a hot iron, and to be perpetually banished from New Plymouth. Thomas Roberts was severely whipped and returned to his master. Though Allexander and Roberts had long histories of sodomy in Plymouth, they were spared capital punishment. Allexander, a property-owning man, and Roberts, an indentured servant, not only violated sexual morals, but also transgressed class distinctions. Their punishment, banishment for Allexander and the denial of future land ownership for Roberts, was approximately the same as that of people who participated in illicit sexual acts between men and women.

1862

Albert Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915) enlists in the 95^th Illinois Infantry and is assigned to Company G of the Union Army. Jennie Hodgers adopted the identity of a man before enlisting and maintained it for most of the remainder of her life. She became famous as one of a number of women who served as men during the Civil War, although the consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity has prompted some contemporary scholars to suggest that Cashier was a trans man. In 1911, a physician discovered the secret during a hospital stay but did not disclose the information. On May 5, 1911, because Cashier was moved to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois. During this stay, Albert was visit-ed by many of fellow soldiers from 95^th Regiment. Cashier was moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane in March, 1914. Attendants at the Watertown State Hospital discovered that Albert was female during a bath, at which point –at age 70 – Cashier was made to wear women’s clothes again after fifty years. Cashier’s tombstone reads “Albert D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill. Inf.” Cashier’s birth name of Jennie Hodgers was discovered nine years later. A second tombstone with both names was placed beside the original.

1868

Florida revises its sodomy law, making sodomy punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

1885, UK

British Parliament votes to make homosexual acts a criminal offense.

1913, Germany

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 – May 14, 1935) was an outspoken advocate for sexual minorities. He crusaded for the repeal of sodomy laws in Germany and founded two organizations for homosexuals, one of which was the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. On this day he spoke at the International Medical Conference in London and met with British gays to discuss forming a London branch of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. Hirschfeld was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Historian Dustin Goltz characterized the Scientific Humanitarian Committee as having carried out “the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights.”

1928

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) is born. He was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silk-screening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67). Warhol’s lovers included poet John Giorno (born December 4, 1936), photographer Billy Name (February 22, 1940 – July 18, 2016), production de-signer Charles Lisanby (January 22, 1924 – August 23, 2013), and Jon Gould. His boyfriend of 12 years was Jed Johnson (December 30, 1948 – July 17, 1996) whom he met in 1968 and who later achieved fame as an interior designer.

1930

Author and GLBT historian Martin Duberman (born August 6, 1930) is born on this date. He is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist, and Professor of History Emeritus at Herbert Lehman College. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War, and was jailed, as a member of REDRESS, for a sit-in protest on the floor of the U.S. Senate. His numerous essays The Black Struggle, The Crisis of the Universities, American Foreign Policy, and Gender and Sexuality have been collected in two volumes of his essays: The Uncompleted Past and Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion, 1964-1999. He came out as a gay man in an essay (December 10, 1972) in The New York Times. A founder and keynote speaker of the Gay Academic Union (1973), he later founded and served as first director (1986-1996) of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School. In 1997 he edited two volumes, A Queer World and Queer Representations containing selections from the Center’s conferences. He was also a member of the founding boards of the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and Queers for Economic Justice. Duberman’s most recent novel, Jews Queers Germans, was published by Seven Stories Press in March, 2017.

1936, UK

Mark Weston (born Mary Louise Edith Weston, March 30, 1905 – January 29, 1978), nicknamed “the Devonshire Wonder,” was one of the best British field athletes of the 1920s. He was a national champion in the women’s javelin throw and discus throw in 1929 and won the women’s shotput title in 1925, 1928 and 1929. At the 1926 Women’s World Games he finished sixth in the two-handed shot put, where the final result was a sum of two best throws with the right hand and with the left hand. On this day, the interview article The Girl who Became a Bridegroom is published. Weston had a genital abnormality and was assigned as female at birth and raised as a girl. In April–May 1936, Weston underwent a series of gender changing operations at the Charing Cross Hospital. He changed his first name to Mark, retired from competitions and later worked as a masseur. In July, 1936, Weston married Alberta Matilda Bray and they had three children. Following his example, his elder sibling Harry (previously Hilda) also changed his gender and name in the 1930s. Harry hanged himself during a depression in 1942. Mark Weston died in the Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth in 1978.

1938

Out actor and director Paul Bartel (August 6, 1938 – May 13, 2000) is born in Brooklyn, New York. After working as a unit director for Roger Corman, Bartel broke out on his own, directing horror/camp classics such as Deathrace 2000 (1975) and Eating Raoul (1982).

1948

Stephen Robert “Steve” Endean (August 6, 1948 – August 4, 1993) is born. He was an American gay rights activist, first in Minnesota, then nationally. He was born in Davenport, Iowa, and came to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota from 1968-1972, majoring in political science. In 1971, Endean founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (later Gay Rights Legislative Committee), and became the first gay and lesbian rights lobbyist in Minnesota a year later. Along with the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights and Democratic legislators, Endean opposed trans-inclusion and public accommodations in a statewide gay rights bill, giving as their reason the belief that the bill would not pass with such inclusion. In the 1970s, he served as co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force (later NGLTF). In 1978, he became the director of the Gay Rights National Lobby. In 1980, he started the Human Rights Campaign Fund (later just HRC) and served as its first Executive Director. In 1985, Endean was diagnosed with AIDS. After this, increasing health problems led to semi-retirement. In 1991, he created the National Endorsement Campaign, an effort to get straight political leaders and media figures to endorse LGBT rights. Also in 1991, he published his memoir, Into the Mainstream. In 1993, he was present in a wheelchair at the Minnesota State Capitol when the Legislature passed the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which banned LGBT discrimination in housing, employment, and education. Endean died of AIDS-related complications on August 4, 1993.

1957

James Edward McGreevey (born August 6, 1957) is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 52nd Governor of New Jersey from 2002 until his resignation in 2004. In early 2002, McGreevey was criticized for appointing his secret lover, Israeli national Golan Cipel, as homeland security adviser even though Cipel lacked experience or other qualifications for the position. Cipel resigned but threats from his lawyers about sexual harassment lawsuits prompted McGreevey to announce on August 12, 2004, that he was gay and would resign the governorship, effective November 15, 2004. This made McGreevey the first openly gay governor in United States history. His partner is financier Mark O’Donnell (born 2005).

1992, Canada

The Ontario Court of Appeals issues a ruling that voided the Canadian military’s ban on gays and lesbians.

1994

The Japanese-American Citizens League votes 50-38 at its meeting in San Francisco in favor of supporting same-sex marriage.

 

August 7

1885, England

The Labouchere Amendment is passed in England. Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment, made “gross indecency” a crime in the United Kingdom. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy (meaning, in this context, anal intercourse) could not be proven. The penalty of life imprisonment for sodomy (until 1861 it had been death) was also so harsh that successful prosecutions were rare. The new law was much more enforceable. It was also meant to raise the age of consent for heterosexual intercourse. It was repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalized homosexual behavior. It was used in 1895 to convict Oscar Wilde which sent him for two years’ hard labor in prison.

1931

Clyde Hicks (September 5, 1910 – December 5, 1993) of North Carolina was stationed in Hawaii, arrested on sodomy charges and sentenced to six years in prison. He was transferred to Alcatraz where he was put into solitary confinement for passing a note to another man. He was released in 1935. He died in Durham, North Carolina, on December 5, 1993.

1981

Black and White Men Together members begin weekly demonstrations outside the Ice Palace, a popular disco in New York City, in protest of the club’s allegedly racist door policies. The National Association of Black and White Men Together, Inc. (NABWMT) – a multiracial organization for all people – has a network of chapters across the United States focused on LGBT and racial equality. It was founded in May, 1980, in San Francisco as a consciousness-raising organization and support group for gay men in multiracial relationships. NABWMT has two major goals: combating racism within the LGBT community and combating homophobia in the general public. Its founder was Michael Smith.

1986

Katie Sowers (born August 7, 1986) is an American football assistant coach. She was an offensive assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers from 2017 to 2021. Sowers began her American football career playing in the Women’s Football Alliance. Upon her retirement, Sowers joined the National Football League in 2016 as a coach for the Atlanta Falcons training camp. Before the start of the 2017 NFL season, Sowers came out publicly as a lesbian and became the first openly LGBT coach in the National Football League. Sowers was refused a volunteer coaching position at Goshen College in 2009 because of her sexual orientation; in 2020 the president of the college apologized to her for rejecting her. In 2021, she became the first female and first openly gay offensive assistant in a Super Bowl.

1986

A law prohibiting insurance companies in Washington, D.C. from discriminating against people who test positive for HIV goes into effect.

1987, UK

Over 100 gay men and lesbians gather at Piccadilly Square in London for a kiss-in to protest at Piccadilly Circus in defiance of the Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized private sex acts between consenting adults but left public displays of same-sex affection a misdemeanor.

1987

Whispers, a gay bar, opens in Saginaw, Michigan. The owners soon faced challenges such as rocks thrown through the windows, derogatory terms spray painted on the building, bomb threats, death threats, and vandalism of patrons’ cars. The owner was forced to close because of the attacks.

1987

Ronald Reagan did not say the word AIDS until this day in 1987. By then, 37,000 Americans had been diagnosed and 21,000 Americans had died.

1988

Rallies are held in 21 American cities for Free Sharon Kowalski day. Kowalski was severely disabled in a car accident in 1983. Her parents barred her lover, Karen Thompson, from visiting her, but Karen sued and won. In re Guardianship of Kowalski, 478 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991) is a Minnesota Court of Appeals case that established a lesbian‘s partner as her legal guardian after Sharon Kowalski became incapacitated. Because the case was contested by Kowalski’s parents and family and initially resulted in the partner being excluded for several years from visiting Kowalski, the gay community celebrated the final resolution in favor of the partner as a victory for gay rights.

1989

Under the headline “Peek-a-Boo,” New York’s Outweek magazine publishes a list of 66 celebrities and public figures who are allegedly gay but closeted. The article marks the beginning of controversial “outing” by some gay activists.

1992

A New York City federal judge rejects a request to dismiss a lawsuit against three Drug Enforcement agents for an anti-gay assault against two men. DEA attorneys argue that the bias-related portions should be dismissed because the constitution does not forbid anti-gay harassment or discrimination.

1994

Two daily newspapers in York, Pennsylvania repeal a policy of refusing to run same-sex personal ads one week after the policy was implemented.

1994, Australia

Victoria police raided the Tasty Nightclub in Melbourne, strip-searching and brutalizing 463 patrons. On this day in 2014, exactly twenty years later, the Victoria Police formally apologize.

1995

African American transgender hairstylist Tyra Hunter (1970 – August 7, 1995) dies due to withheld medical care after a hit and run accident. Paramedics in Washington, D.C. began treating the injured Tyra when they discovered that she was a pre-op trans woman. They withdrew medical care and made transphobic remarks. The ER staff at DC General Hospital subsequently provided dilatory and inadequate care. Evidence shows Tyra would have survived had the medical care not been withdrawn. On December 11, 1998, a jury awarded Hunter’s mother, Margie, $2.9 million after finding the District of Columbia, through its employees in the D.C. Fire Department and doctors at D.C. General, liable under the D.C. Human Rights Act and for negligence and medical malpractice for causing Tyra’s death.

1996

The Northampton County (North Carolina) board of commissioners vote to pass a resolution describing homosexuality as incompatible with community standards.

1998

The U.S. House of Representatives votes 227-192 to prevent unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, from adopting children in Washington, DC.

2003

Hate-monger Rev. Jerry Falwell announces that he is putting aside everything to devote his time to the passage of a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

2003, Singapore

Singapore’s Gay Pride event is expanded to three days. The event was named Nation 03. This was the final year that the event was held in Singapore. The government officially banned the Pride celebration.

2007, Iran

Iran banned a leading daily newspaper for the second time within a year for publishing an interview with a woman alleged to be a lesbian activist.

2020, Poland

Three LGBT activists were protesting the anti-LGBT policies of President Andrzej Duda by hanging pride flags off statues of Christ at the Basilica of the Holy Cross, the astronomer Copernicus and the famous Warsaw mermaid statue. Polish police charged them with desecrating monuments and “offending religious feelings.” President Duda said LGBT rights was more harmful than communism.

 

August 8

1922, Austria

Rudolf “Rudi” Gernreich (August 8, 1922 – April 21, 1985) is born. He was an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing designs are generally regarded as the most innovative and dynamic fashion of the 1960s. He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom, producing clothes that followed the natural form of the female body, freeing them from the constraints of high fashion. He consciously pushed the boundaries of acceptable fashion and used his designs as an opportunity to comment on social issues and to expand society’s perception of what was acceptable. Gernreich became a U.S. citizen in 1943. He met Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) in July 1950, and the two became lovers. They were founding members of the early activities of the Society. In 1951 Gernreich was arrested and convicted in a police homosexual entrapment case, which was common in Southern California at that time. In 1953, Gernreich met Oreste Pucciani (April 7, 1916 – April 28, 1999), future chair of the UCLA French department, who was a key figure in bringing Jean-Paul Sartre to the attention of American educators. Oreste Pucciani (April 7, 1916 – April 28, 1999) was also a pivotal figure in the gay rights movement. The two men kept their relationship private as Gernreich believed public acknowledgment of his homosexuality would negatively affect his fashion business. Oreste Pucciani, Gernreich’s partner for 31 years, endowed a trust in their name for the American Civil Liberties Union in 1988.

1924, Germany

Die Freundin magazine (The Girlfriend) was a popular Weimar-era German lesbian magazine published from 1924 to 1933. The magazine was published in Berlin by the Bund für Menschenrecht (translated variously as League for Human Rights or Federation for Human Rights and abbreviated as BfM), run by gay activist and publisher Friedrich Radszuweit (15 April 1876 – 15 March 1932). The Bund was an organization for homosexuals and had a membership of 48,000 in the 1920s.This magazine, together with other lesbian magazines of that era such as Frauenliebe (Love of Women), represented a part-educational and part-political perspective, and were assimilated within the local culture. Die Freundin published short stories and novellas. Renowned contributors were pioneers of the lesbian movement like writer and activist Selli Engler (28 September 1899 – 1982) and “transvestite” and lesbian activist Lotte Hahm (1890-1967). The magazine also published advertisements of lesbian nightspots, and women could place their personal advertisements for meeting other lesbians. Women’s groups related to the Bund für Menschenrecht and Die Freundin which offered a culture of readings, performances, and discussions as alternative to the bars. This magazine was usually critical of women for what they viewed as “attending only to pleasure”, with a 1929 article urging women “Don’t go to your entertainments while thousands of our sisters mourn their lives in gloomy despair.” Die Freundin, along with other gay and lesbian periodicals, was shut down by the Nazis after they came to power in 1933. But even before the rise of the Nazis, the magazine faced legal troubles during the Weimar Republic. From 1928 to 1929, the magazine was shut down by the government under a law that was supposed to protect youth from “trashy and obscene” literature. During these years, the magazine operated under the title Ledige Frauen (Single Women).

1951

Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) is born. He was an American journalist and author. He worked as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations, becoming the first openly gay reporter with a gay ‘beat’ in the American mainstream press. Shilts wrote three best-selling, widely acclaimed books. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1987), and Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf(1993) which examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military. Shilts bequeathed 170 cartons of papers, notes, and research files to the local history section of the San Francisco Public Library. Shilts died of complications from AIDS on February 17, 1994.

1973

The American Bar Association passes a resolution urging the repeal of sodomy laws.

1978, UK

Representatives of 17 gay (predominantly male) and European organizations from 14 countries found the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) at a meeting hosted by the English Campaign for Homosexual Equality in Coventry, England. The ILGA is an international organization bringing together more than 750 LGBTI groups from around the world. It continues to be active in campaigning for LGBT rights and intersex human rights on the international human rights and civil rights scene, and regularly petitions the United Nations and governments. ILGA is represented in 110+ countries across the world. ILGA is accredited by the United Nations and has been granted NGO consultative status. It was originally called the International Gay Association; the name was changed in 1986.

1980, Canada

The General Council of the United Church of Canada, the largest Protestant denomination in country, meets in Halifax and gives approval to the “In God’s Image… Male and Female,” study document which advocates acceptance of gays and lesbians into ministry and which says premarital and extramarital sex are acceptable under certain circumstances.

1983

Bobbi Campbell became known as the “KS Poster Boy.”  He appears with his partner on the cover of Newsweek on August 8, 1983. Robert Boyle “Bobbi” Campbell Jr., January 28, 1952 – August 15, 1984) was a public health nurse and an early AIDS activist. In September 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma when that was a proxy for an AIDS diagnosis. He was the first to come out publicly as a person living with what was to become known as AIDS. In 1983, he co-wrote the Denver Principles, the defining manifesto of the People with AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement, which he had co-founded the previous year. Appearing on the cover of Newsweek and being interviewed on nation-al news reports, Campbell raised the national profile of the AIDS crisis among heterosexuals and provided a recognizable, optimistic, human face of the epidemic for affected communities.

1984

Greg Louganis (born January 29, 1960) wins his first Olympic gold medal for the Men’s 3-meter springboard in Los Angeles. A few days later he wins gold for the 10-meter platform. He does it again in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. He has been called both “the greatest American diver” and “probably the greatest diver in history”. He doesn’t speak about being gay until a 1995 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

1986

A group of people who tried to collect signatures for the recall of Durham, N.C. mayor Wib Gulley for declaring June 22-June 29 Anti-Discrimination Week admitted that they were short by 6,500 signatures.

1991

Tom Duane (born January 30, 1955), an openly gay candidate in a close race for a New York Ccity West Side Council seat, reveals he is HIV+. He served in the New York State Senate from 1999 to 2012. Duane was the first openly gay member of the New York State Senate and the only such member during his tenure there. He was also their only openly HIV+ member. Duane was the lead sponsor of same-sex union legislation in the New York State Senate. Duane’s partner of 25 years is actor Louis Webre.

1992

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis orders an AIDS prevention organization to vacate their office space in a church-run facility because they distributed condoms.

1996, UK

A BBC documentary airs which presents the case of a man who died in the 1960’s as a result of malpractice during aversion therapy to “cure” his homosexuality.

2000

The U.S. Women’s Basketball League consistently distances itself from the topic of lesbians but Sue Wicks (born November 26, 1966), one of the first players to come out, says in this day’s Village Voice: “I can’t say how many players are gay, but it would be easier to count the straight ones.” Susan Joy “Sue” Wicks is a former basketball player in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) who played with the New York Liberty from 1997 to 2002. In July 2006, she became the Assistant Coach for the women’s basketball team at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. After leaving her assistant coaching position at Saint Francis College, Wicks said that she felt that being an out lesbian was an overwhelming liability in getting a job as a women’s basketball coach. She is one of only two Rutgers women’s basketball players to have her jersey retired.

2001, Singapore

Fridae.com (a major GLBT website in Singapore) organizes the country’s first large-scale LGBT event at Sentosa’s Fantasy Island. Sentosa is a popular island resort in Singapore, visited by some twenty million people a year. Attractions include a 2 km (1.2 mi) long sheltered beach, Fort Siloso, two golf courses, the Merlion, 14 hotels, and the Resorts World Sentosa, featuring the theme park Universal Studios Singapore.

2005

New York City police reveal there had been nearly 100 hundred attacks on gays in the city during the summer of 2005.

 

August 9

1858, Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire decriminalizes consensual homosexuality.

1858

Raphael Gallenti, a sailor from Malta, is thought to be the first person to be arrested for sodomy in California. He served a five-year prison sentence and was released on this day.

1958

Amanda Bearse (born August 9, 1958) is an American actress, director and comedian best known for her role as neighbor Marcy Rhoades (Seasons 1-5) and Marcy D’Arcy (Seasons 5-11) on Married… with Children, a sitcom that aired in the United States from 1987 to 1997, and for her performance in the 1985 horror film Fright Night opposite William Ragsdale. She has been publicly out as a lesbian since 1993 and has an adopted daughter.

1963

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer and actress, one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. Houston released seven studio albums and two soundtrack albums, all of which have been certified diamond, multi-platinum, platinum, or gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Her crossover appeal on the popular music charts as well as her prominence on MTV influenced several African American female artists. Houston’s pal and purported girlfriend, Robyn Crawford, said Houston was dogged by media speculation over her sexuality. Former husband Bobby Brown, however, wrote in his 2016 autobiography that he knew his wife was bisexual. Those claims were corroborated by Crawford herself in 2019’s A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston in which she revealed that she’d been in a relationship with The Bodyguard star in the early 1980s. Houston. Houston called off the romance after she signed with Arista Records in 1983, but the pair remained confidantes.

1967, UK

English playwright Joe Orton is murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell. John Kingsley “Joe” Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967) was an English playwright and author. His public career was short but prolific, lasting from 1964 until his death three years later. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is sometimes used to refer to work characterized by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. On August 9, 1967, Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home at 25 Noel Road, Islington, London, with nine hammer blows to the head, and then died by suicide with an overdose of 22 Nembutal tablets washed down with the juice from canned grapefruit. Investigators determined that Halliwell had died first because Orton’s sheets were still warm.

1970, Israel

Sharon Afek (born August 10, 1970) became the Israel Defense Forces’ first openly gay major general, making him the first member of high command and the most senior Israeli military officer to come out.

1972

The Ohio Secretary of State refuses to grant articles of incorporation to the Greater Cincinnati Gay Society. Two years later, the Ohio Supreme Court upholds the decision, stating that even though homosexual acts are now legal in Ohio, “the promotion of homosexuality as a valid lifestyle is contrary to the public policy of the State of Ohio.”

1973

Donald Cawley, New York City police commissioner, issues a directive prohibiting police officers from using derogatory terms to refer to homosexuals.

1986

Gay Games II opened in San Francisco on this day. The games ran until August 17, 1986. The games were billed as “3482 Athletes (40% women), from 251 cities in 17 countries, participating in 17 sporting events.”

1990

Sarah McBride is the first transgender state senator elected in the United States. Sarah McBride (born August 9, 1990) is an American activist and politician who is a Democratic member of the Delaware Senate since January 2021. She is currently the National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign. After winning the September 15, 2020 Democratic primary in the safely-Democratic 1st Delaware State Senate district, she won in the November 2020 election. She is the first transgender state senator in the country, making her the highest-ranking transgender official in United States history. McBride is largely credited with the passage of legislation in Delaware banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations. In July 2016, she was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention in American history. In 2018, McBride released the book Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality.

1995

While attending a June demonstration against racial inequality and police brutality in New Orleans, Justice Smith (born August 9, 1995), the Pokemon: Detective Pikachu star came out as queer. The actor posted a video on Instagram showing him at the protest with his boyfriend, Queen Sugar actor Nicholas Ashe. “As a Black queer man myself, I was disappointed to see certain people eager to say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ but hold their tongue when Trans/Queer was added,” he wrote in the accompanying caption. “I want to reiterate this sentiment. If your revolution does not include Black Queer voices, it is anti-Black.”

1996

Oregon judge Stephen Gallagher Jr. rules that the state must offer benefits to the partners of gay state employees. Lon Mabon, director of the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance which challenges the governor’s executive order to grant benefits, said the ruling aids in the systematic destruction of the whole notion of family.

1998, UK

Dr. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, issues an apology to GLB Anglicans for the pain they experienced as a result of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops’ resolution against homosexuality.

2000

Dr. Saul Levin was appointed president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA). GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality is an international organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and ally (LGBT) healthcare professionals and students of all disciplines including physicians, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, nurses, behavioral health specialists, researchers and academicians, and their supporters in the United States and internationally. Founded in 1981 as the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, GLMA “came out of the closet” and changed its name in 1994 to the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. GLMA changed its name again in 2012 to GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality.

2004

A domestic partner registry opens in Miami Beach, Florida.

2005, Nepal

Nepal police begin rounding up transsexuals in a sweep of the capital, Katmandu.

2007

Democrat presidential candidates appear at a forum sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. It was televised on LOGO and streamed online. Most candidates said they approved civil unions but not same-sex marriage. Six Democrats participate in the forum including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama while all Republican candidates decline.

 

August 10

1900, France

Rene Crevel (August 10, 1900 – June 18, 1935) is born in Paris. He was a French writer involved with the surrealist movement. The only out bisexual member of the Dada movement of artists, he was the founder of a number of short-lived literary magazines. His poetry was filled with death and castration themes. He told anyone who would listen he had been mutilated as an infant by being circumcised.

1914

A Florida Enchantment, written by Archibald Clavering Gunter (October 25, 1847 –February 24, 1907), was a silent film depicting homosexuality and cross-dressing,. It was released on this day. The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name. The film is also known for its use of blackface antics, an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan Somerville’s Queering the Color Line. Since its inclusion in Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet, the film has increasingly been seen as one of the earliest film representations of homosexuality and cross-dressing in American culture.

1986, New Zealand

The Homosexual Law Reform Act goes into effect decriminalizing consensual sex between homosexual men.

1989

Keith Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) reveals he is HIV positive. Prices for his art soar as collectors anticipate his death. He was an American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death, sexuality, and war. In 2006, Haring was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of LGBT History Month.

2011, Czech Republic

Several thousand people march through Prague in the Czech capital’s first gay pride festival. The event was peaceful though there were some 300 vocal opponents.

August 11

1862, France

Sarah Bernhardt (October 23, 1844 – March 26, 1923) makes her acting debut as a French stage actress who stars in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th century, including La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L’Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also plays male roles, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Rostand called her “the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture” while Hugo praised her “golden voice.” She made several theatrical tours around the world and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures. While she had many male lovers, she had a 25-year relationship with Louise Abbéma (1853–1927), a French impressionist painter some nine years her junior. In 1990, a painting by Abbém depicting the two on a boat ride on the lake in the bois de Boulogne was donated to the Comédie-Française. The accompanying letter stated that the painting was “Peint par Louise Abbéma, le jour anniversaire de leur liaison amoureuse”(loosely translated: “Painted by Louise Abbéma on the anniversary of their love affair”).

1921

The play The March Hare opens. It includes several same-sex innuendoes, both male and female. The March Hare is a lost 1921 American silent comedy romance film produced and distributed by Adolph Zukor‘s Realart Pictures Corporation. It stared Bebe Daniels.

1977

The Austin (Texas) City Council voted 4-3 to accept a Fair Housing Ordinance that does not include lesbians and gays.

1979, Canada

A rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, protests police inaction in dealing with street violence against gays.

1981

Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935–May 27, 2020), whose 1978 novel Faggots takes gay men to task for promiscuity in pre-AIDS New York, calls a meeting of concerned men in his Greenwich Village apartment. It is a precursor to the organization that will become the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the 1969 film Women in Love (1969) and earned an Academy Award nomination for his work. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his Faggots which earned mixed reviews and emphatic denunciations from elements within the gay community for Kramer’s one-sided portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.

1992

The American Bar Association’s House of Delegates votes 318 to 123 to grant affiliate status to the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association.

1992

During a television interview, President George H. W. Bush said that if one of his grandchildren were gay he would love the child but tell him homosexuality is not normal and discourage him from working for gay rights.

1994, Columbia

The government of Colombia issues a protest against the display of a painting by Chilean artist Juan Davila in London. The painting presents nineteenth-century South American independence hero Simon Bolivar as a transgender.

1995, South Korea

South Korea marks its first Pride Celebration with a march and other events in Seoul.

1995

Robert H. Eichberg (1945-August 12, 1995) was a psychologist, activist and author who helped establish National Coming Out Day, a day of observance encouraging gay and lesbian people to reveal their homosexuality, Dr. Eichberg died of complications from AIDS. In 1990, a book by Dr. Eichberg entitled Coming Out: An Act of Love was published by E. P. Dutton & Company. He and his partner, Jon Landstrom, and Jean O’Leary (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005) co-founded National Coming Out Day in 1988. O’Leary was an openly lesbian political leader and long-time activist from New York,  and was at the time the head of the National Gay Rights Advocates in Los Angeles. LGBT activists, including Eichberg and O’Leary, did not want to respond defensively to anti-LGBT action because they believed it would be predictable. This caused them to found NCOD in order to maintain positivity and celebrate coming out. The date of October 11 was chosen because it was the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. In 1978, Eichberg founded The Experience, a community-based workshop that inspired people to reveal their homosexuality to family and friends.

1998

The United Methodist Judicial Council rules that the Social Principles rule prohibiting Methodist ministers from officiating at same-sex unions would have the force of church law.

1998

The Raleigh News and Observer runs an article on the ex-gay debate. Psychiatrist Dr. William Byne points out that after three decades of therapy, castration, hormone injections, shock treatment, and brain surgery, if it were possible to reverse sexual orientation, it would have happened.

2010

Degrassi: The Next Generation introduces its first transgender character. Jordan Todosey stars as Adam Torres.

2012, Lebanon

A protest is held in reaction to 36 men being subjected to an examination of the anus to see if penetration has occurred (which is discredited as inaccurate). The men had been arrested at a porn cinema and were forced to pay for the test. At the time, this was the largest LGBT protest in the Arab world.

 

August 11

1642, France

Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq Mars is beheaded for treason at Lyon. Cardinal Richelieu introduced King Louis XIII (September 27, 1601 – May 14, 1643) to the Marquis. Louis took him as his lover. The Marquis plotted against the king and was executed when the king discovered his plans. Louis XIII was married to Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain. There is no evidence that Louis kept mistresses (a distinction that earned him the title “Louis the Chaste“), but persistent rumors insinuated that he may have been homosexual or at least bisexual. His interests as a teenager increasingly focused on his male courtiers, and he quickly developed an intense emotional attachment to his favorite, Charles d’Albert, although there is no clear evidence of a physical sexual relationship. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux, drawing from rumors told to him by a critic of the King (the Marquise de Rambouillet), explicitly speculated in his Historiettes about what happened in the king’s bed. A further liaison with an equerry, François de Baradas, ended when the latter lost favor fighting a duel after duelling had been forbidden by royal decree. Louis XIII was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France from 1610 to 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown. Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de’ Medici, acted as regent during his minority.

1833, London

Captain Nicholas Nicholls, 50, is sentenced to death on a charge of sodomy. A newspaper said, “Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was one of the unnatural gang to which the late Captain Beauclerk belonged, (and which the latter gentleman put an end to his existence), was convicted on the clearest evidence at Croydon, on Saturday last, of the capital offence of Sodomy; the prisoner was perfectly calm and unmoved throughout the trial, and even when sentence of death was passed upon him.”

1859

Lesbian Katharine Lee Bates, (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929), an American poet, is born. She is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful. She had graduated from Wellesley then became a professor there. Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books, and children’s books. She popularized Mrs. Claus in her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride from the collection Sunshine and other Verses for Children (1889). Bates never married. She lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College School Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman’s death in 1915. Bates was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In 2012, she was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.

1880, UK

Radclyffe Hall (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1943) is born in Bournemouth, England. She was an English poet and author and is best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In 1915 Hall fell in love with Una Troubridge (1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, and the mother of a young daughter. In 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. The relationship lasted until Hall’s death though Hall was involved in affairs with other women throughout the years. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigrée and poet Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her which Troubridge painfully tolerated.

1907

Blues singer Gladys Bentley is born (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) to a Trinidadian mother and an African American father. She was an American blues singer, pianist and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry’s Clam House in New York in the 1920s, as a black lesbian cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem’s Ubangi Club where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men’s clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. She relocated to southern California where she was billed as “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Player” and the “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs.” She was frequently harassed for wearing men’s clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career (a “bulldagger” in the parlance of the day) and even once told a gossip columnist she had married a white woman (whose identity remains unknown) in New York. However, during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married Mr. J. T. Gipson who died in 1952,the same year in which she married Charles Roberts, a cook in Los Angeles; they were married in Santa Barbara, California, and went on a honeymoon in Mexico. (Roberts denied ever marrying her.) Bentley died of pneumonia in Los Angeles in 1960, aged 52.

1968, August 12-17

The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, nicknamed NACHO, made up of delegates from 26 groups, convenes in Chicago to discuss goals and strategy. Although delegates fail to form a unified national organization, they pass a five-point “Homosexual Bill of Rights” and resolve to make “Gay Is Good” the slogan of the movement.

1977

The Fraternal Order of Police in Rhode Island pass a resolution discouraging the hiring of lesbian or gay police officers.

1992

Sharon McCracken becomes the first openly lesbian person to be licensed as a foster parent in Florida.

1993

The Kansas City, Missouri City Council votes 11-1 to approve a hate crimes bill that includes anti-gay crimes.

1993

Federal district court judge William Bassler of Newark, New Jersey rejects a challenge to the state gay rights law.

1996

Mary Fisher (born April 6, 1948) addresses the Republican convention in San Diego to remind them that AIDS is caused by infection, not immorality. She is an American political activist, artist and author. After contracting HIV from her second husband, she had become an outspoken HIV/AIDS activist for the prevention and education and for the compassionate treatment of people with HIV and AIDS. She is particularly noted for speeches before two Republican Conventions: Houston in 1992 and San Diego in 1996. The 1992 speech has been hailed as “one of the best American speeches of the 20th Century.” She is founder of a non-profit organization to fund HIV/AIDS re-search and education, the Mary Fisher Clinical AIDS Re-search and Education (CARE) Fund. Since May 2006, she has been a global emissary for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

2004

“I am a gay American.” New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey (born August 6, 1957) told a news conference that he is gay, appointed his lover, Golan Cipel, to a high government office for which he was not qualified, then re-igned from office.

2005, Japan

Kanako Otsuji (December 16, 1974), an assemblywoman, is the first politician to come out in Japan. She is a Japanese LGBT rights activist and former member of the House of Councilors of the National Diet of Japan. She was also a member of the Osaka Prefectural Assembly (April 2003–April 2007). One of only seven women in the 110-member Osaka Assembly, Otsuji represented the Sakaiku, Sakai City constituency. In May 2013, after her party member of the House resigned, Otsuji became the nation’s first openly homosexual member of the Diet but her term in office expired in July.

2009

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) is posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. Harvey Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Despite being the most pro-LGBT politician in the United States at the time, politics and activism were not his early interests; he was neither open about his sexuality nor civically active until he was 40, after his experiences in the counterculture movement of the 1960s. He and San Francisco Mayor Mascone were assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978. In July 2016, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus named the second ship of the Military Sealift Command‘s John Lewis-class oilers, the USNS Harvey Milk.

2012, Uganda

The first Pride parade in Uganda is held. The Grand Marshall is Maurice Tomlinson (born 1971), an LGBT activist from Jamaica. Police raid the event and detain participants but they are released without charges. Tomlinson is a Jamaican Attorney-at-Law and law lecturer. He has been a leading Gay Rights and HIV activist in the Caribbean for over 20 years and is one of the only Jamaican LGBTI human rights advocates to challenge the country’s 1864 British colonially imposed anti-gay Sodomy Law (known as the Buggery Law). This law predominantly affects men who have sex with men (MSM) and carries a jail sentence of up to ten years imprisonment with hard labor. Maurice was married to his best female friend in 1999 in an attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. The couple divorced four years later and they had one son who now lives with his mother. He now teaches Canadian Human Rights and other law courses at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Canada and is also a Senior Policy Analyst for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, where he focuses on challenging homophobia and HIV in the Caribbean. In 2013, Maurice became a founding member of Dwayne’s House, Jamaica’s first charity which focuses exclusively on providing food and basic services to homeless LGBTI youth who have been forced to live in the sewers of the capital, Kingston. In December 2011, Maurice was awarded the inaugural “David Kato Vision and Voice Award” which was created to honor the memory of slain Ugandan LGBTI activist, David Kato (1964 – 26 January 2011) who was a Ugandan teacher and LGBT rights activist, considered a father of Uganda’s gay rights movement and described as “Uganda’s first openly gay man.” He served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Kato was murdered in 2011 allegedly by a male sex worker, shortly after winning a law-suit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed.

August 13

1937

The New York Times runs a story saying that New York City police were compiling a list of known sex criminals, and that the list already consisted of over 300 names, most of whom were gay men.

1952

Herb Ritts (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002) is born. He was a gay American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits often in the style of classical sculpture. He received the GLAAD Media Pioneer Award posthumously in 2008.

1958, Italy

Domenico Dolce (born August 1958) is born. He is a co-founders of the fashion house Dolce & Gabbana with Stefano Gabbana (born 14 November 1962). Since founding D&G in 1985, Dolce has become one of the world’s most influential fashion designers and an industry icon. Dolce and Gabbana were an open couple for many years. Following their success, they lived in a 19th-century villa in Milan and owned several properties on the French Riviera. They ended their relationship in 2003, but the pair still work together at D&G.

1975

The Advocate calls 1975 the Year of the Disco. Across the U.S. and around the world, discos changed the face of the gay and lesbian subculture.

1975

Gay writer Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) made his debut in The Advocate with the story Candy Jar Politics–The Oregon Gay Rights Story.

1981

The Australian government agrees to grant refugee status to people from other nations who are persecuted because of their sexual orientation.

1984

Homophobes Jimmy Swaggart, Phyllis Schlafley, and Jerry Falwell spoke to a Republican Party committee, urging a platform opposed to gay rights.

1988

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approves funding for The National Task Force on AIDS Prevention (NTFAP). NTFAP originated as a program of the National Association of Black and White Men Together (NABWMT), a multi-racial gay organization. The first NTFAP meeting was held on August 13-14, 1988. Reggie Williams (1951-1999), longtime community activist and member of BWMT, was the Executive Director of NTFAP from its birth until his retirement in February of 1994. Williams also served on the boards of the NABWMT, the AIDS Action Council in Washington D.C., and numerous other organizations related to African Americans, lesbians and gay men, and AIDS.

1992, Nicaragua

Nicaragua president Violeta Chamorro signed into law legislation that criminalized consensual same-sex sodomy. The maximum sentence was set at eight years but could be as high as twenty years for someone who was in a position of authority over minors such as a teacher.

1992

Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) calls on the Pentagon to end the ban on gay and lesbian service personnel unless an independent study could provide a rational basis for it.

1993, Russia

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reports that lesbians and gay men are still jailed though Russia had legalized homosexual acts between consenting adults earlier in the year.

1998

San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, a gay and lesbian newspaper, published its first issue in seventeen years with no AIDS-related obituaries.

1998, France

Julien Green (September 6, 1900 – August 13, 1998), a novelist who chronicled his struggle with his homosexuality, dies in Paris at age 97. He was an American writer who authored several novels (The Dark Journey, The Closed Garden, Moira, Each Man in His Darkness, the Dixie Trilogy, etc.), a four-volume autobiography (The Green Paradise, The War at Sixteen, Love in America and Restless Youth) and his famous Diary (in nineteen volumes, 1919–1998). He wrote primarily in French and was the first non-French nationals to be elected to the Académie Française. For many years Green was the companion of Robert de Saint-Jean, a journalist, whom he had met in the 1920s.In his later years Green formally adopted gay fiction writer Éric Jourdan.

1999

The Pentagon officially revises “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” requiring mandatory anti-harassment training for all troops.

2004

The California Supreme Court rules that the San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority by issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, voiding thousands of marriages sanctioned in San Francisco earlier this year.

2005

Politicians who supported gay rights were banned from speaking at Catholic churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix.

2010

Radio talk show host Stephanie Miller (born September 29, 1961) comes out on air, saying she was inspired by singer Chely Wright (born October 25, 1970). Stephanie is the daughter of U.S. Rep. William Miller who was Barry Goldwater’s running mate. She is an American political commentator, comedian, and host of The Stephanie Miller Show, a liberal talk radio program produced in Los Angeles by WYD Media Management and syndicated syndicated nationally by Westwood One. In 2012, Talkers magazine ranked her the 11th most important radio talk show host out of 13 syndicated radio programs broadcast in America. Since 2011, Miller’s live Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour has periodically toured the country to sold out houses and high acclaim. After Trump became president, the tour was renamed the Sexy Liberal Resistance Tour.

2021

Karine Jean-Pierre became the first openly gay woman to serve as a vice presidential chief of staff. Karine Jean-Pierre (born August 13, 1977 is an American political campaign organizer, activist, political commentator, author serving as White House Deputy Press Secretary to Jen Psaki since January 2021. She is a former lecturer in international and public affairs at Columbia University. She was previously the senior advisor and national spokeswoman for MoveOn.org and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. She served as the chief of staff for Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris on the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign. President Joe Biden selected Jean-Pierre to serve as Principal Deputy White House Press Secretary.

 

August 14

384 BC, Greece

Demosthenes (Aug. 14, 384 – October 12, 322 BC) is born in Athens. He was a Greek statesman and orator. His orations constituted a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provided an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century B.C. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. In Aeschines’s speeches, he uses the pederastic relations of Demosthenes as a means to attack him.

1886

Dr. Randolph Winslow wrote of an “epidemic of gonorrhea contracted through rectal coition” at a boys’ reform school near Baltimore, Maryland. The outbreak lasted from 1883-1885 and was brought under control by keeping a strict watch on the boys and inflicting severe corporeal punishment on anyone caught in the act.

1892, Russia

Composer Piotr “Peter” Ilyich Tchaikovsky (April 7, 1840 –November 6, 1893) wrote to his nephew Vladimir “Bob” Davidov, “It had to be this little incident which made me feel again how strong my love for you is. Oh God! How I want to see you!” Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III and awarded a lifetime pension. Discussion of Tchaikovsky’s personal life, especially his sexuality, has perhaps been the most extensive of any composer in the 19th century and certainly of any Russian composer of his time. While there have been Soviet efforts to expunge all references to same-sex attraction, biographers have generally agreed that Tchaikovsky was homosexual.

1920, Germany

In Germany, a publication of the Community of the Special includes an article called Uranians of the World Unite! It urged the formation of a world-wide homosexual organization.

1954

Dade County, Florida sheriff’s deputies raided eleven gay bars in Miami and Miami Beach under the pretext of checking for venereal disease. Fifty-three men were brought in, and nineteen were held over the weekend pending a medical examination.

1961

Police raid the Tay-Bush Inn, the largest gay bar raid in San Francisco history. One hundred and three patrons are arrested on ‘lewd behavior’ charges. The arrested include actors, actresses, dancers, a state hospital psychologist, a bank manager, an artist and an Air Force officer.

1974

After a three-year battle, Gay Community Services Center Los Angeles wins tax-exempt status.

1980

Black gay activist Melvin “Mel” Boozer (June 21, 1945 – March 6, 1987) is recommended for Vice President at the Democratic National Convention in New York City. In a speech to the convention he said, “I know what it’s like to be called nigger, and I know what it’s like to be called faggot. I can sum up the difference in one word – none!” Boozer also told the convention that “bigotry is bigotry” and that homophobia “dishonors our way of life just as much” as racism, before withdrawing his nomination in favor of Walter Mondale. He was a university professor and activist for African American, LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues. He was active in both the Democratic Party and Socialist Party USA, and president of the Gay Activists Alliance.

1980

Gwen Craig, a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, carried a sign that read “Black Lesbian Feminist.”

1985

Los Angeles is the first U.S. city to ban discrimination against people with AIDS in employment, housing, education, and health care.

1997

Members of the American Psychological Association vote to limit attempts to cure homosexuality and agreed to require the reading of a statement to gay patients affirming that being gay is normal and healthy. Homophobe Charles Socarides, president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), said it was an attempt to brainwash people and called homosexuality “a purple menace that threatens proper gender distinction.” His openly gay son, Richard Socarides (born November 8, 1954), was the White House liaison to the gay community. Richard was the founding president of Equality Matters in 2011.

2003

David Gilmore fights public radio station KUAZ for syndication of the nationally awarded program Outright Radio. Outright Radio is the leading nationally syndicated radio show featuring the extraordinary true stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, distributed by Public Radio International and broadcast on nearly 100 stations across the US. Outright Radio is a recipient of the 2003 Edward R. Murrow Award.

2006, Canada

Andre Boisclair (born April 14, 1966), the first openly gay Canadian politician, becomes the leader of Parti Quebecois in Quebec. In November 2012, he was named as the new provincial delegate-general in New York City.

 

August 15

1880, Germany

Journalist Anna Rüling, (August 15, 1880 – May 8, 1953) is born. In 1904 she gave a speech to the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Berlin, the first known public statement of the socio-legal problems faced by lesbians. Her actual name was Theodora “Theo” Anna Sprüngli. One of the first modern women to come out as homosexual, she has been described as “the first known lesbian activist“.

1937

The New York Times Book Review features Either is Love by Elisabeth Craigin. It was a first-person narrative of a woman who was happily married but also in love with a woman.

1963

Strom Thurmond tries to disrupt plans for the March on Washington by announcing in the Senate that Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987), Dr. Martin Luther King’s right-hand man and planner of the March, is a sex pervert. The tactic didn’t work and the March was a success.

1972

Nineteen-year-old Mark Segal was arrested for barging into the studio of WPVI in Philadelphia and attempting to announce his grievance against the station on the air. Earlier in the month he and a male friend had been kicked out of a dance sponsored by the station for dancing together. It would be his first arrest of four.

1977, Canada

Stefan Maysztowicz creates the micro-nation of the Gay Parallel Republic (GPR) on 308 square miles near Quebec, centered on the city of Sherbrooke.

1978, Canada

The Quebec Human Rights Commission reconsiders an earlier decision and now agrees that the Montreal Catholic School Commission could refuse to rent premises to a gay group.

1983

Returning to his district for the first time since his House censure, Representative Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) (May 12, 1937 – October 14, 2006) receives three standing ovations from supporters. He was an American Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts who served from 1973 until 1997 and the first openly gay member of Congress. In 1983 he was censured by the U.S. House of Representatives after he admitted to an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old page. Studds and partner Dean T. Hara (his companion since 1991) were married in Boston on May 24, 2004, one week after Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. Studds died on October 14, 2006, in Boston, at age 69, several days after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Due to the federal ban on same-sex marriage, Hara was not eligible, upon Studds’ death, to receive the pension provided to surviving spouses of former members of Congress. Hara later joined a federal lawsuit, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, that successfully challenged the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.

1985

People magazine publishes an “expose” of Rock Hudson’s (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) homosexuality and AIDS.

1987

Right Step Recovery Program, a Portland, Oregon, drug and alcohol treatment facility for gays and lesbians, closes due to financial problems.

1988

The National Center for Health Statistics announces that in 1987 AIDS was the 15th leading cause of death in America.

1989

According to an article in The Advocate, nearly eight out of ten victims of anti-gay hate crimes do not report it to the police. Reasons include fear of job loss if employers learned of the reason for the attack and fear of abuse from the police. The article includes a report of a Philadelphia man who said that after a police officer interrupted an attack, the officer allowed the attacker to leave, and refused to take the victim to the hospital. The officer asked the victim, “Are you a faggot?”

1994

Over 100 people gathered to protest a sentence by district court judge David Young on David Thacker who plead guilty to killing a gay man because of his sexual orientation. He was sentenced to six years rather than the maxi-mum sentence of fifteen years.

1996

Rich Tafel of the Log Cabin Republicans announces that the organization would support Bob Dole for president on the homophobic Republican ticket.

1996

After a three-year legal battle, Sharon Bottoms withdrew her petition to re-gain custody of her five-year-old son Tyler Doustou. A Virginia judge had ruled that her lesbianism made her an unfit mother. She was granted visitation but ordered to keep her girlfriend away from her son. Bottoms v. Bottoms was a landmark child custody case in Virginia that awarded custody of the child to the grandmother instead of the mother, primarily because the mother was a lesbian. In April 1993, Kay Bottoms sued her daughter, Sharon Bottoms, for custody of Sharon Bottoms’ son Tyler. On April 5, 1993, judge Buford Parsons ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit parent and Kay Bottoms was awarded custody of her grandson. Sharon Bottoms was allowed visitation rights two days a week but Tyler was not allowed in his mother’s home or to have any contact with his mother’s partner.

1997, Italy

A new edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that homosexuals have deep-seated tendencies and are “objectively disorder. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity…”

2003

Episcopal Bishops who supported Rev. Gene Robinson (May 29, 1947) to be bishop of New Hampshire began receiving hate mail.

2005

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) launches an education program to teach straight reporters how to cover LGBT issues.

2013

WWE wrestler Frederick Douglas Rosser III, better known as Darren Young (born November 2, 1983) comes out. While WWE wrestlers Pat Patterson, Chris Kanyon, and Orlando Jordan (bisexual) came out after either leaving the company or retiring, Rosser is the first professional wrestler to publicly come out while still signed to a major promotion. WWE released a statement in support of Rosser for being open about his sexuality, and various fellow wrestlers tweeted their support for him. Rosser has been in a relationship with his boyfriend, Nick, since 2011. On April 26, 2017, Rosser disclosed that his mother is also gay during his interview with the Afterbuzz TV.

2013, Sweden

Sweden issues the first family-based visa for a same-sex partner’s spouse. It is a direct result of the June 2013 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to expand recognition of same-sex marriage to the federal level. This allows the husband of Ambassador Mark Bezezinski (born April 7, 1965) to now travel to the United States as a fully recognized spouse. Brzezinski is an American lawyer who served as the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011–2015.

 

August 16

1661, France

Jacques Chausson (1618 – December 29, 1661) was a French ex-customs manager and writer. He was arrested on August 16, 1661, and charged with attempted rape of a young nobleman, Octave des Valons. He was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to death. His tongue was cut out and he was burned at the stake (without being suffocated first, the more common and “merciful” practice).

1898

Bessie Foust, 19, and Maud Hoffnagle, 20, of Philadelphia, died by suicide because they loved one another “like man and woman.” They jumped from a ferryboat into the Delaware river. Both took the leap to death together, hand in hand, and were drowned before they could be rescued. The double suicide was evidently prearranged. A note was found in a pocketbook they had left behind, signed by both, and consisted of a quotation from a melancholy poem and the words, “We find we are utterly unfit for this world and will try another.”

1940

Alix Dobkin is born (August 16, 1940-May 18, 2021) into a Jewish Communist family. She is a singer, songwriter, and feminist activist in New York City. In 1965 she married Sam Hood who ran the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. They moved to Miami and opened The Gaslight South Cafe but moved back to New York in 1968. Their daughter Adrian was born two years later. The following year the marriage broke up. A few months later, Dobkin came out as a lesbian which was uncommon for a public personality to do at the time. In 1977, she became an associate of the American nonprofit publishing organization Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). Dobkin is a member of the OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change) Steering Committee. Dobkin has been a highly vocal proponent of women-only space through her consistent exclusion of males. Her controversial criticisms of postmodernism, sadomasochism, transgenderism and other issues appeared in several of her written columns. Her article The Emperor’s New Gender appeared in the feminist journal off our backs in 2000. The Erasure of Lesbians, co-authored with Sally Tatnall, was published in the legislation and case law website Gender Identity Watch in 2015 (transgender activists consider the site anti-transgender). Dobkin has been called a “women’s music legend” by Spin Magazine, “pithy” by The Village Voice, and “a troublemaker” by the FBI. She gained some unexpected fame in the 1980s when comedians such as David Letterman and Howard Stern tracked down her land-mark Lavender Jane Loves Women album, and began playing phrases from the song “View From Gay Head” on the air.

1943, Australia

Dennis Altman (born 16 August 1943) is an Australian academic and pioneering gay rights activist. Altman was born in Sydney, New South Wales to Jewish immigrant parents, and spent most of his childhood in Hobart, Tasmania. In 1964 he won a Fulbright scholarship to Cornell University where he began working with leading American gay activists. Returning to Australia in 1969, he taught politics at the University of Sydney, and in 1971 he published his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, considered an important intellectual contribution to the ideas that shaped gay liberation movements in the English-speaking world. Altman is a longtime patron of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. In March 2013 Altman wrote about the death of his partner of 22 years, Anthony Smith, who died from lung cancer in November 2012.

1969

New York City’s Gay Liberation Front sponsored the first “Coming Out” dance at Alternate U. to give gays and lesbians the opportunity to support their own organizations rather than what they said were mafia-owned bars. Alternate U was a free counterculture school and leftist political organizing center in Greenwich Village for many of its activities through 1970. It was founded around 1966 by Tom Wodetski. It had several classrooms in a former dance studio on the second floor of 69 West 14th Street, at the corner of Sixth Avenue.

1971

Blue Earth County, Minnesota issues a marriage license to two men, Jack Baker (born 1942) and Mike McConnell (born 1942) when Jack changed his name to Pat. Michael McConnell and Jack Baker are pioneering advocates of marriage rights for gay couples. Jack Baker was a stage name used by Richard John Baker in the 1970s to promote full equality for gay men and women. He and Michael McConnell originally applied in Hennepin County for a license to marry which was denied. They appealed the denial to the Minnesota Supreme Court which dismissed the claim. “Under the law at the time (since repealed) governing the [U.S.] Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over appeals from state-court decisions, Baker v. Nelson reached the justices as a mandatory appeal.” The State argued that the marriage license issued previously in Blue Earth County proved that the “questions raised by this appeal are moot.” Baker and McConnell were legally married in 2019.

1973

The chairwoman of the Mississippi Gay Alliance attempted to place an ad in The Reflector, the student newspaper of Mississippi State University. The editor refused to accept the ad. The ad announced hours and services offered by MGA, an unrecognized student organization.

1985

Dr. Paul Volberding, Chief of Medical Oncology and Director of AIDS Activities at San Francisco General Hospital, writes a “breakthrough letter” to Blaine Elswood, founder of the Guerilla Clinic, about obtaining currently unapproved experimental drugs mostly from Mexico. In 1983, Volberding founded the first inpatient ward for persons with AIDS in the San Francisco General Hospital. He worked on early clinical trials to evaluate antiretroviral therapy in HIV infection, and has served on the two major guidelines panels for antiretroviral therapy, addressing issues such as the optimal timing of treatment in early HIV infection when no symptoms are evident. In 2001 Volberding left the SF General Hospital to become chief medical officer at the San Francisco VA Medical Center at which time he also became vice chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He became co-director of the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) at UCSF and the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology. In February 2012, he became the director of UCSF’s AIDS Research Institute, and director of research for UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences. He is widely considered one of the world’s leading AIDS experts.

1988, Canada

The General Council of the United Church of Canada, meeting in Victoria, B.C., became the first mainstream church in the world to accept gay ordination without imposing celibacy.

1990, UK

The British action group OutRage demonstrates outside Scotland Yard to call for an end to police entrapment and an increase in efforts to solve anti-gay murders.

1991

New Jersey governor James Florio issues an executive order prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in the public sector.

1992

In an address to the Huntington, West Virginia chamber of commerce, chamber president Richard Bolen states that the enactment of an ordinance banning anti-gay discrimination would be good for business.

1994

In Largo, Florida, a video store clerk was found not guilty of obscenity charges for renting a gay porn video to an undercover police officer.

1996

At a volunteer campaign training conference in Chicago sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, President Clinton said through a videotaped address, “I’m especially proud to be the first president to endorse a civil rights bill that specifically includes gay and lesbian Americans. I support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because I believe in the fundamental values of fairness and equality.”

1996, Australia

New South Wales announced it would review the “homosexual panic” defense in murder trials to determine the effect it has on the prejudice of a jury.

2004

The United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS voices concern about the arrests and reported mistreatment of 39 gay men in Nepal.

2008

Portia DeRossi (January 31, 1973) and Ellen DeGeneres (January 26, 1958) marry. Portia de Rossi is an Australian-American actress, model, and philanthropist. She appeared as a regular cast member on the American political thriller television series Scandal in the role of Elizabeth North from 2014 to 2017. Ellen DeGeneres is a talk show host, comedian, and activist.

 

August 17

1786, Germany

German monarch Frederick II (January 24, 1712 – August 17, 1786) dies. He was King of Prussia from 1740 until 1786, the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king, and named himself Frederick the Great. Recent major biographers of Frederick are unequivocal that he was predominantly homosexual, and that his sexuality was central to his life and character.

1893

Mae West is born. Mary Jane “Mae” West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades. In 1927, she wrote a play about homosexuality called The Drag, and alluded to the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. It was a box-office success. West regarded talking about sex as a basic human rights issue, and was also an early advocate of gay rights. With the return of conservatism in the 1930s, the public grew intolerant of homosexuality, and gay actors were forced to choose between retiring or agreeing to hide their sexuality.

1967

The third national planning conference of Homophile Organizations was held in Washington, D.C.

1969

An Atlanta art theatre was raided during a showing of Andy Warhol’s (Au-gust 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) film Lonesome Cowboys saying it was a hotbed of homosexuality. Police photographed everyone in attendance as reference material for the vice squad. Written by Paul Morrissey, the film is a satire of Hollywood westerns. It won the Best Film Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

1973, Canada

In Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, Gay Pride Week becomes a national celebration.

1974, Canada

In Toronto, a Gay Pride March converges on Queen’s Park. For the first time, the daily newspapers cover the march.

1982

Texas’s sodomy law was repealed by Federal Judge Jerry Buchmeyer who declared it unconstitutional. A new law was passed three years later and approved by the federal bench because it outlawed only homosexual acts.

1987

City commissioner John Markl of Traverse City, Michigan, during a debate on the sale of condoms within city limits, states that homosexuals are the cause of AIDS and that a quick cut of the scalpel would prevent them from spreading it. He also said that homosexuals were mentally unbalanced.

1993

Loc Minh Truong of Orange County, California, filed a lawsuit against Jeffrey Raines and Christopher Cribbens who assaulted him because they assumed he was gay (he was not). He was beaten so severely that doctors could not determine his race and did not expect him to live. The amount of the suit was $25,000 to cover medical expenses and lost wages. Ten men who watched the attack but did nothing to intervene and were also identified in the suit.

1998

Newsweek runs a cover article on the ex-gay debate. The headline reads “Gay for Life? Going Straight: The Uproar over Sexual Conversion.”

2004

Indiana Governor Joseph Kernan issues an executive order banning gender identity discrimination in the public sector.

2004

Eugene Lange College in New York City is named the most gay-positive school in America by the Princeton Review.

2005

The FBI said mafia kingpin James (Whitey) Bulger, sought for 30 years, was thought to be hiding in a gay neighborhood somewhere in the U.S. or Europe.

2007

The Hollywood Reporter pulls a Ray Richmond column entitled Merv Griffin (March 16, 1925 – August 12, 2007) died a closeted homosexual. Several hours later, it was back online with a different title: Griffin Never Revealed the Man Behind the Curtain. Griffin was an American television host and media mogul. He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in film and on Broadway. From 1965 to 1986, Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show. He also created the internationally popular game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune through his television production companies, Merv Griffin Enterprises and Merv Griffin Entertainment. During his lifetime, Griffin was considered an entertainment business magnate. In 1991, he was sued by Deney Terrio (born June 15, 1950), the host of Dance Fever, another show Griffin created, alleging sexual harassment. The same year, Brent Plott, a longtime employee who worked as a bodyguard, horse trainer and driver, filed a $200 million palimony law-suit against Griffin. Griffin characterized both lawsuits as extortion. Ultimately, both suits were dismissed.

2012

ParaNorman, a 3D animated comedy film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features, is the first mainstream children’s film with an explicit non-adult LGBTQ character. The film has drawn some attention for the revelation in its final scenes that Mitch is gay, making him the first openly gay character in a mainstream animated film. Nancy French of the National Review Online suggested that the film could lead parents “to answer unwanted questions about sex and homosexuality on the way home from the movie theater.” Conversely, Mike Ryan of The Huffington Post cited Mitch’s inclusion as one of the reasons why ParaNorman is “remarkable”. Co-director Chris Butler said that the character was explicitly connected with the film’s message: “If we’re saying to anyone that watches this movie don’t judge other people, then we’ve got to have the strength of our convictions.” In 2013 GLAAD nominated ParaNorman as its first-ever PG-rated movie for its annual GLAAD Media Awards.

2016, Space

The U.S. charity organization Planting Peace launched a rainbow flag as a symbolic gesture to “make space LGBTQ-friendly.” The flag was launched using a high-altitude balloon with a GoPro camera attached and went as high as 21.1 miles over the Earth’s surface, remaining airborne for over three hours.

 

August 18

1721, Germany

Catherina Margaretha Linck (died 1721) is executed for female sodomy. She was a Prussian woman who for most of her adult life presented as a man named Anastasius Lagrantius Rosenstengel. She married 18-year-old Catharina Margaretha Mühlhahn, and, based on their sexual activity together (court records detail their sexual activities), was convicted of sodomy and executed by order of King Frederick William I. Linck’s execution was the last for lesbian sexual activity in Europe and an anomaly for its time. Linck’s story was the subject of a play, Executed for Sodomy: The Life of Catharina Linck, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013.

1935

The New York Times publishes a review of Gale Wilhelm’s (April 26, 1908 – July 11, 1991) lesbian novel We Too Are Drifting. The reviewer refers to reading about “Sapphic intimacy” as chilling and said that while the author had a poetic style and was clearly talented, the subject matter was the book’s major fault. Wilhelm lived with Helen Hope Rudolph Page in San Francisco from 1938 until Page’s death in the late 1940s. Barbara Grier (November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011), owner of Naiad Press, spent several years attempting to locate Wilhelm. The 1984 Naiad Press edition of We Too Are Drifting included a foreword by Grier describing Wilhelm’s life and pleading for any assistance from anyone who knew any information on the whereabouts of Wilhelm. By the time Naiad published Torchlight to Valhalla in 1985, it contained a foreword by Wilhelm herself, information given to Grier by an anonymous source. Grier speculated that Wilhelm stopped writing before she turned 40 years old because “the world would not let her write the books she wanted.” Wilhelm lived with Kathleen Huebner from 1953 until Wilhelm’s death in 1991 of cancer.

1988

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that syphilis and hepatitis B among gay men decreased dramatically since 1982 but had increased among heterosexuals.

1990

President George H. W. Bush signs the Ryan White Care Act, a federally funded program for people living with AIDS. Ryan White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990), an Indiana teenager, contracted AIDS in 1984 through a hemophilia treatment. After being barred from attending high school because of his HIV-positive status, Ryan White becomes a well-known activist for AIDS research.

1992

Rocky Mountain Regional United Methodist Church bishop Roy Sano urges Colorado Methodist ministers to oppose Amendment 2 which sought to ban laws against anti-gay discrimination.

1993, Sicily

Giuseppe Mandanici, 33, was shot three times but survived the attack. Police believed it to be an act of random violence until they discovered that his father had paid a hit man $1 million lire (approx. $700 US) to kill his son because he could not come to terms with his son’s homosexuality.

1999

Hackers re-routed hate monger Fred Phelps’ anti-gay web site, godhatesfags.com to godlovesfags.com.

2009

Lateisha Green, a transgender woman, was killed in 2008. Her killer was found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime, the second person in the U.S. to be convicted of a hate crime for killing a transgender person.

 

August 19

1867, Germany

In Munich, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895) is jeered when he attempts to persuade jurists that same-sex love should be tolerated rather than persecuted. He is probably the first to come out publicly in defense of what he calls “Uranism” (homosexuality). Ulrichs coined various terms to describe different sexual orientations, including Urning for a man who desires men (English “Uranian”) and Dioning for one who desires women. These terms are in reference to a section of Plato‘s Symposium in which two kinds of love are discussed, symbolized by an Aphrodite who is born from a male (Uranos) and an Aphrodite who is born from a female (Dione). Ulrichs also coined words for the female counterparts (Urningin and Dioningin) and for bisexuals and intersexual persons. Ulrichs is likely the first true gay activist and is seen today as the pioneer of the modern gay rights movement. Published in 1870, Ulrich’s Araxes: A Call to Free the Nature of the Urning from Penal Law is remarkable for its similarity to the discourse of the modern gay rights movement. In it “the Urning, too, is a person. He, too, therefore, has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to torture living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them. The Urning is also a citizen. He, too, has civil rights; and according to these rights, the state has certain duties to fulfill as well. The state does not have the right to act on whimsy or for the sheer love of persecution. The state is not authorized, as in the past, to treat Urnings as outside the pale of the law.”

1890

In response to a letter received from John Addington Symonds, American poet Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) denies that “Calamus” from Leaves of Grass was homoerotic. Whitman’s work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. Though biographers continue to debate Whitman’s sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions.

1984

President Ronald Reagan issues a statement saying his administration would fight governmental endorsement of homosexuality.

1992

The Ann Arbor, Michigan, city council votes 8-1 to extend health benefits to same sex partners of city employees.

1992, Germany

Over 250 gay and lesbian couples submit marriage applications in over fifty German cities as part of an attempted mass wedding. About 75% of the couples were male, and over 100 of the applications were submitted in Berlin. The demonstration, organized by the Gay League of Germany, receives widespread media attention. Lesben und Schwulenverband in Deutschland(LSVD), German for the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, is the largest non-governmental LGBT rights organization in Germany. It was founded in 1990 and is part of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association (ILGA). Manfred Bruns, Volker Beck, Eduard Stapel, Günter Dworek and Halina Bendkowski were prominent persons in the Board of Directors. People from the arts, like comic-designer Ralf König, comedian Hella von Sinnen, director Rosa von Praunheim, and from politics and from science like sexologist Rolf Gindorf and others are prominent individual members of the organization.

1996

California’s state senate kills a bill banning same-sex marriage after Democrats attach a provision to establish a domestic partner registry.

1996

In Spokane, Washington, the family of Curtis Babcock files a lawsuit against county coroner Dexter Amend. Babcock’s memorial service had to be delayed because Amend ordered an autopsy to link his AIDS-related death to sodomy.

1997

The school board of Wayne-Westland, a suburb of Detroit, votes 6-1 to repeal sexual orientation protection for students and staff.

2005

DC Comics orders the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts Gallery in New York to remove an exhibit of watercolors showing Batman and Robin in a variety of romantic poses. DC threatened both artist and the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts gallery with legal action if they did not cease selling the works and demanded all remaining art as well as any profits derived from them. Homosexual interpretations have been part of the academic study of the Batman franchise at least since psychiatrist Fredric Wertham asserted in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent that “Batman stories are psychologically homosexual.” Wertham, as well as parodies, fans, and other independent parties, have described Batman and his sidekick Robin as homosexual, possibly in a relationship with each other. DC Comics has never indicated Batman or any of his male allies to be gay but several characters in the Modern Age Batman comic books are expressly gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

2011

The Arizona Queer Archives is founded by Jamie A. Lee with support from Susan Stryker. The Arizona Queer Archives is the state of Arizona’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI) collecting archives of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona.

 

August 20

1308, France

Jacques de Molay (1243 – March 18, 1314), the leader of the Knights Templar, who denied sexual relations with two of his servants, finally admits to it. He was the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, leading the Order from April 20, 1292 until it was dissolved by order of Pope Clement V in 1307. Though little is known of his actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, de Molay is one of the best known Templars.

1881

Dr. E.C. Spitzka of New York presents the case of Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury (Nov. 28, 1661 – March 31, 1723), the colonial governor of New York and New Jersey in the early 1700’s, in a Chicago medical journal. Cornbury frequently appeared in public wearing female clothing. Spitzka describes Cornbury as a sexual pervert, “a degraded, hypocritical and utterly immoral being.”

1916

The New York Times publishes a review of Edward Carpenter’s (August 29, 1844 – June 28, 1929) autobiography. Carpenter’s book was among the earliest in which an author self-identified as homosexual. He was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for rights for homosexuals.

1969

Staircase, a film in which Rex Harrison and Richard Burton play lovers, has its world premiere. The film, like the play, is about an aging gay couple who own a barber shop in the East End of London. One of them is a part-time actor about to go on trial for propositioning a police officer. The action takes place over the course of one night as they discuss their loving but often volatile past together and possible future without each other. It was panned by most critics, including Roger Ebert, who gave it one star in his review and called it “an unpleasant exercise in bad taste. Rarely seen on television, the film was broadcast by Turner Classic Movies during its June 2007 tribute to gay cinema.

1977

Syndicated columnist Mike Royko includes anti-gay Anita Bryant on a list of the ten most obnoxious people in America.

1978

Ronald Reagan announces his opposition to the Anita Bryant Briggs Initiative in California which sought to ban homosexuals or anyone who was supportive of gay rights from being employed as a public-school teacher. The Briggs Initiative, on the ballot as Prop 6, failed.

1979, Canada

Seven men staged Gay Sit-in for Justice in the office of Ontario Attorney General Roy McMurtry to demand a meeting about police and legal harassment of the gay community.

1979, Canada

At the Sarnia, Ontario/Port Huron, the Michigan international bridge, lesbians on their way to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival were harassed or turned back by U.S. Immigration officials. Formal complaints were made on behalf of Canadian women by the National Gay Task Force (NGLTF).

1987

The New York State Consumer Protection Board announces that a one-month supply of AZT costs consumers anywhere from $900 to $3,000, depending on where it was purchased.

1992, Iran

More than 90 gay men were arrested at a private party in Iran. Under Iranian law, homosexuals can be sentenced to death with the testimony of four men.

2001

A federal judge rules that Florida’s law banning lesbians and gays from adopting children is valid, saying the state has a legitimate interest in allowing only married heterosexual couples to adopt. The law is considered the nation’s toughest ban on gay adoptions, prohibiting adoptions by any gay or lesbian individual or couple. Anita Bryant’s hate-based Save Our Children campaign in Dade County branded all gays as pedophiles.

 

August 21

1826

Frances Ann Wood (August 21, 1826 – November 10, 1901) was an American educator. She was the founder of the Mount Carroll Seminary which later became Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois. She was also the sole proprietress of the school from 1870 to her retirement in 1896. Turns out Frances and her woman companion, Cinderella Gregory, left up-state NY in 1800s to go out west looking for land to “start a woman’s seminary.” They found it in Mt. Carroll and established Shimer. They moved into a house in Mt. Carroll and lived there for years. When they were in middle age Frances “married” a local townsman named Shimer who moved into the house with them. From 1853 to 1870, Frances Shimer operated the Mount Carroll Seminary as a partnership with Cinderella Gregory who served as the chief academic officer while Shimer handled finances and other non-academic operations. Shimer and Gregory purchased the school from the discouraged incorporators in 1855 when it still occupied only a single building. The subsequent expansion of the seminary to a 25-acre campus with four connected buildings and numerous outbuildings was attributed largely to Shimer’s industry and careful management of finances.

1869

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) wrote to Peter Doyle on this date: “My love for you is indestructible, and since that night and morning has returned more than before.”

1872, UK

Aubrey Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was born in Brighton, England. More than any other artist of his time, Beardsley epitomized the Art Nouveau style. As a young man he would walk down the boulevards of Paris arm in arm with his mother, his makeup far more dazzling than hers. Although Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) and other English aesthetes, the details of his sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexual. His association with Oscar Wilde ruined him and he died of tuberculosis three years after Wilde was sentenced to prison.

1928

James “John” Finley Gruber (August 21, 1928 – February 27, 2011) was an American teacher and early LGBT rights activist. Gruber helped to document the early LGBT movement through interviews with historians, participating in a panel discussion in San Francisco in 2000 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of Mattachine and appearing in the 2001 documentary film Hope Along the Wind about the life of Harry Hay (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002). Growing up Gruber considered himself bisexual and was involved with both men and women. His father, a former vaudevillian turned music teacher, relocated the family to Los Angeles in 1936. Gruber enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps in 1946 at the age of 18 and was honorably discharged in 1949. Using his G.I. Bill benefits, Gruber studied English literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Gruber suffered increasingly ill health for several years before his death on February 27, 2011, at his home in Santa Clara.

1929, Mexico

Bisexual Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) marries Diego Rivera. She was a Mexican painter, who mostly painted self-portraits. Inspired by Mexican popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, post colonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions, and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. Kahlo was mainly known as Rivera’s wife until the late 1970s when her work was re-discovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the Feminism movement, and the LGBTQ movement. Kahlo’s work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and Indigenous traditions, and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

1936, Spain

Luisa Isabel Alvarez de Toledo y Maura, 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia, Grandee of Spain (August 21, 1936 – March 7, 2008) was nickname La Duquesa Rojaor The Red Duchess. She was the 21st Duchess of the ducal family of Medina-Sidonia, one of the most prestigious noble families and Grandees of Spain. Eleven hours before her death, on March 7, 2008, Luisa Isabel married her longtime partner and secretary since 1983, Liliana Maria Dahlmann in a civil ceremony on her deathbed. Today, the Dowager Duchess Liliana Maria, her legal widow, serves as life-president of the Fundación Casa Medina Sidonia.

1944, Germany

Felice Schragenheim (March 9, 1922 – December 31, 1944), a young Jewish resistance fighter in Germany, was sent to a concentration camp in Poland on this date. Her love story with Lilly Wust, a German wife of a Nazi, is portrayed in the 1999 film Aimee & Jaguar and in a book of the same name by Erica Fischer. It is also the subject of the 1997 documentary Love Story: Berlin 1942.

1970

Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers, publicly announces his support of gay rights, stating his “solidarity” with the “Gay Power” movement.

1971, Canada

In Ottawa, We Demand, a brief prepared by the Toronto Gay Action and sponsored by Canadian gay groups, is presented to the federal government. It calls for law reform and changes to public policy relating to homosexuals.

1983

The musical version of La Cage Aux Folles opens on Broadway to rave reviews and $4 million in advance ticket sales. With a book written by Harvey Fierstein (born June 6, 1954) and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman (born July 10, 1931 – December 26, 2019), La Cage is a romantic musical comedy based on a popular French film about two male lovers, the manager and the leading star of a nightclub featuring female impersonators.

1989

The National Association of State Boards of Education reports that only twenty-four states require AIDS education in schools, and eighteen of those suggest abstinence as the only method of avoiding the disease. Only three programs require teachers to discuss the use of condoms in their programs.

1989

Lucie McKinney, the widow of Congressman Stewart McKinney (R-CT) (January 30, 1931 – May 7, 1987), the first congressman to die of complications from AIDS, challenges his will in court because he left a car and a 40% share of his Washington, D.C. house to his lover Arnold Dennison. McKinney’s physician speculated that McKinney became infected with HIV in 1979 as the result of blood transfusions during heart surgery. McKinney was known by friends to be bisexual, though his family said this was not the case, which raised the issue of how he had contracted the disease. Anti-gay prejudice at the time of McKinney’s death in 1987 may have promoted a disingenuous approach to speculations on the cause of McKinney’s HIV infection. Arnold Denson, the man with whom McKinney had been living in Washington, said that he had been McKinney’s lover, and that he believed McKinney was already infected when Denson met him.

1994

Rikki Streicher (1922 – Aug. 21,1994) dies of cancer at age 68 in San Francisco. She opened Maud’s, America’s oldest continuously operating lesbian bar, in 1966 and Amanda’s, a lesbian dance club that opened in 1978. Maud’s closed in 1989 because of financial problems. Streicher also helped organize the Gay Games in San Francisco in 1986. Streicher was born in 1922. She served in the military and lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s where she spent time in the gay bars of that city. She also frequented the gay bars of North Beach in San Francisco. Butch-femme roles were very fixed at that time. Streicher, then identified as butch, was photographed in 1945 in a widely published image, sitting in Oakland‘s Claremont Resort with other lesbians, wearing a suit and tie. In 1966, Streicher opened Maud’s, originally called “Maud’s Study”, or “The Study”, a lesbian bar on Cole St. in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The following year, the Haight-Ashbury would become the epicenter of the hippie movement during the 1967 Summer of Love. Maud’s, said one historian, served to “bridge the gap between San Francisco’s lesbian community and its hippie generation.” Because women were not allowed to be employed as bartenders in San Francisco until 1971, Streicher had to either tend bar herself or hire male bartenders. The bar quickly became a popular gathering place for San Francisco lesbians and bisexual women. One notable customer of Maud’s was singer Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). Activists Del Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Lyon (born November 10, 1924) were also early patrons of Maud’s. In 1978, at the height of the disco era, Streicher opened a more spacious bar and dance club on Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District called Amelia’s, named after Amelia Earhart. Streicher died of cancer in 1994, and was survived by her partner, Mary Sager.

1996

Intel announces that the company will begin offering domestic partner benefits.

1996

Denver Colorado’s Career Service Authority votes 5-0 to extend health insurance benefits to the partners and children of gay and lesbian city employees. The plan did not cover unmarried heterosexual couples. Mayor Wellington Webb announced that he would approve the plan which had the support of the majority of the city council.

1997

Irving Cooperberg, (1932 – Aug. 21, 1997), co-founder of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, dies of complications from AIDS at age 65. Mr. Cooperberg, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, quit college in 1951, joined the Army and served in Korea. Real estate investments in Manhattan and Fire Island Pines, beginning in the early 1960’s, made him wealthy. In 1973, he attended a service at the embryonic gay and lesbian synagogue, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Greenwich Village. He soon volunteered to serve on its board. Because of his role at the synagogue, Mr. Cooperberg was drawn into the effort in the early 1980s to establish a citywide lesbian and gay center with a full complement of services. One of the first of its kind in the country, it was to occupy the former Food and Maritime High School at 208 West 13th Street. Mr. Cooperberg was elected the center’s first president in July 1983 and served until May 1987. He is survived by his companion, Lou Rittmaster.

1998

According to a survey by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, hate crimes in the first part of 1998 were down 15% but gay males were the second most commonly targeted group with twenty incidents. Ten incidents against lesbians were reported.

1998

Elton Jackson was found guilty by a jury in Virginia of the murder of Andrew Smith. He was given a sentence of life in prison. Police suspected him in the murder of twelve gay men.

2002

Twenty lesbian and gay survivors whose partners died in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were told they would receive workers’ compensation under a new state law.

2003

Former Georgia representative Bob Barr, the man who wrote the Defense of Marriage Act that prevents same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits, said it would be a mistake to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.

2004

A Louisiana state judge rules that the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions was unconstitutional and must be taken off the September 18 ballot.

2008

The Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon legalizes same-sex marriage which is not recognized by the state.

2008

Hallmark Greeting Cards based in Kansas City introduces line of same-sex wedding cards.

2018

A bill was signed into law designating the LGBTQ Veterans Memorial in Desert Memorial Park in Palm Springs as California’s official LGBTQ veterans memorial. California becomes the first state in the nation to officially recognize LGBTQ military veterans.

August 22

1662, Spain

A leader of the Mexican Inquisition sent a letter to his supervisors complaining that the severe punishments given to sodomites had been ineffective. He noted that over 100 had been indicted, that a large number of the offenders were clergy, and that torture had been used to extract confessions.

1894, Denmark

Willem Arondeus (August 22, 1894 – July 1, 1943) is born. He was a Dutch artist and author who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. He participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam public records office to hinder the Nazi German effort to identify Dutch Jews. Arondeus was caught and executed soon after his arrest. He defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. In his last message before his execution, Arondeus, who had lived openly as a gay man before the war, asked his lawyer to “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards!”

1895, Hungary

László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós (August 22, – March 22, 1951) is born. He was a Hungarian aristocrat, desert explorer, aviator, scout leader and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje‘s novel The English Patient (1992)and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996). Letters discovered in 2010 in Germany written by Almásy prove that, unlike the fictionalized character of the film, he was in fact gay. His lover was a young soldier named Hans Entholt who was an officer in the Wehrmacht and who was killed by stepping on a landmine. A staff member of the Heinrich Barth Institute for African Studies where the letters are located also confirmed that “Egyptian princes were among Almásy’s lovers.” The letters confirmed that Almásy died from amoebic dysentery in 1951.

1914, France

Violette Morris (April 18, 1893 – April 26, 1944) marries a man on this day. She won two gold and one silver medals at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. Starting in 1936 she worked with the Gestapo during World War II. She was killed in 1944 in a Resistance-led ambush as a traitor to the French state. Morris was a gifted athlete, becoming the first French woman to excel at shot put and discus, and playing on two separate women’s football teams. She played for Fémina Sports from 1917 until 1919 and for Olympique de Paris from 1920 to 1926. Both teams were based in Paris. She also played on the French women’s national team. She was refused license renewal by the Fédération Française sportive Féminine (FFSF – French Women’s Athletic Federation) amid complaints of her bisexual lifestyle and was therefore barred from participating in the 1928 Summer Olympics. The agency cited her lack of morals, especially in light of the fact that one of her lovers, Raoul Paoli, made public her bisexuality. Paoli had recently left Morris after she had initially decided to undergo an elective mastectomy in order to fit into racing cars more easily. At the end of December 1935, Morris was recruited by the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), a wing of the infamous SS of Nazi Germany. She was invited, with honor, to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin at the personal behest of Adolf Hitler. She was killed along a country road by members of a French resistance group on April 26,1944 at the age of 51 while out driving with friends who were also collaborators.

1915, UK

British actor Hugh Paddick (August 22, 1915 – November 9, 2000) is born in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. He was an English actor whose most notable role was in the 1960s BBC radio show Round the Horne, in sketches such as Charles and Fiona (as Charles) and Julian and Sandy (as Julian). Paddick was gay and lived for over thirty years with his partner Francis. He was distantly related to Brian Paddick (born 24 April 1958), Britain’s first openly gay police commander. Paddick died in November 2000, at age 85.

1927

James Kirkwood, Jr.  (August 22, 1924 – April 21, 1989) is born in Los Angeles. He was an American playwright, author and actor. In 1976 he received the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit A Chorus Line.

1965

David Peter Reimer is born (August 22, 1965 – May 4, 2004). He was a Canadian man born biologically male but who was reassigned as female by Dr. John Money after his penis was destroyed in infancy by a botched circumcision. He died by suicide in 2004. In 1955, Money (1921-2006), a sexologist and psychologist, introduced the concept of ‘gender role’ into the transsexual debate. Money later was heavily criticized over Reimer’s suicide. David Reimer, an identical twin, was mutilated at  eight months old in a botched circumcision and then surgically reassigned as female by Money and raised as a girl. But he never felt female on the inside (even though his parents followed Money’s advice and hid the fact of his birth sex from him), despite Money’s claims to the contrary. His life, especially at school, was sheer hell because others never really perceived him to be a girl either, despite his girl drag. By age 16, Reimer underwent a second reassignment at his own insistence so that he could live as the boy he knew himself to be. In the meantime, however, Money had convinced the medical establishment and the lay public, despite growing evidence to the contrary in his “girl” twin, that babies could be arbitrarily assigned a gender with no psychological consequences. Today, still, five children a day are surgically “corrected” at birth because of this one “case study” and Money’s defense of his handling of David’s life. With the help of Drs. Milton Diamond and H.K. Sigmundson, Reimer would finally tell the medical establishment the truth about his life in 1997 in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine, [“Sex reassignment at birth. Long-term review and clinical implications” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, Mar 1997; 151: 298 – 304.], challenging the firmly established medical and popular myth that gender was mostly a function of nurture rather than nature. Later that year, Reimer would work with author John Colapinto to tell his story to the lay public, first under a pseudonym, in Rolling Stone.

1972

John Wojtowicz (March 9, 1945 – January 2, 2006) and Sal Naturale attempt to rob the Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn to get money for Wojtowicz’s lover’s sex change operation. Naturale was shot to death. The incident became the subject of the 1975 movie Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino. Wojtowicz was sentenced to 20 years.

1979

Stephan “Steve” Joseph Kornacki (born August 22, 1979) is an American political journalist, writer, and television host. Kornacki is a national political correspondent for NBC News. He has written articles for Salon, The New York Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Daily News, the New York Post, The Boston Globe, and The Daily Beast. Kornacki was the multimedia anchor and data analyst for much of MSNBC’s The Place for Politics campaign coverage, airing throughout 2016. On May 1, 2021, Kornacki was part of the NBC broadcast team for the Kentucky Derby, bringing his “big board” to Louisville’s Churchill Downs. Kornacki is gay and publicly came out in 2011 through a column in Salon. He resides in the East Village of Manhattan

1983

Organizers of a Washington march marking the 20th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech announce that no representatives from gay or lesbian rights groups will be allowed to speak. A group of lesbians and gay men stage a sit-in at the organizers’ office in response. Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987), an openly gay man, was one of the primary organizers of the 1963 March.

1996

In an interview publishes by the St. Petersburg Times (Florida, not Russia), openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) said the outing of hypocrites was justified.

1996

Gov. Kirk Fordice of Mississippi signs an executive order banning same-sex marriage.

1998

Hundreds picket at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to protest the Truth in Love newspaper ad campaign which claimed gays and lesbians can be “cured” by becoming Christians. The church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is a major player in spreading hatred for the gay community.

2001

U.S. Census figures showed that same-sex couples head nearly 600,000 homes in U.S., with a same-sex couple in nearly every county.

2017

The Village Voice, a New York newsstand staple since its 1955 inception, discontinued its print edition. The left-leaning weekly, co-founded by the late Norman Mailer is now digital-only.

 

August 23

1954

Charles Busch (August 23, 1954) is born. He is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays off-off-Broadway beginning in 1978, generally in drag roles, and also acted in the works of other playwrights. He wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s. His best-known play is The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.

1971

Newsweek magazine publishes an article entitled “The Militant Homosexual.”

1994, Australia

The federal government acts to overturn Tasmania’s anti-sodomy law. Tasmania is the last Australian state to penalize same sex relations.

 

August 24

79 AD

Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and preserving the city. In a macabre way, it was fortunate for it saved the homoerotic frescos that Christianity would no doubt have destroyed. It also saved the graffiti found centuries later by archaeologists. When the artwork was first discovered, people found it so scandalous that much of it was locked away in the National Museum of Naples where it remained hidden from view for over 100 years. In 2000, the art was finally made viewable to the public, but minors must be accompanied by an adult.

1932, Germany

Five Nazis are convicted of political murder on August 22nd. On this day, Edmund Heines (July 21, 1897, Munich –June 30, 1934), a Nazi leader, organizes a protest against their death sentence. Less than two years later, Heines is discovered naked in bed, by Hitler himself, with another man. Hitler orders Heines to be shot. Hitler’s chauffeur Erich Kempka claimed in a 1946 interview that Edmund Heines was caught in bed with an unidentified 18-year-old male when he was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives, although Kempka did not actually witness it. The boy was later identified as Heines’ young driver Erich Schiewek. According to Kempka, Heines refused to cooperate and get dressed. When the SS detectives reported this to Hitler, he went to Heines’ room and ordered him to get dressed within five minutes or risk being shot. After five minutes had passed by, Heines still had not complied with the order. As a result, Hitler became so furious that he ordered some SS men to take Heines and the boy outside to be executed.

1953

The summary of Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female is published in Time magazine. The study includes lesbian behavior.

1954, UK

The Wolfenden Committee is appointed to investigate laws in Britain relating to homosexual offenses.

1957, UK

Actor Stephen Fry (August 24, 1957), most famous for playing Oscar Wilde in Wilde, was born in Hampstead, London. In addition to his numerous film credits, Fry is also the author of The Liar (1991), The Hippopotamus (1994), and Making History(1996).

1969

The fourth annual North American Conference of Homophile Organizations opens in Kansas City. It includes twenty-four independent gay liberation organizations.

1970

The New York Times runs a front-page story with the headline “Homosexuals in Revolt”. The article reports “a new mood now taking hold among the nation’s homosexuals. In growing numbers, they are publicly identifying themselves as homosexuals, taking a measure of pride in that identity and seeking militantly to end what they see as society’s persecution of them.”

1972

The Greater Cincinnati Gay Society files suit to require the Secretary of State to grant them articles of incorporation. Their request was denied on the grounds that homosexual acts were illegal. The court agreed that the state was not required to grant incorporation to an organization that promotes the acceptance of homosexuality.

1987

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987), an African American gay man who organized the March on Washington for Civil Rights in 1964, dies of cardiac arrest in New York City. Bayard Rustin was a leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the 1963 March on Washington Movement, in 1941, to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King’s leadership and teaching King about nonviolence. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Communist Vietnam and Cambodia. At the time of his death in 1987, he was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti. Rustin had been arrested early in his career for engaging in public sex though he was posthumously pardoned. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights. On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1988

Actor Leonard Frey (September 4, 1938 – August 24, 1988) dies of complications from AIDS at age 49. Frey received critical acclaim in 1968 for his performance as Harold in off-Broadway’s The Boys in the Band. He later appeared alongside the rest of the original cast in the 1970 film version, directed by William Friedkin. He is best remembered for his Academy Award-nominated performance in Fiddler on the Roof.

1993

During a Holocaust remembrance, Oregon governor Barbara Roberts criticizes anti-gay ballot initiatives in the state.

2000

A U.S. federal court of appeals rules that a Mexican transgender woman had reason to fear persecution in Mexico and was entitled to asylum.

2004

Vice President Dick Cheney told a GOP rally in Davenport, Iowa, that gay marriage should be left up to the states, a reversal of his previous statement on the subject and a return to his original position while running in 2000. His daughter Liz Cheney is a lesbian.

2017

Julie “JD” DiSalvatore (March 5, 1966 – August 24, 2017) died on this day. She was an American LGBT film and television producer/director and gay rights activist. She was also an animal rights activist. JD died of breast cancer at her home in Sherman Oaks, California, at the age of 51. DiSalvatore won a GLAAD Media Award for Shelter, for best feature film in limited release. In 2009, DiSalvatore was honored at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s An Evening With Women with a LACE (Lesbians and bisexual women Active in Community Empowerment) Award for her work in the community, and was featured in Go Magazine’s “100 Women We Love.”

2019

The New York Times reported a complaint against astronaut Lieutenant Colonel Anne McClain, brought by her then wife Summer Worden through the Federal Trade Commission, accusing her of illegally accessing financial information while residing in the International Space Station. This accusation “outed” McClain as a lesbian, making her the first openly LGBT NASA astronaut and the third known lesbian astronaut after Sally Ride and Wendy B. Lawrence. McClain was a Flight Engineer for Expedition 58/59 to the International Space Station. McClain married Summer Worden in 2014 but divorced in 2017. On April 7, 2020, McClain was cleared of all charges while Worden faces a two-count indictment on charges of making false statements. McClain resides in suburban Houston, Texas.

 

August 25

1845, Bavaria

Ludwig II (August 25, 1845 – June 13, 1886) is born in Nymphenburg, Bavaria. Louis Otto Frederick William was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He is sometimes called the Swan King, Mad King Ludwig or Fairy Tale King. He built fairytale castles on the Rhine and filled them with young boys in revealing military uniforms. Crown Prince Ludwig had just turned 18 when his father died after a three-day illness, and he ascended the Bavarian throne. Although he was not prepared for high office, his youth and brooding good looks made him popular in Bavaria and elsewhere. Ludwig never married nor had any known mistresses. It is known from his diary (begun in the 1860s), private letters, and other surviving personal documents, that he had strong homosexual desires.

1876

The Sacramento Daily Union reports that Ah Lee and Ah Joe both plead not guilty in California for “crimes against nature.” Ah Joe is sentence to three years in prison. Ah Lee’s fate is unknown.

1918

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) is born. He was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the U.S. to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” His most famous work is probably the music for West Side Story. His lover, author John Gruen, died in July, 2016 at the age of 89.

1981

Bob Hoy, an openly gay graduate student at North Carolina State University, runs for the Raleigh, N.C., City Council. He is defeated with only 3% of the vote after being attacked by the local press. Joe Herzenbeng (June 25, 1941 – October 28, 2007) was the first openly gay elected official in North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, in 1987.

1982

Iran re-institutes Islamic sharia law, proscribing all same-sex acts. Punishments include 100 lashes of the whip, beheading, and stoning to death.

2017

President Trump issues a Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security which prohibits transgender individuals from serving in the military.

 

August 26

1904, UK

English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood (August 26, 1904 –  January 4, 1986) is born in Wyberslegh Hall, United Kingdom. His best-known works include The Berlin Stories (1935-39) and two semi-autobiographical novellas inspired by Isherwood’s time in Weimar Republic, Germany. These enhanced his postwar reputation when they were adapted first into the play I Am a Camera (1951), then the 1955 film of the same name. In 1966 I Am a Camera became the bravura stage musical Cabaret which was acclaimed on Broadway. His novel A Single Man was published in 1964. He began living with the photographer William “Bill” Caskey. In 1947, the two traveled to South America. Isherwood wrote the prose and Caskey took the photographs for a 1949 book about their journey entitled The Condor and the Cows. On Valentine’s Day 1953, at the age of 48, he met 18 year old Don Bachardy (born May 18, 1934) among a group of friends on the beach at Santa Monica. Despite the age difference, this meeting began a partnership that, though interrupted by affairs and separations, continued until the end of Isherwood’s life. Bachardy became a successful artist with an independent reputation, and his portraits of the dying Isherwood became well known after Isherwood’s death.

1923

American photographer Mel Roberts (Aug. 26, 1923) is born in Toledo, Ohio. Roberts specialized in capturing the ideal California male in a series of images taken during the 1960s and 1970s. Like other photographers from his era, Roberts often used friends and former lovers as his models. Much of his work was published in The Wild Ones: California Boys: The Erotic Photography of Mel Roberts.

1929

Chuck Renslow (August 26, 1929 – June 29, 2017) was an openly gay American businessperson known for pioneering homoerotic photography in the mid-20th-century and establishing many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, especially in the Chicago area. His accomplishments included the founding of the Gold Coast bar, Man’s Country Baths, the International Mr. Leather competition, Chicago’s August White Party, and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars. He was the partner and lover of erotica artist Dom Orejudos (July 1, 1933 – September 24, 1991), better known by his pen names Etienne and Stephen.

1952

Actor Michael Jeter (August 26, 1952 – March 30, 2003) is born. He was an American actor of film, stage, and television. His television roles include Herman Stiles on Evening Shade from 1990 until 1994 and Mr. Noodle on Elmo’s World (Sesame Street) from 2000 until 2003. Jeter’s film roles include Zelig, The Fisher King, Waterworld, Air Bud, Patch Adams, The Green Mile, Jurassic Park III, Sister Act 2, and The Polar Express. Jeter was openly gay and met his partner Sean Blue in 1995; they were together from 1995 until Jeter’s death in 2003. Jeter was found dead in his Hollywood home at age 50. Although he was HIV positive, he had been in good health for many years. Blue stated publicly that Jeter died after suffering an epileptic seizure.

1954

William Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and artist. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. On this day he wrote to poet Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) that he had fallen in love with his boyfriend Kiki. Their relationship lasted three years until a jealous former lover murdered Kiki. Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel Junkie (1953), but he is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a highly controversial work that was the subject of a court case after it was challenged as being in violation of the U.S. sodomy laws. Much of Burroughs’s work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict. He lived through-out Mexico City, London, Paris and Tangier in Morocco as well as from his travels in the South American Amazon.

1969, Canada

In Ottawa, amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code come into effect, legalizing sexual acts between two consenting adults in private who are 21 years of age or older. Neither sexual acts nor homosexuality per se were “legalized,” rather, “gross indecency” and “buggery” were decriminalized in certain circumstances.

1973

The Lesbian Feminist Liberation demonstration at the American Museum of Natural History takes place. It is to demand the inclusion of matriarchies and women’s culture. Lesbian Feminist Liberation was a lesbian rights advocacy organization in New York City in 1972. It was originally the Lesbian Liberation Committee as part of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). In 1972, when the members felt the GAA was not giving enough focus to lesbian and feminist issues, they left GAA and formed the Lesbian Feminist Liberation. The departure was coordinated by Jean O’Leary (March 4, 1948 – June 4, 2005). The formation of Lesbian Feminist Liberation left the Radical Lesbians group with few members. The Lesbian Liberation Committee, and initially the Lesbian Feminist Liberation as well, met at an old Firehouse at 99 Wooster Street in SoHo in New York City. In 1974, the organization worked with New York Radical Feminists to increase the visibility of women at the New York City LGBT Pride March.

1976

Transgender tennis player Dr. Renee Richards (born August 19, 1934), who had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 1975, is barred from the U.S. Open to play as a woman. Her first professional tennis match as a woman was a year later after a decision from the New York Supreme Court. After four years of playing tennis, she decided to return to her medical practice which she moved to Park Avenue in New York. She then became the surgeon director of ophthalmology and head of the eye-muscle clinic at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. In addition she served on the editorial board of the Journal of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. She now lives in a small town north of New York City with her platonic companion Arleen Larzelere.

1981

California Governor Jerry Brown appoints Mary C. Morgan to the San Francisco Municipal Court. She was the first openly lesbian judge in the U.S. She retired in 2011. At the time of her appointment to the San Francisco County Superior Court, Morgan’s partner was Roberta Achtenberg (born July 20, 1950) who served as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Clinton Administration. Senator Jesse Helms, who had referred to Achtenberg as “that damn lesbian,” had held up Achtenberg’s nomination and was particularly outraged at discovering that Achtenberg and Morgan had kissed during a gay pride parade.

1985

Ryan White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990), an Indiana boy with hemophilia and AIDS, is barred from attending public school. When a court decision allowed him to return, he was forced to use a separate restroom and eat with disposable utensils. His family was forced to move because of threats and violent acts directed toward them.

1986

Jerry Smith (July 19, 1943 – October 15, 1986), former Washington Redskins tight end, is the first professional athlete to voluntarily acknowledge that he has AIDS. However, he never acknowledged his homosexuality though his teammates were aware and supported him. The Redskins logo, along with Jerry Smith’s uniform number 87, is part of the AIDS quilt. He was a professional American football tight end for the National Football League’s Washington Redskins from 1965–1977. By the time he retired he held the NFL record for most career touchdowns by a tight end. A 2014 documentary from the NFL Network’s A Football Life series profiles his career, as well as his “double life as a closeted gay man and a star athlete”

1993

U.S. Secretary Defense Les Aspin releases a study saying the ban on lesbians and gays in the armed forces should be lifted. The study was conducted by the Rand Corp. and cost $1.3 million. It concluded that the ban could be dropped without damaging order and discipline. Several previous Pentagon studies had reached similar conclusions.

1993

Federal district court judge Aldon Anderson of Utah announces that he would strike down a state law that prohibited people with AIDS from marrying.

1995

Spokespersons for homophobic Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole announce that his campaign was returning a $1,000 donation from the Log Cabin Federation, saying the gay and lesbian Republican organization has “a specific political agenda that’s fundamentally at odds” with the senator’s.

2020

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of former student Gavin Grimm in a more than four-year fight over restroom policies for transgender students. The ruling states that policies segregating transgender students from their peers is unconstitutional and violate federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The decision relies in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2020, stating that discrimination against people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

 

August 27

1782

John Laurens (October 28, 1754 – August 27, 1782) dies at the age of 28. He was an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, best known for his criticism of slavery and efforts to help recruit slaves to fight for their freedom as U.S. soldiers. Though he was married, letters between Laurens and Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) indicate that the two men had an affair. From a young age, Laurens apparently exhibited a lack of interest in women. Laurens’ biographer Gregory D. Massey states that he “reserved his primary emotional commitments for other men.” Though he eventually married, a union born out of regret. While in London for his studies, Laurens impregnated Martha Manning and married her to preserve the legitimacy of their child. Laurens wrote to this uncle, “Pity has obliged me to marry.” Hamilton had “at the very least” an “adolescent crush” on Laurens. Chernow also states that “Hamilton did not form friendships easily and never again revealed his interior life to another man as he had to Laurens. […] After the death of John Laurens, Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it.”

1873

Maud Allan (August 27, 1873 – October 7, 1956) was a pianist-turned-actress, dancer and choreographer who is remembered for her “impressionistic mood settings.” From the 1920s on, Allan taught dance and lived with her secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich. She died in Los Angeles.

1951

California Supreme Court ruled that the mere congregation of homosexuals at the Black Cat Bar was not sufficient grounds for suspending the bar’s liquor license (Stoumen v. Reilly , 37 Cal.2d 713, [S. F. No. 18310. In Bank. Aug. 28, 1951.]). The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco, California that had originally opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years. During its second run of operation, it was a hangout for Beats and bohemians but over time began attracting more and more of a gay clientele. The Black Cat closed down for good in February of 1964. The site is now the location of Bocadillos, a tapas-style restaurant. On December 15, 2007, a plaque commemorating the Black Cat and its place in San Francisco history was placed at the site.

1961

U.S.fashion designer and gay icon Tom Ford (August 27, 1961) is born. He is a film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He launched his luxury brand in 2006, having previously served as the creative director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Ford directed the Oscar-nominated films A Single Man (2009) and Nocturnal Animals (2016). Ford is married to Richard Buckley (born 1948), a journalist and former editor in chief of Vogue Hommes International; they have been in a relationship since meeting in 1986.

1967

Brian Epstein (September 9, 1934 – August 27, 1967), the manager of The Beatles, dies of a drug overdose. Although John Lennon often made sarcastic comments about Epstein’s homosexuality to friends and to Epstein personally, no one outside the group’s inner circle was allowed to comment. Male homosexual activity was illegal in England and Wales until September 1967 when it was decriminalized; however, this was one month after Eptein’s death.

1969, Switzerland

Erica Mann (November 9, 1905 – August 27, 1969) dies in Zurich. She was a German actress and writer and the eldest daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann and his wife Katia. In 1924, Erika Mann moved to Berlin where she lived a bohemian lifestyle and became a critic of National Socialism. She acted in, and wrote for, an anti-Nazi cabaret in Berlin. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann moved to Switzerland. She married gay poet W. H. Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29,1973). The marriage was arranged in 1935 by Christopher Isherwood to help Mann get a British passport to flee Nazi Germany. Mann remained active in liberal causes and continued to attack Nazism in her writings, most notably with her 1938 book School for Barbarians which was a critique of the Nazi education system. Erika was in a relationship with actress Pamela Wedekind (December 12, 1906-April 9, 1986). She would later have relationships with actress Therese Giehse (6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975), author and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942) and dancer Betty Knox (10 May 1906 – 25 January 1963) with whom she served as a war correspondent during World War II.

1973

In New York City the local 6th police precinct defeated the New York Matts in a softball game. Matts was short for Mattachines, a gay organization. It attracted approximately 1,000 spectators and raised $1,000 for mentally disabled children. Geraldo Rivera was the first base umpire.

1992

Colorado Republican senate candidate Terry Considine refers to AIDS as a self-inflicted injury during a town meeting and equates AIDS with gun violence and drug abuse.

1998

At the 16th Annual Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Symposium in Chicago, attorney Aaron Greenberg argues that if the gay gene is isolated, parents should have the right to abort a gay fetus or have its genetic makeup altered.

2000, Japan

After a four-year absence, the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade is held in Japan. Beginning in 1996 as the First Les-Bi-Gay Pride March Sapporo, for the next two years it was the Sexual Minority Pride March, and from 1999 became the Rainbow March. It has become an annual public event of Sapporo and the longest, continuously run LGBT parade in Japan. The 1999 Rainbow Parade was also the first pride parade in Japan to feature floats. Called the Tokyo Lesbian & Gay Parade (TLGP), the event took place in 2000 in the form of a march around the Shibuya district. The Parade went on, taking place in late summer of the two subsequent years, 2001 and 2002, now attracting crowds of over 3,000.

2005

Sen. John McCain announces that although he is opposed a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, he supports a state version in his home state of Arizona.

 

August 28

430, Africa

St. Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430) dies. He was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most important founders in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions. Some of his writings in Confessions reveal his attraction to men.

1603, Italy

During a trial Italian painter Caravaggio (September 29, 1571 – July 18, 1610) was charged with libel when Baglione testified that he had a male lover. Baglione’s painting of Divine Love has also been seen as a visual accusation of sodomy against Caravaggio. Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 (1595?) and 1610. His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, and they had a formative influence on Baroque painting. Since the 1970s both art scholars and historians have debated the inferences of homoeroticism in Caravaggio’s works as a way to better understand the man.

1814, Ireland

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (August 28, 1814 – February 7,1873) is born in Dublin. He wrote vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897) by 26 years. His best known, written 25 years before Dracula, is Carmilla, a story of a lesbian vampire who preyed on young women.

1825, Germany

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895), German jurist and activist, was born in Aurich, Germany. He would become one of the earliest activists in Germany to attempt to abolish the German sodomy law. In 1862, Ulrichs, a lawyer, theologian, and pioneer of the modern gay rights movement, described his own homosexuality as anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa– a female psyche confined in a male body. “I may have a beard, and manly limbs and body,” he writes in Latin “yet confined by these, I am and remain a woman.” Ulrichs’ fusion of gay and gender identities dominates discussion of transsexualism for almost a century.

1920, Germany

The first post-WWI general membership meeting of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee passes a motion to establish connections with homosexual organizations in other countries.

1921

Nancy Kulp (August 28, 1921 – February 3, 1991), famous for her role as Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies, is born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the show’s cancellation, Kulp ran unsuccessfully for state office in Pennsylvania. Kulp lived her life completely in the closet. After her retirement from acting and teaching, she moved first to a farm in Connecticut and later to Palm Springs, California, where she became involved in several charity organizations including the Humane Society of the Desert, the Desert Theatre League, and United Cerebral Palsy. Later in life, Kulp indicated to author Boze Hadleigh in a 1989 interview that she was a lesbian. “As long as you reproduce my reply word for word, and the question, you may use it…. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me phrase the question. There is more than one way. Here’s how I would ask it: ‘Do you think that opposites attract?’ My own reply would be that I’m the other sort – I find that birds of a feather flock together. That answers your question.” Her lesbianism was not publicly acknowledged until after her death from cancer in Palm Springs on February 3, 1991.

1957

Gender-bending lesbian and Jewish folk/punk singer/songwriter Phranc (August 28, 1957) is born. Phranc is the stage name of Susan Gottlieb who began her performing career in the late 1970s and early 1980s punk scene in Los Angeles. She had a bleached blonde crewcut and wore male attire, creating an androgynous persona for her first band, Nervous Gender, which formed in 1978. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her partner and children.

1963

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom takes place. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his “I have a Dream” speech. Openly gay Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was the march’s prime organizer.

1965

Keith Boykin (born August 28, 1965), African American activist and author, is born in St. Louis, Missouri. As if a forecast of his future activism, his birthday and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech” share the same day. Working in the Clinton Administration, Boykin held the positions of Special Assistant to the President and Director of News Analysis, and Director of Specialty Media. In 2001, Boykin founded the National Black Justice Coalition, the largest African American GLBT rights organization in America. Boykin has authored several books: One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America (1996), Respecting the Soul: Daily Reflections for Black Lesbians and Gays (1999), Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America (2005) and For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough (2012). He teaches politics at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York.  From December 2003 until April 2006, Boykin served as president of the board of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington-based civil rights organization dedicated to fighting racism and homophobia which he co-founded.

1970

Police in New York force their way into The Haven, a private, unisex non-alcohol gay club. It was the third of four raids on the club that would take place in a two-week period. Six were arrested, detained overnight, and released the next morning. Between these and other raids, over 300 homosexuals were arrested during the month of August. There were also cases of threats and harassment. New York City was sued for false arrest and harassment in three of the cases. All other cases were dismissed.

1970

The Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, and other gay activists hold a protest at NYU after the campus administration cancelled a series of dances at NYU’s Weinstein Hall when they learned a gay organization was sponsoring them. After a discussion with the dean they were allowed to use the property. The dean had been called by campus police who arrived to break up the demonstration.

1981

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) first announces a sudden, unusual increase in cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the first sign of the worldwide epidemic of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS. The CDC formally recognizes AIDS as sn “epidemic”

1982

The first “Gay Games” are held at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. 1,600 people participated and 50,000 people attended. At that time, it was still called the “Gay Olympics” until the U. S. Olympic Committee sued for trademark infringement and won. Author Rita Mae Brown (born 28 November 1944) hosted the opening ceremonies. The Gay Games is the world’s largest sporting and cultural event specifically for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender athletes, artists and musicians, founded by Tom Waddell, Rikki Streicher and others.

1989

A law took effect in Texas that requires that real estate agents tell potential buyers or tenants if the person who previously occupied a property had AIDS.

1993

Keith Douglas Pruitt (October 12, 1961- November 12, 2008) and another gay man were attacked in Manhattan. Pruitt once played a part on the soap opera As the World Turns. Pruitt required 14 stitches in his head. Three men from New Jersey were arrested and charged with the attack.

1996

In response to threats to out him after the city of Tempe, Arizona granted $1,500 in fee waivers to the annual gay pride festival, Mayor Neil Giuliano  (born October 26, 1956) comes out in an interview with the Tempe Daily News Tribune. He was named to the OUT 100 by OUT Magazine, which notes the top 100 people in gay culture in the U.S. While he was Mayor in 2003, Tempe was named an “All American-City,” an award honoring local governments demonstrating success in problem solving. He was named Tempe Humanitarian of the year in 2014.

1998

The Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, a fund of the Gill Foundation, announces $195,950 in grants to 22 Colorado organizations.

2002

Nevada teen Derek Henkle (born in 1983) settles a lawsuit (Henkle v. Gregory, 150 F. Supp.2d 1067 (D Nev. 2001) against the Washoe County School District for $451,000. The settlement is believed to be the largest pre-trial award ever in this kind of case. Derek’s suit alleged that administrators in three separate schools failed to protect him from years of being beaten, spat upon, called names and threatened with a lasso because he is gay.

2007

The world learns that Republican U.S. Senator Larry Craig had been arrested for lewd conduct in the men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 11, 2007 and entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct on August 8, 2007.

 

August 29

1844, UK

English writer Edward Carpenter (August 29, 1844 – June 28, 1929) was born in Brighton. He was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for rights for homosexuals. On his return from India in 1891, he met George Merrill, a working-class man 22 years his junior, and the two men struck up a relationship, eventually cohabiting in 1898. Their relationship endured and they remained partners for the rest of their lives, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about homosexuality generated by the Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) trial of 1895. An early advocate of sexual freedoms, Carpenter had an influence on both D. H. Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) and Sri Aurobindo (15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950), and inspired E. M. Forster’s (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) novel Maurice.

1956

Dancer and choreographer Mark Morris (August 29, 1956) is born in Seattle, Washington. He founded his own award-winning dance troupe. He is openly gay and lives in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. On November 28, 1980, he got together a group of his friends and put on a concert of his own choreography and called them the Mark Morris Dance Group. For the first several years, the company gave just two annual performances – at On the Boards in Seattle, Washington, and at Dance Theater Workshop in New York. In 1986, the company was featured on the nationally televised Great Performances – Dance in America series on PBS. In 1990, Morris and Mikhail Baryshnikov established the White Oak Dance Project. He continued to create works for this company until 1995. In 2013, Morris was the first choreographer and dancer to be the Music Director of the Ojai (CA) Music Festival.

1968

Me’Shell NdegéOcello is born Michelle Johnson (August 29, 1968). She became a widely respected, openly bisexual singer, songwriter, and bassist and the first female artist to be signed by Madonna’s Maverick label. Ndegeocello is bisexual and previously had a relationship with feminist author Rebecca Walker. Ndegeocello’s first son, Solomon, was born in 1989. As of 2011 she had been married to Alison Riley for five years, with whom she has a second son.

1970

Local activists had had enough, so on Saturday August 29, 1970, the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists’ Alliance, Radical Lesbians and other women’s groups organized a demonstration. About 250 people showed up at 8th Avenue and West 42nd Street near Times Square, and marched down 7th. Avenue to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. This action has since been known as “The Forgotten Riot.” The demonstration broke up around midnight, but the frustrations were still there. Some went on to march around the Women’s House of Detention at Greenwich Avenue and 6th Avenue. New York City Police arrived to break it up and the crowd ran toward Christopher Street. The crowd arrived just in time to witness the police raiding a bar called The Haven. As a mass of demonstrators gathered in front of the bar and the police called for reinforcements. A police bus arrived and was met with a shower of bottles. A running battle ensued over the next two hours as crowds set trash cans on fire and overturned at least one car. Eight were injured and approximately fifteen people were arrested.

1987, Mexico

The First National Conference of Lesbians is held in Guadalajara to unite the lesbian movement in Mexico in anticipation of Feminist Lesbians of Latin America and the Caribbean Conference. The result is the creation of the National Coordination of Lesbians.

1993

Twenty-nine people stage a silent demonstration at St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn, N.Y. to protest Brooklyn Roman Catholic bishop Thomas Daily’s pastoral letter opposing anti-gay bias laws.

1997

Jim McKnight discusses his research on the gay gene on the BBC program Science Now. His research group at the University of Western Sidney studied the families of homosexuals and discovered that evidence exists to suggest that homosexuality is an inherited trait.

 

August 30

1928

The New York Times reports that U.S. publisher Alfred Knopf had purchased the American rights to Radclyffe Hall’s (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) novel about lesbianism, The Well of Loneliness.

1956

American psychologist Evelyn Hooker, UCLA, shares her paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual at the American Psychological Association Convention in Chicago. After administering psychological tests such as the Rorschach, to groups of homosexual and heterosexual males, Hooker’s research concludes homosexuality is not a clinical entity and that heterosexuals and homosexuals do not differ. Hooker’s experiment becomes very influential, changing clinical perceptions of homosexuality.

1969

A National Institute of Mental Health study chaired by Dr. Evelyn Hooker of UCLA urges decriminalization of private sex acts between consenting adults.

1974, Canada

The second national gay rights conference is held in Winnipeg. As part of the opening session, a gay rights march is in held in the city. it was the first major gay demonstration in the prairie provinces.

1981, Canada

Toronto’s Cabbagetown Group Softball League hosts the fifth Gay Softball World Series. Players from eleven cities in U.S. and Canada participated. It was the first time the series was held in Canada. Gay Softball World Series, part of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA), is the largest annual LGBT single-sport, week-long athletic competition in the world. Teams from the 46 Member Cities across North America compete to qualify and represent their city in one of five Divisions. Formed in 1977, NAGAAA is a 501c(3) international sports organization comprised of men and women dedicated to providing opportunity and access for the LGBT community to participate in organized softball competition in safe environments.

1991, UK

OutRage stages a zap against Amnesty International London over their failure to adopt lesbian and gay persons as prisoners of conscience.

1993

Texas state health officials announce that they are investigating two cases of HIV transmission through female-female sex. However, in both cases other risk factors were present. In 2012, in another Texas case, the CDC said that HIV transmission through female-to-female sexual contact was reported, a rare female-to-female transmission of the virus which is “rarely reported and difficult to ascertain.” The two women in the 2012 case said they routinely had unprotected sexual contact and shared sex toys between them. At times, the contact was “rough to the point of inducing bleeding in either woman,” according to the CDC. The women said some of the unprotected sexual contact occurred during menstruation.

1994, UK

A panel of magistrates in London dismissed a paternity suit against singer Boy George (born June 14, 1961) for lack of evidence. By George is an English singer, songwriter, DJ, fashion designer and photographer. He is the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning pop band Culture Club. At the height of the band’s fame, during the 1980s, they recorded global hit songs such as Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, Time (Clock of the Heart) and Karma Chameleon. George is known for his soulful voice and androgynous appearance. He was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the late 1970s to the early 1980s. In his autobiography Take It Like a Man, George stated that he had secret relationships with punk rock singer Kirk Brandon and Club drummer Jon Moss (born 11 September 1957). He stated many of the songs he wrote for Culture Club were about his relationship with Moss.

2005

Off-Broadway musical Naked Boys Singing! re-opens in Milwaukee after being closed by police on obscenity charges two weeks earlier. Naked Boys Singing! is a traditional American vaudeville-style musical revue, with book and direction by Robert Schrock, musical direction by Stephen Bates and choreography by Jeffry Denman, that features eight actors who sing and dance naked. This campy Off-Broadway musical comedy opened on July 22, 1999 at the Actors’ Playhouse in New York City. The show transferred to Theatre Four in March 2004, and again in 2005 to New World Stages Stage Four, until it closed on January 28, 2012. The show has no plot; it contains 15 songs, about various issues, such as gay life, male nudity, coming out, circumcision and love. The official Off Broadway Revival opened at Theatre Row’s Kirk Theatre on April 5, 2012 and is still enjoying a healthy run today.

2012

Charlie Jane Anders, who identifies as genderqueer and a transwoman, wins the 2012 Hugo Award for her book Six Months, Three Days. She is an American writer and commentator. She has written several novels and is the publisher of other magazine, the “magazine of pop culture and politics for the new outcasts”. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, the Emperor Norton Award. In 2007, Anders brought attention to the policy of a San Francisco bisexual women’s organization called “The Chasing Amy Social Club” that she felt was discriminatory, as it specifically barred preoperative transgender women from membership. Since 2000, Anders has been the partner of author Annalee Newitz (born 1969). The couple co-founded Other magazine.

2013

A gay combat medic who challenged the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy while serving in Iraq, dies in a car crash in New York. Darren Manzella (August 8, 1977 – August 29, 2013), a former U. S. Army sergeant, went on national television in 2007 to reveal his sexual orientation, becoming the face of gay servicemen and women before being discharged in 2008 for publicly discussing his sexual identity. The policy was repealed in 2011, and a friend said Manzella had recently signed on as a reservist. He was a United States Army Sergeant, Army medic and gay activist from Portland, New York, who was discharged under the Don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Manzella served in Iraq and Kuwait and was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas. Manzella married Javier Lapeira in Rochester on July 5, 2013. On August 29, 2013, Manzella was killed when an SUV hit him as he was in the act of pushing his disabled vehicle off the road in Pittsford, Monroe County, New York.

 

August 31

12 AD, Italy

Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula (August 31, 12 – January 24, 41) , is born in Anzio, Italy. He was violent and cruel. Bisexual, his male lovers included soldiers, actors and a priest. A soldier was said to have kicked him to death after sex, though more likely Caligula was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers. During his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate. He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself. He also initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. During his reign, the empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania as a province.

1935

Jim Morris (August 31, 1935 – January 28, 2016) is born. He was an openly gay African American bodybuilder known for winning competitions over a thirty-year career. Among the titles Morris won are: Mr. USA (1972), AAU Mr. America (1973), Mr. International (1974), and Mr. Olympia Masters Over 60 (1996). At age 50, he became a vegetarian then vegan, a diet to which he credited much of his excellent health. He posed nude for a PETA ad in support of the vegan lifestyle. From 1974 to 1988 he was Elton John’s personal bodyguard. In March 2014 a short documentary-film starring Jim Morris entitled Jim Morris: Lifelong Fitness was released on YouTube. The film focuses on his life-long body building career, vegan lifestyle and Morris’ yearning to break stereotypes attached to the elderly. Morris died on January 28, 2016 at the age of 80.

1961

The first English language film to use the word “homosexual” in a feature film is shown in the U.S. It was the British suspense film Victim. It was denied the motion picture code seal of approval. The film was directed by Basil Dearden and starred Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms. It premiered in the UK on August 31,1961, and in the US the following February.

1968

Jennifer Lynn Azzi (born August 31, 1968) is a former basketball coach, most recently the head coach of the women’s team at the University of San Francisco. Azzi is also a former collegiate and professional basketball player as well as an Olympic and FIBA world champion. Azzi was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. On March 31, 2016, Azzi publicly came out as gay, announcing her marriage to University of San Francisco assistant Blair Hardiek while introducing Golden State Warriors president Rick Welts at the Anti-Defamation League’s Torch of Liberty Award ceremony at the Fairmont Hotel. About coming out, Azzi said, “I, too, lived a long time not being 100 percent honest. Kind of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell kinda of thing. And it’s so stupid. I don’t know why we do that, but we do that. I’m a college coach. Is it going to hurt me with recruiting? What are people going to think? And you are constantly worrying about those things. What I realized in watching Rick in his path and his journey is that there is nothing more powerful than living the truth. And the best thing I can do for my team is be authentic and true to myself” Azzi and her wife Blair have son and a daughter.

1979

At the start of the Labor Day weekend at the Sri Ram Ashram near Benson, Arizona, the Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies was organized as a ʺcall to gay brothersʺ by early gay rights advocates Harry Hay  (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002), John Burnside (1916-2008), Don Kilhefner (born March 3, 1938), and Mitch Walker (born 1951). It becomes the birthplace of The Radical Faeries. The Radical Faeries is a loosely affiliated worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through spirituality. Sometimes deemed a form of contemporary Paganism, it adopts elements from anarchism and environmentalism. Today Radical Faeries embody a wide range of genders, sexual orientations, and identities. All sanctuaries and most gatherings are open to all, though a decreasing minority of gatherings still focus on the particular spiritual experience of man-loving men co-creating temporary autonomous zones. Faerie sanctuaries adapt rural living and environmentally sustainable concepts to modern technologies as part of creative expression. Radical Faerie communities are generally inspired by indigenous, native or traditional spiritualties, especially those that incorporate genderqueer sensibilities.

2001, Canada

The Canadian Human Rights tribunal rules in favor of prisons respecting sex reassignment.

2019

June Eastwood became the first openly male-to-female transgender athlete to compete in NCAA Division I cross country; she competed for the University of Montana women’s team. On this day, she became the first transgender athlete to compete in DI cross country when she ran for the University of Montana in the women’s division at the Clash of the Inland Northwest meet. Assigned male at birth, Eastwood, a 22-year-old senior at the time, says she has identified as female since middle school and made the decision to transition during her third year competing on the men’s track team at Montana.

2020

Actor and comedian Niecy Nash (born February 23, 1970) announced that she and Jessica Betts (born born 1972), a singer and songwriter, had gotten married.