Friday, 14 October 2011

October 14th in History: Isaac Mizrahi, Leonard Bernstein, Errol Flynn(?)

Born this day:

Benjamin Sumner Welles (1892 - 1961) American
Government official and diplomat in the Foreign Service. Bisexual, he was forced to resign after he was lured into paying for sex with two African American Pullman car porters.

Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer


Gerry Studds  (1937 – 2006)  US 
Politician  


Died this day:]

Leonard Bernstein, celebrated conductor and composer of West Side Story. A devoted husband and father, he was nevertheless undoubtedly gay, and had numerous well-documented sexual relationships and casual encounters with men, in his youth, during his marriage, and after his wife's death.

Errol Flynn, renowned ladies man - and rumoured bisexual. (Although rumours abound, he is not included on the extensive Wikipedia list of gay men and lesbians, which describes itself as "a referenced overview list of notable gay, lesbian or bisexual people, who have either been open about their sexuality or for which reliable sources exist".

Jamie Nabozny,  Youth Activist

Jamie Nabozny was the first student to successfully sue a school district for its failure to protect a student from anti-gay harassment. His 1995 lawsuit helped pioneer the Safe Schools Movement for GLBT students.

Sodomy in History, October 14



1927 — A California appellate court rules that corroborative evidence in crime against nature and oral copulation cases can be entirely circumstantial.
1941 — A newspaper reports that the Ohio Pardon and Parole Commission adopted a policy the previous year of requiring all males convicted of sex crimes to be sexually sterilized before release. The surgery performed leaves the men permanently impotent.
1986 — The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to review the decision of the Oklahoma Court of Appeals that the state’s sodomy law can not be enforced constitutionally against people of the opposite sex.
1986 — The Georgia Court of Appeals upholds a sodomy conviction even though the defendant claimed that what he was charged with doing was "anatomically impossible." The court does not detail the act.


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