October 23rd in Queer History, :

Born this day:

Sarah Bernhardt
French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas. She developed a reputation as a serious dramatic actress, earning the nickname "The Divine Sarah".

Jean Acker   (1893 - 1978)
American film actress with a career dating from the silent film era through the 1950s. She was perhaps best known as the estranged wife of silent film star Rudolph Valentino. After the wedding, Acker quickly had regrets and locked him out of their hotel bedroom on their wedding night.[2][3] The marriage was reportedly never consummated.

Lilian Tashman  (1896 – 1934)
Brooklyn-born Jewish American vaudeville, Broadway, and film actress. Tashman was best known for her supporting roles as tongue-in-cheek villainesses and the bitchy 'other woman'.

Paul Rudolph 1918 –  1997
American architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for six years, known for use of concrete and highly complex floor plans. His most famous work is the Yale Art and Architecture Building (A&A Building), a spatially complex Brutalist concrete structure.
American architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for six years, known for use of concrete and highly complex floor plans. His most famous work is the Yale Art and Architecture Building (A&A Building), a spatially complex Brutalist concrete structure.

Ned Rorem  (1923 – )
Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings. He has also achieved literary prominence by publishing a series of diaries that include candid descriptions of homosexual love affairs and relationships.  

writer and critic.

Manos Hatzidakis   (1925 – 1994)
Greek composer and theorist of the Greek music. He was also one of the main prime movers of the "Éntekhno" song (along with Mikis Theodorakis). In 1960 he received an Academy Award for Best Original Song for his Song "Never on a Sunday" from the film of the same name.

Bella Darvi  (1928 – 1971)
Polish-born French actress.

Maggi Hambling (1945 –)
English painter and sculptor. Perhaps her best known public works are a memorial to Oscar Wilde in central London and Scallop, a 4 metre high steel sculpture of two interlocking scallop shells on Aldeburgh beach dedicated to Benjamin Britten.

Hambling is openly lesbian and her choice of subjects for portraits over the years has included many other openly gay people, such as Derek Jarman, George Melly, Stephen Fry and Quentin Crisp.

Michael Rupert (1951 – )
American actor, singer, director and composer.
Cole Tucker (1953 – )
Actor in gay pornography, who started making appearances in gay pornography in 1996 at the late age of 43

Augusten Burroughs (1965 –)
American writer known for his New York Times bestselling memoir Running with Scissors (2002).He is openly gay, and has spoken freely of his life with (former) partner Dennis Pilsits, and of his support for gay marriage.

Matthew Williamson (1971 – )
English fashion designer. His collections often have an Indian influence, perhaps related to the time Williamson spent working in India for the clothing store Monsoon. He counts celebrities such as Björk, Cat Deeley, Will Buckhurst, Sienna Miller, Kelis, Jade Jagger and Plum Sykes amongst his friends.


Kye Allums, transgender athlete

Kye Allums is the first openly transgender athlete to play NCAA Division I college basketball. Allums was a star shooting guard on the George Washington University (GWU) women’s basketball team.

Died this day:

Charles Demuth 
An American watercolorist who turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism. He was also noted for some frankly homoerotic watercolours, which he circulated privately.

Christian Dior (1905 - 1957)
French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.


Andrew Kopkind (1935 - 1994)
American journalist. He was renowned for his reporting during the tumultuous years of the late 1960s; he wrote about the anti-Vietnam War protests, American Civil Rights Movement, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party, the Weathermen, President Johnson's "Great Society" initiatives, and California gubernatorial campaign of Ronald Reagan.

In the early 1970s he and his long-time companion, John Scagliotti, hosted the "Lavender Hour," the first commercial gay/lesbian radio show

Sodomy in History, October 23

1697 — Massachusetts' sodomy law refers to sodomy as "contrary to the very light of nature."

1762 — English sailors Martin Billin and James Bryan are acquitted of sodomy even though a witness testifies against them.

1880 — A medical journal publishes an article, "Notes upon Sodomy," which claims that men who engage in sodomy have a different type of penis from those who don’t.

1919 — The New Mexico Supreme Court rules that repeal of a statute in derogation of the common law revives the common-law provision. Since the state recognizes common-law crimes, this means that repeal of the sodomy law will not legalize consensual sodomy.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October