Wednesday, 1 May 2013

May 1st in Queer History

Events this day in Queer History

2009 – Same-sex marriage legalised in Sweden.

Born this day

Romaine Brooks (1874 - 1970) US
An American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri, she specialized in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the color gray. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self-portrait of 1923, which is her most widely reproduced work.
She often painted people close to her, such as the Italian writer and politician Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein, and her partner of more than 50 years, the writer Natalie Barney.

Mary MacLane  (1881 –  1929) Canadian
Author / Screenwriter / Actress

Tad Mosel  (1922 – 2008)  US
Playwright / Screenwriter

Julian Mitchell  (1935 – 1998)  UK
Screenwriter / Author 1943 – Ian Campbell Dunn – UK Activist

Iain Smith  (1960 – )  UK
Politician

Scott Coffey  (1967 – 2009)  US
Actor / Director

Octavia St Laurent  (1970 –   2009) US
Transwoman and performer,featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning

Jacek Dehnel  (1980 – )  Polish
Poet / Author / Painter

Died this day

Dorothy Bussy  (1865 - 1960 ) UK
Author / Translator

Harold Nicholson ( 1886 – 1968)
Diplomat, author, diarist and politician, the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West. Their unusual relationship being described in their son's book, Portrait of a Marriage. Nicolson and his wife practiced what today would be called an open marriage. They each had a number of same-sex affairs, and once Harold had to follow Vita to France, where she had "eloped" with Violet Trefusis, to try to win her back. However, they remained happy together.



Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893 –  1978) UK.  
English novelist and poet, who is an important lesbian voice of the earlier twentieth century. and was the life partner of  the poet Valentine Ackland,

Together, Ackland and Warner embarked on an unusual poetry venture - a book of poems, at the heart of which is a group of celebratory, erotic love poetry, published under both names simultaneously, with no indication which poem was the work of which poet.




Bryan Derbyshire (1943 - 2001) UK
Journalist / Editor / Entrepreneur

John Nathan-Turner  (1947 - 2002 ) UK
Producer

Paul Moore (1919 –  2003) US,  Marine, Bishop Bishop of the Episcopal Church and served as the 13th Bishop of New York. During his lifetime, he was perhaps the best known Episcopal clergyman in the United States, and among the best known Christian clergy in any denomination.
Although twice married and the father of nine children, he was bisexual. This was firmly revealed after his death. Honor Moore, the oldest of his revealed that her father was bisexual with a history of gay affairs in a story she wrote about him in The New Yorker and in the book The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir.

Edward von Kloberg III (1942 – 2005) US 
Lobbyist

Bernard Archard (1916– 2008) UK
Actor

Sodomy in history, May


1909Pennsylvania expands its sodomy provision within the divorce law to include acts of sodomy committed prior to marriage.

1933 Guam gets a penal code by order of its naval governor and sodomy and oral copulation are outlawed, copying the California code.
1944 — The Arizona Supreme Court upholds the state’s law prohibiting oral sex.
1950 California permits one year in jail in lieu of prison for violation of the oral copulation law, presumably for consensual acts.
1963 — The North Carolina Supreme Court overturns a "crime against nature" conviction because the burden of proof had been placed on the defendant.
1976Maine’s new criminal code, including repeal of its consensual sodomy law, takes effect.
1990 Oklahoma bans nursing home employment by those convicted of sodomy, whether consensual or not.


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