Tuesday, 4 December 2012

December 4th in Queer History


Events this day in Queer History

Born this day

AL Rowse (1903 – 1997) UK  
Historian / Poet

Cornell Woolrich ( 1903 - 1968) 
US Author

A Scott Berg (1949 – ) US 
Author

Jon Ginoli (1959 – ) US 
Singer / Musician

Filippo Romano (1979 –) [or ?? November 1979] Italian  
Porn / DJ / Personal Trainer

Died this day

Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976), UK. Composer.
English composer, conductor, and pianist, and probably the most important English composer of the twentieth century (certainly of opera). He first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work "A Boy Was Born" in 1934, and continued to produce important works for four decades. Having previously declined a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage in 1976 as Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh, a few months before his death.
He and his partner the tenor Sir Peter Pears, are one of the best known gay couples in music. Their two graves lie side by side in Aldeburgh.

May Swenson (1913 - 1989), US 
Born and reared in Utah of Swedish parents who were Mormons. Her poems are oracular, imagistic, and marked by experimentalism in technique and typography of shaped forms. She also wrote riddles for children and translated Sweedish poetry. May was a co-winner of the Bollingen Prize (1979-80).

Her love poems concerned "human nature, the natural world, geography, and invention. They are poems of intense love between women, written at a time when that genre was rare in poetry" (Schulman). Although she did not go out of her way to make known her lesbian sexual identity, she also did not hide it.


Michelle Abdill ( 1953 - 1995)  US 
Hate Crime Victim

Roxanne Ellis (1942 - 1995) US 
Hate Crime Victim

Simone Walton (?? - 2005)–  US 
Murder Victim

Sodomy in history, December 1st

1895 — South Carolina’s new constitution denies the right to vote to those convicted of the "crime against nature."

1911 — The Washington Supreme Court upholds a sodomy conviction over the contention of the defendant that the "victim" had syphilis of the mouth and that the defendant didn’t have syphilis. The defendant wanted to prove that the "victim" was actually an accomplice.

1956 — The Idaho Supreme Court upholds the sodomy conviction of the first Boys of Boise defendant whose case reaches the Court.

1986 — The Nevada Supreme Court affirms the dismissal of a challenge to the "crime against nature" law because the challengers were not being prosecuted.

1986 — The Georgia Supreme Court rules that an open bed of a truck is a "public place" for sodomy law purposes.

1987 — The District of Columbia Court of Appeals overturns the solicitation conviction of a man who flagged down cars, got in, and drove off, calling the evidence circumstantial only.

Sources:

Wikipedia
On this gay day

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