October 14th in Queer History

Events in LGBT History: 

1979 – First National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights

Born this day

Katherine Mansfield (1888 –  1923) New Zealand
Author

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.

Ruth Bernhard  ( 1905 – 2006) US
Photographer

 Frisco Wiegersma  (1925 – 2006) Dutch
Painter / Lyricist

Udo Kier  ( 1944 –  ) German
Actor


Luz María Umpierre, (1947 - ) Puerto American 
Poet


Janet Cooling  ( 1951 –  ) US
Artist

Al Rantel  ( 1955 – ) US
Presenter

Dominic Agostino  (1959 –  2004 ) Canadian
Politician

Isaac Mizrahi, ( 1961 –  ) US
Fashion Designer

Jamie Nabozny, (1975 - ) US

Youth Activist, 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.

Died this day

Errol Flynn, (1909 - 1959) 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".

Leonard Bernstein,  (1918 - 1990  ) US

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.

Jody Dobrowski  ( 1981-  2005 ) UK
Bartender / Hate Crime Victim

Gerry Studds  ( 1937 – 2006) US
Politician

Sodomy in history, Oct 14th 

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.

Sources:

Wikipedia

glbtq emcyclopedia

On this gay day

Calendar of Sodomy, October

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

October 22nd in Queer History: Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Long, Mark Shaiman

Born this day:

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870 - 1945) UK Author / Poet / Translator


British writer and poet and lover of Oscar Wilde. Bosie, as he was known to his friends, married Olive Cunstance in 1902 and they had a son, Raymond, that same year. The 1997 film 'Wilde' tells the story about his relationship with Oscar Wilde.

Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008) US 

Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the "Combines" are a combination of both. Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called 'Neo-Dada', a label he shared with the painter Jasper Johns , with whom he had a long artistic and personal relationship.

Robert Long

Dutch singer, writer, playwright, Radio- and TV-host and songwriter

Mark Shaiman

American composer, lyricist, arranger, musical director and music producer

Sodomy in History, October 22

1840 — Maine makes its sodomy law gender-neutral.

1968 — The Michigan Court of Appeals upholds a "crime against nature" conviction even though prior acts with others were admitted into evidence.

1971 — The Nebraska Supreme Court upholds a sodomy conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

October 20th in Queer History: Hans Warren

Born this day

Hans Warren (1921 - 2001)
Dutch poet, writer and literary critic, born in Borsele, whose full name was Johannes Adrianus Menne Warren. He published a an extended series of candid diaries of his life ans sexual experiences as a gay man in the Netherlands, including the early years when married and closeted, coming out, and later living and writing as openly gay. He is also notable for a fictionalized account of what it was like to be both Jewish and gay under Nazi occupation, in the novel "Secretly Inside".

Sodomy in History, October 20

1896 — The Iowa Supreme Court permits divorce on cruelty grounds due to one spouse’s violating a sodomy statute.

1941 — South African police are called in to quiet a disturbance at a gold mine caused by the dismissal of 122 miners for refusing to stop dances in which boys are squeezed and kissed.

1941 — The Arkansas Supreme Court rejects the request of a sodomy defendant to be sent to a hospital to determine his mental status.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

October 18th in Queer History: Martina Navratilova, Tim Gill, Ien Dales, Uzi Even

Born this day

• Martina Navratilova, tennis champion
• Tim Gill, businessman, activist and political donor
• Ien Dales,   Dutch politician and cabinet minister
• Uzi Even,  first openly gay member of the Israeli Knesset 

Sodomy in History, October 18


1954 — David Trago, the elected sheriff of Jackson County, Ohio, is arrested on sodomy charges. He is a religious fundamentalist and the father of 13 children. The first trial ends in his acquittal, but later he is arrested again for attempting to have sex with a teenage male and is convicted and removed from office.

1981 — An Ohio appellate court sustains the libel verdict against Larry Hustler magazine for a satirical cartoon showing his rival, Penthouse publisher Robert Guccione, engaged in a "homosexual act."

1984 — The U.S. Virgin Islands repeals its sodomy law.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

October 17th in Queer History: Sir Cameron Mackintosh, The Singing Nun

Born this day:


Sir Cameron Mackintosh Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, The Singing Nun Rebecca Wight (1959 - 1988) US Hate Crime Victim
Sodomy in History,October 17th


1956 — An Illinois appellate court overturns the sodomy conviction of two men because no plea had been entered before the trial. The court refuses to publish the text of its opinion.

1958 — A New York court overturns the disorderly conduct charge against two men for fondling each other in a restroom, because they did not solicit.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

Oscar Wilde, (1854 - 1900): Playwright and gay icon

b. October 16, 1854
d. November 30, 1900

"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world, there are only individuals."

Oscar Wilde gloried in flaunting his individuality during the Victorian Era, a period synonymous with social conformity and sexual repression.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin to a mother who was a noted poet and Irish nationalist, and a father who was an eye surgeon. Wilde showed brilliance from an early age, winning prizes at school and university. At Magdalen College, Oxford Wilde adopted his signature flowing hair and flamboyant style of dress, openly scorned "manly sports," and decorated his rooms with peacock feathers and beautiful objects.

Wilde first became a public figure as a spokesman for the Aesthetic Movement, whose motto was "art for art's sake." After a lecture tour through the United States, where he met poet Walt Whitman, Wilde said that "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

In 1892, the debut of his first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, introduced London theatergoers to such Wildean trademark witticisms as, "My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's," and "I can resist anything but temptation." Wilde's plays sparkle with keenly observed satirical wit that punctures the stuffy pretenses of Victorian society.

A turning point in Wilde's life came in 1891 when Wilde, who was married and the father of two children, began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, known as "Bosie," son of the Marquess of Queensbury. Infuriated by his son's involvement with Wilde, the Marquess instigated legal actions that ended with Wilde's conviction on a charge of gross indecency for "a love that dare not speak its name."

In April 1895, the night he was arrested for "indecent acts," Wilde's name was removed from the playbills outside theatres in London and New York where his hit plays "The Importance Of Being Earnest" and "An Ideal Husband" were playing.

Wilde was sentenced to two years' imprisonment at hard labor. He spent the last three years of his life in poverty and self-imposed exile. He died in Paris in 1900 at the age of 46, his life undoubtedly shortened by the rigors of imprisonment

The continued popularity of Wilde's plays and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray,as well as numerous films and books about his life, have made him an icon of popular culture. His grave in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris has become a pilgrimage site.

Oscar Wilde us listed at  number 3 in Paul Russell's ranking of The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present.

Bibliography:

• CMG Worldwide: Official Web Site of Oscar Wilde
• Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Vintage, 1998.
• McKenna, Neil. Secret Life of Oscar Wilde: An Intimate Biography. Basic Books, 2006.

Selected works by Oscar Wilde:

• The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Stories, Plays, Poems & Essays (See all Contemporary Literature)
  
• The Importance Of Being Earnest
• The Picture Of Dorian Gray
  

DVD:

• The Oscar Wilde Collection
• Wilde
• The Trials of Oscar Wilde (aka The Green Carnation)

October 15th in History : Michel Foucault, Luz María Umpierre

Born this day:


Michel Foucault, philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas.

Luz María Umpierre, Puerto American lesbian poet

Nigel Green (1924– 1972 ) UK 

Actor 

Sodomy in History, October 16

1749 — North Carolina adopts the English sodomy law explicitly.

1943 — The Tennessee Supreme Court rules that fellatio is prohibited by the state’s "crime against nature" law, although the decision is neither published nor publicized.

1958 — The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a conviction for sodomy after the police entered without a warrant to search the defendant’s home.


Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

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.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

October 12th in Queer History: Matthew Shepard

Died this day:

Matthew Shepard


Sodomy in History, October 12

1984 — Congress enacts a law repealing the District of Columbia sexual assault reform law of 1981, that had included a repeal of the District’s sodomy law.

1988 — The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals clarifies that only "consensual, heterosexual" activity is constitutionally protected, preventing a more liberal decision of two weeks earlier from becoming precedent.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October

October 9th in Queer History: Cardinal John Henry Newman

Saint's day:


Blessed John Henry Newman

Cardinal  Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on October 2011, which means that although not yet recognized by the Catholic Church as as a saint, he is in effect on the way to sainthood. "Blessed" John He is important in queer history for his notable devotion to his beloved friend, the fellow priest Aubrey St John, in whose grave he shared after death.


Sodomy in History, October 9


October 9

1706 — English sailor James Ball is sentenced to death for sodomy with a ship boy.

1900 — The Hawaii Supreme Court upholds a sodomy conviction secured by a non-unanimous jury verdict.

1958 — The Hawaii Supreme Court rules that people of the opposite sex can be prosecuted for sodomy as well as those of the same sex.

1967 — The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear a challenge to the Washington sodomy law, the first challenge based on privacy rights ever to reach it.

1990 — The Maryland Court of Appeals rules that the state’s sodomy and unnatural and perverted practices law are unconstitutional as applied to people of the opposite sex, but constitutional as applied to those of the same sex. The Court misconstrues case law history in the state to justify its ruling.

1998 — The South African Constitutional Court strikes down the country’s sodomy law under the new constitution.

October 6th in Queer History: Alfred Lord Tennyson; Janet Gaynor

Born this day:

Janet Gaynor  (October 6, 1906 - September 14, 1984)

American actress, who in 1928 was the first woman to receive an Academy Award, and the only person to win the award for multiple roles: Seventh Heaven (1927), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and Street Angel (1928). Her career continued with the advent of sound film, and she achieved a notable success in the original version of A Star Is Born (1937).

Died this day:

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate.

Tennyson's life and work present a direct challenge to the conventional thinking which places a clear dichotomy between "homo-" and "hetero-" sexuality (with a passing nod to bi-). He was noted for his undoubted attraction to women, and is not known to have had any physical relationships with men, so would not normally be described even as bisexual. Yet, his celebrated verse abounds in homoerotic and androgynous imagery, his long poem "In Memoriam", written upon the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam, has been described as "the most beautiful homoerotic elegy in the English language" 

October 6

1943 — An Oklahoma appellate court rejects the contention of a man and woman that sodomy can be accomplished only between people of the same sex.

1967 — A New Mexico appellate court rules that cunnilingus is prohibited by the state’s sodomy law.

1969 — The Georgia Supreme Court rules that the testimony of police officers in sodomy cases does not need to be corroborated.

-Sodomy in History

Today in Queer History: October 5

Saint Galla of Rome, and her beloved Benedicta.

Today the Christian church honours the feast day of St Galla, a Roman nun of the turn of the 5th/ 6th century. What makes her of particular interest to queer people today, is her intimate friendship and devoted attention to her colleague Benedicta. This devotion was so intense, that according to legend, in answer to prayer, they were permitted to die together, so as to avoid being separated even for a moment of eternity.

Their story (or myth) is an important reminder that for all the modern Church's opposition to homosexuality, the record shows that same-sex couples and queer saints, nuns, priests, bishops, and popes have always been present, throughout Church history.


Sodomy in History, October 5

1659 — Richard Berry is banished from Plymouth Colony, after his third arrest on various Gay-related sex charges.

1915 — The Montana Supreme Court rules that fellatio is a violation of the "crime against nature" law.

1964 — The U.S. District Court in North Carolina questions the soundness of the North Carolina sodomy law and says that the State Supreme Court was erroneous in deciding that fellatio was embraced in the term "crime against nature," but does not decide its constitutionality.

1976 — The District of Columbia Court of Appeals upholds the District of Columbia sodomy law.

Source:

• Calendar of Sodomy, October
• Queer Sainsts and Martyrs

Related Posts:

• Saints Sergius and Bacchus
• Saints Felicity and Perpetua
• Saints Polyeuct and Nearchos
• Saints Symeon of Emessa, and John
• Same-Sex Unions in Church History
• Gay Popes, Papal Sodomites
• Gay Bishops: How Many?

October 3rd in Queer History

Born this day


Gore Vidal

Jake Shears, Singer, Scissor Sisters


Sodomy in History, October 3

1905 — The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in the first case of fellatio reported under the 1897 law, upholds the conviction and says, "We are unwilling to soil the pages of our reports with lengthened discussion of the loathsome subject.

1972 — The Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that the state’s sodomy law never meant to cover married couples solely because no married couples ever have been prosecuted under the law.

Source:
Calendar of Sodomy, October