Tammy Baldwin

b. February 11, 1962

“There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now O.K. to express ourselves publicly.We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are.”

 A self-proclaimed “forceful supporter of civil rights and those whose voices are not heard,” Baldwin spearheaded efforts to pass inclusive hate crimes legislation and the Employment Non- Discrimination Act (ENDA). 

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin is the first out lesbian elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. As of 2011, she was one of four openly gay members and the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to Congress. In November 2012, she won election to the US Senate election for Wisconsin. In doing so, she became the first openly lesbian or gay US senator.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Baldwin was raised by her mother and maternal grandparents. She graduated from high school at the top of her class and attended Smith College, where she majored in government and mathematics.

In 1986, Baldwin was elected to the Dane County Board of Supervisors, her first public office. During this time, she earned her degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School. After practicing law from 1989 to 1992, she won a seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly.

In 1998, Baldwin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, making her the first congresswoman from Wisconsin. She was elected to her sixth term in 2008. She serves on the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee of Energy and Commerce and on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the Committee of the Judiciary.

Baldwin is a leading advocate for universal health care, as well as a proponent of renewable fuel sources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

A self-proclaimed “forceful supporter of civil rights and those whose voices are not heard,” Baldwin spearheaded efforts to pass inclusive hate crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). She has authored legislation that would extend benefits for same-sex partners to federal employees.

Baldwin lives with her partner, Lauren Azar.

Bibliography

• Canon, David T., “First things first: Democrat Tammy Baldwin's Wisconsin win blended professionalism, people power” Campaigns & Elections. 1 May 2009
• Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s Official Web site
• Nichols, John. "Tammy Baldwin's Turn." The Nation. 27 May 2009
• "Tammy Baldwin"  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 27 May 2009

Films

• Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)  
• Outrage (2009) 

Video Clips

• Tammy Baldwin speaks at the University of Wisconsin 
• Rep. Tammy Baldwin on "The Rachel Maddow Show" 
• Tammy Baldwin speaks about coming out at work 
• Tammy Baldwin speaks on the Federal Marriage Amendment 

Websites and Articles

• Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
• Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s Voting Record
• On the Issues: Tammy Baldwin

Related articles

• Is Rep. Tammy Baldwin Still Facing The Violent Threats That Forced Her to De-List Her Home Address? (queerty.com)
• Rep Baldwin Introduces Legislation To Mandate LGBT Health Data (lezgetreal.com)

Gertrude Stein

Author
b. February 3, 1874
d. July 27, 1946

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears

Gertrude Stein, portrait by Picasso

Known as an influential American writer who focused on character depth, Gertrude Stein spent most of her life in Paris. While in France she met her life partner, befriended famous artists and developed into an influential literary figure and feminist.

Born into a wealthy family in Pennsylvania, Gertrude Stein grew up in Oakland, California. As an undergraduate she attended Radcliffe College, now incorporated into Harvard University, and studied under psychologist William James. She spent much of 1899-1901 at Johns Hopkins University Medical School but did not earn her degree.

Stein moved to Paris in 1902 and became an avid art collector. She turned her house into an informal salon. It soon became a hotspot for famous artists and writers - including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Henri Matisse and Thornton Wilder. Hemingway viewed Stein as his mentor and Picasso became her close friend. Stein later called Paris a city of "The Lost Generation."

In 1907, Stein met life partner Alice B. Toklas. Together during WWI, Toklas and Stein drove supplies to French hospitals. After the war, Stein received a medal for her contributions.

Stein wrote her first book, "Q.E.D.," in 1903, but did not publish a novel until "Three Lives" (1909), a work heavily influenced by former professor James and writer William Henry. Unique because of its similarity to the art form of cubism, Stein's writing delved into a literary area previously unexplored. "Tender Buttons," a short collection of feminist poems published in 1914, resembled Pablo Picasso's artwork, albeit in different form. In 1926, Stein explained the connection during lectures at the University of Oxford and Cambridge University. She published her lectures as a book, "Composition and Explanation" (1926).

In 1932, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," a book that told Stein's life story, excited the American public. It was her first bestseller. Composers adapted several of her works, including Virgil Thomson's "Four Saints in Three Acts" and "The Mother of Us All."

Complex and progressive, Stein's writing transformed American literature and contributed to the feminist movement. A monument on the upper terrace of Bryant Park in New York City honors her memory.

Bibliography

“An Interview with Gertrude Stein.” Writing.upenn.edu. July 3, 2007

Will, Barbara. Gertrude Stein: Modernism and the Problem of “Genius.” Edinburgh University Press, 2000

Williams, William Carlos. “The Work of Gertrude Stein.” Center for Book Culture. July 3, 2007

Selected Works

Blood on the Dining Room Floor (1948)

Brewsie and Willie (1946)

First Reader and Three Plays (1946)

Four in America (1947)

How to Write (1931)

Ida (1941)

Last Operas and Plays (1949)

Lectures in America (1935)

Lucy Church Amiably (1930)

Matisse, Picasso and Gertrude Stein (1933)

Narration (1935)

Paris France (1940)

Picasso (1938)

Portraits and Prayers (1934)

Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (1946)

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to Human Mind (1936)

The World is Round (1939)

Things As They Are (1950)

Three Lives and Tender Buttons (2003)

Wars I Have Seen (1944)

What are Masterpieces (1940)

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• Gay History Week 8: Judy Grahn, Activist and Lesbian-Feminist Poet (The New Gay)

Thornton Wilder (1897 - 1975), playwright. and novelist

b. April 17, 1897

d. December 7, 1975

American playwright and dramatist,who is the only writer to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both literature (his novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"), and for drama (twice, for his plays "Our Town" and "The Skin of Our Teeth"). He also earned a National Book Award for his novel "The Eighth Day".

Although Wilder never discussed being gay publicly or in his writings, his close friend Samuel Steward is generally acknowledged to have been a lover. Wilder was introduced to Steward by Gertrude Stein, who at the time regularly corresponded with the both of them. Wilder's mainstream literary works are landmarks of American literature, but they reveal scant traces of his homosexuality. A discreet homosexual, his sexual proclivities were kept far out of the limelight.

Wilder seems to have been regarded even by his closest friends as a kind of Henry James figure, somewhat sheltered and cerebral, and frightened of sex. The relationship between Wilder and his one documented companion, Steward, may have begun as a furtive sexual fling in Zurich in 1937. Steward, a writer, pornographer, tattoo artist, and one-time college professor, was, in pointed contrast to Wilder, open and adventurous. He wrote popular erotic gay works in the 1970s under the pseudonym Phil Andros.

Wilder seems to have backed away from Steward after several awkward encounters. Intimate affection eventually became fond intellectual acquaintance. Typical of some gay men of the era, Wilder preferred to play the role of the perennial Respectable Bachelor. Although he never publicly discussed his homosexuality, later in his life he is believed to have had discreet affairs with younger men.

Leonardo da Vinci, Artist/Inventor/Scientist

Artist/Inventor/Scientist
b. April 15, 1452
d. May 2, 1519

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence

Leonardo Da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man. His curiosity and genius led him to make observations, experiments and breakthroughs in a variety of fields including engineering, architecture, math, anatomy, optics, astronomy, geology, biology and philosophy. His artwork and inventions, many of them advanced far beyond normal innovations of the time period, continue to earn him wide acclaim.

Artist Andrea del Verrocchio hired Da Vinci, at age 15, as his apprentice. While working with Verrocchio in Florence, Da Vinci learned a broad range of skills including painting, sculpting and drafting. In 1472, he was accepted into the painters' guild in Florence. Da Vinci lived mostly in Florence and Milan for the rest of his career while working on commissioned art. "Mona Lisa," "The Last Supper" and "Madonna of the Rocks" are a few of his most famous paintings.

Da Vinci left behind a collection of 40 notebooks, of which 31 still remain. He filled these notebooks with diagrams and records of his observations and research in the fields of painting, architecture, mechanics, human anatomy, geophysics, botany, hydrology and aerology.

Da Vinci's documents demonstrate that he conceptualized helicopters, tanks and calculators long before construction of these devices became feasible. He also envisioned solar power and developed a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.

Da Vinci's professions included civil engineer, musician, military planner and weapons designer. He worked as the court artist for the Duke of Milan. From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome. He developed a close relationship with Niccolò Machiavelli and mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he helped write "Divina Proportione" (1509).

No evidence suggests that Da Vinci had relationships with women. His closest relationships were with two of his male pupils, Melzi and Salai.

Bibliography


“Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter and Sculpter of Florence (1452-1519).” Life of an Artist: Biographies and Galleries. July 1, 2007
Kemp, Martin. Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, and Design. Princeton University Press. 2006
Nicholl, Charles. Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind. Penguin. 2005

Christopher Marlowe

baptised 26 February 1564
died 30 May 1593

English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian,next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists and for the homoerotic situations and incidents which occur in his plays and poems more frequently and more variously that in any other major English Renaissance writer.

Two famous quotations attributed to him were "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned alwaies in his bosome, that he used him as the sinners of Sodoma" and "That all they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fooles". These may have been invented by his enemies, but they are in keeping with sentiments expressed or implies in his work.

Born two months before Shakespeare, Marlowe was the son of an established and respect­able shoemaker in Canterbury, where he attended the King's School, later going on to take both his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. One month before he was to appear for his commencement in 1587, amid rumors of his conversion to Catholicism and flight to France, the university received a letter from the Queen's Privy Council excusing his absence and assuring them of his loyal service to Elizabeth. This letter has cre­ated a great deal of speculation about the dashing and iconoclastic young man's activities, suggesting that he was probably working as a government spy.

The final six years of his short life were spent in London where "Kit" Mar­lowe was usually involved in something scandalous or illegal, resulting in several scrapes with the law and at least one prison confinement. During these years, he pro­duced his slender but highly important and influential canon: Dido Queen of Carthage (1586), Tamburlaine I and II (1597), The Jew of Malta (1589), The Mas­sacre at Paris (1590), Edward II (1591), Doctor Faustus (1592), and the unfinished narrative poem Hero and Leander. The first genuine poet to write for the English theatre was killed, perhaps assassinated, under highly suspicious circumstances by a knife wound to the head in a private dining room in an inn in Deptford on May 30, 1593.

Twelve days before his death, Marlowe had been arrested on charges of atheism, stemming in part from his repu­tation and from accusations made against him by fellow playwright Thomas Kyd, who had been charged earlier; Kyd's claim was based on documents seized during a search of the rooms both men used for writing. This sort of sensation followed Marlowe throughout his life and, seem­ingly, was fostered by the poet himself.

After his death, claims about him became more personal and explicit. In the proceed­ings of his inquest, government informer Richard Baines claimed that Marlowe had said that "all they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fooles," and in 1598, Francis Meres wrote that he "was stabbed to death by a bawdy seruing man, a riuall of his in his lewde loue." However characteristic of what we do know of Marlowe's life, these posthumous comments do little to estab­lish his homosexuality.

However, Marlowe's work does demonstrate an understanding and com­passion for mythological and historical homosexuality. His Hero and Leander deals directly with Jupiter's passionate infatuation for Ganymede, a story which is also mentioned in Dido, and his masterwork, Edward II, based on fact, can be considered the first gay play in English.

An effeminate child, Edward was given as a companion the orphaned son of a Gascon knight at age 14 by his royal father, who hoped that the handsome and virile 16-year-old Piers Gaveston would exert a positive and masculine influence on his son. However, Edward fell passion­ately in love, and the king banished Gaveston in 1307. Marlowe's play begins shortly after this point with Edward (who had become king upon his father's death) immediately recalling his love to court, much to the anger of his barons, who demand Gaveston's permanent banish­ment. Edward, more the lover than the ruler, will accept nothing of this and even shares his throne with Gaveston, who is eventually seized and beheaded. Enraged in his grief, Edward involves himself in a bloody civil war, eventually taking an­other lover, young Spenser, who also is killed by the barons. Edward himself is seized, forced to abdicate, and, in 1327, is murdered by having a heated poker in­serted into his anus, "intended as just retribution for his sins." In this one play, Marlowe surpasses the achievements of many explicitly gay writers in his sensi­tive and complex portrayal of a doomed and passionate relationship between two men caught up in a repressive and homo­phobic society.

Ferdinand I of Bulgaria

Son of Prince August of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, born in Vienna, was elected prince of Bulgaria in 1887, after the abdication of Alexander of Battenberg.

Despite Ferdinand's preference for handsome young blond men, he took his responsibility to wed and father a dynasty with the utmost seriousness. Ferdinand entered a marriage of convenience with Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, daughter of Roberto I of Parma and Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, on April 20, 1893 at the Villa Pianore in Lucca in Italy, producing four children

Ferdinand's bisexuality was both well-known and exploited throughout European diplomatic circles. It became the custom for visiting dignataries seeking favour from Ferdinand to be accompanied by a handsome young equerry and Ferdinand's regular holidays on Capri, then a famous haunt for wealthy gay men, was common knowledge in royal courts throughout Europe.

In 1908 proclaimed Bulgaria's indipendence of Turtkey and assumed the title of Czar. In 1915 he entered World War I as germany's ally, and in 1918 abdicated in favour of his son Boris, and withdrew to private life.

Zora Neale Hurston, Author & Folklorist

b. January 7, 1891
d. January 28, 1960

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.”

American author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston was a principal figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She is the author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” a book heralded as “one of the most poetic works of fiction by a black writer in the first half of the 20th century, and one of the most revealing treatments in modern literature of a woman’s quest for satisfying life.”

Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black town to be incorporated in the United States, and a source of much of her writing.  Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father was a Baptist preacher, farmer and mayor. 

When her mother died in 1904, Hurston was sent to Jacksonville, Florida. Working as a maid for a traveling theatrical company, she ended up in Baltimore and attended high school by claiming to be a decade younger. She adopted 1901 as her birth year.

Hurston attended Howard University and, in 1928, became the first African-American woman to graduate from Barnard College. She went on to do graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University. 

During her time in New York, Hurston was a mainstay of the Harlem Renaissance, an African-American cultural movement. Hurston befriended and collaborated with notable figures such as poet Langston Hughes and entertainers Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith.  In 1935, she published “Mules and Men,” an anthology of African-American folklore.

Hurston traveled to Haiti and Jamaica for research on a Guggenheim Fellowship. During her travels, she penned what would later become her masterpiece: “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937).  She wrote two more novels and an autobiography, “Dust Tracks on a Road” (1942).

Though she received awards for her work, Hurston never reaped financial benefit. 

In her later years, Hurston wrote for newspapers. After medical and financial complications, she moved into a welfare home in Fort Pierce, Florida, where she died. She was buried in an anonymous grave.

In 1973, writer Alice Walker found an unmarked headstone in Fort Pierce and marked it as Zora Neale Hurston’s. Walker published an article that launched a revival of Hurston’s work. In 2005, Oprah Winfrey produced a film version of “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” starring Halle Berry.

Bibliography
"GradeSaver.com: Zora Neale Hurston." 17 May 2009
The Zora Neale Hurston Official Website. 16 May 2009
"Women In History: Zora Neale Hurston." 16 May 2009
"Zora Neale Hurston" Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 17 May 2009


Books by Zora Neale Hurston
Color Struck in Opportunity Magazine (1925)
How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934)
Mules and Men (1935)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1935)
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)
Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)
Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (1979)
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life co-authored with Langston Hughes (1991)


Films
PBS: Zora is my Name! (1989)
Brother to Brother (2004)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
PBS: Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun (2008)


Other Resources
The Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive – University of Central Florida
State Library & Archives of Florida: Florida Memory
Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts & Humanities – ZORA! festival

Related articles

• Rural Southern By Zora Neale Hurston (1928) (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• October's Big Read focuses on 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' (knoxnews.com)
• Their Eyes Were Watching Movies (reason.com)
• NEA awards Big Read grant to local YWCA (knoxnews.com)

E. M. Forster, Novelist

b. January 1, 1879

d. June 7, 1970

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”

E. M. Forster was a prolific and internationally acclaimed writer. His works display his acute awareness of the social and political problems of his time and his belief in the power of human connection. Though best known for novels, he wrote numerous short stories and nonfiction works. 

Forster grew up in London, England. An inheritance from his great-aunt allowed him to attend college and sustained his early writing career. Forster received his B.A. from King’s College in Cambridge. After graduation, he and his mother traveled to Italy. This experience deeply influenced two of his first novels, “Where Angels Fear to Tread” (1905) and “A Room with a View” (1907).  

Forster’s novel “Howard’s End” (1910) provided a sharp analysis of the upper-class British world. It is recognized as his greatest work. His next novel, “A Passage to India” (1924), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1924 and was named one of the 100 best novels published in the English language by Modern Library in 1998. 

“Maurice,” which Forster wrote between 1913 and 1915, was not published until a year after his death, at the author’s request. Written when homosexuality was illegal in England, the book revolved around a gay man and his relationships. Though unwilling to publish “Maurice,” Forster fought against the suppression of Radclyffe Hall’s novel about a lesbian Englishwoman, “The Well of Loneliness” (1928).  

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, Forster’s novels were adapted for the big screen. According to The New York Times, “Forster displayed a genius for capturing the complex personalities expressed in the social manners of his day, and the best screen adaptations have done the same.” The film versions of “Howard’s End” and “A Room with a View” each won three Oscars, and “A Passage to India” secured two more.

In 1934, Forster became the first president of the National Council for Civil Liberties, a human rights organization in England. A year before his death, Queen Elizabeth appointed Forster a member of England’s Order of Merit, one of the highest national honors.  

Bibliography

• “Aspects of E.M. Forster: Biography.” Emforster.de. June 2, 2008
• James, Caryn. “Film View; Why Forster’s Novels Have Star Quality.” The New York Times. March 22, 1992
• Lewis, Anthony.  “E. M. Forster Homosexual Novel Due.” The New York Times. November 11, 1970
• Stansky, Peter.  “A Curious Life.” The New York Times. November 12, 1978

Articles
“Times Topics: E.M. Forster.” The New York Times.



Books

• Where Angels Fear to Tread (Penguin Classics) (1905)
• The Longest Journey (Penguin Classics) (1907)
• A Room With a View (1908)
• Howards End (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (1910)
• The celestial omnibus and other stories (1911)
• A Passage to India (Penguin Classics) (1924)
• Eternal Moment And Other Stories (A Harvest Book, Hb 180) (1928)
• Maurice: A Novel (1971)
• The Life to Come: And Other Stories (1972)

Films

• A Passage To India (2-Disc Collector's Edition) (1984)            
• A Room With a View (Two-Disc Special Edition)(1985)
• Maurice - The Merchant Ivory Collection (1987)
• Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) 
• Howards End - The Merchant Ivory Collection (1992)