Harvey Milk, Secular Gay Saint and Modern Martyr

In California, today is officially recognised as "Harvey Milk Day". The reasons for this secular honour are well-known, and recorded in several books and notable movies.  In 1977, he became the first openly gay man elected to public office as a gay man, but served for only a short term before he was assassinated on  Nov. 27, 1978. Even in that brief term of office, he made his mark with his contribution to San Francisco's landmark Gay Rights Ordinance, and to the defeat of the Briggs initiative, which would have required California school districts to fire openly gay and lesbian teachers, but was defeated in the November election shortly before Milk's assassination. Rather than rehashing the bare facts of Harvey Milk's life and career, which can be read elsewhere, I want to reflect a little on the symbolism and lessons that these have acquired, three decades later.

Harvey Milk

b. May 22, 1930
d. November 27, 1978

Harvey Milk became the first openly gay person to be elected to a significant public office when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He served eleven months before he was assassinated.

"The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it."

Harvey Milk was a New Yorker who migrated to San Francisco in the 1970's, when an influx of gay immigrants from across the country was changing the Castro neighborhood into the city's gay village. Milk opened a camera store and founded the Castro Valley Association of local merchants. His willingness to represent the interests of local merchants with city government earned him the unofficial title of "the Mayor of Castro Street." Milk discovered that he had a natural flair for politics.

Milk was a political outsider and a populist who made his own rules. From his shop in the Castro, he ran grassroots campaigns based on relentless meetings, door-to-door canvassing, and media interviews. His supporters formed "human billboards" by standing along major thoroughfares holding placards. Milk's first three tries for office were unsuccessful, but they gave him increasing credibility with the electorate.

When Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, a lesbian wrote, "I thank God I have lived long enough to see my kind emerge from the shadows and join the human race."

Milk was shot to death in his City Hall office on Nov. 27, 1978, by Dan White, a conservative anti-gay former supervisor who also murdered Mayor George Moscone. White was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years imprisonment. City-wide violence erupted in San Francisco when White's sentence was announced.

Harvey Milk had forebodings of his assassination. He left a tape-recorded "political will" naming his preferred successor on the Board of Supervisors. On that tape he said: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Bibliography:

• Cloud, John, "Harvey Milk," Profile in The Time 100, June 14, 1999.
• Shilts, Randy: The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk

DVD

• The Times of Harvey Milk (20th Anniversary Collector's Edition)

Basil I Byzantine emperor (867-886), founder of the Macedonian dynasty.

(867-886)

Born in Macedonia to a peasant family, Basil worked during his youth as a groom in the imperial stables in Constantinople (now Istanbul), but ended up emperor of Byzantum. 

Basil is a notable example of an emperor who "married"  a man in the liturgical rite of adelphopoeisin- twice! Indeed, he owed his extraordinary ascent from an obscure birth to the emperor's throne by skilful seduction. 

"A few centuries later Basil I (867-886), the founder of the Macedonian dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire from 867 to 1156, was reported to have been twice involved in ceremonial unions with other men. Although the most important sources for his life -- composed under the rule of his descendants within a century of the events in question -- are contradictory on some points and occasionally unreliable, their take on this matter is largely consistent. His biographers (including Western sources: see below) all agreed that when Basil arrived in Constantinople with nothing but a staff and a knapsack -- a young man from the provinces with no connections in the capital -- he was befriended by a certain Nicholas of the church of St. Diomede, who rescued him from sleeping in the streets, brought him into the church, bathed and clothed him, and supported him for some time until the ambitious Basil was able to attract the attention of a well-placed courtier related to the imperial family.

"In most accounts of their relationship Nicholas and Basil are united in a church ceremony. According to one tradition, on the morning after finding him Nicholas 'bathed and dressed Basil and was ceremonially united to him, and kept him as his housemate and companion. (Chronicle of George in Istrin 2:5). Another version is more explicit about the ceremony 'and on the next day he went with him to the baths and changed [his clothes] and going into the church established a formal union with him, and they rejoiced in each other.' (George in Moravcsik p 120) The odd final phrase would probably recall to a Christian Greek reader the biblical "Rejoice with the wife of thy youth." (Prov 5:18)

"Given the wording in the chronicles (one uses adelphiopioinois, another adelphiopiointos) and the fact that the union is accomplished in a church, there can be little doubt that the writers have in mind some form of the ceremony published and translated in this text."

Boswell, Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe 

Later, he also had a well-documented relationship with Emperor Michael III, who made him his lover and chamberlain. In 866 he murdered Michael's uncle (with Michael's permission) and became co-ruler of the Byzantine Empire with Michael... and a year later had Michael assassinated.

As sole ruler of the empire, Basil began the reform of the legal code completed by his son Leo VI, introduced other administrative reforms, and restored the scholar Photius to the Patriarchate.

Related Posts:

• Right Royal Queens: Gay, lesbian and trans royals, near-royals and rulers in history.
• Alexander the Great
• Roman Emperor Hadrian, and his lover Antinous

Count Lâszlò Ede Almâsy de Zsadány - Törökszentmiklós, (Hungary), Spy

b. August 22, 1895
d. March 22, 1951

Almásy was born in Borostyánkô, Austria-Hungary (today Bernstein im Burgenland, Austria), into a comital Hungarian noble family, and was educated by a private tutor in Eastbourne, United Kingdom. From 1911 to 1914, he lodged at Berrow, 17 Carew Road in Eastbourne.

Highly decorated pilot for the Hungarian Royal Air Force; desert explorer and researcher who discovered the prehistoric rock art sites in the Uweinat (Sudan) and Gilf Kebir (Egypt) regions. He was also a spy-for-hire, awarded an Iron Cross by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel for his work for German military intelligence in World War II.

His life, highly fictionalized, was the inspiration for the title character in Canadian Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning 1993 novel The English Patient; Ondaatje's novel was adapted for the screen in the 1996 movie The English Patient starring Ralph Fiennes (the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director).

In reality, Almásy was gay, and researchers have discovered about 80 of his passionate letters to a young German army officer, whom he tried to help avoid going to the Russian war front.

Almásy fell ill in 1951 during a visit in Austria. He died of dysentery in a hospital in Salzburg, where he was then buried. The epitaph on his grave, erected by Hungarian patriots in 1995, honors him as a "Pilot, Sahara Explorer, and Discoverer of the Zerzura Oasis".

Wladziu Valentino Liberace U.S.A., Pianist, showman

b. May 16, 1919
d. February 4, 1987

Born of Italian and Polish ancestry in West Allis, Wisconsin, Wladziu Valentino Liberace (called also Lee, or Walter Valentino) became one of the most popular and controversial entertainers of the 1950s and 1960s. With the advent of television, his career skyrocketed; and during the early 1950s, The Liberace Show was watched by more than 35 million people each week. His television exposure led to one of the most lucrative concert, nightclub, and recording careers in history.

For 3 years he had a relationship with his chauffeur/assistant, Scott Thorson. Despite ongoing rumors and accusations, and a palimony suit brought against him by Scott in 1982, Liberace continued to deny that he was homosexual. In 1978 The Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, was opened. His last performance was at Radio City Music Hall, New York, on November 2, 1986. Liberace died in Palm Springs, California, for Aids-related complications.

Ronnie Tober (left) with Liberace (right)

TV:
The Liberace show (1952-)
Films:
South Sea Sinner (1950)
Sincerely Yours (1955)

Website


Books:

Liberace (1972, autobiography)
The Things I Love (1976)
Darden Asbury Pyron, Liberace: An American Boy

Source:

Matt & Andrej Koymasky Living Room, LGBT Biographies.com

Gay Popes: John XII (r. 955-964)

 b. c. 937  
d. May 14, 964

John XII (938-964) was the son of Alberic 11, the civil ruler of the eternal city, and connected to other patrician families. On being elected pope at the age of eighteen, he modeled himself on the scandalous  Roman emperor Heliogabalus, holding homosexual orgies in the papal palace. To counter opposition to his rule, he invited the German ruler Otto the Great to Rome, where he was crowned emperor in 962. John was thus instrumental in establishing the Holy Roman Empire, an institution that lasted in a formal sense until 1806

John's activities may have helped to incite the reaction of the puritanical theologian Peter Damian (1 007-1072), whose Liber Gomorrhianus is an attack against all kinds of sexual

irregularities among the clergy. Under his associate Pope Gregory VII (ca. 1021-1085) reform ideas triumphed, and clerical celibacy was made obligatory for the Catholic

priesthood, an injunction that remains in force to this day. 

Related Posts:

• Gay Popes, Papal Sodomites
• Benedict IX: The First (Primarily) Gay Pope (r. 1033-1045; 1047-1048)
• Gay Popes:  Paul II (r -1471) and his embarrassing death
• Gay Popes: Sixtus IV (r. 1471-1484)
• Gay Popes: Julius II (r. 1503-1513)
• Gay Popes: Leo X (r. 1513-1521)
• Gay Popes: Julius III (1550 to 1555)

May 12: Florence Nightingale, Nurse

Health Care Advocate
b. May 12, 1820
d. August 13, 1910

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale exploded into public consciousness during the Crimean War (1853-1856). Serving as the superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London from 1853-1854, she learned of the horrible conditions soldiers faced during Britain's Crimean War with Russia. Using her friendship with politician Sidney Herbert to gain official approval, Nightingale trained 38 nurses and traveled to Turkey, arriving at a hospital in Scutari (modern day Istanbul) in November of 1854.

The Scutari hospitals had the highest mortality levels in the region. Overcrowding, defective sewage systems and poor ventilation contributed to soldiers' illnesses and death. Yet while a sanitary commission sent by the British government took over six months to arrive, Nightingale and her nursing crew cleaned up the hospital and delivered an unprecedented level of nursing care. By the time she left, Nightingale had earned the military's admiration. She returned to Britain as a hero in 1857.

Confined to bed by fever upon her return, Nightingale refused to let her illness diminish her work. She helped establish the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army and wrote its first report, a document that facilitated an overhaul of army medical care and record-keeping. "Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not," her instructional guide published in 1860, continues to influence nursing schools across the globe. Nightingale founded The Nightingale Fund and the Nightingale Training School. Nurses she mentored and trained spread throughout England and Australia and conducted pioneering work in America and Japan.

A brilliant mathematician and writer, Nightingale used a unique ability to simplify complex statistics to communicate her findings to government officials. Historians consider her book "Cassandra" (1928) a major feminist work.

Queen Victoria awarded Nightingale the Royal Red Cross in 1883. In 1907, Nightingale became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit.

Hospitals, foundations, and other organizations in her name continue to advocate for improved health care. 
The Florence Nightingale Museum in London commemorates the life of the modern world's first great health care provider

Bibliography

• “Florence Nightingale.” Fynetimes: Gay Greats. July 3, 2007
• “Florence Nightingale.” The Florence Nightingale Museum. July 3, 2007
• Dossey, Barbara. Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer.Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 2000

Selected Works

• Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not (1860)