23rd April in Queer History

Born this day

Ethel Smyth  (1858 - 1944) UK
Composer / Suffragette

Elisabeth de Gramont (1875 - 1954) French 

Antoinette Corisande Élisabeth, Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre (née de Gramont) was a French writer of the early 20th century, best known for her long-term lesbian relationship with Natalie Clifford Barney. She was a close friend, and sometimes critic of writer Marcel Proust, whom she had met on June 9, 1903. In her youth, Élisabeth de Gramont was a strikingly pretty woman. Opinionated, outspoken, she became openly bisexual by the turn of the century, despite being married.

Augusto d’Halmar  (1882 –  1950) Chilean
Author

James Kirkup  (1918 –  2009 ) UK
A prolific English poet, translator and travel writer who became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. In 1977, he was at the centre of a blasphemy trial when the newspaper Gay News published his poem The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name, in which a Roman centurion describes his lust and attraction for Jesus after his death.

Halston (1932 – 1990) US
Fashion Designer

Fred Goldhaber (1947 – 2010) US
 Teacher

Dirk Bach (1961 – )German
Actor

Jon Birgisson (1975 – ) Icelandic
Musician / Singer

Bradley Traynor  (1975 – ) US
Drag Queen [aka Wanda Wisdom] / Presenter

Died this day

Rupert Brooke (1887– 1915) UK
Poet

Jean-Daniel Cadinot (1944 – 2008) French
Porn Director 

Sodomy in history, 

April 23

1829 — Pennsylvania passes a new sodomy law with a penalty of 1-5 years for a first offense and up to 10 years for a second offense.

1841 — Hawaii passes a vagrancy law that prohibits men and boys from running "in crowds after new things" in an "indecent manner."

1941 — A California appellate court rules that actual penetration must occur to violate the oral copulation law.

1952 — The New York State Court of Appeals overturns a sodomy conviction because of uncorroborated testimony of the partner being admitted into evidence.

1957 — The Alabama Court of Appeals rules that the testimony of accomplices in sodomy cases must be corroborated.

1969 — Kansas passes a new criminal code and becomes the first state in the nation to makes its sodomy law applicable only to people of the same sex. It also reduces the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor. The commission writing the code tells the legislature that the language is standard in new codes, even though no other state has such a provision.

1977 — Vermont passes a new sexual assault law that includes a repeal of its law banning oral sex.

Sources:

Wikipedia

glbtq emcyclopedia

On this gay day

Calendar of Sodomy, April