February 19th in Queer History

Events this day in Queer History

2009 – North Dakota Senate votes to include LGBT in the Human Rights Act
2010 – Football V Homophobia launches in the UK

Born this day

F. O. Matthiessen  (1902 – 1950) US
Historian / Literary Critic

Carson McCullers  (1917 –  1967 ) US
Author / Playwright

George Rose  (1920 – 1988) UK
Actor / Murder Victim

Dudley Cave  (1921 –  1999) UK
Activist

Sheila Kuehl (1941 - ), US
California state legilator

Stuart Challender  (1947 –  1991) Australian
Conductor

Jackie Curtis  (1947 –   1985) US
Actress / Poet / Playwright

Pim Fortuyn  (1948 –   2002)
Dutch Politician

Lari Pittman  (1952 –  ) US
Artist

Stephen F Kolzak  (1953 - 1990) US
Director


Justin Fashanu  (1959/61 - 1998)  UK
Footballer who was known by his early clubs to be gay, and came out to the press later in his career, to become the first and only English professional footballer to be openly homosexual. Until former France international Olivier Rouyer came out in 2008, Fashanu was still the only professional footballer in the world to disclose that he was gay. Fashanu hanged himself in May 1998,at a time when he was wanted in the United States on charges of sexually assaulting a teenager in Maryland. In his suicide note, he insisted that the sex had been consensual.
Since his death, he has been frequently held up as a role model, to encourage other sporting figures to come out publicly.

Jaime Bayly  (1965 – ) Peruvian / US
Author / Journalist / Presenter

Dallas Angguish  (1968 – ) Australian
Author / Poet

Beth Ditto  (1981 –  ) US
Singer

Died this day

Andre Gide   (1869 - 1951)  French
Author

Suzanne Malherbe (1892 - 1972) French
Artist

Eric Stryker (1954 - 1988) US
Porn

Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994)  UK
Director / Screenwriter

Charles Trenet  (1913 - 2001) French
Singer / Author

Sylvia Rivera  (1951 - 2002 ) US
Activist 

Sodomy in history, February 19th

1821 — Maine enacts a new sodomy law. It retains the male-only provision of the Massachusetts statute, but sets a one-year minimum penalty.

1926 — A California appellate court upholds a sodomy conviction based on photographs without any relationship to the case found in the defendant’s vest.

Sources:

Wikipedia

glbtq emcyclopedia

On this gay day

Calendar of Sodomy, February

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

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• 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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Mary Daly, "Radical Lesbian Feminist", Theologian

b. October 16, 1928 d. January 3, 2010
Radical feminist philosopher, academic, and Catholic theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at Boston College, a Jesuit-run institution, for 33 years. She retired in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her advanced women's studies classes. She allowed male students in her introductory class and privately tutored those who wanted to take advanced classes.

Women who are pirates in a phallocratic society are involved in a complex operation. First, it is necessary to plunder--that is, righteously rip off gems of knowledge that the patriarchs have stolen from us. Second, we must smuggle back to other women our plundered treasures. In order to invent strategies that will be big and bold enough for the next millennium, it is crucial that women share our experiences: the changes we have taken and the choices that have kept us alive. They are my pirate's battle cry and wake-up call for women who want to hear.

As one of the most influential feminist thinkers and theologians of the second half of the twentieth century, Daly had a profound impact upon other feminist writers and scholars. As colleague Mary E. Hunt observed in announcing her death to the Women's Alliance in Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) email list: "Her contributions to feminist theology, philosophy, and theory are many, unique, and if I may say so, world-changing. She created intellectual space; she set the bar high. Even those who disagreed with her are in her debt for the challenges she offered...She always advised women to throw our lives as far as they would go. I can say without fear of exaggeration that she lived that way herself."

However, Hunt was also controversial in some feminist and LGBT circles. Audrey Lourde and some other Black feminists accused her of ignoring the contributions of feminists of colour, and she angered the community. In Gyn/Ecology, Daly asserted her negative view of transsexual people, writing, "Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent . . . in . . . phallocratic technology. . . . Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes."[24] "Transsexualism, which Janice Raymond has shown to be essentially a male problem, is an attempt to change males into females, whereas in fact no male can assume female chromosomes and life history/experience."[25] "The surgeons and hormone therapists of the transsexual kingdom . . . can be said to produce feminine persons. They cannot produce women." 

Daly's other published books are:
Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon, 1978); 
Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy   (Beacon, 1984);
Websters' first new intergalactic wickedary of the English language  (Beacon, 1987); 
Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage (Harper 1992); 
Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future (Beacon, 1999); 
Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big Mary Daly and the Invitation to Explore Wild Ideas about Inclusivity: A Memorial Reflection(The Open Tabernacle)

Del Martin (1921 – 2008) US

Pioneer lesbian activist, who together with her life partner Phyllis Lyons made several major contributions over half a century to progress to LGBT equality in the United Sates. They were founder members of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first social and political organization for lesbians in the United States.. For their work editing The Ladder, the group's pioneering newsletter, in 2005, they were among the first group of people inducted the LGBT Journalists' Hall of Fame. They remained active in the DOB, until they later joined the National Organization for women, the first lesbian couple to do so. 

Their activism extended to religious and political groups. They worked  to form the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH) in northern California to persuade ministers to accept homosexuals into churches, and used their influence to decriminalize homosexuality in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They became politically active in San Francisco's first gay political organization, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, which influenced Dianne Feinstein to sponsor a citywide bill to outlaw employment discrimination for gays and lesbians. Both served in the White House Conference on Aging in 1995. 

They had first met in 1952, and moved in together in San Francisco on Valentine's Day the following year. 55 years late they were the first same - sex couple to be married, in June 2008, after the California Supreme Court   briefly legalized same-sex marriage in California. (later overturned by Proposition 8 that same year).

Christina of Sweden (1626 –1689)

b. 18 December 1626
d. 19 April 1689

Portrait by
Sébastien_Bourdon

Queen regnant of Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Grand Princess of Finland, and Duchess of Ingria, Estonia, Livonia and Karelia, from 1633 to 1654, Christina was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. As the heiress presumptive, at the age of six she succeeded her father on the throne of Sweden upon his death at the Battle of Lützen. Being the daughter of a Protestant champion in the Thirty Years' War, she caused a scandal when she abdicated her throne and converted to Catholicism in 1654. She spent her later years in Rome, becoming a leader of the theatrical and musical life there. As a queen without a country, she protected many artists and projects. She is one of the few women buried in the Vatican grotto.

From the moment of her birth, Christina confounded sexual and gender stereotypes. Her parents had been anxious for a male royal heir, and astrologers had confidently predicted a boy would be born. When the robust baby arrived, it was first thought to be a boy, on account of a hairy body and strong voice. After it had been recognized that she was in fact a girl, her father the king was undeterred, and proceeded to raise her as the boy she had been expected to be: with an education education of a prince. Thus, her lessons included languages, political and military science, riding, and shooting- all of which suited her much better than women's traditional activities such as needlework, for which she claimed to have no aptitude whatsoever.

After her father's death, she was proclaimed "king" by the Swedish parliament - not queen. During the regency until she began to rule in her own right, she continued to receive an excellent education.

As an adult, she continued to resist all gender conformity. She showed no interest at all in fashion and adopted mannish styles of dress. She ignored traditionally approved "feminine" interests, and instead continued to pursue and promote her love of scholarship, books and culture. She also resisted marrying, and rejected several proposals. Immediately after abdicating in favour of her cousin Gustav, she left Sweden for Rome, dressed as a man.

Details of her sexual relationships, if any are not known conclusively, but she did have close personal friendships with both men and women. Some frank letters to her lady-in-waiting Ebba Sparre suggest that their relationship may have been sexual. The question of her biological sex is also unclear. In addition to the confusion around the matter at birth, other physical details suggest that she may have been intersex. However, it has not been possible to confirm this, in the absence of soft tissue remains.

What is clear, from the evidence of her rejection of marriage and feminine pastimes, ambiguous love relationships and cross-dressing, that in modern terms she should be thought of as either lesbian or trans.

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.

February 23rd in Queer History

Events this day in Queer History

2009 – The Colorado House approves a domestic partner benefits bill that would make it easier for unmarried couples (including LGBT) to make medical decisions for incapacitated partners and leave property to their partners [or 24th February 2009]

Born this day

Robin Wood  (1931 –  2009) UK / Canadian

Canada-based film critic and educator.
In September 1974, Wood and his wife divorced. Around this time, he also had a relationship with John Anderson, the dedicatee in at least one of Wood's books. Later he was to meet Richard Lippe, with whom he lived from 1977 until his death in 2009.
After his coming out as a gay man, Wood's writings became more political, primarily from a stance associated with Marxist and Freudian thinking, and with gay rights.


Sugar Lee Hooper (1948 – 2010) Dutch
Stage name of Marja van der Toorn, a Dutch singer and television personality, known for her forthright presentation, shaven head and brightly colored dresses. In 1988, she formed a registered partnership with Andrea van der Kaap. In 2001,the pair converted the partnership into full marriage under the new Dutch law - the first Dutch entertainer to do so.

Glen Maxey  (1952 – )  US
Politician from Austin, Texas, who was the first openly gay member of the Texas Legislature.

Mary Glasspool  (1954 –  ) US
Suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. She is the first open lesbian to be consecrated a bishop in the Anglican Communion.

Michael Hardwick (1954 –  1991) US
Barman / Activist

Karin Wolff  (1959 – )  German
Politician and vice-president of the German state of Hesse, for the conservative Christian Democratic Union. Her academic training and early professional career was in history and evangelical theology, and she remains active in religion. She is a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau (EKHN), and of the Board of Education of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
In July 2007 she came out publicly, and lives in an openly lesbian relationship in Darmstadt.


Olivier Ducastel  (1962 – )  French
Film director, screenwriter and sound editor who currently works in collaboration with his professional and personal partner Jacques Martineau.

Vaginal Davis  (1969 – )  US
Genderqueer performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Davis's name is a homage to activist Angela Davis.

Michael Ausiello  (1972 – )  US
Television industry journalist and actor.

Died this day

William Bonin (1947  - 1996 ) US
Serial killer and a twice-paroled sex offender, also known as the Freeway Killer, a nickname he shares with two other serial killers. Between 1979 and 1980, Bonin tortured, raped and killed a minimum of 21 boys and young men, and is suspected of committing a further fifteen murders. Bonin was convicted and eventually executed in 1996 for 14 of these murders.

Tuulikki Pietila  (1917 - 2009) Finnish
Graphic artist and professor, one of the most influential people in Finnish graphic arts, whose work has been shown in numerous art exhibitions.

Scott Symons (1933 -2009)  Canadian
Author, who wrote two novels with homoerotic themes before leaving Canada to live in Morocco.
He was openly gay at a time when this was very difficult, publishing his first novel, Place d'Armes, which dealt directly with homosexuality, two years before gay sex was decriminalized in Canada.

Sodomy in history, February 23rd

1921 — The Washington Supreme Court denies the right of defendants in sodomy cases to challenge the morality of the prosecuting witness.

1966 — The Maine Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the state’s sodomy law, but overturns the conviction of an openly Gay man because of prejudicial remarks of the prosecutor.

1966 — The Louisiana Supreme Court upholds a sodomy conviction even though a witness not connected to the case was permitted to testify.

1983 — The New York Court of Appeals strikes down the state’s loitering law in a case brought by a Gay man.

1989 — A Michigan appellate court overturns a gross indecency charge against a man for fondling an undercover police officer’s clothed crotch area and refuses to follow case law in the state by limiting the scope of the law to nonconsensual acts.

Sources:

Wikipedia

glbtq emcyclopedia

On this gay day

Calendar of Sodomy, February

February 21: Barbara Jordan

b. February 21, 1936
d. January 17, 1996

Representative Barbara Jordan (D-Texas) was the first African-American woman elected to Congress from a southern state. She was known as an outstanding orator and Constitutional scholar.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."

Barbara Jordan came to national prominence during the Watergate Scandal in 1974 when, as a freshman member of the House Judiciary Committee, she made an eloquent speech on the Constitution which was nationally televised in prime time. Her speech set the stage for President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Journalist Molly Ivins said of Jordan, "It seemed to me that the words 'first and only' came before Barbara Jordan['s name] so often that they seemed like a permanent title: the first and only black woman to serve in the Texas State Senate, the first black woman elected to Congress, the first black elected to Congress [since] Reconstruction, the first black woman to serve on corporate boards. She broke so many barriers."

The daughter of a Baptist minister, Barbara Jordan grew up during the days of segregation in Houston's Fifth Ward. She earned degrees from Texas Southern University and Boston University Law School and was admitted to both the Massachusetts and Texas bars before becoming active in politics during the 1960 presidential campaign.

In 1976, Jordan delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, a speech many historians consider the best political keynote speech in modern history.

Jordan began to suffer the physical effects of multiple sclerosis in the 1970's. In 1979, she retired from politics to become a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1992.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Jordan the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

At Jordan's funeral in 1996, President Clinton eulogized her: "Whenever she stood to speak, she jolted the nation's attention with her artful and articulate defense of the Constitution, the American Dream, and the common heritage and destiny we share, whether we like it or not. "

Bibliography:

• "Barbara Jordan," Lambda.net
• Holmes, Barbara A. A Private Woman in Public Spaces: Barbara Jordan's Speeches on Ethics, Public Religion, and Law. Trinity Press International, 2000.
• Rogers, Mary Beth. Barbara Jordan: American Hero. Bantam, 2000.

Selected works by Barbara Jordan:

• "Opening Statement ... on Impeachment of President Richard Nixon," July 25, 1974.
• "Who Then Will Speak for the Common Good?" Democratic Convention Keynote Address, July 12, 1976.

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