Today in Gay History

March 11, 1967 – Today is the birthday of Scottish singer, actor, and activist JOHN BARROWMAN. Best known for his role as Captain Jack Harkness in the science fiction series Doctor Who and Torchwood. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Barrowman and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was nine. Growing up in the state of Illinois, his high school teachers encouraged his love for music and theatre and he studied performing arts at the United States International University in San Diego before visiting the United Kingdom and landing the role of Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London's West End.



Barrowman met his partner Scott Gill in 1993 and in 2005 they registered as civil partners under British law. They do not call their relationship a marriage: "We're just going to sign the civil register. We're not going to have any ceremony because I'm not a supporter of the word marriage for a Gay partnership." Barrowman explained later: "Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system that hates me?" A small ceremony was held in Cardiff with friends and family, with the cast of Torchwood and executive producer Russell T Davies as guests.





In 2009, Barrowman published I Am What I Am, his second memoir detailing his recent television work and musings on fame. In the book, Barrowman reveals that when he was just beginning his acting career, a Gay producer told Barrowman that he should try to pretend to be heterosexual in order to be successful. Barrowman was offended by the incident, and it made him more aware of the importance of his role as a Gay public figure: "One of my explicit missions as an entertainer is to work to create a world where no one will ever make a statement like this producer did to me to anyone who s Gay." To this end, Barrowman is active in his community supporting the issues that matter to him most. He worked with Stonewall, a Gay rights organization in the UK, on the "Education for All" campaign against homophobia in the schools. In April 2008, the group placed posters on 600 billboards that read, "Some people are Gay. Get over it!" Barrowman contributed his support to the project asking people to join him and "Help exterminate homophobia. Be bold. Be brave. Be a buddy, not a bully." In the same month, Barrowman spoke at the Oxford Union about his career, the entertainment industry, and gay rights issues. The event was filmed for the BBC program The Making Of Me, in an episode exploring the science of homosexuality

In 1998, Barrowman was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and in 2006 he was voted Stonewall's "Entertainer of the Year."

credit gaywisdom.org

Today in Gay History

Monday, February 28, 2011

credit to Dan Vera and SEE MORE @ gaywisdom.org

1824 - on this date Karl-Maria Kertbeny or Károly Mária Kertbeny (born Karl-Maria Benkert) (d. 1882) was born in Vienna, the son of a writer and painter. He was an Austrian-born Hungarian journalist, memoir-ist and human rights campaigner who in 1869 coined the word homosexual. This was part of his system for the classification of sexual types, as a replacement for the pejorative terms "sodomite" and "pederast" that were used in the German- and French-speaking world of his time. In addition, he called the attraction between men and women "heterosexualism", masturbators "monosexualists", and practitioners of anal intercourse "pygists." [Please note that "homosexuality" was defined first. Then they had to come up with the term for "heterosexuals."]

1973 - on this date two members of the GAY ACTIVIST ALLIANCE appeared on the popular national television program JACK PAAR TONITE show to demand that the host stop using the terms "fairies", "dykes" and "fags" to disparage Gay people. It was the first such conversation on network television and resulted in Paar apologizing for his deluge of anti-gay remarks (he had a long track-record of homophobic remarks over his career).

Today in Gay History

Del Martin (left) and Phyllis Lyon (right) at their 2004 wedding

On this day in 2004, and after 50 years together, LGBT pioneers Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were the 1st gay couple wed in San Francisco weddings. Del died just two short years later in August 2006 at age 87. Phyllis still lives in San Francisco, the undisputed gay female icon of the last 70 years.

In their younger years, Del and Phyllis had founded the lesbian organization, The Daughter’s of Bilitis in 1956. They published for several years the newsletter “The Ladder,” with Phyllis being the first editor for about a year, and Del becoming the editor for the next several years. They also were very involved advocating for the entire LGBTQ community for over 58 years.

For more on their remarkable and very public activism over 50+ years, see Wiki here.

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin in the 1950s

Herewith a letter published in “The Ladder” from Del in 1956, explaining the rationale for the Daughters of Bilitis.

“ . . . The Daughters of Bilitis is a women’s organization resolved to add the feminine voice and viewpoint to a mutual problem. While women may not have as much difficulty with law enforcement, their problems are none the less real — family, sometimes children, employment, social acceptance.

However, the lesbian is a very elusive creature. She burrows underground in her fear of identification. She is cautious in her associations. Current modes in hair style and casual attire have enabled her to camouflage her existence. She claims she does not need help. And she will not risk her tight little fist of security to aid those who do.

But surely the ground work has been well laid in the past 5½ years [referring to earlier references to the male-dominated groups such as The Mattachine Society]. Homosexuality is not the dirty word it used to be. More and more people, professional and lay, are becoming aware of its meaning and implications. There is no longer so much “risk” in becoming associated with [text missing].

And why not “belong”? Many heterosexuals do. Membership is open to anyone who is interested in the minority problems of the sexual variant and does not necessarily indicate one’s own sex preference.

Women have taken a beating through the centuries. It has been only in this 20th, through the courageous crusade of the Suffragettes and the influx of women into the business world, that woman has become an independent entity, an individual with the right to vote and the right to a job and economic security. But it took women with foresight and determination to attain this heritage which is now ours.

And what will be the lot of the future lesbian? Fear? Scorn? This need not be — IF lethargy is supplanted by an energized constructive program, if cowardice gives way to the solidarity of a cooperative front, if the “let Georgia do it” attitude is replaced by the realization of individual responsibility in thwarting the evils of ignorance, superstition, prejudice and bigotry.

Nothing was ever accomplished by hiding in a dark corner. Why not discard the hermitage for the heritage that awaits any red-blooded American woman who dares to claim it?

S/ Del Martin, President
Daughters of Bilitis

Today in Gay History

Happy Birthday

U S Rep Tammy Baldwin (D-Ws)

Born February 11, 1962

“The first out lesbian elected to the United States Congress, Democratic legislator Tammy Baldwin has been a strong supporter of glbtq rights, but she is far from a one-issue politician. Because of her solid record on such concerns as health care, the environment, education, and farming, her constituents in Wisconsin have [thus far] elected her to four terms in the House of Representatives. The last two terms, she was elected by over 2 to 1 margins over her nearest opponents.” http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/baldwin_t.html

From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammy_Baldwin

“Baldwin has stated her support for such legislation as the Equal Pay Act (EPA) and recently voted for the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. These acts criminalize and outline prosecution guidelines and punishments for wage discrimination based on sex. She received a grade of 100 from the League of Women Voters as of 2007. She has received favorable evaluations from other civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

Representative Baldwin has also advanced what she sees as stronger enforcement of laws against sexual violence and violence against women. She is a supporter of the Violence Against Women Act, which allowed victims of sexual violence and other sexual crimes to take their cases to federal courts as well as providing funding for various anti-sexual violence initiatives and programs. She is also among the sponsors of a resolution to promote and support National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

Baldwin has also promoted her efforts on behalf of women's health and reproductive rights.^[5] She sponsored of the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program Reauthorization Act of 2007, which helped low-income, underinsured and uninsured women pay for cervical and breast cancer-related medical services.”

Baldwin and her domestic partner Lauren Azar were together for 16 years before amicably separating and ending their relationship in May, 2010.

Today in Gay History

During this week, in fact on February 7th, 1941, an incident took place in Hamburg, Germany during World War II. As the Nazi’s reign of terror continued, many gay couples had one man dress as a woman to avoid being caught. One such couple, Franz Liederspool and his lover, Burt Nowitski were out for casual evening of beers and weinershnitzel when the Nazi’s noticed that one of them was actually a woman. The men ran through the crowded streets of Hamburg trying to escape the Nazi’s when they ended up in a dark alley.

Knowing that if they were caught together they were doomed, Franz Liederspool told Burt Nowitsk, who was dressed as the woman, to go into the back entrance of a local burlesque house. Little did Franz know that the door actually led right to the stage. For the next three hours the Nazi’s hunted for the gay couple while Burt performed with some of the best leg kicks that the German people had ever seen. Not only did the Nazi’s not find them, but the soldiers eventually grew tired and went for some R&R at the very burlesque house that Burt was working at. It was quite an ironic twist of fate, indeed.

Years later the movies “La Cage au Folles” and “The Bird Cage” were loosely based on their story.

Today in Gay History

First Mattachine Society meeting

Members of the Mattachine Society in a rare group photograph.

Pictured are Harry Hay (upper left),
then (l-r) Konrad Stevens, Dale Jennings, Rudi Gernreich,
Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland (in glasses),
Paul Bernard. Photo by Jim Gruber.

On November 11, 1950, at Harry Hay's home in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, a group of gay men met as a group to assert their common societal interests as gay men. Harry hay had been promoting the idea of such a society for several years prior, as he envisioned, to be "a service and welfare organization devoted to the protection and improvement of Society's Androgynous Minority."

Subsequent meetings of the group resulted in the formation of the Mattachine Society. Of the original Mattachine founders, Chuck Rowland, Bob Hull, Dale Jennings pre-deceased Hay; Konrad Stevens and John Gruber are the last surviving members of the founding group.

"Mattachine" took its name from a group of medieval dancers who appeared publicly only in mask, a device well understood by homosexuals of the 1950s. Hay devised its secret cell structure (based on the Masonic order) to protect individual gays and the nascent gay network. Officially co-gender, the group was largely male; the Daughters of Bilitis, the pioneering lesbian organization, formed independently in San Francisco in 1956. Though some criticized the Mattachine movement as insular, it grew to include thousands of members in dozens of chapters, which formed from Berkeley to Buffalo, and created a lasting national framework for gay organizing. Mattachine laid the ground for rapid civil rights gains following 1969's Stonewall riots in New York City.

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Today in Gay History

Happy 82nd Birthday
Robert Indiana, Visual Artist
(b. September 13, 1928)


Robert Indiana, né Robert Clark, was born in Newcastle, Indiana September 13, 1928. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1946 to 1949 and then entered the Art Institute of Chicago with the assistance of the GI Bill. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1953, Clark won a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh. He earned an Masters degree in Fine Arts there in 1954 and moved to New York City.

Establishing himself in the growing art colony at the very southern tip of Manhattan, he became part of a group of young artists including Agnes Martin, Lenore Tawney, Jack Youngerman, and Ellsworth Kelly. For a time, he and Kelly were lovers.

Clark changed his surname to Indiana in 1958 to reflect better the American focus of his work. He first attracted notice in 1959 with unpainted assemblages, stenciled with short words and constructed from scavenged wood, pieces of iron, and wheels.

Indiana is part of the pop art movement, though he deprecatingly refers to himself as a "sign painter." Like other pop artists he invests commonplace objects and familiar images with new meaning. However, his works occasionally deviate from the pop art norm by evincing intense personal and political engagement. They express concern over social issues and make pointed political statements. His painting Yield Brother (1962), for example, focuses on the peace movement while his Confederacy series (1965-66), created during the Civil Rights movement, attacks racism in four southern states.

He painted "LOVE" for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965.

The LOVE image had an immediate impact, especially among the youth culture of the 1960s. As a painting, graphic design, and a sculpture, it has become one of the most pervasive and widely disseminated images of all time.

In 1973, the U.S. Postal Service commissioned Indiana to do a LOVE postage stamp. The resulting product became the most popular stamp ever issued by the U.S. government.

In 1978, Indiana moved to Vinalhaven, Maine. Working with Vinalhaven Press, he has used the traditional printmaking media of etching and lithography to depict the solitude and isolation of his life in rural Maine.

Indiana's more recent works include biographical elements of gay lives, including his own.

Indiana continues to work actively and accept commissions. He filed suit a few months ago to protect his rights in his art against his “business” “partner” John Gilbert who’d been merchandizing Indiana’s images in India and elsewhere.

see: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/paint_smears_jBZJS1KAzFac0GKYyhIgMO#ixzz0zS1yuIFE

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Today in Gay History

Happy 41st Birthday
Rudy Galindo (b. Sept 7, 1969)
the first openly gay American figure skating champion

Credit:
glbtq



With a stunning upset victory in 1996 Rudy Galindo became the first openly gay man and the first Mexican-American to win the United States figure skating championship.

Galindo came from a family of modest means. His father, Jess Galindo, was a long-distance truck driver, and his mother, Margaret Galindo, a homemaker. Rudy Galindo, the youngest of their three children, was born September 7, 1969.

His mother and father made enormous sacrifices so that Rudy and his sister Laura could become accomplished figure skaters as youngsters. Rudy won many accolades in the late 1980s in pair skating with Kristi Yamaguchi as his skating partner. She decided to move to full time women’s singles skating, and , depressed over the break-up of the promising partnership, Galindo turned to drugs and alcohol. He continued skating as a single, but with disappointing results.

Galindo's brother George contracted AIDS in 1992. Rudy Galindo became the primary care-giver until his brother's death in 1994. Only a few months later, Galindo's coach Rick Inglesi also succumbed to AIDS (as had his pairs coach, Jim Hulick). The previous year Galindo had lost his father, who had always been close to and supportive of him, to a sudden heart attack.
Discouraged by his eighth-place finish in the 1995 U.S. Nationals and short of money, Galindo abandoned skating for eight months.

Galindo lacked funds for travel, but since the 1996 U.S. Nationals were to be held in his hometown of San Jose, he resumed training, this time with his sister, Laura Galindo-Black, as his coach.
Discouraged by his eighth-place finish in the 1995 U.S. Nationals and short of money, Galindo abandoned skating for eight months.

Galindo lacked funds for travel, but since the 1996 U.S. Nationals were to be held in his hometown of San Jose, he resumed training, this time with his sister, Laura Galindo-Black, as his coach.
With a string of lackluster performances before his absence from skating, Galindo was regarded as such an unlikely competitor for the title that the United States Figure Skating Association did not even include him in its publicity guides.

After an artistic short program skated to Pachelbel's Canon, Galindo stood third, a result booed by the crowd, who felt that he had been undermarked.

Galindo's style had been criticized as too balletic and not sufficiently "masculine," but his long program, choreographed by jazz dancer Sharlene Franke to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, featured eight triple jumps, including two triple-triples. Galindo's flawless execution of a program that was both masterful in its artistry and athletically demanding drew a wild standing ovation and earned him the national title. His artistic marks included two perfect scores of 6.0.

Galindo thus became the first openly gay American figure skating champion. In the exhibition after the competition he wore a simple black costume with a large AIDS ribbon as he skated a moving routine to Schubert's Ave Maria as a tribute to his late brother and coaches.
After winning a bronze medal at the 1996 World Championships, Galindo turned pro, joining the Champions on Ice tour.

In the spring of 2000 he had to withdraw from a performance due to shortness of breath. A subsequent medical examination revealed that he was HIV-positive. Galindo suspects that he contracted the virus during his period of depression, when he practiced unsafe sex. Galindo made the news of his diagnosis public and quickly resumed skating. He is still active on the tour, where he is popular with fellow performers and audiences alike. His signature piece, "Village People Medley," is a particular fan favorite.

In the summer of 2002, Galindo was diagnosed with avascular necrosis in his hips, a condition that results in the death of bone. It is an increasingly occurring condition in long-term HIV survivors. Although he skated with the debilitating disease for over a year, in 2003 he underwent two operations to replace his hips. By April 3, 2004, he was ready to return to the Champions on Ice tour, where, skating on two new hips, he exemplified the determination and courage that has characterized his entire career.

Galindo has worked to increase AIDS awareness, especially in minority communities. He served on the National Minority AIDS Council, and in 2001 received the Ryan White Award for contributions to AIDS awareness, prevention, and education.

This Week in Gay History

August 22-25, 1968

At the Democratic Party National Convention in Chicago, a sub-convention of gay rights groups coalesced under the moniker of the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) met to create a Homosexual Bill of Rights and coined the slogan "Gay is Good," an homage to the Black Power slogan "Black is Beautiful."

Their non-violent gathering and meetings were greatly overshadowed by the large number of leftist anti-war groups coalescing in concert with the Youth International Party (Yippies) and other more “demonstrative” characters. Crapaud was there attending a college social fraternity annual gathering in Evanston, but did just barely escape being tear-gassed downtown one evening when he took a wrong turn on a walking tour. It was the first time I ever saw machine gun emplacements and armed soldiers on the street corners of an American city.

A number of lesbian organizations, still concerned over the lack of attention being paid to their issues, refused to participate. Daughters of Bilitis president Rita LaPorte compared the relationship between NACHO and DOB to a husband and wife. Heterosexual women, she argued, dissipated their energy through their marriages; similarly, lesbians risked dissipating their energy should DOB become a surrogate "wife" to what she perceived as the male-centered NACHO.

NACHO held national conferences in 1969 and 1970, but faded in importance with the rise of the Gay Liberation Front and others becoming more radicalized after Stonewall.

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Today in Gay History

HAPPY 86TH BIRTHDAY

James Arthur Baldwin, (August 2, 1924-1987)

AMERICAN AUTHOR OF ARTICULATE CHALLENGES TO RACISM AND MANDATORY HETEROSEXUALITY

James Baldwin, a pioneering figure in twentieth-century literature, wrote sustained and articulate challenges to American racism and mandatory heterosexuality.

The circumstances of Baldwin's birth were unremarkable: He was born on August 2, 1924, at Harlem Hospital in New York City to a poor, unmarried, twenty-year-old woman named Emma Berdis Jones. But his death sixty-three years later on December 1, 1987, at his home in southern France was an event reported on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Indeed, his journey from a difficult childhood in Harlem to his eventual status as a legendary artist with a large and loyal international audience constitutes one of the most compelling American life-stories of the twentieth century.

Baldwin is a pioneering figure in twentieth-century literature. As a black gay writer in a culture that privileges those who are white and straight, he offered in his work a sustained and articulate challenge to the dominant discourses of American racism and mandatory heterosexuality. As an African-American writer, he ranks among the finest. As a gay writer, he occupies a preeminent place.

Long before the Stonewall Riots of 1969 helped liberate the gay literary imagination in the United States, he boldly made his sexuality a vital part of his artistic vision. Even more important, by insisting on honest and open explorations of gay and bisexual themes in his fiction, he made a sharp break from the established African-American literary conventions. Through such a radical departure from tradition, he helped create the space for a generation of young African-American gay writers who succeeded him.

This Month in Gay History

June, 1989

U.S. Postal Service issues the first commemorative "Lesbian and Gay Pride" postage stamp

Today in Gay History

Happy 80 th Birthday !

Harvey B. Milk

Harvey Milk Speech
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Today in Gay History

Happy 85th Birthday May 21st
Frank Kameny (b. 1925)
Gay Rights Founding Father

Frank Kameny is one of the founding fathers of the American gay rights movement. He helped radicalize the homophile movement, preparing the way for the mass movement for equality initiated by the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

He was born Franklin Edward Kameny on May 21, 1925, into a New York middle-class Jewish family. A prodigy who had taught himself to read by the age of four, he entered Queens College at the age of 15 to study physics. He interrupted his education, however, to serve in the armed forces during World War II. After the war he returned to his studies, and in 1956 he received a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University.

Upon graduation Kameny moved to Washington, D. C. to join the faculty of Georgetown University. In July 1957, after one year of teaching, Kameny obtained a civil service job as an astronomer with the United States Army Map Service and began what he hoped would be a fulfilling scientific career. However, events over the next couple of years changed the direction of his life forever.

Late one night in 1957, Kameny was arrested on a morals charge in Lafayette Park, a popular gay cruising area in Washington, D. C. He was released, and nothing immediately came of the incident. It was not long afterward, however, that an investigator from the Civil Service Commission came to question him about rumors that he was a homosexual.

That fall, after serving in his job for only a few months, Kameny was fired from the Map Service, and early the next year he learned that he had been barred from all future employment in the federal government. A victim of the McCarthy-era regulations that branded homosexuals as potential traitors and unfit for government employment, Kameny found his career in ruins.

This experience drove Kameny to militant activism. "My dismissal amounted to a declaration of war against me by the government," Kameny later said, "and I tend not to lose my wars." Kameny attempted to sue the government to get his job back, a lengthy process that went through several appeals. However, all his legal efforts came to naught, including filing his own petition to the United States Supreme Court, which was denied in 1961.

Having failed to achieve his goal as an individual, he resolved that it was time to organize and work within a group. Kameny and his friend Jack Nichols established the Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C. in August 1961. Although the Washington group took its name from the Los Angeles-based homophile organization, the two were not affiliated.

The Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C.'s first official meeting was held on November 15, 1961 and drew about a dozen men and women. Kameny was elected as the group's first president. In opposition to many gay leaders at the time, Kameny embraced direct action and sought contact with public officials rather than hiding from them. Kameny believed that gay people should fight a "down-to-earth, grass-roots, sometimes tooth-and-nail battle" against discrimination.

Under Kameny's leadership, the Mattachine Society of Washington, D. C. charged to the forefront of the emerging homophile movement, in many ways anticipating the militancy that was to be unleashed among gay men and lesbians generally by the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

. . .Kameny's group focused its efforts on removing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation from civil service employment, as well as on granting gay men and lesbians security clearances and qualifying them for service in the military.

In April 1965, the group organized the first gay demonstration at the White House. A dozen or so gay men and lesbians, including Kameny and Barbara Gittings, dressed in business attire, carried signs reading "First Class Treatment for Homosexuals" and "Civil Service Commission is Un-American."

A few months after that demonstration, the U. S. Court of Appeals issued a ground-breaking decision. The court held that rejection of an application for federal employment on the grounds of "homosexual conduct" was "too vague." The Civil Service Commission, the court ruled, failed to state "why [homosexuality] related to occupational competence or fitness."

After a number of similar court decisions were handed down over the next ten years, the Civil Service Commission finally amended its anti-gay policy in 1975.

In addition to battling discrimination in civil service employment, Kameny also sought to challenge the negative images of homosexuals prevalent in the 1960s. Toward that goal, he coined the slogan "Gay is Good." The slogan was later adopted by the 1968 North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO).

In 1971 Kameny participated in the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, where he accused psychiatrists of victimizing gay men and women with their unscientific theories of homosexuality. He urged the APA to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric illnesses, which the organization eventually did in 1973.

In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay person to run for congress. Competing for D. C.'s non-voting seat in the House of Representatives, Kameny came in fourth among six candidates. He used the campaign to call attention to the inequities experienced by homosexuals in a country in which the government "wages a relentless war against us."

Kameny is also a cofounder of the National Gay Task Force and the Gay Rights National Lobby. In 1975, he was appointed a Commissioner of the D. C. Commission on Human Rights, becoming the first openly gay municipal appointee. He also personally drafted the bill that repealed D. C.'s sodomy law, which was finally enacted in 1993.

Dr. Kameny's archives and papers documenting his life and leadership were acquired by the Library of Congress in 2006.

In February 2009, Kameny’s home in Washington was designated as a D.C. Historic Landmark by the District of Columbia’s Historic Preservation Review Board.

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Today in Gay History

April 30, 1997

Ellen Morgan,

portrayed by

Ellen DeGeneres,

came out on her

ABC television

series "Ellen."

And the world has not been the same since. Thank you, Ellen!

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Today in Gay History

Happy 726th Birthday

Edward II, King of England
(April 25, 1284-1327)

"Historians largely regard the reign of Edward II as one of the most ineffectual of the Middle Ages. The nobility deemed his intimacy with Piers Gaveston (d. 1312) inappropriate and excessive; and Edward's insistent loyalty to his closest friend only further alienated them, ultimately contributing to his own fall from power.

Edward was born on April 25, 1284 at Caernarvon Castle in Wales. Although he was the fourth son of Edward I and his first wife Eleanor of Castile, he was the only son to survive infancy and become heir to the throne. . . .

His pursuits were not those typically approved of in kings at this time. Edward preferred such activities as swimming, boating, thatching roofs, and arranging theatrical and musical events. . . . In addition, he formed intense friendships with men whom his father felt wielded too much influence over the prince. Piers Gaveston, a knight from Gascon, was the first and most important of Edward's favorites.

Gaveston and Edward may have become intimate friends during the Scottish campaign led by Edward I in 1300. The king became critical of this friendship, and exiled Gaveston from England. " Learn more about Edward @ g l b t q

Today in Gay History

Photo left to right: Dr. Frank Kameny, Jack Nichols, and Dr. George Weinberg being honored as Grand Marshalls of New York City's 2004 Heritage of Pride Parade
Happy 72nd Birthday
JACK NICHOLS, ~March 16, 1938 - May 2, 2005


Credit: Thomas Kraemer; see his blog from 2006 @
http://thomaskraemer.blogspot.com/2006/09/jack-nichols-1938-2005.html

Although Jack Nichols affected the lives of all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans with his five decades of gay activism. Jack Nichols died in Florida on May 2, 2005 at the age of 67. Nichols' 1972 book "I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody" was co-authored with his lover Lige Clarke. For many years prior to the publication of this book, Jack and Lige had touched many other gay people with "The Homosexual Citizen" column published in Al Goldstein's very heterosexual "SCREW" newspaper. This column was one of the only sources of gay news available to many Americans. "SCREW" was only sold in adult book stores.

Jack and Lige's column led them to become the editors of "GAY," the first weekly gay newspaper. ("The Advocate" was a biweekly newspaper.) It was often sold in hippie-style bookstores and cigar store newsstands alongside the other radical political publications of the period.

Jack Nichols' activism started years before the 1969 Stonewall rebellion. In 1961 Nichols and Dr. Frank Kameny started the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Mattachine homophile rights organization. Inspired by Martin Luther King's famous 1963 march on Washington organized by Bayard Rustin for black civil rights, Jack and Frank led a protest at Independence Hall on July 4, 1965 calling for homosexual civil rights.

Nichols was the first activist to challenge the medical dogma that homosexuality is a sickness. Nichols worked with Dr. George Weinberg and other activists to get homosexuality removed from the official list of mental disorders. Weinberg coined the term homophobia in the 1960s and initiated psychological research on homophobia.
On March 7, 1967 Nichols was interviewed by Mike Wallace of CBS News for the first nationally televised documentary on homosexuality. Jack Nichols was one of the first homosexual Americans to come out publicly.
Jack Nichols never retired. His gay activism continued into the Internet Age. He edited a daily web publication GayToday.com from 1997 until 2004 that was read by more than 50,000 people worldwide.
In 2002 I sent Jack an email thanking him for his 1972 book. As he seemed to do with everyone who came close, we became friends. Even though he lived on a beach in Florida, the Internet enabled our frequent long distance communications.
Professor J. Louis Campbell of Penn State University has spent the last several years working on a biography of Jack Nichols. A contract with a distinguished book publisher is under negotiation. An early draft of the book promises to preserve this important part of gay history.

Today in Gay History

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN BARROWMAN

Born March 11: John Barrowman

clipped from Band of Thebes

Uncomfortably straddling the border of irony and stupidity is this true anecdote: The gay and straight producers of Will & Grace rejected finalist John Barrowman, who's gay, to play the gay character Will Truman, because they said he was too straight, and instead they hired Eric McCormick who is straight but acted "gayer." Our loss. Barrowman, who is Scottish, has a perfect American accent because his family moved to Illinois when he was nine. However he kept his Scots pride, which was not always appreciated in the Land of Lincoln: He arrived to pick up his prom date and she dumped him on the spot because he was wearing a kilt.

After losing Will & Grace, he went back to London and was cast in Dr. Who and its spinoff Torchwood, both hugely successful. A frequent star of West End musicals, Barrowman has also released four solo cds, including an album of Cole Porter songs and his 2007 hit, Another Side, in which he cheeses up mid-tempo hits from Carly Simon, Cyndi Lauper, Chicago, Elton John, Eric Carmen, The Police, and, yes, Air Supply accompanied by a full orchestra. Last year he followed it up with a cd called Music Music Music featuring covers of Both Sides Now, I Made It Through the Rain, Uptown Girl, I Am What I Am, and a duet with also out Daniel Boys of I Know Him So Well. (Clip below, both in pink shirts.) Like Celine, Barrowman delivers what the midcounty ladies swoon to. Perhaps more of an entertainer than an artist, he is wildly popular throughout the U.K., where he substitute hosts the morning chat shows and had more than one thousand people queue up in Cardiff for him to sign copies of his autobiography, Anything Goes.

Gorgeous yes, but no dunce. He frequently speaks on behalf of gay organizations, hosted London's pride in 2007, kisses his partner in public, and doesn't mince words about anti-gay discrimination and double standards. He said, "Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system that hates me?" He and his statistically improbable partner [equally handsome, above left] of sixteen years, Scott Gill, signed the civil register in December 2006. OK! magazine covered the small, private ceremony rapturously. Barrowman wore a kilt.