Today in Gay History

Happy Birthday March 19th
Sir Richard F. Burton (1821-1890)

Although Sir Richard F. Burton was smack dab a scion of the Victorian era in which he lived, in his outlook on sexuality there was little about him that seems "Victorian."

Based on his extensive travels in exotic lands, Burton translated and published works that were shocking for their sexual frankness. Moreover, his accounts of homosexual brothels and other activities severely stigmatized him. Although evidence of his own homosexual leanings is inconclusive, in his lifetime he was regarded with suspicion because of his knowledge and understanding of same-sex sexual activity.

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Tip O' the Bonnet to Julian Bond of NAACP

Julain Bond Spoke on Saturday March 14th to a Human Rights Campaign Dinner. He eloquently acknowledged the commonality of LGBT struggles with the Black Civil Rights movement, and decried especially black homophobia.



Some excerpts courtesy Pam's House Blend:

...When someone asks me, "are gay rights civil rights?" my answer is always, "Of course, they are." Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives: the right to equal treatment before the law. These are the rights shared by everyone. There is no one in the United States who does not, or should not, enjoy or share in enjoying these rights. Gay and lesbian rights are not special rights in any way. It isn't "special" to be free from discrimination. It is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship.

...People of color ought to be flattered that our movement has provided so much inspiration for others. That, it has been, that our movement has been so widely imitated. That our tactics, our methods, our heroes, our heroines, and even our songs, have been appropriated or served as models for others.

...Now, no parallel between movements is exact. African-Americans are the only Americans who were enslaved for more than two centuries and people of color carried the badge of who we are on our faces. But we are far from the only people suffering discrimination; sadly, so do many others. And those others deserve the law's protection and civil rights too.

Herebelow: The entire speech, containing some amazingly refreshing declarations. The video is 25 minutes long, but its WELL worth watching!

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Today in Gay History

March 18, 1314

Jacques de Molay
Burned at the Stake

On Friday October 13th, 1307 King Philip the Fair de Valois of France had 140 French Knights Templar and Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order, arrested.

He likely did this because he owed them money and thought they had become too powerful. What followed was a classic case of power politics between the Catholic Church hierarchy in France, the Papacy itself, and the King.

They were tortured, and confessed to heresy, sodomy, cannibalism and other crimes. More than a hundred of them were then burned to death within a year of their arrest. 51 more were burned in 1311.

de Molay was not put to death until March 18, 1314, but recanted his confessions. The Papacy was complicit, having ordered the disbanding of the Knights Templar in 1308.

During forced interrogation by royal agents on October 24, Jacques confessed that the Templar initiation ritual included "denying Christ and trampling on the Cross". He was also forced to write a letter asking every Templar to admit to these acts. Under pressure from Philip IV, Pope Clement V ordered the arrest of all the Templars throughout Christendom.

The pope still wanted to hear Jacques de Molay's side of the story, and dispatched two cardinals to Paris in December 1307. In front of the cardinals, de Molay retracted his earlier confessions. A power struggle ensued between the king and the pope, which was settled in August 1308, when the king and the pope agreed to split the convictions. Under this agreement, the pope, and not the king, was to judge Jacques De Molay.

The cardinals sent by the pope sentenced the Temple dignitaries Jacques de Molay, Hugues de Pairaud, Geoffroy de Charney and Geoffroy de Gonneville to life imprisonment. Realizing that all was lost, Jacques de Molay rose up and recanted. Along with Geoffroy de Charney, he proclaimed his order's innocence, before challenging the king and pope to appear before God before the year was out. Philip, apparently unamused at de Molay's notion that he should be judged by God within the year, ordered both to be burned at the stake. On the eve of 18 March 1314, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay were taken to the Isle des Juifs, now incorporaed into the Île de la Cité, where they were executed. The image above is a contemporaeous rendition of the two being immolated on the isle in the Seine.

Apparently the Pope “absolved” De Molay and other top Templars in 1308 according to“lost documents” found in the Vatican in recent years. In 2002, Dr. Barbara Frale found a copy of a document which explicitly confirms that Pope Clement V absolved Jacques de Molay and other leaders of the Order in 1308.

Maybe they were "sodomites" or not, but the Knights Templar, and Jacques de Molay in particular, were certainly scapegoated by power plays between the Church and The State. Shades of modern times. Le plus ça change, etc.

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For My Four Little Irish Tadpoles

An Irishman who had a little to much to drink
is driving home from the city one night and,
of course, his car is weaving violently all over
the road. A cop pulls him over.

"So," says the cop to the driver, "where have
you been?"

"Why, I've been to the pub of course" slurs he.

"Well," says the cop, "it looks like you've
had quite a few to drink this evening".

"I did all right," the drunk says with a smile.

"Did you know," says the cop, standing straight
and folding his arms across his chest, "that a
few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?"


"Oh, thank heavens," sighs the drunk. "For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf."

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Today in Gay History

March 17, 1910

Happy Birthday -

Brother Outsider Bayard Rustin

H/T Wiki

Bayard Rustin March 17, 1910 –August 24, 1987 was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in of the 1960s and earlier, and one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington. It was his early mastery of the philosophy of Gandhi that led him to be foremost in counseling the Rev. Martin L. King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience .

For much of his career, Rustin lived in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, in the union-funded Penn South complex, from 1978 with his partner Walter Naegle. He became an advocate on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people and causes in the latter part of his career; however, his homosexuality was the reason for attacks from many governmental as well as interest groups.

Solely because of his homosexuality, he agreed to remain largely in the background of the civil rights movement once Dr. King rose to leadership.

A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: "Twenty-five, thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, or lesbian."

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"Big Government" is not Epithetical

H/T to MotherJones

Let's Hear It For Big Government!

— By Debra J. Dickerson |

We've all got our issues about which we're just plain unreasonable. One of mine is the right wing's vilification of "big government." You might as well try to engage me in a forum on whether the Earth is flat; I will simply get up and walk away from such a pointless conversation. Nothing will convince me that America, or any country, is a group of hearty frontiersmen with no one to blame but themselves if they don't build their own roads, provide their own medical care...oh wait. We're supposed to trust capitalism to do that which we individually can't and religion to take care of the losers. My bad.

As I listen to the latest pathetic jeremiads against the boogeyman of 'socialism,' my eyes just roll and roll. I simply do not trust people who believe we need as little government as possible. Who believe we need just a coupla folks to hand over public resources to corporations gratis, with no pesky bureaucrats whining about not being able to breathe. Who believe that capitalism is always and everywhere rational, so why would corporations contaminate the very resources it needs to exist? And that therefore, there is no global warming. Puh-leeze.

We certainly need better government (a former president comes to mind), but I'm not sure we need less of it. We need government if only to protect us from capitalism; if anyone still believes the profit motive has its limits, I'd like to know what color the sky is in your world. Here's me being unreasonable again: People who want only fifty cents worth of government are people who just don't want to pay taxes. Which makes me sneer because without all this government—roads, cops, telecommunications systems, public schools—we'd all only be able to make fifty cents. Duh. I pay about half my income in taxes (and I don't make even half as much as you think I do). I don't like it, but I'm a patriot, which means thinking now and then about what's best for all of us, not just me. I don't like my money going to people like KBR and Halliburton and AIG; their allegiance is to money and other rich people, and that kind of government we don't need.

Bill Maher summed it up on HuffPo:

"The first responders who put out your fires, that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom...Recent years have made me much more wary of government...stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it is plainly too greedy to trust with."

Take a page from Bill and say it out loud: I'm for big government and I'm proud! Why he lowered himself to 'debate' this ur-knuckle dragger, I don't know, but still...the video of it made me want to stand up and cheer.

Bill O'rally Is Still an Idiot Clown

Example # 1 He equates labor unions with radical socialism

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Today in Gay History

March 16, 1952

Babe Didrikson-Zaharias-Pro Golfer

wins LPGA Titleholders Golf Championship

Babe was born Mildred Ella Didrikson
June 26, 1911, in Port Arthur, Texas.

She was a phenomenal female athlete, accomplished in basketball, track, golf, baseball, tennis, swimming, diving, boxing, volleyball, handball, bowling, billiards, skating and cycling.

She was given the nickname "Babe" during sandlot baseball games with the neighborhood boys, who thought she batted like Babe Ruth.
She won gold medals for the javelin and hurdles and was awarded the silver medal in the high jump during the 1932 Olympics,

In 1948, Babe won the U.S. Women's Open, the World Championship and the All-American Open in golf. It wasn't just another golf title she won this day in 1952, but its a slow day in "Gay" history. Babe won this tournament title while battling colon cancer.

She married George Zaharias, a well known professional wrestler and sports promoter, on December 23, 1938. They had no children, and some believe theirs was a marriage of convenience.

Zaharias had her greatest golfing year in 1950 when she completed the Grand Slam, three women's majors of the day--the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship, and the Western Open--in addition to leading the money list. That year, she became the fastest LPGA golfer to ever reach 10 wins. She was the leading money-winner again in 1951 and in 1952 took another major with a Titleholders victory, but illness prevented her from playing a full schedule in 1952-53.

After undergoing cancer surgery, she made a comeback in 1954. She took theVare Trophy for lowest scoring average, her only win of that trophy, and her 10th and final major with a U.S. Women's Open championship, one month after the cancer surgery. She served as the president of the LPGA from 1952 to 1955 despite her ongoing cancer battle. She died September 27, 1956.

Zaharias broke the accepted models of femininity in her time, even the accepted models of female athleticism. Although just 5'5" tall, she was physically strong and socially straightforward about her strength. Although a sports hero to many, she was also derided for her "manliness." She died ten years before the the social landscape of the United States made women athletes, such as Billie Jean King, more acceptable.

Despite her marriage to George Zaharias, there is keen historic interest in her from the modern lesbian community.

Questions about Didrikson's sexuality were rampant during the 1932 Olympics; the press wondering if she was neither male nor female but some "third" category, and in the locker room at the Olympics some of the other female athletes accosted her to check for themselves.

Later in her golfing career, in response to a female spectator asking where Didrikson's whiskers were, the Babe famously replied: "I'm sittin' on 'em, sister, same as you."

Unhappy with her marriage and wanting a separation, Didrikson began to travel openly with nineteen year old golfer Betty Dodd to golf tournaments in 1950. Unwilling to grant her wish for a divorce, Zaharias and his wife apparently came to an agreement, and Dodd moved in with the couple, living there until Didrikson's death in 1956. Betty Dodd acted as Babe's caretaker, during her lengthy battle with cancer, and that seemed to mollify the public as to why Dodd was constantly with Didrikson.

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The Complicity of the Real Femi-Nazis

Excerpts from
an article in MotherJones


"The Purpose-Driven Wife"
Teaching women to submit to husbands for the love of Christ-

—By Kathryn Joyce

—Illustration: Yuko Shimizu

March/April 2009 Edition of MotherJones

Kathryn Joyce encounters Martha Peace at a church lady's confab at a megachurch in suburban Atlanta.

"...The evening's emcee, Leanne, a peppy blonde with frosty blue eye shadow, says they represent the virtues of the nearly 120 women who came to see Peace speak as part of the church's "Women of Purpose" series. As daughters of the king of kings, Leanne explains, all Christian women wear crowns. But with that honor comes a mandate to apply their faith at home.

Peace is here to help. Over the past two decades, the 62-year-old Georgia native and former nurse has written five books on biblical womanhood, conservative Christianity's answer to the women's movement. Among them are The Excellent Wife, now a classic in this burgeoning niche, and Damsels in Distress, a set of biblical solutions to female problems ranging from pms to depression to "feminist tendencies." It's common for a young Christian wife to rebel against home life as her primary ministry, Peace writes in Becoming a Titus 2 Woman, which lays out the principles of her ministry model. It's the role of older women to help her understand her priorities.

...(Peace asserts that priorities for church ladies) may include rising early to feed the family, being available anytime to satisfy a husband's desires (barring a few "ungodly" or "homosexual" acts), seeking his approval regarding work, appearance, and leisure, and accepting that he has the "burden" of final say in arguments. After a wife has respectfully appealed her spouse's decision—a privilege she should not abuse—she must accept his final answer as "God's will for her at that time," Peace advises. The godly wife must also suppress selfish desires (for romance, a career, an equitable marriage), practice addressing her spouse in soothing tones, and maintain a private log of bitter thoughts to guide her repentance. "If you disobey your husband," Peace admonishes in The Excellent Wife, "you are indirectly shaking your fist at God."

.... she's just one among hundreds of professional Titus 2 mentors, older women who help younger ones—as outlined by Apostle Paul in Titus 2:5—"to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."

...Sensitive to charges that her busy career might contradict her message, Peace reassures audiences that she ministers only to women, and only under her pastor's supervision....

These church leaders argue that a generation of women has abdicated its sacred responsibility by ignoring biblical directives that used to reign unchallenged. In addition to the "corrupting" influence of feminism on the wider culture, they fear feminization of the church by female-majority congregations, the concept of a soft and womanly Jesus, and the elevation of women to positions of church authority. Their concerns extend to questions—on Christian marriage counseling; on women speaking in church or exercising authority over men as, say, teachers or cops—that are nearly as divisive in conservative churches as gay marriage is in mainline denominations. "A lot comes into this," Peace tells me. "Not just husbands and wives, but women as pastors, women in church. It's not a matter of 'Good Christians can differ on the issue.' This is a slippery slope they're on. It's like wherever the world goes, 30 or 40 years later, the church goes, too."

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Today in Gay History

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

March 15, 76 CE

Hadrian, Roman Emperor

H/T to The Independent, UK

The bust is classically Roman, the face imperious. But this is no ordinary emperor. As a major new exhibition at the British Museum makes clear, Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus was not only a peacemaker who pulled his soldiers out of modern-day Iraq. He was also the first leader of Rome to make it clear that he was gay.

Hadrian: Empire and Conflict will see the bust make pilgrimages to both ends of Hadrian's Wall, the first time it has left the British Museum since being found in the Thames 200 years ago. But it is the singular life-story of the gay emperor that is likely to capture the interest of most visitors.

After being made emperor AD117, he inherited a Roman Empire in its prime, which had thrived on a policy of endless expansion and conquest.

His first move, within hours of coronation, was to withdraw his troops from Mesopotamia, now Iraq, and fortify the empire's boundaries by building his eponymous wall in northern England and others in the Danube and the Rhine valleys, ushering in a new era of peace. The reign that followed can be traced through 200 ancient treasures, many of which have never been display in Britain.

Several of the artefacts relate to his male consort, Antinous, who accompanied him on his travels around the empire. These items include a poem written on papyrus, featuring the two men hunting together, and new finds that include memorials to the dead lover at Hadrian's villa in Tivoli.

Although it was not uncommon for his predecessors to have taken gay lovers alongside a female spouse, Hadrian was unique in making his love "official" in a way that no other emperor had before him.

When Antinous drowned in mysterious circumstances, Hadrian was so distraught that he chose to commemorate the young Greek by naming an Egyptian city in his honour. Thorsten Opper, curator of the exhibition, said what was unusual in Hadrian's attitude towards Antinous was the way in which he publicly deified him.

"He had to marry, and he had a politically arranged marriage to Sabina, who was the great-niece of the former emperor Trajan, which in effect, set up his succession. But clearly, it was a loveless marriage with no children. What was unusual is that he had a lot of flings, and then after his lover drowned in the Nile AD130 he made him a god.

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