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.

Today in Gay History

HAPPY 174th BIRTHDAY

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836-1910)



One of the most prolific and important American painters and printmakers of the second half of the nineteenth century, Winslow Homer created a distinctly American, modern classical style.

For this and other reasons, his works have often been compared to the achievements of such prominent nineteenth-century American authors as Henry Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.

Very little is known about Homer's "private" life. He consistently refused to answer personal questions from critics and potential biographers, and he left no revealing diaries or other personal papers. His reclusiveness is indicated by the fact that he produced no self-portraits; in contrast, most American and European painters of the nineteenth century eagerly exploited the rapidly growing market for images of artists.

Most historians have adamantly maintained that Homer remained a bachelor because he was extraordinarily "shy" around women. However, such deeply moving and psychologically complex pictures as The Country School (1871) and Mending the Nets (1882), among many others, suggest a respect for and understanding of women that was very unusual for a male artist of the era. Thus, it would seem more plausible to suggest that Homer simply may not have been interested in women sexually.

Constructing Homer as a solitary eccentric, who virtually withdrew from human society, most scholars have overlooked evidence of significant, intimate associations with other men.

One of his closest friends was Albert Kelsey, a fellow artist whom he initially met in 1858 in Massachusetts. In 1867, Kelsey traveled with Homer to Paris, where they lived together for the next two years. A studio photograph, made while they were in Paris, mimics the conventions of marriage portraits, as do so many photographic portraits of male friends of this period. Kelsey inscribed the back of the photograph with the names "Damon and Pythias," famous ancient Greek heroes and lovers.

In the 1890s, Homer remembered their friendship in the humorous and erotically suggestive drawing "Albert Kelsey riding a giant turtle in the Bahamas."

A studio photograph, made while they were in Paris, mimics the conventions of marriage portraits, as do so many photographic portraits of male friends of this period. Kelsey inscribed the back of the photograph with the names "Damon and Pythias," famous ancient Greek heroes and lovers.

In the 1890s, Homer remembered their friendship in the humorous and erotically suggestive drawing "Albert Kelsey riding a giant turtle in the Bahamas."

Homer's closest companion in the final years of his life was an African-American man, Lewis Wright, who worked as his servant and lived at his Prout's Neck, Maine estate from 1895 to 1910. There are indications that some of Homer's acquaintances were disconcerted by the apparent closeness of his friendship with Wright. While most "negative" reactions involved race, other "unmentionable" factors may also have been involved.

Rest In Peace

Sylvia Rae Rivera

8th Anniversary of her Death

1951 - February 19, 2002

Thanks to wikipedia, we learn that Rivera was born July 2, 1952 and raised in New Your City and lived most of her life in or near that city. She was of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent. Her birth name was Ray (or Rey) Rivera. She was abandoned by her birth father José Rivera early in life and became an orphan after her mother committed suicide when Rivera was three years old. Rivera was then raised by her Venezuelan grandmother, who disapproved of Rivera's effeminate behavior, particularly after Rivera began to wear women's makeup in fourth grade.^[3] As a result, Rivera began living on the streets at the age of eleven, where she joined a community of drag queens.

She was one of those rabble rousing resisters to queer oppression who literally led the charge at the Stonewall Inn, New York City, on the night of 27th of June, 1969, the night that a riot at the bar, touched off the open radicalization of the Gay Liberation Movement fighting back against police harassment directed at the most visible members of the community. She became a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance and helped found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group dedicated to helping homeless young street transwomen, with her friend Marsha P. Johnson.

Rivera spent most of her life at the forefront of both transgender and gay activism, tirelessly advocating and demonstrating for LGBT rights, inclusive social policies and struggling against transphobia.

In 1970 Rivera formed a group called S.T.A.R. - Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - to fight for the civil rights of transgender people, and provide them with social services support. The S.T.A.R. House lasted for two years until her crack habit caused her to lose the house. It was the first institution of its kind in New York City, and inspired the creation of future shelters for homeless street queens.

In 2000, she reformed S.T.A.R. pressuring the Human Rights Campaign to be more inclusive of transgender people. Even when hospitalized with liver cancer, Rivera never stopped working for the civil rights of transgender people and several hours before she passed away on February 19, 2002 she was meeting with LGBT community leaders.

An active member of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Rivera ministered through the Church's food pantry, which provided food to the hungry. Recalling her life as a child on the streets, she remained a passionate advocate for queer youth, and MCC New York's queer youth shelter is called Sylvia's Place in her honor.

February is Black History Month

Qui c'est ça, ce couillon-la qui dit que << On va battre ces Saints ? >>

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~~And the Dream Will Never Die ~~

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Happy 81st Birthday,
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“... The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are…
....But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust..”

Excerpts from Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Today in Gay History

H/T to Band of Thebes

HAPPY 11oth BIRTHDAY
William Haines (January 1, 1900-1973)

In 1925, MGM's leading male actor was the charming William Haines and he remained a top-five grossing star from 1928 to 1932. Handsome and funny, his typical character was a clever, athletic young narcissist whose giant ego was deflated before he finally won the day. As for that self-adoring trait, Haines fell in love with his double, Jimmy Shields, whom the studio had hired as his stand-in, and starting in 1926 they lived together openly for nearly fifty years, causing their friend Joan Crawford to declare them "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."

Perhaps, but their happiness came at a high price. In 1933, seven years into their relationship and still at the height of his fame, Haines cruised a sailor in Pershing Square and they went back to the YMCA to have sex, only to be busted by the police. Louis B. Mayer, the genius tyrant running MGM, insisted Haines enter into a fake marriage, and when he refused, choosing to stay with Shields, Mayer canceled his contract, virtually ending his career. As plucky as his characters, Haines and Shields opened an interior design studio which was an immediate success. Two years later, a neighbor claimed they propositioned his son and as a result members of the Ku Klux Klan broke into their house, hauled them outside, and savagely attacked them. Once again, rather than shunning the gay couple, their famous friends and colleagues rallied to support them: Haines' co-star Marion Davies begged her lover William Randolph Hearst to get the neighbor arrested and many others, including Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Charles Boyer, and even George Burns, implored them to tell the police about the attack, but given their past experience they did not.

Their design studio flourished for decades. They created interiors and furniture for a top tier of international clientele beyond the Hollywood luminaries, George Cukor, Jack Warner, the Annenbergs, the Reagans, and Gloria Swanson, who urged Haines to accept a part in her own comeback movie, Sunset Boulevard, which he declined. Although Haines died on Boxing Day 1973 and Shields killed himself with an overdose of pills soon after, in their shared bed, wearing Haines pajamas, their design studio was recently revived. Look at their lovely work here. And say a prayer of thanks to William J. Mann for rescuing Haines from obscurity with his excellent biography, Wisecracker.

Bonne Année