Ive Had About Four Good Ideas In My Life @burning-down-the-mall - Tumblr Blog

the world of ultimate music

sua-sponte-deactivated20200331

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

is-the-post-reliable

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

i-am-a-fish

I hope you get your favorite food this week and your favorite drink and your favorite 2k dollars

i-am-a-fish

I'm sorry there's no magic in this post I'm just talking. I hope good stuff happens to people online I hope good things happen to all of us

shirecorn

THIS is the comic that has been banned

It was flagged as "Eksplicit", shadowbanned, and every reblog turned invisible. The flagging is also unappealable (unless that is an error, thanks tumblr)

Happy Trans Day of Invisibility from your tumblr mods!

Only found out because I tried to reblog with an update from your local trans unicorn siblings!

I cannot even LINK to my old comic without every new post getting deleted.

And yet, we will CONTINUE to exist, and grow, and find each other. We will be visible up to and beyond our own deaths. Because we stand for love. We love ourselves and each other and that just makes us stronger.

stjohnstarling

In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.

a-kind-of-merry-war

Extremely good idea - how are you doing it? Through the contact us option?

stjohnstarling

Yeah it’s one of the options on the Contact Support form:

sharas-bae

for what it's worth: after a few months of submitting help tickets as 'feedback' when i saw a post inappropriately flagged as mature, i tried following this suggestion instead. today i got my first-ever response from tumblr support on this issue, letting me know that a post i'd submitted a ticket before has had its mature content flag removed.

stjohnstarling

Hey it worked! Maybe if enough of us make a stink they’ll fix the fucking system.

chrisweedpiano

one of my favorite posts of all time

probuccalfat

avoidance is lowkey funny because it’s like i don’t want love on the off chance that it gets taken away from me and then i have to become john wick or something

probuccalfat

we’re all on the only social media that matters and this is why.

achillesinhighheels

adoredaqua

manifesting for everyone to have a very lesbian summer

whats-a-bear

can't believe i just blew fifty bucks in there <- gay deer walking out of a bar

largehyphencollider

dragon-hoard

if you are going to need some kind of sedative for 4th of july fireworks for your pets NOW IS THE TIME TO SCHEDULE THOSE APPOINTMENTS TO ASK FOR THEM

NOT WHEN ITS 2 DAYS AWAY

alex51324

I feel like to really get this circulating as it should, we need it superimposed over the picture of the turkey going in the fridge. (I can't do it I'm on my phone.)

teddy-the-queer-wizard

@alex51324 ?

frawgs

apparently vic’s vapor rub goes exitinct ? i’ve been using the same vapor rub for years and apparenlty it went bad in the 2010s ..

expired .

The cards see all.

ko-fi request: "Gromit from Wallace and Gromit getting in a heated internet argument with other dogs on an older Dell computer, as Wallace walks in with saying "are ya winning, old chum?""

nymph1e

On Discomfort and Morality

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?

lord-kitschener

thedreadpiratecam

Why he light skinned?

yourladyindank

Because Martin Luther was white and German.

fancynewaddress

did…

did someone confuse Luther with Jesus omg

lookwhathappenedtomack

I suspect they confused him with Martin Luther King

lets-talk-about-sects

Oh no

the-golden-ghost

I mean, I get mixing them up based on names alone, but I’m concerned about the people who think Martin Luther King Jr. routinely wrote with a quill or dressed like a Renaissance man.