based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …
323 BC – Alexander The Great died (b.356 BC). Alexander was not only a great soldier, but he was also renowned for his love of his comrade-in-arms Hephaestion.
Hephaestion was clearly his lover. Alexander, like many ancient Greeks, cultivated an ideal of heroic friendship that did not exclude sexual expression. He carried with him on his conquests a copy of the Iliad, and sought to emulate its heroes. When he first crossed into Asia and reached Troy, he sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles while Hephaestion did the same on that of Patroclus. So close did Alexander feel to Hephaestion that when the captured women of the Persian King's household mistakenly threw themselves at Hephaestion's feet rather than at his own, he found no offense in this and excused them by saying that his friend was another Alexander. Finally, his grief at the death of Hephaestion, one year before his own, was also — in its intensity and public display — to parallel that of the Homeric lovers.
Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. He was just one month short of attaining 33 years of age.
1566 – Switzerland: Bartholome Tecia, 15, is convicted of sodomy and drowned in the Rhone River. On 10 June 2013, at the initiative of Network, a Swiss non-governmental organization, a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the banks of the Rhone in Geneva at the site of Bartholome's murder.
"In 1566, as Bartholomé was led to his death, no one stood, as we stand today, to decry the State-sanctioned killing of a child on suspicion of homosexuality," said Marcia V.J. Kran of the UN Human Rights Office. "No one was prepared, as we are today, to challenge homophobic prejudice, to insist on the equal worth and equal rights of every person, irrespective of their sexual orientation and gender identity. It would be beautiful to think that out of this one sad, lonely death in the Rhone, more than four centuries ago, might come some good; that passers-by who see this plaque will pause and reflect on the folly of homophobia; and that we can all draw from Bartholomé's story the strength to continue our modern day struggle to achieve equality for LGBT people everywhere."
1911 – The British playwright Terence Rattigan, was born on this date (d.1977). One of England's most popular 20th century dramatists, he was born in London of Irish extraction, educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford, and his plays are generally situated within an upper middle class background. His plays were more or less pushed off the stage by the works of Osborne, Wesker, Pinter and Arden and were considered passé in the 60s, so he never really received his due as a playwright.
Yet, his plays have held up very well, even as the reputations of his once-revolutionary successors have declined a bit. Rattigan's The Browning Version (1948), an effective and masterful study of failure, may be seen as a precursor of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The horror of a particular type of marriage, in which the pain inflicted on each partner is ultimately the pleasure of both, is as fully explored in Rattigan's one-act play as it is in Albee's much longer drama.
It is not difficult to understand why Rattigan so admired the talents of Joe Orton and was instrumental in helping to get the young writer's early plays produced. A recent review of a New York production of The Browning Version implied, snidely, that a more balanced view of marriage might have come from a heterosexual playwright. Until that review, there were probably no more than three New York theater-goers who ever conceived of Terence Rattigan as anything but straight. Rattigan was homosexual, with a string of lovers but no long-term partners.
It has been claimed that his work is essentially autobiographical, containing coded references to his sexuality, which he kept secret from all but his closest friends. There is some truth in this, but it gets distorted; for example, the repeated claim that Rattigan originally wrote The Deep Blue Sea as a play about male lovers, turning into a heterosexual play at the last minute, is unfounded. His female characters are written as females and are in no sense 'men in drag'.
Fifteen years after his death, largely through a revival of The Deep Blue Sea, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz, Rattigan has increasingly been seen as one of the century's finest playwrights, an expert choreographer of emotion, and an anatomist of human emotional pain. A string of successful revivals followed, including Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005: In Praise of Love at the Chichester Festival Theatre; and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006.
1922 – Actress Judy Garland, born Frances Gumm (d.1969), is widely considered a gay icon; The Advocate has called Garland "The Elvis of homosexuals." The reasons frequently given for her standing as an icon among gay men are admiration of her ability as a performer, the way her personal struggles seemed to mirror those of gay men in America during the height of her fame, and her value as a camp figure. Garland's role as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz is particularly noted for contributing to this status.
The tragic aspects of gay identification with Garland were being discussed in the mainstream as early as 1967. Time magazine, in reviewing Garland's 1967 Palace Theatre engagement, disparagingly noted that a "disproportionate part of her nightly claque seems to be homosexual." It goes on to say that "[t]he boys in the tight trousers" (a phrase Time repeatedly used to describe gay men, as when it described "ecstatic young men in tight trousers pranc[ing] down the aisles to toss bouquets of roses" to another gay icon, Marlene Dietrich)would "roll their eyes, tear at their hair and practically levitate from their seats" during Garland's performances. Time then attempted to explain Garland's appeal to the homosexual, consulting psychiatrists who opined that "the attraction [to Garland] might be made considerably stronger by the fact that she has survived so many problems; homosexuals identify with that kind of hysteria" and that "Judy was beaten up by life, embattled, and ultimately had to become more masculine. She has the power that homosexuals would like to have, and they attempt to attain it by idolizing her."
In discussing Judy Garland's camp appeal, gay film scholar Richard Dyer asserts Garland is camp because she is "imitable, her appearance and gestures copiable in drag acts". He calls her "ordinariness" in her early MGM films camp in their "failed seriousness" and her later style "wonderfully over-the-top." Garland herself acknowledged her camp appeal during her lifetime, saying "When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast."
Other connections between Garland and LGBT people include the slang term "Friend of Dorothy", which likely derives from Garland's portrayal of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz and became a code phrase gay people used to identify each other. Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz "mirrored many gay men’s desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of small town life...for big, colorful cities filled with quirky, gender-bending characters who would welcome them."
Another connection is the rainbow flag, symbol of the LGBT communities which may have been inspired, in part, by Garland's song "Over the Rainbow." Garland's performance of this song has been described as "the sound of the closet," speaking to gay men whose image "they presented in their own public lives was often at odds with a truer sense of self that mainstream society would not condone."
Judy Garland's father and other significant people in her life were also gay. Frank Gumm would apparently seduce or at least keep company with very young men or older teens, then move on when told to leave or before his activities could be discovered. Garland's husband Vincente Minnelli was rumored to be a closeted bisexual. From the beginning of her Hollywood career, Garland liked to visit gay bars with openly gay friends Roger Edens and George Cukor, to the chagrin of her handlers at MGM. While Garland did not specifically attempt to connect with gay audiences, she was known to accept and respect gay people, giving them a visibility they did not often enjoy.
1964 – Born: Ben Daniels, an English actor who has won a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award. Born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, the six-feet tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Daniels trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art for three years.
Since then, has appeared in many UK television shows and dramas, such as The Lost Language of Cranes (1991), Soldier Soldier (1991-1997), A Touch of Frost (1992-present), Outside Edge (1994), Cutting It (2002-2005) (as the philanderer Finn Bevan), and The Virgin Queen (2005). He played the role of Mercutio in the 1994 TV production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and the part of Jonathan in the 1997 Emmy-nominated TV film, David. In Ian Fleming: Bondmaker (2005), Daniel performed as the famous English author and journalist Ian Fleming. He appeared in the BBC television mini-series The State Within (2006).
Daniels may be best known to American audiences for his portrayal of Tony in the 1996 gay film Beautiful Thing, written by Jonathan Harvey and based on his play of the same name.
Daniels is openly gay and lives in south London. He remarked: "Out? I've never been in." He lives with actor Ian Gelder. They began seeing each other during a 1993 production of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane.
Daniels was already sure of his sexuality in his teens, although he did not discuss the matter with his parents because they did not have a very close emotional relationship. He was "cautious about mentioning it when I left drama school, because AIDS was terrifying everyone and there was a huge homophobic backlash". He decided to come out at the age of 24, while appearing in an all-star benefit performance of Martin Sherman's Bent.
Daniels said in an interview:
"Homophobia is still shockingly prevalent in film and TV. I know I've lost work because of being gay, and it is always an issue. Even on a serious BBC Two drama, there will be some suit in some office going, "Hmmm, isn't he a poof?" I don't consider myself politically gay, but whenever I catch a whiff of that now, I'm on it like a ton of bricks."
1974 – Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, film and television producer, and LGBT rights activist. He has won two Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on the television series Big Love and an Academy Award for the 2008 film Milk.
Black was born in Sacramento, California and grew up in a Mormon household, in San Antonio, Texas and later moved to Salinas, California when his mother remarried. His father had been the Mormon missionary who had baptized Black's mother earlier.
Growing up surrounded by Mormon culture and military bases, Black worried about his sexuality. He told himself, "I'm going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I'll be hurt, and I'll be brought down" when he found himself attracted to a boy in his neighborhood at the age of six or seven. He says that his "acute awareness" of his sexuality made him dark, shy and at times suicidal, but he came out in his senior year of college.
Black attended the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Theater, Film, and Television (UCLA) while apprenticing with stage directors, taking acting jobs and working on theater lighting crews.
In 2000, he wrote and directed The Journey of Jared Price, a gay romance film, and Something Close to Heaven, a gay coming-of-age short film. In 2001, he directed and was a subject in the documentary On the Bus about a Nevada road trip and adventure at Burning Man taken by six gay men. Raised as Mormon, he was hired as the only such writer on the HBO drama series Big Love about a polygamistic family.
Black had first visited San Francisco in the early 1990s, while AIDS was devastating the city's gay community. Black said that, "Hearing about Harvey was about the only hopeful story there was at the time." He had first viewed Rob Epstein's documentary The Times of Harvey Milk when he was in college, and thought, "I just want to do something with this, why hasn't someone done something with this?" Researching Milk's life for three years, Black met with Milk's former aides Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg, as well as former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, and began to write a feature film screenplay encompassing the events of Milk's life. The screenplay was written on spec, butGus Van Sant signed on to direct the feature. which eventually won an Academy Award for Black.
Black has been in a relationship with British Olympic diver Tom Daley since 2013. They live together in London. In October 2015, it was announced that Black and Daley had become engaged. Daley and Black married at Bovey Castle in Devon on 6 May 2017.
In 2014, Black was one of eight potential commencement speakers invited by Pasadena City College, and he accepted. After school officials learned of nude pictures of Black having unprotected gay sex were leaked online, the college announced that Black had not been officially invited and that the unofficial invitation was "an honest error". Following talks between Black's and PCC's attorneys, the college board of trustees apologized and formally invited him.
1979 – (Donald Joseph) DJ Qualls is an American actor, producer, and model. He is best known for his work in films including Road Trip (2000), The New Guy (2002), Hustle & Flow (2005), and The Core (2003), and for several appearances on television series such as Breaking Bad, Supernatural, Scrubs, Lost, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and The Big Bang Theory. He co-starred in the FX comedy series Legit, the Syfy horror series Z Nation, the Amazon Studios show The Man in the High Castle and CW’s Supernatural, where he plays fan-favorite recurring character Garth Fitzgerald IV.
Qualls was born in Nashville, Tennessee, one of five children. He was raised in Manchester, Tennessee, and attended school nearby. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at age fourteen; after two years of treatment, his cancer was said to be in remission. According to Qualls, the chemotherapy at an early age sped up his metabolism and impacted his growth, "It stopped my development," which explains his slender frame.
After graduating from Coffee County Central High School, where he was an active member in the Red Raider Band, Qualls attended King's College, London, where he studied English language and English literature. He returned to Tennessee enrolling at Belmont University in Nashville, where he also began acting in a local theater company.
In January 2020, Qualls came out as gay on his Twitter account, stating: Yep, I’m gay. Been gay this whole time. Tired of worrying about what it would do to my career," after announcing it at a Jim Jefferies show in San Diego. Qualls has been friends with Jeffries for several years. He has appeared on Jeffries’ comedy show before, in 2018, and worked with the Australian-born comedian’s series “Legit” in 2013.
Qualls revealed in May 2024 that he is currently in a relationship with fellow Supernatural actor Ty Olsson, and that the two have plans to get married.
2013 – The Cherry Grove Community House and Theatre, on Fire Island, opened in 1948, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The theater was cited for being the oldest continuously operating gay and lesbian theater in the United States.
Lesbians and gay men were living freely and openly in a place called Cherry Grove, decades before the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City helped launch the gay rights movement. The seaside resort on Fire Island, about 60 miles east of Manhattan, was known as far back as the late 1940s as a sanctuary where gay writers, actors and businesspeople from the city and beyond escaped to relax, hold hands and show affection in public.
Cherry Grove and the nearby Pines neighborhood are the predominantly gay communities on Fire Island, although the Pines developed its reputation as a haven decades after Cherry Grove.
It is only the third gay-rights landmark to get the federal designation, joining the Stonewall, where gays clashed with the New York Police Department for three days in 1969 over harassment, leading to the modern gay rights movement, and the Washington, D.C., home of Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, who became a gay rights activist after he was fired from his job with the Army Map Service in 1957 for refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation.
"By the nature of its isolation and beauty, it became a safe haven for gay people, where they could not be afraid of repercussions from work, or anger from their families about being gay," said Thom "Panzi" Hansen, president of the Cherry Grove Arts Project. He and others noted there were occasional raids in which police would enforce laws prohibiting same-sex dancing or ticket people for lewd behavior, but largely because the island was so isolated from the mainland, they were generally left alone.
Landlords and businesses desperate for cash after the Depression, the 1938 hurricane and World War II generally overlooked their tenants' sexual orientation in order to fill what were then largely rental properties, locals said.
Every July Fourth, a ferry filled with men in drag travels from Cherry Grove to the Pines in a fun-loving commemoration of a man in drag being refused service at a bar in the Pines in 1976. The event commemorates the advances of gays, lesbians and transgender people in the ensuing decades.
On February 22, 2009, Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Milk at the 81st Academy Awards. He wore a White Knot to the ceremony as a symbol of solidarity with the marriage equality movement. In his acceptance speech at the Oscar ceremony, he said:
"... When I was thirteen years old my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Milk and it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day I could live my life openly as who I am, and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married...'
"I want to thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to...'
"But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours."
"Thank you, and thank you God for giving us Harvey Milk."
"... When I was thirteen years old my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Milk and it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day I could live my life openly as who I am, and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married...'
"I want to thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to...'
"But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation ours."
"Thank you, and thank you God for giving us Harvey Milk."
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