THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

August 8

1884 – SARA TEASDALE, American poet, born (d: 1933); It used to be fashionable in speaking of the brevity, the simplicity, the rare musical quality and the technical perfection of her poems, to imply that Sara Teasdale, something of a grown up child, "could not adjust to the demands of maturity." What was meant by this was that a "healthy" woman was expected to yield completely and utterly to a man, and this Sara Teasdale could not do. Although she married and made a conscious attempt to "surrender herself completely" as she was expected to do, she could not succumb to an "urge" that she could not feel. The marriage endured, but it did not succeed. When the poet was forty-two, she fell in love with an admiring college student named Margaret Conklin, who became the friend for whom she had been waiting all her life. They two spent summers traveling together, and Teasdale even took rooms at a nearby inn so she could be near Conklin during her last two years in school. After the poet's divorce in 1929, they lived together until Teasdale's death at 49 in 1933. Of her love for Margaret Conklin, she wrote, "There is a quiet at the heart of love, / And I have pierced the pain and come to peace." As one critic has observed, the simple lyrics of Sara Teasdale are the work of "a Sappho in modest draperies."

1922 - RUDI GERNREICH, Austrian-born fashion designer born (d. 1985) A fashion designer and early Gay activist. Born in Vienna, he fled Austria at age 16 due to Nazism. He came to the USA, settling in Los Angeles, California. For a time, he had a career as a dancer, performing with the Lester Horton company around 1945.

He moved into fashion design via fabric design, and then worked closely with model Peggy Moffitt and photographer William Claxton, pushing the boundaries of "the futuristic look" in clothing over three decades. An exhibition of his work at the Phoenix Art Museum in 2003 hailed him as "one of the most original, prophetic and controversial American designers of the 1950s, '60s and '70s."

He is perhaps most notorious for inventing the first topless swimsuit, or monokini, as well as the pubikini (a bikini with a window in front to reveal the woman's pubic hair) and later the thong swimsuit. He was also known as the first designer to use vinyl and plastic in clothes, and he designed the Moonbase Alpha uniforms on the television series Space: 1999.

Along with Harry Hay. Gernreich was an influential co-founder of the Mattachine Society, the USA's first Gay liberation movement. The group first met in Los Angeles, on November 11, 1950, with Gernreich, Hay, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, and Dale Jennings in attendance. In his will, Gernreich established a defense fund for Gay men who were entrapped for sex by police.

1951 - RANDY SHILTS, American journalist and author born (d. 1994) a highly acclaimed, pioneering Gay American journalist and author. He worked as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In addition to his extensive journalism, Shilts wrote three best-selling, widely acclaimed books. His first, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, is a biography of the first openly Gay San Francisco politician, Harvey Milk, who was assassinated by a political rival in 1978. The book broke new ground, being written at a time when "the very idea of a Gay political biography was brand-new."

Shilts's second book, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1980-1985), published in 1987, won the Stonewall Book Award and brought him nationwide literary fame. And the Band Played On is an extensively researched account of the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. The book was translated into seven languages and in 1993 was made into an HBO film with many big-name actors in starring or supporting roles, including Matthew Modine, Richard Gere, Anjelica Huston, Phil Collins, Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda, among others. Historian Garry Wills wrote, This book will be to Gay liberation what Betty Friedan was to early feminism and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was to environmentalism."

His last book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military: Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, which examined discrimination against Lesbians and Gays in the military, was published in 1993. Shilts and his assistants conducted over a thousand interviews while researching the book, the last chapter of which Shilts dictated from his hospital bed. Shilts bequeathed 170 cartons of papers, notes, and research files to the local history section of the San Francisco Public Library. At the time of his death, he was planning a fourth book, examining homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church.

1960 - RALF KÖNIG, award-winning German comic book creator, born. Known for his early "coming out" strips that appeared in underground magazines and his books SchwulComix, Sarius and Kondom des Grauens. His work has been translated into fourteen languages, and sold millions of copies.

1978 - INTERNATIONAL LESBIAN AND GAY ASSOCIATION (ILGA) formed at Campaign for Homosexual Equality conference in the United Kingdom.

1980 - General Council of United Church of Canada, largest Protestant denomination in country, meeting in Halifax, gives approval to "In God's Image... Male and Female," study document which advocates acceptance of Gays and Lesbians into ministry and which says premarital and extramarital sex are acceptable under certain circumstances.

August 9

1875 - REYNALDO HAHN, Venezuelan composer, born (d: 1947); One rarely hears the name of Reynaldo Hahn today, although, as a student of Massenet, he became one of the most popular composers in turn-of-the-century Paris. Because of his popularity, Diaghilev commissioned him to create, with the young Jean Cocteau, the ballet Le Dieu Bleu (1912), one of the few failures of the Ballets Russes. As interest in this period of cultural history increases, Hahn is seen more and more in books (about Diaghilev, about Cocteau, about Proust) as a figure of some importance. He was a key member of the Paris Gay set, which included, among others, Diaghilev, Lucien Daudet, Marcel Proust, and the young Jean Cocteau. He was a student and a close friend of Saint-Saens, himself homosexual, and was Proust's first lover.

It is said, in fact, that the musical battles of Hahn and Proust – Hahn championed the traditional Saint Saëns and Proust favored the radical Debussy – led eventually to their separation. Had Hahn's musical tastes been those of his lover, the chances are that he might not have gone out of fashion so very soon.

1896 – LÉONID MASSINE, Russian dancer, born (d: 1979) As a young dancer, Massine is said to have resembled the ripening boys whom Baron von Gloeden photographed at Taormina. As Mijinksy's successor, both in Diaghilev's bed and as dancer and choreographer, he was, if anything, even more popular with Europe's gay set, because he was more sexually attractive than Nijinsky. Several Oxford and Cambridge dandies were known to treasure scrapbooks filled exclusively with photographs of Miassine, and Harold Acton and Brian Howard, as young Eton students, are reputed to have performed behind closed blinds all the roles of their Russian idol. (They wer5e then a precocious fourteen and thirteen respectively.) But history repeated itself. Massine fell in love with a ballerina, quarreled with his lover, and was dismissed from Diaghilev;s company. Three years later, his impetuous marriage annulled, he begged Diaghilev to take him back. Unforgiving, the impresario refused. And by this time, he had Lifar.

1967 – Joe ORTON, English writer died (b. 1933) a satirical modern playwright. In a short but prolific career from 1964 until his death, Orton shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. "Ortonesque" became a recognized term for "outrageously macabre". Orton met Kenneth Halliwell at RADA in 1951, moving into a West Hampstead flat with him and two other students in June of that year. Halliwell was seven years older than Orton and of independent means, having a substantial inheritance. They quickly formed a strong relationship and became lovers, despite Orton's claims of sexual incompatibility. His plays include: Entertaining Mr. Sloane (first performance 1964) Loot (first performance 1965) The Erpinham Camp (first performance 1966) The Good and Faithful Servant (first performance 1967) Funeral Games (first performance 1968) What The Butler Saw (first performance 1969) Up Against It. Pranksters, Orton and Halliwell would amuse themselves with pranks and hoaxes. Orton created Edna Welthorpe, an elderly 'outraged of' whom he would later revive to stir controversy over his plays. Orton coined the term as an allusion to Terence Rattigan's "Aunt Edna", Rattigan's archetypal playgoer.

In another episode, Orton and Halliwell stole books from the local library, and would subtly modify the cover art or the blurbs before returning them to the library. A volume of poems by John Betjeman, for example, was returned to the library with a new dust jacket featuring a photograph of a nearly naked, heavily tattooed middle-aged man. The couple took many of the prints to decorate their flat. They were eventually discovered and prosecuted for this in May, 1962.

The incident was reported in the national newspaper the Daily Mirror as "Gorilla in the Roses". They were charged with five counts of theft and malicious damage, admitted damaging more than seventy books, and were jailed for six months and fined £262. The books that Orton and Halliwell vandalized have since become the most valued of the Islington Library service collection.

1974 - As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president.

August 10

1881 - WITTER BYNNER, poet, writer and scholar. Best remembered for his classic translation of The Way of Life, according to Lao Tzu (1944). Initially he pursued a career in journalism at McClure's Magazine, Bynner then turned to writing. He was a charter member of the Poetry Society of America and was influential in getting the work of A.E. Housman and Ezra Pound published. In 1916 Bynner was one of the perpetrators of an elaborate literary hoax. It involved a purported 'Spectrist' school of poets. They published a book called "Spectra" that received accolades from Edgar Lee Masters and William Carlos Williams who were completely taken in by the ruse. Bynner meant it as a critique of the fashion of "ism" schools in poetry that were ruining poetry in his opinion. The incident, while successful, damaged his reputation in certain circles.

Bynner travelled to Japan and China and subsequently produced many translations from Chinese. His verse showed both Japanese and Chinese influences, but the latter were major. After a short time in academia (University of California, Berkeley), Bynner settled down in Santa Fe, in a relationship with Robert Hunt taht would last for thirty-four years. Mabel Dodge Luhan, the doyenne of the intellectual community in Santa Fe & Taos at one point accused Bynner of "single-handedly introducing homosexuality into New Mexico." Bynner and Hunt became fixtures in Santa Fe. On January 18, 1965, Bynner had a severe stroke. He never recovered, and required constant care until he died on June 1, 1968. His papers are archived in the New Mexico State University Library. His last words were reported to have been, "Other people die, why can't I?"

1900 - RENÉ CREVEL is born in Paris. The only "out" member of the Dada movement of artists he was the founder of a number of short-lived literary magazines. His poetry was filled with death and castration themes. He told anyone who would listen he had been mutilated as an infant by being circumcised.

1963 - ANDREW SULLIVAN, born; English-born journalist, a libertarian conservative author and political commentator, distinguished by his often personal style of political analysis, and pioneering achievements in the field of blog journalism. In May 2001, Village Voice columnist Michael Musto said that Sullivan had anonymously posted advertisements for bareback sex (anal sex without a condom) on America Online and the now-defunct website barebackcity.com. Subsequently, the Italian-American journalist and activist Michelangelo Signorile wrote about the scandal in a front-page article in the New York Gay magazine LGNY, igniting a storm of controversy. Later, in a defiant blog post titled Sexual McCarthyism: An article no-one should have to write, Sullivan confirmed the allegations while lashing out at his detractors.

Sullivan's critics argue that it was hypocritical of Sullivan to engage in this kind of sexual activity while arguing against Gay sexual promiscuity. They claim that the vision of Gay sexuality presented in Sullivan's writing is at odds with the activities he was said to be engaging in. They also charge that because Sullivan is HIV-positive, it is unsafe for him to engage in sex without a condom. Sullivan's critics also contend that it is unfair for Sullivan to criticize Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions as "reckless" while engaging in unprotected sex himself. This scandal was parodied in the popular television show, Queer as Folk. In one episode, a well-known Gay political commentator condemns a 30-year-old Gay man for dating an 18-year-old, only to be later caught attending a bareback sex party.

~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~