On This Day In Gay History- The Wizard Of Oz Premiers

73 years ago today, The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater & homosexuals have never been the same.

“Mommy, Mommy…please let me stay up & watch The Wizard of Oz, please, please! I promise to be good!”… from 1956 to 1998 The Wizard of Oz was an annual television tradition at my house & all over the USA. Because of these broadcasts, it has become one of the most famous films ever made. The Library of Congress names The Wizard of Oz as the most-watched film in history. It is often ranked among the top 10 best movies of all-time in most critics' & popular polls, it certainly is in mine.

The Wizard Of Oz has provided enduring quotes for our popular cultural consciousness. Its signature song, Over the Rainbow, sung by Judy Garland, has been voted the greatest movie song of all time by the American Film Institute.

Born On This Day- August 2nd... James Baldwin

"Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, & this was an immutable law."

The very first "gay" book I ever read was James Baldwin's GIOVANNI'S ROOM (1956) & at 15 years old, & the tragic story did not lift my spirits. I was reading everything I could that dealt with homosexuality or by a homosexual, & the message I was getting was not positive. I had already decided at 15, that my life was not going to be tragic because I was gay. Still, I found the novel to be erotic & well written. I continued to follow James Baldwin's life & work through his exile in Europe, reading his novels, poems & essays. When he returned to the USA & was active in the civil rights movements of the 1960s & 1970s, I still admired his work & had my eyes opened by his words.

Born in 1924, he had a life of extreme hardship, growing up illegitimate & very poor in Harlem, Having his work rejected by publishers (black & Homo!), & harassed by the FBI (he had a 1750 page file on his activities). After the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 & drawbacks in civil-rights movement, Baldwin started bitterly to acknowledge that violence may be the only route to racial justice. Some optimism about peaceful progress would later return, but in the early 1970s he also suffered from writer's block. Baldwin: "Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent, which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it."

In 1983 Baldwin became a professor in the African-American Studies department of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He spent his last years in St. Paul de Vence on the Riviera, France, where he died of stomach cancer on November 30, 1987.

James Campbell said in the NY Times Book Review: "All the aspects of Baldwin’s character are exposed … He was magnetic, compulsively sociable, elaborately extrovert, darkly introverted, depressive, magnificently generous, self-absorbed, self-dramatizing, funny, furious, bubbling with good intentions, seldom hesitating over a breach of promise – capable of exhibiting all these traits between lunch & dinner, & between dinner & the last whisky at 4 am."

Born On This Day- July 31st... Gay Rights Pioneer, Barbara Gittings

During an era when very few gay people dared come out in private, much less in public, Barbara Gittings was a vocal & visible figure in the fledgling fight for gay rights.

In the late 1950s, she founded the NYC chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national organization for lesbians, even though she lived in Philadelphia. In the 1960s, she took part in early gay rights demonstrations at the White House & Liberty Square in Philadelphia. In the early 1970s, she helped lobby the American Psychiatric Association to change its stance on homosexuality; in 1973, the APA invalidated the definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Gittings also strove to make information about gay men & lesbians more widely available in libraries. Though not a librarian by training, she was for many years the head of the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force; she coordinated & edited the association’s comprehensive bibliography of literature by & about gay people.

Gittings felt keenly aware of the need for such a bibliography as a young woman, when she scoured local libraries, seeking, but seldom seeing, something that would help her understand her own life.

Gittings was born on July 31, 1932, in Vienna, where her father was a member of the United States diplomatic corps, returning to the United States when Barbara was young. When she was a teenager, her father caught her reading The Well of Loneliness, the 1928 novel of lesbian love by the English writer Radclyffe Hall. He told her, via a letter, to burn the book. Gittings’ father mailed the letter, when he could not bring himself to speak to her.

Gittings studied theatre at Northwestern, but she was increasingly distracted by the need to learn as much as she could about homosexuality. She haunted the libraries of Chicago, unearthing little that was relevant & nothing that was encouraging.

Gittings: "I had to find bits & pieces under headings like ‘sexual perversion’, ‘invert, or ‘sexual aberration’ in books on abnormal psychology. I kept thinking, ‘It’s me they’re writing about, but it doesn’t feel like me at all.’"

She left Northwestern after her freshman year, & for decades she supported her activism with clerical jobs. In 1958, commuting from her home in Philadelphia, Gittings started the NYC chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, which was founded in San Francisco in 1955; she later edited the organization’s national newsletter- The Ladder. In 1965, she took part in one of the first gay rights pickets of the White House, in an effort to end discrimination against gay people in federal employment.

Gittings received many awards, among them honorary membership in the American Library Association. The Free Library of Philadelphia named its gay & lesbian collection for her, & the NYC Public Library acquired the papers of Gittings & her longtime partner- Kay Tobin Lahusen, which chronicle more than half a century in the gay rights movement.

She appeared in the documentaries Out of the Past, Gay Pioneers, Before Stonewall & After Stonewall.

Lahusen: “Before Barbara died, we went jointly into an assisted-living facility. Our last bit of activism was to come out in the newsletter of our assisted-living facility.” Gittings died of cancer in her home on February 2007 at 74 years old.

On This Day In Gay History- June 30th... Bowers VS Hardwick

"Bowers was not correct when it was decided, & it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be & now is overruled."
Justice Kennedy in Lawrence v. Texas

What a week with several important decisions handed down by SCOTUS. One of the most significant of of all legal decisions having to do with gay rights is the infamous Bowers v. Hardwick & it happened on this day, 26 years ago.

Michael Hardwick was a bartender in a gay bar in Atlanta, Georgia who was targeted by a police officer for harassment. In 1982, an unknowing house guest let the officer let into Hardwick’s home. The officer went to the bedroom where Hardwick was engaged in oral sex with his partner. The men were arrested on the charge of sodomy. Charges were later dropped, but Hardwick brought the case forward with the purpose of having the sodomy law declared unconstitutional.

Bowers VS Hardwick was a response to a particularly insulting police action & repeal advocates had hoped that the case would put an end to sodomy laws in the United States when it reached the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the 5-4 decision found that nothing in the Constitution "would extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy."

Justice Lewis Powell was the swing vote in the decision, switching from supporting invalidating all sodomy laws to denying homosexuals any right of privacy. In October of 1990, 3 years after his retirement, Powell told a group of New York University Law students, "I think I probably made a mistake in that one." He told the National Law Journal, "That case was not a major case, & one of the reasons I voted the way I did was the case was a frivolous case" brought "just to see what the court would do" on the subject. A more callous opinion is hard to imagine.

The case was overturned 17 years later by Lawrence & Garner v. State of Texas.

On This Day In Gay History- June 28th... The Stonewall Riots

"Before Stonewall, you took your life into your hands when you tried to be openly gay. Whenever we celebrate pride, a component of that pride should be that we are proud of our history & struggle & that we fought back against oppression & managed to have lives under that difficulty."

Martin Duberman, author of Stonewall

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, a group of Hispanics, hippies, drag queens, & queers got fed up with being harassed by the police because they were gay. It’s hard to imagine police handcuffing, harassing, & arresting gay people for simply gathering in public, but that’s what happened, routinely, before Stonewall’s spontaneous uprising of gay men & lesbians in New York’s Greenwich Village. What happened then galvanized the gay rights movement? For younger people, who have grown up in a world with increasing legal protections for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, & transgender community, it’s hard to imagine that just 4 decades ago, gay people’s jobs, families, & homes were threatened, & their lives restricted or ruined if they were out of closet.

While not the first rebellion, the Stonewall riots are the most famous instance of homosexuals fighting back against government persecution. From all accounts, the riots were not pretty or organize. Stonewall was 6 nights of street riots with some of the least empowered elements of society: the closeted, fearful, & disenfranchised, fighting the police batons & pepper spray with what they had, mostly fists, signs, garbage cans, bottles, & shoes. For gay Boomers, the uprising is a defining moment to celebrate as we look back at how far we have come in four short decades & look ahead to the future. In 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn who refused to be intimidated by police oppression had no idea they were about to change history. They just wanted equality. In the 1950s, Rosa Parks had no idea she was about to change history when she refused to move to the back of the bus, either. As she famously recounted: "The reason that I did not move from my seat was that my feet were tired."  Those queers at the Stonewall Inn were tired too. From such humble origins, movements ignite.

NY TIMES, June 29th, 1969

It was just 50 years ago, homosexuals were classified as subversives by the US Department of State; we were officially recognized as security risks to the country. The FBI kept lists of known homosexuals, as did the US Postal Service. The names of people arrested for public indecency & lewd behavior (men holding hands, women wearing suits) were published regularly in newspapers. Being queer was officially recognized as a psychopathic condition, & was a valid reason to be fired from your job. Gay men & women forced out of the government positions by the 1000s each year. If gay people regularly congregated together, the police department’s “Public Morals Squad” would be called in to intervene. Police brutality was commonplace. Hope for the future was pretty bleak; there were no substantial gay rights organizations. The only real community gay people had was in underground establishments, often maintained with help from the Mafia, or by bribing the police.

I wonder what we’ll imagine next for the older LGBT community? I wonder if those on the front lines of gay "out" aging will keep walking that line between activism & diplomacy. If the first 40+ years of our civil rights movement are any indication, will the next 40 take us into a future of greater equality, with more allies? Will the Stonewall legacy of fighting for being out & for equality motivate us to pave new trails for gays & lesbians at age 50+? Will DOMA be struck down? I think we owe that not only to ourselves & to the generations, but also to those who stood up for us at Stonewall.

For over a decade I needed to explain Stonewall to a group of 6 young people that I supervised, many of the group were gay, but even the straight kids went drinking & dancing at Portland's gay clubs. None of them had heard of Stonewall. I had to explain it to them, & they got quite an earful. I continue to reflect on all the things many "baby queers" just don't know about or care about:

Harvey Milk?

Judy Garland?

Camp?

Musical Theatre?

People could be arrested for dancing with someone of the same sex ?

Gay bars were once hidden & "coded"?

George Cukor?

Cole Porter?

Leonard Bernstein?

Tennessee Williams?

Truman Capote?

Montgomery Clift?

James Dean?

Dag Hammerskjold?

Rudolf Nureyev

Ralph Waldo Emerson?

Walt Whitman?

Rock Hudson?

Tales Of The City?

Frida Kahlo?

Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert?

Billie Jean King?

Elton John?

George Michael?

Martina Navratilova?

Billie Jean King?

Greg Louganis?

Neil Patrick Harris?

A world with no Internet Hook-up sites?

A world with no GRNDR?

A world before HIV?

Post Apocalyptic Bohemia remembers our history & as long as this blog continues, I will attempt to get down that history & those individuals that played a part, in hopes that somebody cares.

On This Day In Gay History- June 26th... Lawrence VS Texas

One of the most important & pivotal moments in gay history, in 1998, John Lawrence & Tyron Garner were arrested in Lawrence’s Houston home & jailed overnight after officers responding to a false report found the men having sex. The 2 men were convicted of violating Texas’s “Homosexual Conduct” law, which made it a crime for 2 people of the same sex to have oral or anal sex, even though those sex acts were legal in Texas for people to engage in with persons of a different sex. Lambda Legal quickly responded to represent Lawrence & Garner. Battling for years in the Texas courts, they sought to overturn the criminal convictions (which made the 2 men registrable “sex offenders” in several states) & to have Texas’s law declared unconstitutional. When the highest court in Texas eventually refused to even hear the arguments, the U.S. Supreme Court to took the case On this day in 2003, in a stunning victory, the highest court in the land found the “Homosexual Conduct” law unconstitutional & established, for the 1st time ever, that lesbians & gay men share the same fundamental liberty right to private sexual intimacy with another adult that heterosexuals have.


The mere existence of sodomy laws often had been used to justify wholesale discrimination against Gay people. In striking down those laws, this historic ruling removed a major roadblock in the battle for Gay Rights. No longer can gay people be considered “criminals” because they love others of the same sex. Moreover, laws that deny gay people liberty or equal protection no longer can be justified on moral grounds alone. This distinction can not be overstated when arguing with the haters.


The breadth of this landmark case is extraordinary. The Supreme Court declared all sodomy laws unconstitutional, putting an end to the sodomy laws that remained on the books in 13 states at the time of the ruling, including laws that criminalized only same-sexual conduct & laws that criminalized oral & anal sex irrespective of the sex of the participants. The Court also reversed Bowers v. Hardwick, its 1986 decision that upheld Georgia’s sodomy law that had been extraordinarily harmful to gay people’s struggles both for liberty & equality. The decision’s sweeping language about gay people’s equal rights to liberty marked a new era of legal respect for the LGBT community. Lawrence v. Texas is considered the most significant gay rights breakthrough of our time.


I think I may have to celebrate this historic anniversary with some hot & very legal man sex.

On This Day In Gay History- June 25th... The Rainbow Flag Flies For The First Time

In Victorian England the color green was associated with homosexuality, as was lavender in the USA. The pink triangle was first used by Hitler’s Nazi Party to identify gay males & black triangle was similarly used to identify lesbians & others deemed “asocial”. The pink & black triangle symbols were reclaimed by the Gay communities in the early 1980s to signify our strength of spirit & willingness to survive oppression. As we slowly started gaining our rights, the symbols of oppression are gradually being replaced by the symbols of celebration. The most colorful of Gay symbols is the Rainbow flag, and its rainbow of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & purple, which represent the diversity of our communities.

The first rainbow flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, in response to calls by activists for a symbol for the community. Baker designed a flag with 8 stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These colors were intended to represent respectively: sexuality, life, healing, sun, nature, art, harmony, & spirit. Baker dyed & sewed the material for the first flag himself, in a nod Betsy Ross.

When Baker approached a company to mass-produce the flags, he found out that “hot pink” was not commercially available. The flag was then reduced to 7 stripes.

Wanting to demonstrate the gay community’s strength & solidarity after the assassination of Harvey Milk & George Moscone, the Pride Committee decided to use Baker’s flag. The indigo stripe was eliminated so that the colors could be divided evenly along the parade route, 3 colors on one side & 3 on the other. Soon the 6 colors were incorporated into a 6-striped version that we use today.

In 1994 Baker moved to NYC & continued his creative work & activism. That year he created the world's largest flag in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

In 2003, to commemorate the Rainbow Flag’s 25th anniversary, Baker created a Rainbow Flag that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean in Key West. After the commemoration, he sent sections of this flag to more than 100 cities around the world.

Portland Pride Day... 25 Gayest Songs Of All Time

25. 9 to 5- Dolly Parton

24. In the Navy- Village People

23. Relax- Frankie Goes To Hollywood

22. Macho Man- Village People

21. Small Town Boy- Bronski  Beat

20. I’m Coming Out- Diana Ross

19. I Am What I Am- Harvey Fierstein

18. I Love The Nightlife- Alicia Bridges

17. Vogue- Madonna

16. Constant Craving- k d lang

15. Xanadu- Olivia Newton-John

14. Go West- Pet Shop Boys

13. No More Tears (Enough is Enough)- Babs & Donna Summer

12. You Make Me Feel Mighty Real- Sylvester

11. Don’t Rain On My Parade- Barbra Streisand

10. Love Shack- B 52s

9. YMCA- Village People

8. Dancing Queen- ABBA

7. Secret Love- Doris Day

6. Faith- George Michael

5. Hot Stuff- Donna Summer

4. We Are Family- Sister Sledge

3. It’s Raining Men- Weather Girls

2. I Will Survive- Gloria Gaynor

1. Over The Rainbow- Judy Garland

Born On This Day- June 6th... Harvey Fierstein

“If you don't look, you don't know,”

Well, first of all, there is that voice. I always think of my distinctive voice, made possible by decades of pot smoking & whiskey drinking, but Harvey Fierstein brings it all to a whole new level. .. a 300-pound man who sounds like he's been chain-smoking since the age of 3.

Fierstein grew up in Bensonhurst, the son of a handkerchief manufacturer & a school librarian. He attended Pratt & began his career in the mid-1970s performing in drag bars under the name Virginia Hamm. It was Fierstein's collection of interconnected, semi-autobiographical one-act plays in the late '70s- Torch Song Trilogy, that eventually brought him to Broadway. (He also starred in the big screen adaptation.). He has the distinction of winning Tony Awards for both writing & playing the lead role in his long-running play, about a gay drag performer & his quest for true love & family.

Fierstein has since effectively become a celebrity spokesperson & champion for gay civil rights. He describes himself as a "first real, live, out-of-the-closet queer on Broadway". He wrote the book for the musical La Cage aux Folles & he has been nominated for 11 Tony Awards (the Tonys are a high Holy Day at my house & will be broacast live next Sunday). Fierstein has been featured in the films Bullets Over Broadway, Mrs. Doubtfire, Death to Smoochy, & Independence Day.

Fierstein's turn as Edna Turnblatt in Hairspray earned him a Tony award in 2003. Fierstein virtually owned the role, but he was ultimately turned down for movie version of Hairspray. Closet case-John Travolta was cast instead. He played Tevye in the revival of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway & & then toured the country in the iconic role. His brave, unlikely & open portrayal of a straight father of 3 daughters in the Jewish- The Sound Of Music earned him rave reviews all over the country. My first professional role was as Motel the tailor in Fiddler On The Roof in 1971. I have a soft spot for this show & I think it would  have been nifty to play Grandma Tzeitel in Harvey’s production. He appeared in last season's popular revival of La Cage Aux Folles, replacing Douglas Hodges as Albine/Zaza. Fierstein wrote the book for this season's Broadway hit- Newsies & is working on a musical version of Kinky Boots, a film that I think is just begging to be a stage musical.

I really like & admire Harvey Fierstein. He has been a vocal gay rights activist, speaking out for gay people, queer theater, & AIDS causes. He has been a spokesman for the Services Legal Defense Fund, a group that advocates for the rights of gays & lesbians in the military. Fierstein: "Time will tell us what we did and didn't do. The way that I look at it, the only thing that I will definitely take credit for is that Torch Song & La Cage Aux Folles, 2 of my shows, were the first ever gay themed shows to make money on Broadway. I think that counts more than anything."

Harvey Fierstein Turns 60 years old today. He is nominated for a Tony Award for the book of Newsies. The Tony Awards broadcast is this Sunday. I will be there. Fierstein lives on 7 acres in Connecticut. Harvey... Let's have cocktails & have a chat.

June 1st in Gay History

In the words of Oscar Hammerstein II:

But it's comin' by dawn,

We can feel it come,

You can feel it in your heart

You can see it on the ground

Just because it's June,

June, June!

On this day in 1901, English playwright, director, & screenwriter John van Druten was born. In the early 1930s, he was one of the most successful playwrights in London with star studded West End productions: Diversion, After All, There's Always Juliet, Behold, We Live& Flowers of the Forest. Van Druten moved to the USA where one of his successful plays- Bell, Book, & Candle was made into a rather good movie in 1950 starring Kim Novak & Jimmy Stewart. The original play was about the gay underground in NYC's Greenwich Village, with witches & their magic substituting for gay & special. Bell, Book & Candle is about witches living in the village. They have special 'witch bars,' & they are always worrying about being outed.

Van Druten wrote the very good screenplays for Old Acquaintance, Voice Of The Turtle & Leave Her To Heaven.  His play- I Am A Camera was based on the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood & was the basis for the musical Cabaret. He was gay & English, always a winning combination in my opinion. 

On this day in 1970, Sexology magazine reported that a study shows that gay men have larger penises than heterosexual men.

On this day in 1994, the Pentagon considered a proposal from the Air Force requesting funds to build a "gay bomb" that would turn enemy troops gay. The proposal came to light in 2007 when the Sunshine Project discovered it through a Freedom of Information Act disclosure. As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested: "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior." I like the idea of the Iraqis & the US soldiers in an orgy of lust... the war would have gone much differently. The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon. They called the new weapon- Poppers. Really.

Born On This Day- May 22nd... Harvey Milk

Milk was not an easy man & he had a temper, but his independence freed him from compromising party politics, allowing him to be controlled by his conscience rather than the debt owed to special interest groups. Milk had an absolute allegiance to Jeffersonian principles of American democracy, the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution.

Milk had a burning belief that the only devout defense of individual rights, Milk was individual participation in the political process. As an open gay man, Milk knew all too well that whoever holds power, dictates the limits of individuality.


Milk was a political pioneer of the 20th century. History will prove Milk’s struggles & his success show that there is no gay way, there is only one way. Milk can live forever if we can to do things his way, in the actions & accomplishments of the small daily efforts to make our world better.

Harvey Milk entrusted the energy of his eloquent voice not only to the voiceless minority, but to all minorities, whose voices are cast away in the conformity of the American cultural landscape. Milk: “All I ever seek is to open up a dialogue that involves all of us." Tragically, his assassin's bullet not only vanquished his voice, but his populist vision as well.

On This Day In Gay History- May 21st, 1979... White Night Riots

On this day- May 21st, in 1979, inside a jury room 12 people were deliberating whether to find former Supervisor Dan White guilty of murdering then Mayor George Moscone & gay rights leader, City Supervisor Harvey Milk on the morning of November 27, 1978. White's attorney mounted what became known as the "Twinkie defense", arguing that he had temporarily lost his mind due to the sugary snacks he had consumed.

On the afternoon of May 21st, 1979, the jury, which included no out Gay people, rendered its verdict finding White guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, thus saving him from being sentenced to death.

The pain & shock over the assassinations of the 2 beloved progressive politicians still simmering, many Gay residents, as well as straight allies, were angered & outraged by the outcome of White's murder trial.

Thousands of people descended on the Castro, as planned, the evening of May 21, 1979 & proceeded to march to the Civic Center, where another large crowd had gathered to protest the jury's decision.

As evening came, emotions boiled over & the crowd surged the building, smashing windows & trying to break through the front doors. A line of police cars parked nearby were set on fire, sending smoke & fire into the night sky.

In retaliation, police raided the Elephant Walk, a gay bar in the heart of the Castro. The culmination of events became known as the White Night Riots & it took decades before the rift between police & the city's LGBT community would be healed.

Not all the protesters were part in the mayhem. A line of people had locked arms in front of City Hall in an attempt to hold back the crowd from doing further damage to the building.

 It marked the last time local gay people would be afraid to stand up and fight for their rights.

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, then a public school teacher, took part in the events of that night: "We were in no mood. This guy had killed a hero of ours & a friend of ours & he got treated like he had shoplifted. Dan White was a former cop & he got away with murder. In a strange way I am grateful that when the verdict came out people were not just silent. I am glad we were so vocal. I just thought it taught us you can not be too docile. You really do have to be strong."

Mark Leno, now an openly gay man serving in the state Senate: “The White Night Riots were the culmination of many changes that were impacting the city at that time. It was as if it all came to a head through the outrage of the injustice of Dan White's sentence. It was a jolt to the civic fabric as if we had to experience all of that to be able to move forward to become the city that we have become today. The experience I had at that time continues to inform my public office today. That we have had to fight for every right that we have gained & we have had to be vigilant every step of the way so as not to ever lose anything we have again.”

The next morning gay leaders convened in a committee room in the Civic Center. Supervisor Harry Britt, who had replaced Milk made it clear that nobody was to apologize for the riots. Britt: "Harvey Milk's people do not have anything to apologize for. Now the society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We're not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore."

That day, May 22, would have been the 49th birthday of Harvey Milk. City officials had considered revoking the permit for a rally planned for that night, but decided against it for fear of sparking more violence. Officials stated that the rally could channel the community's anger into something positive. Police from San Francisco and its neighboring towns were placed on alert by Mayor Feinstein, & my hero- Cleve Jones coordinated contingency plans with the police. More than 20,000 people gathered on Castro & Market streets. The crowd engaged in a peaceful celebration of Milk's life. Attendees danced to  disco songs, drank beer, & sang a tribute to Milk.

5 months later, on October 14, 1979, more than 100,000 people marched on Washington DC for gay rights. Many carried portraits of Milk, and placards honoring his legacy.The rally, something that Milk had intended to organize, was instead a tribute to his life.

On This Day In Gay History... Proposition 2 Is Struck Down By The US Supreme Court

Amendment 2 was a statewide antigay initiative prohibiting any branch of government in Colorado from passing legislation or adopting policies prohibiting discrimination against Gay people based on their sexual orientation. The measure was passed in 1992 by 53 percent of Colorado’s voters.

Don’t ski in Colorado, don’t hike there, don’t convention there, don’t visit there. That was the message, coming from the our friends inHollywood, indeed from gays & their friends across the country, in the weeks after Colorado became the “Hate State”. Among the celebrities calling for a boycott were Martina Navratilova, Barbra Streisand & Elizabeth Taylor, who all owned homes in Aspen.

The ACLU, the Colorado Legal Initiatives Project, & Lambda Legal won preliminary court rulings that kept the measure from taking effect until all lawsuits were resolved. The case went before the Supreme Court, which, on this day- May 20^th 1996, struck down Amendment 2 in a landmark 6–3 ruling. In declaring Amendment 2 unconstitutional, the Court made clear that antigay sentiment does not justify governmental discrimination & shattered the “special rights” rhetoric of those who oppose equal treatment for lesbian, gays.

The bigots & haters in the early 1990s mounted voter initiatives at local & state levels to block & repeal the passage of laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. This case put an end to those efforts & led the way for numerous additional states & local governments to ban such discrimination.

This landmark victory was the single most positive Supreme Court ruling in the history of the gay rights movement when it was decided. The Court’s ruling made clear that Gay folks have the same right to seek government protection against discrimination in the USA as any other group of people. The decision also marked a new level of legal respect for the LGBT community & rejected the notion that it is legitimate for the government to discriminate against gay people based on religious objections to homosexuality.

In the 4 years after the vote, as the case made its way through the courts, Proposition 2 never actually became the law in Colorado.

Also on this day, in 1873 – Levi Strauss, a Jew & very possibly Gay, received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. A year later, in 1874, the “Castro Clone” look began & gum memberships soared.

On May 20^th, 1891, was the first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope. On May 21^st, a line forms at the offices of The Screen Actors Guild.

On This Day In Gay History- May 19th

“We who live in prison, & in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, & the record of bitter moments.”

On this day- May 19th in 1897, Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gayol Prison, outside of London, after serving 2 years of "hard labour, hard fare & a hard bed" for a conviction of Gross Indecency. His health had suffered greatly, but he had a feeling of spiritual renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits, responsible for my college education, by the way) requesting a 6 month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept.

Wilde left England the next day for the continent, to spend his last 3 years in penniless exile. He took the name Sebastian Melmoth, after Saint Sebastian. Wilde wrote 2 long letters to the editor of the London Daily Chronicle, describing the brutal conditions of English prisons & advocating penal reform.

On This Day In Gay History

8 years ago, on this day- May 17th, Same-Sex Marriage became legal in Massachusetts, the first state to do so.


Society has not crumbled, no one has married their horse, children are not confused about gender, marriage, as an institution, has not been broken & mocked, no minister or priest has been jailed for refusing to perform a ceremony, men & women continue to use separate public bathrooms, no one is teaching children sexual techniques in sex ed classes, the terrorists did not win.

This is what could happen if we allow people of the same sex to marry.

Bedtime Story

Between the 2 great wars, there existed a movement that we now call The Bright Young Things, flappers & socialites seeking thrills & chasing dreams in the anything goes era.

Tennant by Cecil Beaton

Stephen Tennant was a born on this day-April 21^st, in 1906, into a life of profound privilege, yet he perverted his special standing by becoming the most beautiful person, male or female, of his generation.  With gold dust in his blond hair, vaseline on his eyelids, a leather coat with a chinchilla fur collar, he outraged staid society with his lover- the great poet & pacifist, super-masculine & much older- Siegfried Sassoon on his arm. Sassoon brought his fame, his talent, his position to their relationship, while Tennant's only daily activities were dressing-up & reading about himself in the gossip columns. The way-too-thin, way-too-rich Tennant's extreme elegance was a sort of sexual terrorism, as it flabbergasted society on both sides of the Atlantic for half a century.

Sassoon (standing) & Tennant

Retreating from the vulgarity of the modern world, Tennant’s home base was his country Arts & Crafts manor built for his mother.  He had 22 tons of silver sand spread on the lush English lawns, palms planted, & tropical birds & lizards were let loose in the grounds.  In the winter, they took refuge in the house, accompanying Stephen as he turned the bath taps on his collection of shells, since they looked better wet. His many visitors included: Cecil Beaton, David Hockney, Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman, Greta Garbo, The Sitwells, T.E.Lawrence, Talulah Bankhead, Christopher Isherwood, Cocteau, & his best friend- Willa Cather. Tennant lived in this home for homos, in delicious, decorative detachment.

When his NYC friends met his ship at the pier, the must have been embarrassed to see him walking down the gangway with his Marcelled, wearing makeup & .delicately holding a spray of orchids. When a rough customs official shouted "Pin 'em on!" in homophobic disgust, Tennant exclaimed: "Oh, have you got a pin? You kind, kind creature."

Tennant & his crowd

Tennant's  BFF was Willa Cather, the notoriously no nonsense writer of O' Pioneers!. What an odd pair, with the rather plain Cather hanging out with a man whose beauty tips included: “an absolute ban on facial grimacing or harsh, wrinkle-forming laughter.” Cather encouraged him to write, even though  the novel that obsessed him for the last 50 years of his life, remained unfinished at his death. Tennant did publish several slim volumes of poetry.

After WW2, Tennant went to bed.  For the next 17 years he rested. Perfumed, made-up, with ribbons in his dyed comb-over, Tennant was not concerned about his grossly overweight figure: "'But I'm beautiful, & the more of me there is the better I like it!” He lay in bed surrounded by his jewelry, drawings & Elvis Presley postcard, pink & gold statues in the overgrown garden, the fishnets & seashells everywhere, & pet lizards. His famous visitors may have laughed, but Tennant himself, was in on the joke from the beginning. 

A telling anecdote has him regretting giving a present to a friend because “I’m not sure if she loves it as intensely as I do”. 

In his later years, Tennant would visit the nearby villages by going shopping wearing tight pink shorts or a tablecloth as a skirt. His family had given up on him long before, exhibiting only bemused resignation, a trait The Husband uses today while dealing with me. Writer V. S. Naipaul described Tennant by noting "His shyness wasn't so much a wish not to be seen as a wish to be applauded on sight."

Stephen Tennant peacefully passed away, in bed, of course, in his 81st year. Beaton had once predicted: “he will be the last of us to go,” & so he was,leaving us in 1987.Sublime obliviousness to social taboos was Tennant's greatest contribution to our gay history. 

Born On This Day- April 6th... Rob Epstein

He is a Director, Editor, Executive Producer, Cinematographer, Producer, Sound/Sound Designer, & Screenwriter.From the beginning of his career, Oscar winner-Robert Epstein has sought to explore issues of homosexuality onscreen. At 19 years old, he responded to an ad looking for a director to contribute to the nonfiction film Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977). The finished film is a compilation of gay lives that shatter common stereotypes. The film was an impressive debut from such a very young man. Epsteins’ next work was the hugely successful The Times of Harvey Milk (1983), Epstein’s heroic homage to our hero, Harvey Milk, the gay city supervisor & assassination victim. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary & a host of other honors. The film was screened at festivals & in mainstream theaters.

In 1987, Epstein teamed up with filmmaker Jeffrey Friedman to form Telling Pictures Production in San Francisco, California. Their first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on the Mall in Washington DC. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Common Threads tells the dramatic story of the first decade of HIV/AIDS in America through stories of 5 individuals featured in the Quilt. Epstein won his second Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads.

Next was The Celluloid Closet (1995), another collaboration by Epstein & Friedman. It took 9 years to finance, produce, & release; started in 1986, it finally had a theatrical release with the help of HBO Films. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, this star-studded film offered one of the first serious, in-depth explorations of Hollywood's onscreen treatment of homosexuality.

In 2000, Epstein & Friedman directed & produced Paragraph 175, a film about the experiences of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett, & filmed in Germany, France & Spain, Paragraph 175 was awarded the documentary Grand Jury Prize for Directing at Sundance in 2000, with European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival where it was won the International Film Critics Association Award.

Epstein moved to a fiction film scripting & producing 2010's Howl, a dramatization of the 1957 obscenity trial surrounding beat poet Allen Ginsberg, played in the film by my boyfriend- James Franco, & my occasional lover- Jon Hamm.

Rob Epstein lives & works in San Fransisco. He turns 57 years old today.

On This Day In Gay History- Act Up Acts Up For The First Time

On this weekend in 1987, 250 ACT UP members demonstrated at Wall Street & Broadway in NYC  to demand greater access to experimental AIDS drugs & for a coordinated national policy to fight the plague. An Op/Ed article by Larry Kramer published in the NY Times the previous day described  the issues ACT UP was concerned with. 17 ACT UP members were arrested during this civil disobedience.

A year later, in 1988, ACT UP returned to Wall Street for a larger demonstration in which over 100 people were arrested. Since its birth in March 1987 at the Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center in downtown Manhattan, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power had grown to have thousands of members in more than 70 chapters in the USA & around the globe. ACT UP's non-violent direct action, using vocal demonstrations & dramatic acts of civil disobedience, focuses attention on the crucial issues of the AIDS crisis.

The small group of men & women of all races & classes, came together to change the world & save each other’s lives, planning & executing exhilarating major actions including Seize Control of the FDA, Stop the Church, & Day of Desperation, & other “zaps” and  that forced the government and mainstream media to deal with the AIDS crisis. Shortly after that first demonstration 25 years ago, the Food & Drug Administration announced it will shorten its drug approval process by 2 years.