THIS WEEKEND IN GAY HISTORY JULY 12

/ / | \ \ | / / | \ \
GAY WISDOM for Daily Living...

from White Crane a magazine exploring
Gay wisdom & culture http://www.Gaywisdom.org

Share this with your friends...
\ \ | / / | \ \ | / / 

THIS WEEKEND IN GAY HISTORY

JULY 12

100 BCE – JULIUS CAESAR, Roman military and political leader (d. 44 BCE) (born either July 12 or July 13); Although it is by no means the only reason why they carried Caesar out on a slab on the Ides of March, the Roman Emperor's reputation as a manly man had once been irrevocably besmirched. The Roman code that permitted men to bugger at their will, allowed only adolescent boys to be on the long end of the stick. In a society where it was considered infinitely better to give than to receive, any male who voluntarily adopted a passive sexual role was forever after considered an inferior being. This Caesar had done in his love affair with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. Cicero reports that Caesar, acting as the royal cup bearer for Nicomedes, was led, clad in purple shift, to the royal bedchamber and its golden couch. Nicomedes, he says, was definitely on top. Throughout the remainder of his life, emperor or not, Caesar was taunted by his enemies: Suetonius reports that Caesar was called "the queen's rival"; his partner in the consulship described him in an edict as "the queen of Bithynia"; his soldiers chanted "Caesar conquered Gaul; Nicomedes, Caesar"; Curio the Elder called him "every man's wife and every woman's husband." "In contrast," as John Boswell wrote, "the charge that Augustus had, as a boy, submitted to Caesar in the same way seems never to have done him much harm." Poor Julius Caesar, in so many ways a man in advance of his time. Not long after his murder, the public attitude changed as more and more emperors began to turn the other cheek just for the hell of it. They set the fashion for the glory that was Rome. Or, as an anonymous poet put it, "Rome, which delighted in making love from behind,/spelled AMOR—love—by inverting its own name."

And speaking of spelling please note for all future menu references: it is C-A-E-S-A-R…not Ceasar or Cesar.

1817 – HENRY DAVID THOREAU, American writer, philosopher born (d: 1862); In the fall of 1856, when he was thirty-nine years old, the author of Walden found "a rare and remarkable fungus, such as I have heard of but never seen before. The whole length [is] six and three quarter inches. It may be divided into three parts, picus, stem and base, -- or scrotum, for it is a perfect phallus. One of those fungi named impudicus, I think. In all respects, [it is] a most disgusting object, yet very suggestive. It was as offensive to the eye as to the scent, the cap rapidly melting and defiling what it touched with a fetid, olivaceous, semiliquid matter. In an hour or two the plant scented the whole house wherever placed, so that it could not be endured. I was afraid to sleep in my chamber where it had lain until the room had been well ventilated. It smelled like a dead rat in the ceiling, in all the ceilings of the house. Pray, what was Nature thinking of when she made this? She almost puts herself on a level with those who draw in privies."

Thoreau's sexuality has long been a subject of speculation; even his contemporaries commented on his apparent lack of interest in conventional romance. The most exhaustive examination of the evidence on both sides of this question is Walter Harding's article, "Thoreau's Sexuality," published in the Journal of Homosexuality (1991). Basing his conclusions mostly on evidence from Thoreau's Journal, Harding suggests that Thoreau's affectional orientation was probably homosexual, though there is no evidence that he was physically intimate with either men or women. Although Thoreau proposed marriage to one woman (and was proposed to by another), Harding concludes that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that he had a fundamental attraction to other men, an attraction sublimated through his writing and his passion for nature.  It's fascinating that his journals never mention women and some of whose essays express his thoughts on the relations of men.  His essay "Chastity and Sensuality," and the long discourse on "Friendship" in A Week are prolific expressions of the beauty, and the agony, of love between men.  Some of these discussions are said to refer to his brother or to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Others clearly refer to two men whom Thoreau found particularly attractive: Tom Fowler, whom Thoreau chose as a guide on a trip to the Maine woods; and Alek Therien, the Canadian woodchopper who visited Thoreau at Walden Pond (more on that in a bit).

In 1991, a quarter of a century after publishing his biography of Thoreau, his biographer Walter Harding, added an important postscript to his analysis of his subject: an essay in the Journal of Homosexuality arguing that Thoreau had "a specific sexual interest in members of his own sex." This aspect of Thoreau's sensibility has remained strangely quarantined from mainstream Thoreau scholarship, despite Harding and scholars such as Henry Abelove, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Michael Warner. 

Another Thoreau biographer, Robert Richardson, has consistently downplayed it and is so allergic to all things Freudian that he took the precaution of omitting Thoreau's childhood and adolescence from his biography. Telling.

Of course, Thoreau could not have thought of himself as a homosexual as we understand the term, but as a careful reader of Darwin and a close observer of nature, Thoreau wondered what it meant that he dispersed no seed of his own. (He half-asserted, half-speculated in his journal that "The end of marriage is not the propagation of the species— If you & I succeed there will have been men enough—any more than the object of the blossom is to mature the seed.") He also knew that in his relationships with men, his emotions were often more turbulent and demanding than his partners: "Methinks that I carry into friendship the tenderness & nicety of a lover," he admitted in his diary.

Most touchingly in 1854 Thoreau wrote in Walden of a visit paid him by a wandering French-Canadian woodchopper Alex Therien. So taken was Thoreau with this rugged laborer--"a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man," as he put it in his journal--and so eager was he "to fasten [him]self like a blood-sucker... to any full-blooded man that [came his] way," that he indulged in a moment of "Homerotic" fantasy: he asked the woodsman to read to him from the Iliad, and in particular "Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance."

Throughout his life Thoreau was falling in and out of love with his male acquaintances. He meditated on the higher meaning of male friendship in his notebooks. He never married.

1876 – MAX JACOB, French poet, born (d. 1944); Born in Quimper, Britttany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career. On the Boulevard Voltaire, he shared a room with Pablo Picasso, who introduced him to Guillaume Apollinaire, who in turn introduced him to Georges Braque. He would become close friends with Jean Cocteau, Christopher Wood and Amedeo Modigliani, who painted his portrait in 1916. He also befriended and encouraged the artist Romanin, otherwise known as French politician and future Resistance leader Jean Moulin.

Jacob, who had Jewish origins, claimed to have had a vision of Christ in 1909, and converted to Catholicism. But, despite his hopes, his new religion could not rid him of his homosexual longings, about which he once said, "If heaven witnesses my regrets, heaven will pardon me for the pleasures which it knows are involuntary." Notorious for his heavy drinking, Jacob said he joined the artistic community in Montparnasse to "sin disgracefully." In 1915, he arrived drunk at the funeral of Picasso's lover, Eva Göuel, and attempted to seduce the driver of the hearse.

Max Jacob is regarded as an important link between the symbolists and the surrealists, as can be seen in his prose poems Le cornet à dés (Dice Box, 1917) and in his paintings, exhibitions of which were held in New York City in 1930 and 1938.

On February 24, 1944 Max Jacob too was arrested by the Gestapo and put into Orleans prison. He was then transferred to a holding camp in Drancy for transport to a concentration camp in Germany. However, said to be suffering from bronchial pneumonia, Max Jacob died in the Drancy deportation camp on March 5^th.

1970 - PHIL JIMENEZ, born today, is an American comic book writer, artist and penciller. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and later Orange County, California, he moved to New York City to attend college at the School of Visual Arts where he now teaches a life-drawing course, Drawing for Cartoonists, as part of the undergraduate cartooning program. He began working at DC Comics when he was 21; his first published work was four pages in the DC miniseries War of the Gods (1991) and still lives in New York City.

He is probably best known for his work as writer/artist on Wonder Woman (2000- 2003), main penciller of the miniseries crossover event Infinite Crisis (2005- 2006) or his collaborations with writer Grant Morrison on The Invisibles and New X-Men.

1972 - Delegate JIM FOSTER becomes the first openly gay person to address a major American party convention at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

2002 – CANADIAN GAY RIGHTS: The Superior Court of Ontario orders Ontario to recognize marriage equality.

JULY 13

1968 – ROBERT GANT, American actor, born; Beginning in 2001, the handsome Gant starred in television in Showtime's Queer As Folk as Ben Bruckner, his best-known role to date. He attended undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania and law school at Georgetown University. While studying law, he never gave up on his true passion, acting, and performed in numerous theatrical productions. It was his career as a lawyer that brought him to Los Angeles when he accepted a position with the world's largest law firm; the firm's Los Angeles office was closed soon after, so he decided to focus all of his time on acting. Prior to Queer as Folk, he appeared on the WB's Popular and on NBC's Caroline in the City. Gant has made guest appearances on TV programs such as Friends, Veronica's Closet, Becker, Melrose Place, Ellen, Providence and Nip/Tuck. He also appeared in the independent films The Contract, Fits and Starts and Marie and Bruce, starring Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick.

In June 2004, Gant, along with actress Cady Huffman (star of Broadway play The Producers), filmed Billy's Dad is a Fudgepacker. The short film is an homage to 1950s educational films. Along with producing partners Chad Allen, and Christopher Racster, Robert has started the film and television production company, "Mythgarden". They have optioned a slate of initial projects, each with varying degrees of Gay-focused content, and are developing a number of other films and television shows.

While he gives time to a number of philanthropic and political causes, Gant's "torch issue" is that of aging in the Gay community. He supports such organizations as SAGE (Senior Advocacy for GLBT Elders) and GLEH (Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing). He is also developing a website devoted entirely to Gay elders and matters that affect them.

JULY 14

BASTILLE DAY is the French national holiday. In France, it is called "Fête Nationale" ("National Holiday"), in official parlance, or more commonly "quatorze juillet" ("14 July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Federation, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

For more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille

1895 -- KARL-HEINRICH ULRICHS, the great German campaigner for Gay rights, died on this date (b: 1825); a visionary pioneer of modern lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender movement. Ulrichs was born in Aurich, then part of the Kingdom of Hanover, in northwestern Germany. His first homosexual experience was in 1839 at the age of fourteen, in the course of a brief affair with his riding instructor. He graduated in law and theology from Göttingen University in 1846. From 1846 to 1848, he studied history at Berlin University, writing a dissertation (in Latin) on the Peace of Westphalia. From 1849 to 1857 Ulrichs worked as an official legal adviser for the district court of Hildensheim in the Kingdom of Hanover. He was dismissed in 1859 when his sexuality became apparent.

In 1862, Ulrichs took the momentous step of telling his family and friends that he was, using his own term, an Urning, and began writing under the pseudonym of "Numa Numantius". His first five essays, collected as Forschungen über das Rätsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Researches on the Riddle of Male-Male Love), explained such love as natural and biological, summed up with the Latin phrase anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa (a female psyche confined in a male body).

In these essays, Ulrichs coined various terms to describe different sexual orientations/gender identities, including "Urning" for a male who desires men (English "Uranian"), and "Dioning" for a male who is attracted to women. These terms are in reference to a section of Plato's Symposiumn which two kinds of love are discussed, symbolized by an Aphrodite who is born from a male (Uranos), and an Aphrodite who is born from a female (Dione). Ulrichs also coined words for the female counterparts, bisexuals and intersexuals.

He soon began publishing under his real name (possibly the first public "coming out") and wrote a statement of legal and moral support for a man arrested for homosexual offences. On August 29, 1867, Ulrichs became the first self-proclaimed homosexual to speak out publicly in defense of homosexuality when he pleaded at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich for a resolution urging the repeal of anti-homosexual laws. He was shouted down. Two years later, in 1869, the Austrian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny cobbled together the word "homosexual" (oddly combining a Latin prefix with a Greek suffix), and from the 1870s the subject of sexual orientation (as we would now say) began to be discussed  widely.

In the 1860s, Ulrichs moved around Germany, always writing and publishing, and always in trouble with the law — though always for his words rather than for sexual offenses. In 1864, his books were confiscated and banned by police in Saxony. Later the same thing happened in Berlin, and his works were banned throughout Prussia. Some of these papers have recently been found in the Prussian state archives and were published in 2004. Already several of Ulrichs's more important works are back in print, both in German and in translation.

Ulrichs was a patriotic Hanoverian, and when Prussia annexed Hanover in 1866 he was briefly imprisoned for opposing Prussian rule. The next year he left Hanover for good and moved to Munich, where he addressed the Association of German Jurists on the need to reform German laws against homosexuality. Later he lived in Würzburg and Stuttgart.

In 1879, Ulrichs published the twelfth and final book of his Research on the Riddle of Man-Manly Love. In poor health, and feeling he had done all he could in Germany, he went into self-imposed exile in Italy. For several years he travelled around the country before settling in L'Aquila, where his health improved.

He continued to write prolifically and publish his works (in German and Latin) at his own expense. In 1895, he received an honorary diploma from the University of Naples. Shortly after he died in L'Aquila. His grave stone is marked (in Latin), "Exile and Pauper." "Pauper" may have been bit of romantic license. Ulrichs lived in L'Aquila as the guest of a local landowner, Marquis Niccolò Persichetti, who gave the eulogy at his funeral. At the end of his eulogy, he said: "But with your loss, oh Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the fame of your works and your virtue will not likewise disappear... but rather, as long as intelligence, virtue, learning, insight, poetry and science are cultivated on this earth and survive the weakness of our bodies, as long as the noble prominence of genius and knowledge are rewarded, we and those who come after us will shed tears and scatter flowers on your venerated grave."

Late in life Ulrichs wrote: "Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the specter which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt."

Forgotten for many years, Ulrichs is now a cult figure in Europe. There are streets named for him in Munich, Bremen and Hanover. His birthday (August 28^th) is marked each year by a lively street party and poetry reading at Karl-Heinrich-Ulrichs-Platz in Munich. The city of L'Aquila has restored his grave and hosts the annual pilgrimage to the cemetery. Later Gay rights advocates were aware of their debt to Ulrichs. Magnus Hirshfeld thoroughly referenced Ulrichs in his The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914). The International Lesbian and Gay Law Association presents an annual Karl Heinricch Ulrichs Award in Ulrichs' memory.

1895, people…think about it. We all talk about the "modern LGBT movement" and we automatically think "Stonewall"…no. The most important thing stolen from a people is their history. If they steal your history they can tell you anything. Rethink. Revisit. Remember.

1914 - ARTHUR LAURENTS, American playwright, novelist, director and one of the giants of the American theater, born (d: 2011); His credits included the stage musicals West Side Story and Gypsy and the film The Way We Were. In 2000, Laurents published Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood. In it, he discusses his lengthy career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships, including those with Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher, an aspiring actor whom Gore Vidal suggested Laurents seek out at the men's clothing store in Beverly Hills Hatcher was managing at the time. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death on October 26, 2006. Laurents died in 2011.

1923 - JAMES PURDY (d: 2009) novelist, born; From the start, his work had often been at the edge of what was printable: Gollancz could not bring himself to print the word "motherfucker" in the 1957 UK edition of 63: Dream Palace; decades later, the German government tried to ban Narrow Rooms, but a court threw the case out. Although many readers were scandalized, a solid cadre of distinguished critics and scholars embraced his work from the start, including John Cowper Powys, Dame Edith Sitwell, Dorothy Parker, Jane Bowles, Lillian Hellman and Susan Sontag, who warmly defended him against puritanical critics. Tennessee Williams was also an early admirer of Purdy's work.

His early novel Malcolm was for decades a staple of the undergraduate American Literature curriculum of most American colleges and universities. Malcolm may have slipped from its place in the canon in recent years due to its irregular publishing history. This is consequent upon the contractual confusion that arose when Purdy agreed to permit Edward Albee to adapt it for the stage. In spite of this ongoing and unresolved problem, Malcolm is currently in print.

Following several reissues of previously out-of-print novels, as well as a recent appreciation by Gore Vidal in The New York Times Book Review, Purdy's work is currently enjoying a renaissance. As Edward Albee wrote long ago, there is a Purdy renaissance every ten years, like clockwork. Albee has been proved right every decade since.

Since the 1990s, when great age began to make itself felt, he had worked closely with his companion John Uecker (who was previously the last amanuensis of Tennessee Williams), a partnership that resulted in such late works as the novel Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (1997) and the collection of stories Moe's Villa (2003, 2005). He continued to dictate to a small team of devoted friends, and ascribed his continued intellectual vigor to the drinking of green tea and the avoidance of alcohol and tobacco. His advice to young writers was to 'banish shame'.

Purdy wrote anonymous letters from the age of nine. His first was written to his mother's landlady who, in young Purdy's view, was grasping. Countless thousands have been written since, many now owned by persons who have no idea of their provenance or value, although the style is inimitable. One of his very latest, written when he was 92, to a redactor who had displeased him by moving from New York to Montana, can be seen at http://hermeseta.com/purdyanon.html. This features some of Purdy's drawings, which have attracted some attention.

Purdy continued to dictate and to draw nearly every day until his death at 94. After several years of declining health, he fractured a hip and died in Englewood, New Jersey on 13 March 2009.

Shortly after his death in March 2009 a book of plays, "James Purdy, Selected Plays" including Brice, Ruthanna Elder, Where Quentin Goes and The Paradise Circus, was published by Ivan R. Dee. It features an insightful foreword by John Uecker (who also edited the book) about the friendship between Tennessee Williams and James Purdy. It also focuses on Purdy's play writing being his first form of writing since childhood, when he wrote plays for his brother, an actor, to perform. The book is dedicated by Purdy "To those who stood behind me", to Tennessee Williams and John Uecker.

John Waters contributed the following blurb on the cover: "James Purdy's Selected Plays will break your damaged little heart." Also on the cover, Gore Vidal called Purdy "An authentic American genius."

He was a gay man

1931 – THOMAS FRANCK, international law advisor and educator, born (d: 2009); A legal advisor to man foreign governments and an ad hoc judge and advocate before the International Court of Justice and the author of many books on international law, Franck was the founder of the Center for International Studies at New York  University. Brown University Professor of Law and international relations, David Kennedy called Franck "the leading American scholar of international law, an enthusiast for new ideas to make the world a more ordered and humane place. He was a powerful voice in just about every discussion of important international law in the last four decades."

Professor Franck's advocacy was rooted in his own childhood. Fleeing from Nazi Germany just before Kristallnacht, Frank was born in Berlin, the only child of Hugo and Ilse Franck. An early advocate of decolonialization in the 1950s, Professor Franck wrote constitutions for several African countries as they emerged from British rule, Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which became Tanzania, and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe; and Sierra Leone. He later served as legal advisor to the governments of Kenya, Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, El Salvador and Chad. From 1995 to 2007 he was counsel to Bosnia before the International Court of Justice in the case against Serbia in the case of the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica.

Dr. Franck's marriage to Martin Daly was one of the 18,000 marriages the Supreme Court of California allowed to stand in the wake of Proposition 8. Franck died on May 29, 2009 and is survived by his partner of many years.

1960 – Today is the birthday of the American comedienne, actress and singer JANE LYNCH. She is known for her roles in comedies such as Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and for her recurring role as lawyer Joyce Wischina in The L Word.  She starred opposite Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia, playing the role of "Dorothy McWilliams," Julia Child's sister.

As of 2009, Lynch currently appears on the Fox series Glee. Lynch won glowing reviews for her role as the aggressive cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. Mary McNamara of the LA Times wrote, "Lynch alone makes Glee worth watching." Lynch received a 2009 Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role on Glee. The series itself also received nominations in three other categories. She won the 2010 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress - Comedy Series for her work in Glee.  Lynch hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time in October.

Lynch is an out Lesbian and married her wife, Dr. Lara Embry, on May 31, 2010 at the Blue Heron Restaurant in Sunderland, Massachusetts. Embry herself received much publicity surrounding a custody

battle over two children with her former partner.

2011 – SENATE BILL 48 is signed by Governor Jerry Brown in California. The bill requires California's public school textbooks to include the historical contributions of LGBT Americans under a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on this date. The legislation was authored by out gay Democratic State Sen. Mark Leno, who said it would ensure that LGBT Americans are no longer excluded from history lessons. "Denying LGBT people their rightful place in history gives our young people an inaccurate and incomplete view of the world around them," Leno said.

Senate Bill 48 requires public instruction in social sciences to include the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, as well as people with disabilities and members of other cultural groups. It prohibits teaching from textbooks or other instructional materials that reflect adversely on people because of their sexual orientation.

"History should be honest," said Governor Brown in a written statement. "This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books.

 

/|\=/|\=/|\=/|\=/|\=/|\=/|\=/|\=/|\